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

[martinvickers]

I could, but this is Sky. Dave Brailsford has been in charge of British cycling for what 10+ years. In that time the track team never had a saddle sore? Given that Sky have the biggest budget they could hire all the best and clean medical staff(probably an oxymoron in the cycling world) that are out there.

My point.

snow white
sleeping beauty
cowardly lion
seven dwarves

 

[zigmeister]

When you are reducing fat, you need to be in calorie deficit. In such a case, the body reacts negatively such that your power is reduced by a few percentage points. At least it is not possible to reduce weight and increase power simultaneously. They need to be done in 2 separate phases. This has been my personal experience as well. But i am not an expert in medical matters.

Not accurate entirely. You don't have to be calorie deficit. You need to adjust your diet so your body burns fat, not muscle.

So adjusting the percentage/ratio of certain food intake, such as higher fats/proteins, less carbs/sugars, you will get your body in more of a ketosis state, which will then burn fat for energy. Your body prefers sugar/carbs for energy, protein for muscle buidling, but fat is really a great energy source and better once you force your body to utilize it. Hence, taking sugars entirely out of your diet, and only higher protein, good fats and lower carbs complex and nearly all sugar is how to go in a ketosis state.

This is almost entirely the Atkins Diet fad in the US. High fat/protein, complex carbs, like vegetables...no sugars. Also, many call a stricter variation of this the caveman diet. Meats/poultry/vegetables. No other carbs. No grains, no sugars. If you do eat sugar, it should be fruit only, and only limited amounts. Refined sugar is the devil...but tastes so good!

Does anybody know what his actual weight it then and now? That will tell us if he lost weight, saved muscle, or if he lost both, and increased power. Not likely he lost muscle at all. Just appears he has cut his body fat, which for endurance riders like this, isn't that difficult to do. Just adjusting the diet as mentioned will encourage that.

Also, even if he did lose 1-2% muscle strength if he went calorie deficit and his body used muscle to fuel it, the weight/body fat savings was a net gain in power/weight ratio.

Or, he is doping...

 

[BYOP88]

My point.

snow white
sleeping beauty
cowardly lion
seven dwarves

Look I agree the 'good' Doctor maybe the greatest expert in the prevention/treatment of saddle sores, but surely detective Dave with his time spent in the sport would have a good handle on who would fit into the Sky PR and who wouldn't be a good fit. I'm sure there are doctors out there who've had no prior involvement in cycling, who would take the Sky paycheck and provide legit medical treatment.

You may have answered this before, but please could you indulge me?

If Froome and Wiggins were Russian, Spanish, Italian etc and were riding for Movistar/another random team and the same transformation had taken place, would you think they were legit?

 

[Fearless Greg Lemond]

Why was Wiggins on antibiotics in Trentino then?

I read he had a saddle sore? LA had those too you remember?

A saddle sore and then been given antibiotics? And then perform like he did at Trentino?

Mmmmmh.

That does not do good for your point pentacycle, I always thought antibiotics were not so good for ones stamina/form, at least not for me.

Lets hope Wiggo didnt do vacation with Chris.

 

[thehog]

Like I said I don't have the excact fat % from Froome in 2009 but just look at the difference, pretty shocking. You can see in 2009 he was thin, but naturally looking. In 2012.. well haha





after....





and: http://i802.photobucket.com/albums/yy305/webbie146/4_zpsdf07690e.jpg

Well, make you're own conclusion haha

All the weight lost stopped him going sideways.

Result!

 

[Pentacycle]

Yes, the pressure got to him, so he became anorectic. LOL Maybe the worst argument ive ever heard.

Of course it indicates a doping program. There is no way someone that skinny should be able to be better than Cancellara in the ITT.

He's 69-70 kgs, and he has a very high FTP. Of course he's a good TT'er. Despite his horrible pedalling style he's still got a very flat TT position and good power/surface ratio. Lots of guys with his build can TT well, but as he's the better climber(more W/kg) he's automatically a better TT'er.

