Team Ineos (Formerly the Sky thread)

[Benotti69]

Re:

Just listened to podcast and it was on stage 12 I think. Punched in the torso. If true, this sh*t is getting out of hand.

Seems Sky started it...

http://www.lequipe.fr/Cyclisme-sur-route/Actualites/-coup-de-poing-et-coup-de-coude/574264

Le Suisse Steve Morabito (FDJ) n'a pas apprécié le comportement des Sky à l'entame du col du Soudet, mardi. «Pour le placement, c'était au coup de poing et au coup de coude», a-t-il notamment regretté.

 

[bigcog]

Re: Re:

Apparently a spectator punched Ritchie Porte in the last 3km in todays stage according to the Telegraph.

pretty hilarious since just recently Porte was actively calling out a spectator as a coward and accusing him of soiling their pants in his presence.

If I went around calling people cowards and telling the world they were little pussies with bladder control issues, I'd expect a punch in the face too.

couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Two separate incidents, he was punched in the last 3 km and then after the finish someone called him a doper and they apologised when approached.

 

[blackcat]

Re:

This will be slightly long-winded post, but here is my opinion/feeling about the Team Sky...

1) Team Sky is only a tip of the iceberg, but the roots are in British Cycling & National Cycling Centre/Manchester Velodrome.

2) National Cycling Centre (from here on NCC) was opened in 1994 to promote & develop British Track Cycling. It is state-funded, institutionalised centre with open (and likely hidden) access to co-operation with universities, medical schools etc. in a way which (maybe except Astana) no road cycling trade team can even dream about...

3) NCC understandably started with an emphasis on track cycling as many track events are PURE performance sports with no tactics adaptation to daily conditions (elements of nature) etc. included. The results started to pile up :

1996 Olympics : no medals on track (Boardman & Sciandri took medals on road, but they had nothing to do with NCC, really)
2000 Olympics : Gold for Jason Queally in 1000 m TT, 3 other medals. No yet success in more tactical events like individual sprint, madison, keirin etc.
2004 Olympics : 2 Golds thru' Sir Brad & Chris Hoy
2008 Olympics : Total domination! 7 golds out of total of 10 available on track. Every "performance event" gold to UK! Only points races and men's madison slipped away...

4) 2009 : The birth of Team Sky in a very close co-operation of British Cycling...

I am bluntly accusing that NCC is a hotbed of very advanced doping research and the natural progression has been to start with the "easiest" pure performance sports and move towards most tactical, most pricey sport (= professional road cycling).

This would also explain why it is mostly British riders who do advance to "alien"-level in Team Sky. As it is national institution, the best of "knowledge" is not to be given for your competitors. While they are teammates in Sky, they are "enemies" of British Cycling in WCs/Olympics etc. Sky has employed a lot of talented foreigners, but the only one who appears to have been given "full 5-course meal" is Richie Porte. Otoh, numerous foreign riders (EBH, Löfkvist, Gerrans, Uran, Henao, Deignan, Roche, König etc) have remained very mortal, stagnated or even plummeted off the cliff while in Sky. So it is not only a "peloton a deux vitesses", but also "team a deux vitesses".

And this separates Team Sky from almost ALL of its competition... Even the richest competitors are still private teams - only Astana has similar governmental backing. However, I also think that cutting-edge sports medicinal research is more likely to happen in UK, than in Kazakhstan.

And this leads to...

5) I don't think Team Sky are BIGGER cheats than most of their competition (although they are the most double-faced in their insistence of innocence). Frankly, yesterday Froome put a whipping for plenty of riders/teams, which have no moral qualms in using any available PEDs/methods as long as they avoid being caught. However, the rest of the teams are restricted to "known methods" of blood transfusion / micro-dosing etc. while I'm pretty convinced Team Sky has some completely unknown, off-the-market, unpublicised stuff which they can utilise freely without ANY danger of detection (at this moment). Quite BALCOish, but likely with public sources / funding instead of private lab.

6) So, do I feel sorry for beaten "cheats" like Contador, Nibali, Piti etc. for them being caught way behind in "arms race". Not really. They would do the same without any remorse given a half-chance...

7) But at the same time - this is

- killing the suspense
- making the world of cycling even MORE unfair for riders. If the best stuff is (at least for a moment) available only for riders of certain nationality, why should others bother?

