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Team Ineos (Formerly the Sky thread)

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Since the UCI took control of testing from AFLD again, the number of riders busted has drastically gone down. Armstrong's return, the attempt to replace the huge audience drop off in places like Germany following successive major doping scandals, and lawyers poking huge holes in the efficacy of the biopassport have been the biggest factors. Nowadays big names only get caught on technicalities like Quintana, when the police get involved like López, or when the UCI kicks an own goal like Contador or Froome.
Quintana technically wasn't doping, but my definition of doping is according to WADA definition, not my own opinion. An athlete and their team look at WADA code and it tells them what is doping/cheating and what isn't.
To be fair, UCI didnt' have any control over results management even with CADF. Remember Lappartient getting angry with CADF's boss who wouldn't give him pre-warning of riders testing positive because it would break WADA RM Rules?
 
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"there haven't been any rumours"
"here are some things I consider rumours"
"he hasn't been suspended"
"that isn't what you said"
"not listening"
The point you made essentially comparing Ferrari to Brailsford I think shows the enormous stretching of even your own wild imagination you are having to make to even have a conversation and try and relate Thomas to anything you think might have happened. The main argument is there is as much about Thomas as there is on any neo-pro and so in the belief that one has to prove beyond at least some reasonable doubt, it needs more than your imagination or bias to be believed really.
 
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For me, no. Anti-doping, authorities, the riders and teams all define doping by the anti-doping code written in black and white and updated continually throughout history both with additions like Blood or EPO and omissions like Salbutamol etc.
I thought Team Sky were going to be the all-singing all-dancing clean team that would withdraw riders from races rather than get TUEs.

As it turns out, they were playing every grey area they could find. It turns out that the only revolution they brought was to have more money to lawyer up and find those loopholes than anybody else,to filibuster justice and bury evidence (unless you genuinely believe Freeman was so incompetent that he failed to back up important medical records for several years - gross negligence of duty for his profession - and just happened to accidentally destroy the computer... and if you tell me you do believe that, I don't believe you).

If your stance is that all's fair in love and war and so within the letter of the law is fine, I don't have a problem with that - but that isn't what the team promised or professed, so they get called out on the hypocrisy and lying that they did around it. They asked us to hold them to a higher standard, and then get upset when we do just that.
 
I am baffled at how people really listened to what Sky said. I'm a mad Sky fan since autumn 2013 (I still hoped for Contador during the Embrun TT in July 2013) and I have no fking idea of the rules of what they said. it's PR to hook the 2010 British new cycling fans. I'm baffled that adults still hold a grudge at a pro cycling team doing PR for newcomers-fans ffs
 
I am baffled at how people really listened to what Sky said. I'm a mad Sky fan since autumn 2013 (I still hoped for Contador during the Embrun TT in July 2013) and I have no fking idea of the rules of what they said. it's PR to hook the 2010 British new cycling fans. I'm baffled that adults still hold a grudge at a pro cycling team doing PR for newcomers-fans ffs
I don’t know why I wouldn’t still despise Sky/Ineos for spending gobs of $ to bring in attnys, scientists, expensive lab testing, etc to clear Froome of his doping violation, which not only showed how tilted the legal playing field was/is for top riders on wealthy teams, but also damaged the anti-doping system. It may be that the current managers (aside from whatever connection Brailsford still has) & current riders have no connection to that, but I see no reason to like or trust the corporate entity given their history. On the other hand, it doesn’t get in the way of me rooting for individuals on the team like Bernal or Pidcock.
 
I thought Team Sky were going to be the all-singing all-dancing clean team that would withdraw riders from races rather than get TUEs.

As it turns out, they were playing every grey area they could find. It turns out that the only revolution they brought was to have more money to lawyer up and find those loopholes than anybody else,to filibuster justice and bury evidence (unless you genuinely believe Freeman was so incompetent that he failed to back up important medical records for several years - gross negligence of duty for his profession - and just happened to accidentally destroy the computer... and if you tell me you do believe that, I don't believe you).