I read he had a saddle sore? LA had those too you remember?

A saddle sore and then been given antibiotics? And then perform like he did at Trentino?

Mmmmmh.

That does not do good for your point pentacycle, I always thought antibiotics were not so good for ones stamina/form, at least not for me.

Lets hope Wiggo didnt do vacation with Chris.

He felt bad, and after the first MTF he faded on the final stage, not only due to having that mechanical. His form wasn't ideal. Or are you suggesting that his max climbing level is just being able to follow Nibali, and that he wasn't affected by some medication?

But I agree that suddenly when Leinders leaves, saddle sores become an issue at Sky. It's the only thing stopping them now from winning all GT's.

 

[webvan]

+1 That was indeed what I was trying to point out.

If it stands to reason that if he was doping in August-September 2011 he is likely doping now, why is that even a query? If the bilharzia could mask blood doping back then, he has now a new, post-2011 baseline, whether based on clean or dirty figures. The old baseline must be chucked out because it's irrelevant. As has been mentioned before, the biopassport is more effective as a method of moderating doping than preventing it. Froome isn't an untalented guy. But what he showed in 2008-9 does not make what happened in 2011 any less ridiculous.

The thing that's suspicious is that Chris Froome is now the best climber in the world, and one of the best time triallists. That in itself sets alarm bells ringing. Because no matter how much re-appraisal we give to the pre-bilharzia performances, he showed the talent to be a pretty decent top tier rider. That's not the same as showing the talent to be a GT winner and one of the top 5 riders in the world. Rigoberto Urán, a couple of months later, finished on the podium of Lombardia, and was more active in the final week in the 2009 Tour than Froome was in 2008. He's a guy that people had been raving about the potential of since he arrived at Unibet in 2007 and some even earlier than that. Froome was a guy with potential, but that's all. The 2011 transformation did not constitute 'normal progression' unless you completely reinvent what happened between May 2009 and August 2011, and draw an exponential curve.

I kind of want to know what the racial overtones that got pulled from your post were now, but at the same time I quite like you and don't want to have to jeopardise that.

There is a plausible narrative that Froome's development is clean, but there's a plausible narrative that Mosquera's was too (and I fell for it, more because like many of the Sky fans - not necessarily including yourself - I was more willing to believe the justifications for Mosquera because he was a rider I liked, always animating races and always coming up just short because he was too limited to pull off the win). Riders and teams are always tweaking things, trying small changes to see what works. I have plenty of time for you and you've indicated in the past that the same goes for you, so let's cut to the chase: this thread - and the accompanying Sky megathread - is always going to be a mess. I don't think we can pay much attention to the arguments that are made out of silliness, pedantry or just for the sake of an argument - and to prove this I would like to show you David Moncoutié with a raised single fist and Pierrick Fedrigo with the full Froome celebration. And let's also say, that while there are a lot of downright crazy conspiratorial arguments being made in favour of Sky doping here (which I see as unnecessary given the presence of much stronger arguments) there are equally some bizarre justifications for Sky performances (arguments that could equally be used to say that Contador or Valverde are clean, which is what was the point of my Valverde post yesterday that airstream appears to have muddled, and as we know would be patently ridiculous since Contador and Valverde are known dopers). But even trimmed of all that fat, there are a lot of reasons that Sky's performances are suspicious. Let's do ourselves the favour of not contributing another hundred posts on these threads going through the interpretation of 2008-9 Froome and the effects of bilharzia again. Yes, there's a plausible out for it, but it requires a few leaps of faith while the opposite argument requires just one. And a few times I have admitted that the various things about Froome's history make me feel a bit less concerned about him... but the problem is there are also a lot of facts that I find hard to ignore:
- his improvement came during the contract negotiation phase. Even if we accept he would have got a WT gig elsewhere, he certainly earnt a bunch more money on his 2012-date contract as a result of it
- he then struggled with the disease again for a number of months, but it was gone again before he could prepare for the Tour, enabling him to be at peak form at the biggest race of the year
- Sky have been predicated on a British Tour winner within 5 years and, in 2010, we could not be sure that Wiggins could or would become that. Froome was way down the list of candidates, and suddenly vaulted to the top. What's more, British Cycling had been carefully grooming riders, meaning there are more British talents at this point than at almost any other point in living memory. Certainly in my lifetime. With British interest, sponsor money and media coverage heading towards an all time high, Chris Froome - who has nothing to do with British Cycling and was hired because of his passport - has just coincidentally happened to turn up at the right time to make maximum profit.