8) I am strong supporter of CLEAN sport. I also believe that to be unrealistic ideal. However, a world where the doping is limited to certain known methods/PEDs and doping controls can even hinder and put limitations to a use of those known "evils", the field is rather fair and even. The guys who want to ride clean will likely not win too often, but they are not in unconquerable disadvantage AND they pretty much know how much of headstart the dopers have...

9) But in a world where one group of riders (apparently not even close to a full team) have stuff which no one else knows about... That is no longer a sport. It is WORSE that Lance-years. At least Lance used same stuff as everybody else. He only could use it more efficiently as he had the "immunity" from getting caught and a "private line" to whistle-blow whomever had the audacity to raise their bar to match him (Hamilton, Mayo).

i like the post but my devil's advocate is wrt their doping advantage. i dont think it is the significant advantage you say. I think more is the logistics and calendar objectives allowing froome and sky to marshal all resources to 10 days away from today.

i would like to enter in to evidence i) edita rumsas.
raimondas rumsas would have beatean beloki for second if you null out the team timetrial advantage ONCE had over Lampre in the 2002 Tour.

And Cecchini said, just epo, and be really lean, were his words to Hamilton no?

I reckon i could spec up a pretty dope doping plan by just using insulin testo hgh epo homologous blood transfusions epo microdosing AICAR GW cortisone and lipotropin. I doubt anything Sky have will have such material advantage, keytones would be a diminishing marginal return of highest order***

they will be diminishing marginal returns. It is not the sleeping tent in an bus, the bus is merely a diversion like an armstrong nike ad. it is not tenerife.

it is more about having every duck in a row (anglophone proverb) and the team with the ~15million GBP budget, all working towards one end. back office, front office, asphalt, tarmac and lime. and line.

if Rumsas can get so close to Armstrong just on some myocera and testo and hgh and cortisone, you dont need to have the wonder drug.

and Armstrong was also bragging about his horse steroid or equine steroid in the '98 vuelta. i think i heard that from betsy.

***not contradiction, just tortured

 

[blackcat]

Re:

Just listened to podcast and it was on stage 12 I think. Punched in the torso. If true, this sh*t is getting out of hand.

dont worry, wont be true. just another lie.

 

[blackcat]

Re: Re:

Apparently a spectator punched Ritchie Porte in the last 3km in todays stage according to the Telegraph.

pretty hilarious since just recently Porte was actively calling out a spectator as a coward and accusing him of soiling their pants in his presence.

If I went around calling people cowards and telling the world they were little pussies with bladder control issues, I'd expect a punch in the face too.

couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Two separate incidents, he was punched in the last 3 km and then after the finish someone called him a doper and they apologised when approached.

undoubtedly all are lies.

 

[bigcog]

Re: Re:

Just listened to podcast and it was on stage 12 I think. Punched in the torso. If true, this sh*t is getting out of hand.

Seems Sky started it...

http://www.lequipe.fr/Cyclisme-sur-route/Actualites/-coup-de-poing-et-coup-de-coude/574264

Le Suisse Steve Morabito (FDJ) n'a pas apprécié le comportement des Sky à l'entame du col du Soudet, mardi. «Pour le placement, c'était au coup de poing et au coup de coude», a-t-il notamment regretté.

Yes could be that incident, hard to tell from podcast whether he was punched by a spectator or another rider.

 

[bigcog]

Re: Re:

Apparently a spectator punched Ritchie Porte in the last 3km in todays stage according to the Telegraph.

pretty hilarious since just recently Porte was actively calling out a spectator as a coward and accusing him of soiling their pants in his presence.

If I went around calling people cowards and telling the world they were little pussies with bladder control issues, I'd expect a punch in the face too.

couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Two separate incidents, he was punched in the last 3 km and then after the finish someone called him a doper and they apologised when approached.

undoubtedly all are lies.

What are you, the all seeing eye ?

 

[blackcat]

Re: Re:

Good post. For me personally I don't think that the academic researchers would be the ones "leaking" novel compounds to a team or a rider: I am more inclined to think that it would be the pharmaceutical companies themselves. My wife has worked in clinical research for years and has seen some dodgy behavior coming from the pharmaceutical side in terms of repressing unfavorable outcomes, dangerous side effects , etc. I always wondered if Lance and US Postal had this kind of relationship with Amgen and other Big Pharma companies. If a rider or team had access to compounds that were still in the development stage such drugs would be zealously kept under the radar and not be known to WADA for testing reasons. From a laboratory researchers point of view they usually have very stringent inventory controls for any novel compounds they might be testing if such compounds came from Big Pharma to their labs. I don't think that an academic PhD tasked with researching a compound for a big company would ever divert such material for reasons discussed above. Just my two cents FWIW.

