Most Farcical Tour Ever?

[Mellow Velo]

That is the point. He didn't have to. His team killed off all the other contenders. Not even US Postal could do that.

2002, Heras.
A joke of a Tour, if ever there was.
Huge time gaps in the top 10.

Lol you're really clueless

Says the guy with 36 posts and no repost.

 

[180mmCrank]

Insert the name Lance Armstrong, put the post in another thread, repeat four times and what do you get?

Suspended by Susan for trolling.

Saying a rider is clean is trolling ?? Really

 

[AcademyCC]

Lol you're really clueless[/Q

are you saying Bradley Wiggins isnt a world class athlete? It would be quite funny if you were.

 

[DominicDecoco]

2009 is 3 years ago. The guy was multi Olympic medallist and a World Champion ... we are not really suggesting that he doesn't have a substantial pedegree as an athlete - are we? Wiggins was and is a World Class athlete by any measure.

I have no clue about Froome and others but Wiggins is clean.

He most definitely is. Every rider in the peloton is. Still, that doesn't explain the progress of him being a track/TT-specialist ending 124 in the Tour, loses 8-10 kg and becomes one of the best climbers without losing any power what so ever due to that weight loss. Something is not right.

 

[180mmCrank]

Oh no! Tyler Hamilton syndrome has spread!

You can't really compare Tyler H with Wiggins? Well I suppose you can but I don't think it stands up for long.

 

[the asian]

2009 is 3 years ago. The guy was multi Olympic medallist and a World Champion ... we are not really suggesting that he doesn't have a substantial pedegree as an athlete - are we? Wiggins was and is a World Class athlete by any measure.

I have no clue about Froome and others but Wiggins is clean.

We've had this discussion in other threads before. Are there any precedence of World Class Track riders becoming Grand Tour winners. The only who have done well in the Track and won GTs are Berzin, the 94 Giro (a proven doper), Moser. the 84 Giro in a course tailor made for him, even more so than the 2012 Tour for Wiggins, and Coppi.
So either Wiggins is a legend like Coppi, a doper like Berzin or a guy who got lucky once due to a tailor made course like Moser.

 

[thehog]

You can't really compare Tyler H with Wiggins? Well I suppose you can but I don't think it stands up for long.

I was referring to the nice guy reference..... I just spoke to the year 2002 and they want their excuses back...c

 

[Epicycle]

It definitely ranks with the craziest performances of the biopassport era...

Sky Tour 2012
Boonen Roubaix 2012
Cancellara Ronde/Roubaix 2010

And probably Gilbert's 2011 triple too.

Remember Cancellara's performances started the motor speculation and tons of people were suspicious of Boonen's TTing away from the field this spring. It's not like Friggins is getting picked on when other guys weren't.

The added weirdness about things now is that it may be more than just the actual doping that's causing the big difference. It could be other riders having to back off their programs after getting biopassport warnings too. You just don't know.

 

[180mmCrank]

We've had this discussion in other threads before. Are there any precedence of World Class Track riders becoming Grand Tour winners. The only who have done well in the Track and won GTs are Berzin, the 94 Giro (a proven doper), Moser. the 84 Giro in a course tailor made for him, even more so than the 2012 Tour for Wiggins, and Coppi.
So either Wiggins is a legend like Coppi, a doper like Berzin or a guy who got lucky once due to a tailor made course like Moser.

Or he is just "Bradley Wiggins" a guy that was very good on the track and then got good on the road. There doesn't have to be a precendent. I get it would be nice (or convenient) if there was but there not being one doesn't really matter IMHO.

T

 

[Square-pedaller]

You can't really compare Tyler H with Wiggins?

I have to say that Wiggins doesn't do it for me. I did think that Tyler didn't dope becasue he was a nice guy. Maybe that experience immunised me from making the same mistake again.

 

[BroDeal]

It definitely ranks with the craziest performances of the biopassport era...

Sky Tour 2012
Boonen Roubaix 2012
Cancellara Ronde/Roubaix 2010

And probably Gilbert's 2011 triple too.

Remember Cancellara's performances started the motor speculation and tons of people were suspicious of Boonen's TTing away from the field this spring. It's not like Friggins is getting picked on when other guys weren't.