Again, none of these are evidence of doping, but when put together they provide a motive, which has to be at the root of all good mysteries. The other thing that I simply can't unsee is that Froome's transformation has come at the heart of a number of other transformations, mighty improvements and domination in a style hitherto only seen in the dirtiest of dirty teams - Banesto, Gewiss, Mapei and US Postal (with apologies to Saunier Duval). As per usual, each tree may be explicable (though Froome's tree is a freaking Giant Sequoia), but the forest that has emerged around Sky's activities means that the number of leaps of faith required to believe the "all plausible and clean" argument in all cases continues to ever increase, while the opposite still requires just one: starting from the assumption "there is doping".

And as any insurance professional can tell you, there's only so much risk you can accept before you have to decline. How many leaps of faith are we all willing to take?

Good post but going along with the doping theory it would point to individual doping and it's hard to believe DB would not have crossed all the Ts, he definitely can't afford a doping scandal that would mark the end of ten years of triumph...I highly doubt anyone on Sky is breaking any current rules.

Besides I'm always amazed that the haters (there is really no other word for people who repeatedly profer baseless accusations that would pass as slander anywhere else) only see stuff that serves their crackpot theories, case in point when Froome fails on Tirreno and shows his limits, they totally ignore it...on the other hand when he beats a pretty average (and very young) rider like Talansky in a 7km prologue they go crazy. Sky have hired nearly all the best riders and the competition is weak overall these days, hence what we're seeing.

 

[taiwan]

Also, even if he did lose 1-2% muscle strength if he went calorie deficit and his body used muscle to fuel it, the weight/body fat savings was a net gain in power/weight ratio.

Good post. Just one point: power/weight is not the metric you want in a flat TT, and he's one of the best in the world now.

 

[Fearless Greg Lemond]

Good post but going along with the doping theory it would point to individual doping and it's hard to believe DB would not have crossed all the Ts, he definitely can't afford a doping scandal that would mark the end of ten years of triumph...I highly doubt anyone on Sky is breaking any current rules.

Besides I'm always amazed that the haters (there is really no other word for people who repeatedly profer baseless accusations that would pass as slander anywhere else) only see stuff that serves their crackpot theories, case in point when Froome fails on Tirreno and shows his limits, they totally ignore it...on the other hand when he beats a pretty average (and very young) rider like Talansky in a 7km prologue they go crazy. Sky have hired nearly all the best riders and the competition is weak overall these days, hence what we're seeing.

Dave Brailsfraud is kinda equal to Kochli, or not?

Still waiting for it webvan.

Please endulgggggge us with the la Vie Claire versus SKY comparison.

He felt bad, and after the first MTF he faded on the final stage, not only due to having that mechanical. His form wasn't ideal. Or are you suggesting that his max climbing level is just being able to follow Nibali, and that he wasn't affected by some medication?

But I agree that suddenly when Leinders leaves, saddle sores become an issue at Sky. It's the only thing stopping them now from winning all GT's.

A lot of assumptions. And, to be true, Wiggins is packfodder in climbing but now able to climb with Ferrari riders like Nibali?

 

[Netserk]

He's 69-70 kgs, and he has a very high FTP. Of course he's a good TT'er. Despite his horrible pedalling style he's still got a very flat TT position and good power/surface ratio. Lots of guys with his build can TT well, but as he's the better climber(more W/kg) he's automatically a better TT'er.

