Sky/Froome Talk Only (No Way Sky Are Cleans?)

[maltiv]

Froome's results? Those were surprising. Very surprising. It wasn't just that he was up there (which was strange enough). It's the people he was putting out the back door. As you note, many of them were out of form and would likely have been dropped anyway. But I would have been impressed and surprised with Froome climbing with the likes of Monfort and Fuglsang, let alone blowing them out the back door (as he did on more than one occasion).

Not really surprised that Froome can outclimb Fuglsang, not like he has shown much in the mountains since Dauphine in 2009. I mean in the TDF the last two years Fuglsang has repeatedly been dropped in the mountains by O'Grady and Voigt (+about 60 others).

Not to mention that Fuglsang, Monfort and Mollema all did the TDF. I don't see how Tour-Vuelta is much better than Giro-Tour and shouldn't be ideal for the form. Amongst those who didn't do the tour however, most of them showed up in much worse form than they potentially could be in (Scarponi, Nibali, Anton).

That doesn't change the fact that Froome produced insane numbers, though.

 

[michel700c]

http://velonews.competitor.com/2011...t-of-africa-and-onto-the-vuelta-podium_192373

"Bilharzia – it’s a water-borne disease, which I found that I had it in December last year. It feeds on your red blood cells, for a cyclist, it was a nightmare. I must have touched some contaminated water somewhere in Africa. I probably had it for year before I found it. That just drained my immune system. I was always getting little colds and coughs, nothing serious, but it always kept me from being at 100-percent fitness."

 

[Mambo95]

My reasoning is that, should Nibali, Antón and Scarponi all underperform (as they did), then the likes of Mollema, Monfort and Fuglsang are the kind of riders I would expect to profit from that - i.e. lower end top 10 riders and fringe GC men who could hope to get a good GC by quietly accumulating results. Like Tiralongo and Cobo in '09.

Really? There was hype for Monfort as a GC contender? Fuglsang? Cobo? No-one was talking about these riders. The same with Froome. He had actually been talked up in some parts as a future GC guy. If he hadn't then I wouldn't have been disappointed by him for about two years.

But my original post was quoting you saying that he was dropping riders with 10 times the palmares. This was true but it makes the mistake of thinking that sportsmen are robots and work just the same every time. The Nibali and Scaponi of the Vuelta were not the Nibali and Scarponi of the Giro. That's form for you. Play some sport and you'll learn about it.

 

[webvan]

http://velonews.competitor.com/2011...t-of-africa-and-onto-the-vuelta-podium_192373

"Bilharzia – it’s a water-borne disease, which I found that I had it in December last year. It feeds on your red blood cells, for a cyclist, it was a nightmare. I must have touched some contaminated water somewhere in Africa. I probably had it for year before I found it. That just drained my immune system. I was always getting little colds and coughs, nothing serious, but it always kept me from being at 100-percent fitness."

Guy sounds legit to me and certainly more of an "intellectual" than even Fignon who had only graduated from high school.

 

[JRanton]

http://velonews.competitor.com/2011...t-of-africa-and-onto-the-vuelta-podium_192373

"Bilharzia – it’s a water-borne disease, which I found that I had it in December last year. It feeds on your red blood cells, for a cyclist, it was a nightmare. I must have touched some contaminated water somewhere in Africa. I probably had it for year before I found it. That just drained my immune system. I was always getting little colds and coughs, nothing serious, but it always kept me from being at 100-percent fitness."

The Bilharzia disease makes Froome's transformation just about believable for me. It explains his poor 2010 season and I think there was enough in his 2008 and '09 results to suggest that he could be a future GT contender.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Really? There was hype for Monfort as a GC contender? Fuglsang? Cobo? No-one was talking about these riders. The same with Froome. He had actually been talked up in some parts as a future GC guy. If he hadn't then I wouldn't have been disappointed by him for about two years.

There was hype for Fuglsang as a GC rider. He had disappointed, but even his results whilst being "disappointing" were 10x those that Froome was gaining whilst similarly "disappointing" as a potential GC rider.

As for Cobo, well, more than one person actually nominated him for a top 10 before the race began, so it's not like he was totally nobody. Fuglsang has been the top mountain helper for the Schlecks for a couple of years now, so it's not surprising that he might do well given the chance.

