Zypherov said:
sniper said:
doperhopper said:
Dan2016 said:
Interesting the reactions post Wiggins fiasco. Surprising how many people still holding resolutely to the belief Sky are clean.
Seems like cognitive dissonance to me.
The evidence is quite damning. The rational objective response is surely to accept the damning evidence and at least move your belief from 'clean' to uncertainty. To maintain belief in 'completely clean' seems a little delusional. A bit of fence sitting is in order at least, surely?
Is this some kind of life affirming thing, needing sporting heroes to believe in? Or are the true believers here just stirring the pot for a bit light-hearted banter?
well, remarkably similar evolution as in the case of certain zero times Tour winner: fanbase gradually eroding as the allegations kept piling up, but those that remained gradually hardened up... so at the end there were only real hardcore pharmstrongistas
Agreed. The usps-sky similarieties are baffling on many levels, also wrt the behavioural curve of the fanbase.
The fall out came a bit earlier with Sky though. I mean the Believers vs. Doubters ratio was much more favourable for Lance around the same time.
Which is no surprise of course considering some people (albeit not too many, and certainly not the UK press) have actually learned from the Lance case, and I guess increased power/reach of social media also plays its part.
Only very few whose learning curve has actually been backwards. Walsh being the most striking example.
See that's the problem right there and that is comparing Team Sky to Lance Armstrong and US Postal. Sky and Us Postal are worlds apart. You can't compare both. For example Sky are especially in the Tour de France deploying the so called train on a daily basis, US postal done the same so the argument goes that Sky must be doping. Same goes for all other current teams dominating the pace setting on the front of the Peloton just like US Postal so they must be doping. No Sky riders ever tested positive, neither did Armstrong (well he did of course), neither did Marion Jones so the argument goes that because these athletes never tested positive then Sky are able to cheat the system. Sky will get rid of employees, doctors and riders etc, who have had an affiliation with doping on some level or another so the argument goes that this has all to do with public relations, etc, ect. Sky are subject to the Biological Passport so the argument goes that it can be manipulated and Sky are real Houdini's at performing this magic. Sky have a magic potion up their sleeves that no one else has access to. These futile arguments go on and yet no one has ever proved anything because there is nothing to prove. These extraordinary allegations must be followed up by extraordinary proof.
The fact that they got rid of the personnel with links to doping when they the info got out means nothing IMO. The fact they hired them in the first place on the other end... i mean you can't believe that they didn't know about Leindeers, not with a former rabo rider like Flecha on their roster... And friggin' Mick Rogers for **** sake... How do you think they managed to make him perform clean at least as good as when he was working wth Ferrari/a Freiburg client?
Servais Knaven is still working for them btw!
The biological paspport can be cheated btw, it is more useful as a tool to know wich rider to target test. Only the most reckless dopers get caught directly by it and even in those case it's not foolproof, see Kreuziger, Roman.
**** with what we know about the UCI, it might actually be a useful tool for them to rig the game...