He's 68 atm.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Good post but going along with the doping theory it would point to individual doping and it's hard to believe DB would not have crossed all the Ts, he definitely can't afford a doping scandal that would mark the end of ten years of triumph...I highly doubt anyone on Sky is breaking any current rules.

Besides I'm always amazed that the haters (there is really no other word for people who repeatedly profer baseless accusations that would pass as slander anywhere else) only see stuff that serves their crackpot theories, case in point when Froome fails on Tirreno and shows his limits, they totally ignore it...on the other hand when he beats a pretty average (and very young) rider like Talansky in a 7km prologue they go crazy. Sky have hired nearly all the best riders and the competition is weak overall these days, hence what we're seeing.

How many of those riders were 'the best' when Sky signed them? They haven't come CLOSE to signing 'nearly all the best riders'.

Froome signed for them because he had the right passport and they picked up a bunch of people out of the ashes of the Barloworld set up (whilst missing out on Soler, the most proven and seen as the most talented there).

Porte signed for them as a bit of a patchy potential star, who had surprised many with his quality in 2010 but still had much room for improvement, then surprised almost as many with how anonymous he was and how little he contributed to Contador's GT bids.

Wiggins signed for them a then one-hit-wonder, a top time triallist who nevertheless had only shown the requisite level in two stage races: the 2009 Tour de France and the Jayco Herald Sun Tour.

Rogers signed for them an aging doper, liable to injury, whose position in the World Rankings was rather inflated by a lot of dud parcours in 2010-11 that enabled him to win races in the ITT and just follow in the mountains.

López signed for them a mid-career journeyman who had had a couple of good years but mostly been a bit-part player in Euskaltel's golden era and somewhere in the middle of the hierarchy at Caisse/Movistar.

Cataldo signed for them a reasonable peripheral GT man who has twice finished 13th in the Giro due to respectable climbing and useful TTing.

Knees signed for them at the 11th hour, a leftover from the Pegasus collapse. He signed for Pegasus from Milram, so while he's a very good domestique, he was hardly at the pinnacle of the sport when Sky picked him up.

The guys that they signed that you could legitimately claim were signing top talents were Boasson Hagen, Urán, Henao. And Löfkvist, but marginal gains don't seem to work for him, and he went from being a maglia bianca contender and putting together good placements in classics and short stage races, to being better than Wiggins in stage races, to two years later being almost totally unnoticeable in any race he enters.

 

[thehog]

My god. Vaughters has got inside the Skybots heads! They believe everything he says.

He is our leader. We follow him. Disciples.

Sky sign best riders. Sky wins. Clean.

 

[IndianCyclist]

Like I said I don't have the excact fat % from Froome in 2009 but just look at the difference, pretty shocking. You can see in 2009 he was thin, but naturally looking. In 2012.. well haha

Pretty shocking in fact downright horrifying.
The methodology applied by sky definitely involves medicine. It is not performance improving like blood doping otherwise they would be at the top in cobbles and the hillier classics. It has for sure helped the power to weight ratio. But i am not sure how they are doing this. Sustaining power in race after race and reducing weight.
The trend i think was started by Garmin. See Wiggins 2009, Van de Velde 2008, Hesjedal 2010 & 2012, Danielson 2011.

 

[sheenyp]

GW501516 is/was a GSK drug
GSK and Sky's UK HQs are probably less than 1km apart as the crow flies
Ill say no more .......

 

[webvan]

Yeah, please don't.

How many of those riders were 'the best' when Sky signed them? They haven't come CLOSE to signing 'nearly all the best riders'.

Froome signed for them because he had the right passport and they picked up a bunch of people out of the ashes of the Barloworld set up (whilst missing out on Soler, the most proven and seen as the most talented there).

Porte signed for them as a bit of a patchy potential star, who had surprised many with his quality in 2010 but still had much room for improvement, then surprised almost as many with how anonymous he was and how little he contributed to Contador's GT bids.