If we look at the palmarès of the relative riders prior to that Vuelta, then there is no way on earth you convince me that Froome being up there is not more of a shock than Monfort or Fuglsang. Look at their palmarès for 2009-11. Froome has done nothing in his career. Those guys may have stagnated or not achieved at the level they perhaps were expected to - but they had five, six, seven times the CQ points for 2011, and Monfort has SEVEN years on his palmarès with more CQ points than Froome's highest haul before 2011. And Froome's points totals were decreasing.

If Froome's performance was not a surprise, why on earth wouldn't Sky already have him locked in for a contract? How on earth would Sky justify letting a British rider with genuine GT-winning calibre go? Oh yea - because he'd not only been disappointing, but had simply achieved nothing in his career since a decent performance from a breakaway in the 2008 queen stage.

Even freaking Cobo was less out of nowhere than this - he podiumed the Vuelta a Burgos in August and showed he was in form. Froome went from irrelevant lower slope domestique with no contract for 2012 to GT-calibre climber and better TTer than Wiggins or Cancellara in the space of two days. And unfortunately for Mr Froome, too many years of following cycling has bred skepticism in the form of remembering a number of "too good to be true" performances from the likes of Santiago Pérez, Isidro Nozal, Ezequiel Mosquera and Bernhard Kohl. Each and every one of them had a better palmarès than Froome when they broke out, and apart from Santi Pérez they didn't perform as obviously dominantly as Froome, and each and every one of them turned out to be a fraud.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Not really surprised that Froome can outclimb Fuglsang, not like he has shown much in the mountains since Dauphine in 2009. I mean in the TDF the last two years Fuglsang has repeatedly been dropped in the mountains by O'Grady and Voigt (+about 60 others).

Not to mention that Fuglsang, Monfort and Mollema all did the TDF. I don't see how Tour-Vuelta is much better than Giro-Tour and shouldn't be ideal for the form. Amongst those who didn't do the tour however, most of them showed up in much worse form than they potentially could be in (Scarponi, Nibali, Anton).

That doesn't change the fact that Froome produced insane numbers, though.

Tour-Vuelta is much easier than Giro-Tour because the average speed in the Vuelta is much lower than that in the Tour.

 

[Benotti69]

Tour-Vuelta is much easier than Giro-Tour because the average speed in the Vuelta is much lower than that in the Tour.

but take into consideration the heat factor of this years Vuelta, which can negate any idea of easier.....

 

[D Avoid]

But this year he was being told to drill it on the front for the sake of someone they favoured and still being there at the finish after dropping people whose palmarès are 10x his. And to do it once is "wow, impressive day from Froome!"

But to go in two weeks from being the guy whose only claim to fame is doing a Taaramäe on San Luca in 2009 and who doesn't have a contract to a guy who outclimbs people who've won GTs - not just on a good day but continually - and out-TTs Wiggins and Cancellara?

Let's just say that if Sky were being honest about spotting those numbers and thinking he could be a GT contender, then:
- he wouldn't have been working for Wiggins anyway, especially not on La Manzaneda when in the leader's jersey
- given their commitment to a British Tour winner, they wouldn't let a 26 year old potential GT winner walk, they'd have locked him into a contract sooner.

All of which gives me the impression that Froome performing to that level - or at least him performing to that level for several days, not just an isolated great day of superdomestiquing - is almost as much of a surprise for Team Sky as it is for the rest of us. If he had a Spanish flag next to his name he'd be being treated like dirt here.

There is a perfect ring to that statement.

Hope you are fit enough to stay in tune!!

Ja z z it up.

 

[Berzin]

You guys need to focus more on the following circumstances-

1) The Vuelta field was pathetic. Whoever showed up was either not on form, training for the World's or from Spanish teams that have no decent enough riders to make the race difficult.

2) Wiggins is an overrated rider with almost no palmares in hilly Classics or mountain top finishes at the Tour. In 2009 he followed wheels. That's all he did.

3) The Vuelta is notorious for it's dodgy and lax anti-doping testing. Not that hard to get away with a program in Spain.

Given these three things I don't think it's a stretch that Froome did as well as he did.

 

[Reverend_T_Preedy]

There seems to be 3 view points here.

1) People who can't bear the thought that a British rider can cycle up mountains quicker than Spanish and (dare I say it) even Colombians!! Therefore, Froome and Wiggins must be doped up to the eyeballs.

2) People who are adamant that British riders don't dope (and would never think of doping) and believe it's only done by dirty Spaniards and Italians.

