wrinklyvet said:
Absolutely right except that there are sports columns in national publications that do not confine cycling reports to doping stories. It probably depends on which papers you are talking about.
The papers can
print known facts and they can print general observations about the sport, but what they can't normally do is to make allegations
that are not fair comment and cannot be proved, because they don't have bottomless pockets from which to pay out. That sort of thing is a Clinic luxury. I really don't begrudge it to anyone as long as, now and again, they can see the other view and tolerate it without unpleasantness.
Thanks for you comment. Do have a great 2014!
The newspapers can't even do that.
It Christmas and I am having a grand sort out. I have a big pile of newspapers and magazines I don't throw away. I like to keep them because I hope that, occasionally "truth will out" and the odd thief and their complicit associates in the administration gravy train, who so disfigure sport will get exposed. I found an Observer Sport Monthly for July 2009 I kept for its "Lance comeback" special. It needs to be shown to every 18 year old contemplating a life in sport. I will save the St David of Millardom quotes within it, for another post, suffice to say at that time, the wind the dawg found to blow him so strongly around each and every hairpin of the Ventoux was blowing St David towards Lance, to whom he plighted his fidelity with "Our relationship has always been close". [Where is an icon for - puking into a sick-bag and the contents overfilling and falling onto your feet -when you need it ?]
But back to Wrinkly and the rightness of the free press. Latest addition to my sad pile of newsprint is the Telegraph double page spread with headline screaming "THE BIGGEST DOPING COVER-UP IN ATHLETICS HISTORY". So where has this gone? If we believe the poster on Bike Radar who sent a pm to RaceRadio, RR replied that he already knew the answer to his tweet to Paula Radcliffe when he asked her if it was her name on the list. Her "super aggressive" lawyers have locked down the revealing of FACTS that a whilstleblower tried to expose. It appears that in this case the IAAF establishment have acted with an athlete to make sure we don't get the FACTS. Do I find this unusual? Look at that selfie the idiot Cookson took with dopers Eddie and Gilbert (who I see has several fellow team-mates calling him out). Cookson took it at a symposium for Juniors helping them find their way in the sport. "Look - stealing and cheating pays" it screamed.
Radcliffe, Wiggins, Boardman and now Froome are all major figures in the iconography of UK sport. All are put forward by the press as clean icons not to be tainted by dirty johnny foreigner they thrashed. Belief that whilst PEDs were rampant in their sports, these "stars" can somehow set a collection of records, is suspended. Do I believe any of them are clean ? I don't have a the tiniest belief any of them are anything other than a sham exactly like born-again St David was in July 2009 in his so eloquent love letter to Lance so carefully recorded in the Observer.
I think it is quite simple. Factually, all had committed to their careers with no fall back. I propose they all met their Calvary. They discovered the playing field had a slope on it and the authorities were like Cookson with his seflie - actively promoting the known dopers. Boardman is quoted as being sick of cycling at the end of 1991 and talks of leaving the sport. He had two kids and lived in a two bed terrace with no money. He had just been thrashed at the Pursuit Worlds by riders using the new undetectable drug epo. The choice was give up cycling do more casual labour helping out decorating or "join them". Critically, he also had alongside him an adviser with little to lose but plenty to gain if Boardman took all the risks; a malevolent voice in his ear. Boardman chose "join them" and hasn't it worked out well for Boardman and the "professor" alongside him. The Lotus bike made excellent cover for his wiggo/dawg like improvements, provided one does not look at the comparative improvements achieved by Colin Wallace or Bryan Steel when they were riding it at the time.
Brad was on the fringes of it all. He had won Olympic gold and found out like Boardman before, that this didn't make him rich and so went and lived in the boozer. He was out of it. No future. Undoubtedly his father's end was a vivid signpost to the choices that lay ahead. Brailsford dried him out and like Keen before him, Brailsford had plenty to gain and little to lose, so reinforced the stark choices ahead and gave him a vision of how Wiggo (and Sir David) could make money from this seriously scr**ed up sport. Wiggo went full genius and the rest is history.
As other posters have so eloquently put it Froome was about to lose his contract with Sky. The dream was over. Obscurity and poverty beckoned. Why have a few years as a domestique and walk away to nothing when he too could do even better what Wiggo and Brailsford was doing ? Yes, he should have won in 2012. The 2013 pay-back that saw the defending Tour champ not even take the start line, was awesome to behold. How seriously does Brailsford despise the fans, that he thinks so many cannot see through it ?
For Radcliffe it was the same. At the 93 World Championships she had a 7th; 5th in 95. At the Olympics in 1996 it was a 5th as well. The World Champs in 97 and the CG in 98 brought no spoils. This career was going to end with none of the riches, the Monaco life style, the hobnobbing with "stars" of the day - "look mummy who is that alongside the gallant knight Sir Chris, close by Sir David ?" I don't know about the relationship with her husband but it draws comment elsewhere. Was he taking the role of a Brailsford or Keen, "WE have put X years into this and all you have to do now is ....." You can decide if in 1999, after 6 years of getting her teeth kicked in, Radcliffe found the precursor of "marginal gains" and was able to fine tune her training regime so that she went from "plucky Brit loser" to fastest ever, ever, in the history of humankind, just at a time when epo usage was at its most epic. That this "clean" athlete seems so reluctant to share with the World the science behind why she was able to explain away her "red" readings to so august and determined a body as the IAAF on their relentless search to out the dopers and instead appears, if indeed raceradio is calling it right, and it is her, to instead be resorting to a "highly aggressive legal team" to keep it all under wraps, must be baffling to her apostles.
To those of us who keep old newspapers and pictures of idiot Cookson and his selfies, the Radcliffe silence is not comforting, because she still holds every wrongly gained asset she possesses.
Did they dope ? I am only speculating.
Common sense, held by the majority, as expressed to you by Benotti, is that - "professional cycling is riddled with dopers. Brad is a doper, the dawg is a doper and a lot of the other Brit cyclists are dopers too". Common sense also informs the common person that a real sporting hero is not going to be found with riches and awards overfilling their cup, but will have a very different profile. For a couple, let's keep it Brit centric and look at the pursuit in the period 1989 to 1996. Two Brit riders there stand head and shoulders above the Brit who could win the World TT championship. (For f.s., who in their right mind thinks Boardman could beat them clean ? )
Yes, Wrinkly and the rest of the fanboys, I admire you posting here and the sincerity of your belief. Sadly that belief requires a recalibration.
The saddest piece of the 2009 Observer Lance-fest was a piece by Mike Grisenthwaite, founder of UK charity of Cyclists Fight Cancer. It was a piece of religion backed with "how could so nice and great a World star possibly commit such a fraud ?". Sir Brad, Sir David, Sir Chris, all of these have found the palms laid in their path placed by idiots like Cookson. If you want to run an investigation to detect dopers you would not employ anyone like Cookson in any capacity whatsoever. A fanboy of the worst sort - one who cannot counter an alternative view.
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