The added weirdness about things now is that it may be more than just the actual doping that's causing the big difference. It could be other riders having to back off their programs after getting biopassport warnings too. You just don't know.

Friggins! LOL.

 

[Race Radio]

The biggest problem with this years Tour is you have a large bunch of riders who never should have been there. These riders were chemical inventions, They never should have stood on podiums let alone been leaders of a team focused around them.

We started the Tour with a normal list of 20-40 riders who would animate the race. it turns 20 of those riders got their skill through a needle. Instead of having a bunch of animators we had a bunch of guys struggling to hang on to a group that is climbing 10% slower then 10 years ago.

Time for those guys to retire and let riders with talent that does not come in a needle have some time

 

[sniper]

The added weirdness about things now is that it may be more than just the actual doping that's causing the big difference. It could be other riders having to back off their programs after getting biopassport warnings too. You just don't know.

good point.

Could be one effective way of how the UCI could favor their favorites (Sky in this case): by warning other teams that they're in the danger zone.

Could perhaps even partially explain the Sagan explosion: the UCI simply did/does not (yet) have enough passport data of this guy, so there was no way they could warn him?

 

[Anonymous]

2009 is 3 years ago. The guy was multi Olympic medallist and a World Champion ... we are not really suggesting that he doesn't have a substantial pedegree as an athlete - are we? Wiggins was and is a World Class athlete by any measure.

I have no clue about Froome and others but Wiggins is clean.

He was within a few seconds of leading the Tour de France wire to wire.

Everyone knows that happens all the time

Unbelievable.

 

[Martinello]

The Roche-conspiracy probably only exists in the poor guys head. 70 employees servicing cyclists? That's one big department for a customer group who's pharma consumption of epo doesn't even come close to say a mid sized department of nephrology in e.g. Cologne or Girona. To the best of my knowledge, such hospital departments do not have their own sections within the pharmaceutical companies.

and Roche isn't German, it's Swiss...

 

[Martinello]

as some guy in a comment section on some article said, it's a miracle that this sport still gets the amount of media coverage it gets.


Interestingly, in the same comment section, a former employer of the German pharmaceutical company Roche chimed in and said this:


http://www.spiegel.de/sport/sonst/b...ohl-die-tour-de-france-gewinnen-a-845637.html

The Roche-conspiracy probably only exists in the poor guys head. 70 employees servicing cyclists? That's one big department for a customer group who's pharma consumption of epo doesn't even come close to say a mid sized department of nephrology in e.g. Cologne or Girona. To the best of my knowledge, such hospital departments do not have their own sections within the pharmaceutical companies.

and Roche isn't German, it's Swiss...

 

[FoxxyBrown1111]

The biggest problem with this years Tour is you have a large bunch of riders who never should have been there. These riders were chemical inventions, They never should have stood on podiums let alone been leaders of a team focused around them.

We started the Tour with a normal list of 20-40 riders who would animate the race. it turns 20 of those riders got their skill through a needle. Instead of having a bunch of animators we had a bunch of guys struggling to hang on to a group that is climbing 10% slower then 10 years ago.

Time for those guys to retire and let riders with talent that does not come in a needle have some time

That´s a good post. It makes sense. Never thought of it this way. Thanks...

 

[sniper]

The Roche-conspiracy probably only exists in the poor guys head. 70 employees servicing cyclists? That's one big department for a customer group who's pharma consumption of epo doesn't even come close to say a mid sized department of nephrology in e.g. Cologne or Girona. To the best of my knowledge, such hospital departments do not have their own sections within the pharmaceutical companies.

and Roche isn't German, it's Swiss...

ok, so we substract the exaggeration-factor.
what remains would perhaps be a handful of Roche-guys doing contracts with a handful of cyclists and an occasional runner. still sounds dirty.

 

[FoxxyBrown1111]

The Roche-conspiracy probably only exists in the poor guys head. 70 employees servicing cyclists? That's one big department for a customer group who's pharma consumption of epo doesn't even come close to say a mid sized department of nephrology in e.g. Cologne or Girona. To the best of my knowledge, such hospital departments do not have their own sections within the pharmaceutical companies.

and Roche isn't German, it's Swiss...