3) People who have a very small amount of knowledge on the subject who sudenly think they know everything and can spot a doper from a mile off.

Unfortunately, the first two view points are based on assumptions, no fact whatsover and bull****. The third is even more dangerous because some mentally challenged people actually believe them.

Nobody knows the facts or knows much about any of the riders so making assumptions that they dope is wrong in my opinion.

Every rider deserves to have the assumption of innocence until proven guilty. Let the powers that be decide if certain riders should be target tested and leave the testing and analysis of data to the experts.

 

[Mrs John Murphy]

4) Posters with a Jesus complex who come into threads and pontificate about what posters should be doing and thinking.

 

[mb2612]

How dare people form their own opinion, we should just listen to what you and the UCI tell us to do

 

[Winterfold]

5) Long-time fans of the sport with no particular national bias who have in the past seen riders come from nowhere and dish out consistent hurt to legit GT contenders which leave everyone speechless, and have been taught by experience that testing generally catches up with such 'too good to be true' performances.

Which seems to be quite a few of the people posting in this thread.

 

[Anonymous]

5) Long-time fans of the sport with no particular national bias who have in the past seen riders come from nowhere and dish out consistent hurt to legit GT contenders which leave everyone speechless, and have been taught by experience that testing generally catches up with such 'too good to be true' performances.

Which seems to be quite a few of the people posting in this thread.

So Pierre Rolland is a doper, but thats impossible. Hes French. Everyone knows the French dont dope (well, the French men anyway)

 

[Libertine Seguros]

If there was a Spanish flag next to Pierre Rolland's name, he'd have been being crucified too.

 

[Mrs John Murphy]

So Pierre Rolland is a doper, but thats impossible. Hes French. Everyone knows the French dont dope (well, the French men anyway)

To paraphrase Mandy Rice-Davies 'Well you would say that, wouldn't you?

 

[mb2612]

So Pierre Rolland is a doper, but thats impossible. Hes French. Everyone knows the French dont dope (well, the French men anyway)

Roland got a top 10 in the tour after being called the next big thing for a few years, that's massively different from Froome.

Not that I am saying Europcar is clean, because they were amazingly strong this year, but still

 

[roundabout]

So Pierre Rolland is a doper, but thats impossible. Hes French. Everyone knows the French dont dope (well, the French men anyway)

There's a thread on Rolland and Europcar has been discussed in this forum. We're equal opportunity 'haters' here.

 

[Winterfold]

Dim Rolland and Froome are not the same thing. Rolland suffered from almost Gilbertesque levels of hype. Froome has never been the next big thing, not ever.

Plus I bet one of halalala's power analyses would show one on the believeable side of W/kg and the other, questionable at best.

I'm not going to shut off my inner cynic just because the guy is as British as Kevin Pieterson - if he was in a yellow shirt in 2008 (and the performances were like that) I know exactly what I'd have thought.

EDIT Also - if Rolland got popped <gallic shrug>

 

[Duartista]

For anyone who hasn't seen it, Froome's 'trainingpeaks' analysis: http://teamsky.cyclingnews.com/tech-features/trainingpeaks-analysis-chris-froome%E2%80%99s-vuelta-breakthrough/

It was only posted today I think.

 

[Duartista]

If there was a Spanish flag next to Pierre Rolland's name, he'd have been being crucified too.

To be fair, there is no Spanish team with as good a record on doping as Europcar. I don't recall them ever having a positive or having any links to a doping ring/investigation, and they've been around for years.

 

[roundabout]

Nothing from Angliru, nothing from Pena Cabarga.

He can hold 6.6 w/kg for 24 minutes it seems. Wonder what stage that was.

 

[webvan]

Too bad cry baby Miler stole Froome's spot on the ITT today, Britain could have made one and two.

I watched the rerun on the BBC and oddly enough I didn't hear the commentators mention Froome's name a single time. They are very fond of cry baby Miler though since they were ecstatic at his pathetic 7th place nearly 3 minutes down.

 

[Cycle Chic]

Too bad cry baby Miler stole Froome's spot on the ITT today, Britain could have made one and two.

I watched the rerun on the BBC and oddly enough I didn't hear the commentators mention Froome's name a single time. They are very fond of cry baby Miler though since they were ecstatic at his pathetic 7th place nearly 3 minutes down.

I agree - looked like he was carrying a huge gut as well.