see my post above^, I think there are negligble gains to be made with anything knew to market (or not even publicly available or known about even in research), the riders can still manage to get their hematocrit and hemoglobin to the near maximum level's of Riis and Pantani's era. I dont think it is the new PEDs on the market. no.

sure, p'raps they could get a little better efficiency and recovery, but atm surely they are doing the insulin testo hgh cortisone, and it cant be improved too much, and the o2 cant be used that much more efficiently.

see Froome and Siutsou's debut with Barloworld in the 2007 Tour or whenever. Froome at 73kg, maintain or improve the power slightly, and is now at 66kg. That is ten percent less weight, and his first Tour, he demonstrated some ability to go uphill.

these peptides for weightloss are widely used in the metropolitan country where i live. That is the non-secret secret. It was just rendering all that non-functional tissue from his physique where he is now merely lungs organs dermis and glutes quads hammies and calves.

 

[blackcat]

Re: Re:

What are you, the all seeing eye ?

i am jeremy benthem's panopticon. who the f r u?

 

[bigcog]

Re: Re:

What are you, the all seeing eye ?

i am jeremy benthem's panopticon. who the f r u?

No one of any consequence just like you.

 

[TheSpud]

Re: Re:

What are you, the all seeing eye ?

i am jeremy benthem's panopticon. who the f r u?

No one of any consequence just like you.

He's just someone who seems to have a massive chip on his shoulder about Brits (hence the continued "Empire Crew" comments and strange references to Gordonstoun School ...). I'd guess he's an Aussie or a Kiwi who cant quite reconcile his past / heritage ...

 

[bigcog]

Re: Re:

What are you, the all seeing eye ?

i am jeremy benthem's panopticon. who the f r u?

No one of any consequence just like you.

He's just someone who seems to have a massive chip on his shoulder about Brits (hence the continued "Empire Crew" comments and strange references to Gordonstoun School ...). I'd guess he's an Aussie or a Kiwi who cant quite reconcile his past / heritage ...

That would explain it

 

[TMP402]

Re: Re:

What are you, the all seeing eye ?

i am jeremy benthem's panopticon. who the f r u?

No one of any consequence just like you.

He's just someone who seems to have a massive chip on his shoulder about Brits (hence the continued "Empire Crew" comments and strange references to Gordonstoun School ...). I'd guess he's an Aussie or a Kiwi who cant quite reconcile his past / heritage ...

That is hilarious.

 

[Eagle]

Re: Re:

What are you, the all seeing eye ?

i am jeremy benthem's panopticon. who the f r u?

No one of any consequence just like you.

He's just someone who seems to have a massive chip on his shoulder about Brits (hence the continued "Empire Crew" comments and strange references to Gordonstoun School ...). I'd guess he's an Aussie or a Kiwi who cant quite reconcile his past / heritage ...

You should probably read posts in some non-Sky threads before you claim they have a chip on there shoulder about Brits

 

[WillemS]

I think Sky's marginal gain is their unwillingness to mount GoPro's*

*) Specialized did a test with GoPro camera's in the wind tunnel: The newest model produced an additional drag just south of 1 watts (~.8 W) at a simulated 45 km/h speed. I don't think I've seen one of Sky's Pinarello's fitted with such a device.

 

[blackcat]

#Poe'slaw
StephenFry

 

[blackcat]

Re: Re:

What are you, the all seeing eye ?

i am jeremy benthem's panopticon. who the f r u?

No one of any consequence just like you.

He's just someone who seems to have a massive chip on his shoulder about Brits (hence the continued "Empire Crew" comments and strange references to Gordonstoun School ...). I'd guess he's an Aussie or a Kiwi who cant quite reconcile his past / heritage ...

That would explain it

funny sense of humor bickcog

 

[Saint Unix]

Re:

I think Sky's marginal gain is their unwillingness to mount GoPro's*

*) Specialized did a test with GoPro camera's in the wind tunnel: The newest model produced an additional drag just south of 1 watts (~.8 W) at a simulated 45 km/h speed. I don't think I've seen one of Sky's Pinarello's fitted with such a device.

Which is completely reasonable...

...compared to the nutella and pillow stories.

I mean, at least this one actually saves watts.

 

[blackcat]

they forgot the references to Chariots of Fire, muscular christianity, Steve Redgrave, Oxbridge, Rowing, and Mike Atherton and St Andrews links.

