You are right that poggie is way more ridicilous than Pharmastrong. I meant the level of cheating, professionalism in it and the money invested is only rivalled by US Postal. Visma a few years back was close to that too, but still there wasn't one rider winning it all, with performances never seen before and always looking like on a Sunday ride. UAE with Gianetti seems to be head and shoulders above them all.
With the socialmedia I meant, that they have really carefully painted this golden sweetheart boy picture to even lesser the difficult questions and it allows the (blind) people to continue the fanjerking around these extraterrestial performances. In hindsight maybe Ricco would have gotten away with it, if the times would have been different and they would have planned it better image wise. Maybe even sweeping a positive test quitly under the carpet. We also have to remember, that Ricco made these super alien performances only a few times and still eyebrows started to rise right away. Teddy just keeps on doing it over and over again and it's just chapeau, nothing to see here. For what i remember there was a lot more questioning back in the days, now after covid there's very little anything.
I'm still super skeptic about the skipping of olympics too. That Urska explanation is just very lame, he was on monster form and the course really suited him, so you supposedly skip a very likely olympic gold cause your girlfriend wasn't chosen, give me a break. You might never get another chance, four years is a long time even for the monster and the course might be more sprinter friendly next time aswell. So the only explanation that still makes sense to me is, that it was skipped cause UCI can't control the tests in the olympics. Remember also the hustle and drama surrounding teddys bike after the most ridicilous WC performance of the history. Something shady is going on with UCI, their poster boy and all the petrodollars coming from the UAE.