Wiggins signed for them a then one-hit-wonder, a top time triallist who nevertheless had only shown the requisite level in two stage races: the 2009 Tour de France and the Jayco Herald Sun Tour.

Rogers signed for them an aging doper, liable to injury, whose position in the World Rankings was rather inflated by a lot of dud parcours in 2010-11 that enabled him to win races in the ITT and just follow in the mountains.

López signed for them a mid-career journeyman who had had a couple of good years but mostly been a bit-part player in Euskaltel's golden era and somewhere in the middle of the hierarchy at Caisse/Movistar.

Cataldo signed for them a reasonable peripheral GT man who has twice finished 13th in the Giro due to respectable climbing and useful TTing.

Knees signed for them at the 11th hour, a leftover from the Pegasus collapse. He signed for Pegasus from Milram, so while he's a very good domestique, he was hardly at the pinnacle of the sport when Sky picked him up.

The guys that they signed that you could legitimately claim were signing top talents were Boasson Hagen, Urán, Henao. And Löfkvist, but marginal gains don't seem to work for him, and he went from being a maglia bianca contender and putting together good placements in classics and short stage races, to being better than Wiggins in stage races, to two years later being almost totally unnoticeable in any race he enters.

You forgot Kiryienka, an excellent rider who has the pitchfork mob ranting and raving when he pulls for his leaders these days, when he did the same for Valverde it wasn't a problem of course, just normal team work.

 

[taiwan]

GW501516 is/was a GSK drug
GSK and Sky's UK HQs are probably less than 1km apart as the crow flies
Ill say no more .......

CBF looking up the Armstrong-Amgen business links but I wouldn't dismiss this post.

 

[BroDeal]

You forgot Kiryienka, an excellent rider who has the pitchfork mob ranting and raving when he pulls for his leaders these days, when he did the same for Valverde it wasn't a problem of course, just normal team work.

No one was ever not just skeptical but took it as a given that Caisse d'Epargne was a team of dopers. Nobody. Instead their was a concerted effort in The Clinic to assert that Caisse d'Epargne was a clean team and its riders would never dope.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Yeah, please don't.



You forgot Kiryienka, an excellent rider who has the pitchfork mob ranting and raving when he pulls for his leaders these days, when he did the same for Valverde it wasn't a problem of course, just normal team work.

You forgot that I laid the smack down on those who included Kiryienka in the list of major Sky improvers for that very reason. Kiryienka's always been strong. He's not improved or worsened at Sky. I also left out Siutsou because I don't know where I'd judge him. I don't recall ever seeing him climb like he did in Trentino at HTC, but he did top 10 the Giro albeit with the aid of a break, and he was seldom high enough up the food chain to be allowed to do anything other than sprint train duty there.

 

[martinvickers]

Look I agree the 'good' Doctor maybe the greatest expert in the prevention/treatment of saddle sores, but surely detective Dave with his time spent in the sport would have a good handle on who would fit into the Sky PR and who wouldn't be a good fit. I'm sure there are doctors out there who've had no prior involvement in cycling, who would take the Sky paycheck and provide legit medical treatment.

You may be right, but that's a rather different argument (he's good at both the legit stuff and the non-legit stuff, but he shouldn't have been hired because of the non-legit (which is my position, i'll add)) from the "saddles sores, meh!" variant (his only possible use was non-legit) highly favoured in these parts.

Or maybe I'm just bored of sarcastic references to saddle sores without any actual point of argument beyond sneering. whichever.

You may have answered this before, but please could you indulge me?

If Froome and Wiggins were Russian, Spanish, Italian etc and were riding for Movistar/another random team and the same transformation had taken place, would you think they were legit?

Well, let's start with this. I'm not British, so I'm not cheering on the home team - if you want to see me do that, check the Nico and Dan Martin threads...

So, OK, I'll play.

1. Do I accept the idea that "as countries, they are all as bad as each other?".

No, I don't.

There was a recentlarge scale study done on blood doping in track and field athletes; over 7000 samples retested and filtered for sex, age, nationality, type of event etc.