 

[The Hitch]

Re: Re:

What are you, the all seeing eye ?

i am jeremy benthem's panopticon. who the f r u?

No one of any consequence just like you.

He's just someone who seems to have a massive chip on his shoulder about Brits (hence the continued "Empire Crew" comments and strange references to Gordonstoun School ...). I'd guess he's an Aussie or a Kiwi who cant quite reconcile his past / heritage ...

Eh, that's a bit personal and insulting. Blackcat posts a lot of weird things about sky and not about sky. Behind that there is usually substance.

 

[gooner]

Could you please tell me what substance there was behind his lies reference to what happened to Richie Porte?

That was passed comment on without any reserved judgement on what actually happened and hence why bigcog and The Spud responded.

 

[blackcat]

Re:

Could you please tell me what substance there was behind his lies reference to what happened to Richie Porte?

That was passed comment on without any reserved judgement on what actually happened and hence why bigcog and The Spud responded.

lets work this thru shall we.

what is behind the substance and actual happenings of what happened to Sky these last three weeks.

i) they said they got hacked for Froome's training numbers. now, we are aware brailsford, Skyy, Froome, and LRP have released their climbing times previously of their training circuits around Monaco and the surrounding French mountains.
ii) Froome said the hotel desk had failed to pass on the call by the OOC drug tester 3 weeks ago. They said this, but we are supposed to take this as gospel with no verification. This tactic by Sky would be called leading the story, they provide their story before it is called into question.
iii) Froome and Brailsford say they will get independently tested after the Tour. There are a few things we can interpret, firstly, this is prima facie admission the current testing is $h!te and secondly, has not Radcliffe used this to divert and deflect without ever going so far as to store her blood and urine from the time she was breaking world records. Also, they then have the hide and contempt to complain about the lack of testing for nibali and contador on tenerife in 2014 a month before the tour.
i) LRP has also adopted similar communication tactics, how was he punched the other day by a spectator, how did he confront the coward fan who called him a doper. Cant you see the paradox between calling someone a fan then accusing them of at once, being a coward and calling you a doper. P'raps it is no paradox the behaviour manifested was indeed the behaviour one could expect of a passionate fan who wanted their sport to be clean.

can you please help me with the dilemma about believing Sky whilst maintaining my conscious thinking capacity?

 

[wendybnt]

"P'raps it is no paradox the behaviour manifested was indeed the behaviour one could expect of a passionate fan who wanted their sport to be clean"

There is an issue with this though. How far down the pelotonshould the fan go before he stops punching people? On the basis of doping, would you really rather see Contador win? Or Nibali??

 

[LaFlorecita]

Re:

"P'raps it is no paradox the behaviour manifested was indeed the behaviour one could expect of a passionate fan who wanted their sport to be clean"

There is an issue with this though. How far down the pelotonshould the fan go before he stops punching people? On the basis of doping, would you really rather see Contador win? Or Nibali??

I think the difference is that with some imagination, you could see Contador and Nibali being good cyclists in a clean peloton also. In other words, they are a lesser evil.

 

[blackcat]

Re:

"P'raps it is no paradox the behaviour manifested was indeed the behaviour one could expect of a passionate fan who wanted their sport to be clean"

There is an issue with this though. How far down the pelotonshould the fan go before he stops punching people? On the basis of doping, would you really rather see Contador win? Or Nibali??

if it happened.

I don't believe it happened.

I was referring to the hypothetical fan that called LRP a doper and LRP confronted him then is this anecdote is true or untrue, even in the untruth LRP called this hypothetical fan a coward.

ofcourse, no one punched LRP.

and I dare say, lots are screaming out individual and collective epithets to Sky and LRP on the road, as fans plural, and fans as individual actors. But did an individual actor as fan, abuse LRP as a doper, as LRP was riding back to the Sky bus?

no. it did not happen. Because it is boy who cried wolf parable. Sky have lost all pretense of credibility since they went down the "feeding new kittens to pythons" PR release MO. I don't believe anything they say.

now, it may well have happened. But it is not my fault I fail to believe Sky anymore. They dont deserve any rational person believing anything they say.

now, with my conscious mind, I think LRP has been called a doper by fans on the road literally hundreds of times so far this tour. It is a legitimate chance it happened in the staging area and LRP confronted this "coward".

However, what is MORE likely, LRP put a little sugar on this anecdote and confected a fable, by suggesting he confronts a hypothetical fan in the post stage staging area and LRP calls this coward a coward.

no, it did not go down like this in truth. It went down as I suggest, in the confected fable of LRP.