Yes it does. A self proclaimed "insider" who knows nothing about cycling, but who posts the exact same BS in DER SPIEGEL every time they print something about cycling.

 

[The Cobra]

The biggest problem with this years Tour is you have a large bunch of riders who never should have been there. These riders were chemical inventions, They never should have stood on podiums let alone been leaders of a team focused around them.

We started the Tour with a normal list of 20-40 riders who would animate the race. it turns 20 of those riders got their skill through a needle. Instead of having a bunch of animators we had a bunch of guys struggling to hang on to a group that is climbing 10% slower then 10 years ago.

Time for those guys to retire and let riders with talent that does not come in a needle have some time

+1

I think there has been one too many big names to have been busted for these guys to take crazy risks anymore. I mean even the master escape artist Armstrong is finally going to go down. Cycling really has turned a corner and the guys with a real big talent and racing clean are coming to the top (Wiggins/Froome).

 

[180mmCrank]

He was within a few seconds of leading the Tour de France wire to wire.

Everyone knows that happens all the time

Unbelievable.

I get it - it's difficult to believe.

But the difficult to believe label doesn't do it for me ... because having been involved in high performance sport I have seen people do apparently unbelievable things (without doping), I have done unbelievable things (without doping) ... it's the nature of sport, it's the nature of high performance in sport.

 

[BroDeal]

+1

I think there has been one too many big names to have been busted for these guys to take crazy risks anymore. I mean even the master escape artist Armstrong is finally going to go down. Cycling really has turned a corner and the guys with a real big talent and racing clean are coming to the top (Wiggins/Froome).

With the Rabobank dope doctor plus Rogers and Porte right there beside them...

 

[taiwan]

Yes it does. A self proclaimed "insider" who knows nothing about cycling, but who posts the exact same BS in DER SPIEGEL every time they print something about cycling.

OK point taken.

 

[zlev11]

The biggest problem with this years Tour is you have a large bunch of riders who never should have been there. These riders were chemical inventions, They never should have stood on podiums let alone been leaders of a team focused around them.

We started the Tour with a normal list of 20-40 riders who would animate the race. it turns 20 of those riders got their skill through a needle. Instead of having a bunch of animators we had a bunch of guys struggling to hang on to a group that is climbing 10% slower then 10 years ago.

Time for those guys to retire and let riders with talent that does not come in a needle have some time

I agree with this, but it only explains why Leipheimer/Vino/Scarponi/Valverde are getting dropped by the GC group.

i mean, there's no doubt that Jingleheimer is off the gear and that's why he was so horrendous. but then there's guys like Porte and Rogers riding tempo on a finishing climb and shelling off all but 4 other guys, what's the explanation for that? how are they all of a sudden able to not only climb with guys they would have had no business climbing with even last season, but now are able to ride so hard for so long that they prevent them from attacking at all?

people mention Liquigas doing the same thing at the Giro, but it didn't work. Szmyd was useless in the 3rd week, as he should be after drilling at the front for an entire week of climbing. and Basso ended up isolated pretty early even in the 2nd week.

 

[Martinello]

ok, so we calculate the exaggeration-factor.
what remains would perhaps be 10 Roche-guys doing contracts with a handful of cyclists and an occasional runner. still sounds dirty.

I can't see why Big Pharma would do such business with athletes. The risk of getting involved in some juicy scandal with celeb atheletes over a few thousand vials of NeoRecormon is just too big compared with the gains. Saleswise, the epo/hgh consumption of the pro athletes is a drop in the ocean compared to the consumption of the patients with e.g. renal failure.

Next, giving some phase I/II drugs to the athletes for testing is a waste of time. You'll never get good quality data usable in research back from cyclists. Too many unknown variables in that equation (using other drugs, missing doses, changes in training/race schedule etc. etc.). And don't expect pro cyclists to come a Swiss lab once a week for blood sampling in an illegitimate protocol.

If Big Pharma wants to get dirty and try out new drugs in shady phase I/II trials, they find a nice hospital with some easygoing doctors in a nice, warm African/Asian/LAtin American country with regulatory bodies willing to look the other way.
Big Pharma are probably dirty in some aspects but pro atheletes make poor guniea pigs and the market is small.

and I do clinical trials and medicine for a living....