The overall blood doping rate was found to be approx 14%, which appeared plausible.

The study appears to find two significant correlations.

Some events have a much higher propensity to blood doping - not surprisingly, it was the endurance events which came out on top/worst.

But the other significant correlation was nationality. There were vast differences between random sample populations. Some 'nations' had an approx 'blood dope' rate of 1%, give or take.

One country had a rate closer to 49%

1%.

49%.

A lot of people in here get very upset when it is suggested that some countries have a worse record and culture on this issue than others. Words like racism and the like fly about very easily.

Now there may be flaws in the study, I entirely accept. Some countries may be better at hiding doping, for example. But until there's evidence of that beyond pure speculation, the numbers are what they are.

2. Do British sportspeople dope?

Of course they do. There is no doubt about that. There are countless examples, and there are sports in GB with clear problems - both rugby codes for example.

There is however, no 'genetic' propensity to doping, and culture is not 'foolproof'. I would not be remotely surprised by a British doping scandal; it would hardly be the first. Just as every sprinter in the world runs in the shadow of Ben Johnson, every british sprinter runs in the shadows of Linford Christie and Dwain Chambers, up to and including Adam Gemili

3. So do i treat all the countries the same?

No. I don't. Because some countries, for purely non-genetic, non-racial, simply cultural and historical reasons have problems to a greater degree than other countries. That's just anthropology 101.



Now, in cycling, Armstrong was as bad as they get, in my limited view; he was American. Millar was British, Roche and Kelly Irish, Riis was a Dane, Ullrich German. And Spain. And Russia. and Italy.

Dopers are everywhere, and no country is immune. And most of those countries have riders who are regarded as, or hoped to be, clean. Sastre spriongs to mind - I'm not remotely convinced he doped.

But let's also get real. I simply cannot imagine other countries treating a doper the way the Spanish authorities treated Contador, for example.I mean, the King for gods sake! I have a fundamental problem with the historical attitude of the Spanish authorities to cyclist doping, or doping generally. I simply don't trust them, because they consistently make bad choices.

Russia's problems in all sports are well known. They (RUSADA) recently pinged a female swimming star, and had to report direct to FINA to prevent a rule kicking in that would have suspended Russia from aquatics for eighteen months for multiple violations.

The girl was 14.

14. That's GDR territory. (GDR, were Ullrich came from, oddly enough)

Now, RUSADA seem to actually be taking matters seriously. That's excellent. and there are Russian athletes I have no suspicions about. but to suggest a country with 30 CURRENT IAAF bans does not have an endemic problem is wilful blindness.

But even given that, I want to allow any rider, of any nationality, the benefit of the doubt - be he Russian, Spanish, Italian, French, Colombian, American, Canadian, Swedish, British...or Irish.

And we know how to dope. We were doping horses long before Godolphin. And turning donkeys into red haired dolphins. She used to claim she had a unique stroke style you know.

 

[JimmyFingers]

- his improvement came during the contract negotiation phase. Even if we accept he would have got a WT gig elsewhere, he certainly earnt a bunch more money on his 2012-date contract as a result of it
- he then struggled with the disease again for a number of months, but it was gone again before he could prepare for the Tour, enabling him to be at peak form at the biggest race of the year
- Sky have been predicated on a British Tour winner within 5 years and, in 2010, we could not be sure that Wiggins could or would become that. Froome was way down the list of candidates, and suddenly vaulted to the top. What's more, British Cycling had been carefully grooming riders, meaning there are more British talents at this point than at almost any other point in living memory. Certainly in my lifetime. With British interest, sponsor money and media coverage heading towards an all time high, Chris Froome - who has nothing to do with British Cycling and was hired because of his passport - has just coincidentally happened to turn up at the right time to make maximum profit.

Again, none of these are evidence of doping, but when put together they provide a motive, which has to be at the root of all good mysteries. The other thing that I simply can't unsee is that Froome's transformation has come at the heart of a number of other transformations, mighty improvements and domination in a style hitherto only seen in the dirtiest of dirty teams - Banesto, Gewiss, Mapei and US Postal (with apologies to Saunier Duval). As per usual, each tree may be explicable (though Froome's tree is a freaking Giant Sequoia), but the forest that has emerged around Sky's activities means that the number of leaps of faith required to believe the "all plausible and clean" argument in all cases continues to ever increase, while the opposite still requires just one: starting from the assumption "there is doping".

And as any insurance professional can tell you, there's only so much risk you can accept before you have to decline. How many leaps of faith are we all willing to take?

Good stuff as ever, and certainly very provocative reasoning. You know the one thing that struck me in all of that, in particular the timing of the leaps, which suggests a lone wolf, unless you think teams dope their riders so they have to pay them more when contracts are re-negotiated. You also stress his outsider nature to BC.

I'll buy into the possibility he has doped, as I hope I have indicated, but I also buy into the plausibility that it could have been done clean too.

I'm not of the mantra that every performance is done clean, as I hope evidenced by my vote in the poll that 30-40% of the peloton may be doping, as Bro Deal and Netserk are fond of referencing, but my hope is that it is cleaner than that, that the riders are taking more responsibility with the glaring lack of leadership from the governing body. Omerta may not be dead but I do think that riders are making better choices in general.

 

[Dekker_Tifosi]

 

[DirtyWorks]

GW501516 is/was a GSK drug
GSK and Sky's UK HQs are probably less than 1km apart as the crow flies
Ill say no more .......

Yeah, it's not falling out the back of GSK's HQ.

From my limited understanding, one does not need to be GSK to make the stuff and sell it as a yet-to-be regulated supplement. This is the how of most famously BALCO.

Especially with the peptides, it appears you don't need a great deal of anything besides a very advanced education. I don't have the link handy, but there was a rather depressing story profilling this industry some time ago.
Find a compound, make it, package it and sell it until the regulators make it illegal. Before it goes illegal, find another unregulated compound, make it, package it and sell it. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

 

[DirtyWorks]

Pretty shocking in fact downright horrifying.
The methodology applied by sky definitely involves medicine. It is not performance improving like blood doping otherwise they would be at the top in cobbles and the hillier classics. It has for sure helped the power to weight ratio. But i am not sure how they are doing this. Sustaining power in race after race and reducing weight.
The trend i think was started by Garmin. See Wiggins 2009, Van de Velde 2008, Hesjedal 2010 & 2012, Danielson 2011.

I would argue the Grand Tour team is doing things the one-day riders are not. What exactly? I don't know.

You can probably thank Dr. Ferrari for correctly reducing the complexity of winning a Grand Tour to a simple ratio, Watts/Kilo.

 

[The Hitch]

when he did the same for Valverde it wasn't a problem of course, just normal team work.

Unless you come up with evidence for this ill assume you're trolling as always.

 

[BYOP88]

You may be right, but that's a rather different argument (he's good at both the legit stuff and the non-legit stuff, but he shouldn't have been hired because of the non-legit (which is my position, i'll add)) from the "saddles sores, meh!" variant (his only possible use was non-legit) highly favoured in these parts.
Or maybe I'm just bored of sarcastic references to saddle sores without any actual point of argument beyond sneering. whichever.

Well, let's start with this. I'm not British, so I'm not cheering on the home team - if you want to see me do that, check the Nico and Dan Martin threads...

No, I don't.

There was a recentlarge scale study done on blood doping in track and field athletes; over 7000 samples retested and filtered for sex, age, nationality, type of event etc. .

Thanks for answering.

Oh I wasn't implying you were 'rooting for the home team' I apologize if it came across like that, wasn't my intention. The reason I asked is because I get the impression you're a Sky fan and I just wanted to ask a Sky fan their view. I know you may have answered it already but these threads seem to multiply quicker than a Gremlin taking a bath and due to that good posts from either side get lost in the dross that normally ends up in the threads.

.