If your stance is that all's fair in love and war and so within the letter of the law is fine, I don't have a problem with that - but that isn't what the team promised or professed, so they get called out on the hypocrisy and lying that they did around it. They asked us to hold them to a higher standard, and then get upset when we do just that.
Where did you read they wouldn't use TUEs like any other team? Their claim was they would win Le Tour with a clean British rider. As I just said, riders, teams, organisers, wada and uci define that as not doping by breaking WADA code. You can run your own made up definition of anti-doping of course, but it doesn't mean it's more valid than the reality of their claim that still upholds true against the definition of WADA,
 
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Where did you read they wouldn't use TUEs like any other team? Their claim was they would win Le Tour with a clean British rider. As I just said, riders, teams, organisers, wada and uci define that as not doping by breaking WADA code. You can run your own made up definition of anti-doping of course, but it doesn't mean it's more valid than the reality of their claim that still upholds true against the definition of WADA,
This was one of their many promises back in 2010, "we will withdraw riders from races rather than get TUEs" in order to preserve their cleanliness, because they were aware that in the climate of 2008-9 people were unwilling to buy "doing every substance not nailed down as long as it's inside the WADA code" as a definition of "clean". They didn't promise "not breaking the rules", they promised "clean". They promised attention to detail, and drew attention to the success that this attention to detail brought, while simultaneously pleading total ignorance of how a doctor named in the Rasmussen court documents ended up on the team "just to weigh people", and a known Ferrari customer ended up on the roster cheerfully telling the press he was putting out the best numbers he'd ever managed.

Again: if they'd said, "we're gonna do whatever we can get away with, but keep it within the rules", then they wouldn't have faced half the scrutiny, but they would probably not have achieved the same buy-in from fans who had grown distrustful of the sport in the mid to late 2000s. They invited us to hold them to a higher standard, and then got upset when we did.
 
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I don’t know why I wouldn’t still despise Sky/Ineos for spending gobs of $ to bring in attnys, scientists, expensive lab testing, etc to clear Froome of his doping violation, which not only showed how tilted the legal playing field was/is for top riders on wealthy teams, but also damaged the anti-doping system. It may be that the current managers (aside from whatever connection Brailsford still has) & current riders have no connection to that, but I see no reason to like or trust the corporate entity given their history. On the other hand, it doesn’t get in the way of me rooting for individuals on the team like Bernal or Pidcock.
It's fine. Some people like to watch Manchester City - a Johnny-Come-Lately moneyed team who flaunt their status as too big to fail by using high-priced lawyers to make it too expensive for the authorities to make them face consequences - because they have the best players, so they can swoon at a 4-0 dismantling of a lesser team, because they're watching really high quality football, and are happy to cheer for the overdog. Other people like to watch a close competition of players, regardless of whether that means compromising the quality of the game by viewing players objectively at a lower standard, and object to the morality involved in assembling those corporate, financially invulnerable teams of galacticos. It's two conflicting viewpoints of sport that are simply largely incompatible.

Cycling is at a disadvantage in that because, being a pack sport, there isn't so much opportunity to just watch a different game, because all of the teams are present in the biggest races together.
 
Can you link to where that 2010 quote is from? That sounds more like they would not use the TUE system within the race to me aka Armstrong, Cofidis etc. Wiggins TUEs go all the way back to FdJ and IOC for Asthma in 2004 iirc.
"Peters insists that Leinders was scrupulously ethical in his time with Sky. ‘We agreed as a team that if a rider, suffering from asthma, got into trouble with pollen we would pull him out of the race rather than apply for a therapeutic use exemption on his behalf." (source: David Walsh, "Inside Team Sky")

I will confess that I have not read the book to know where exactly said quote appears, but I have heard a number of variations on the theme. Unfortunately of course it has become somewhat difficult to find a lot of these earlier comments because of the amount of articles and quotes that came from after the controversies started.

You are correct in Wiggins having TUEs for asthma long before Team Sky. I remember doing a post way back when where I analysed where in the year these TUEs were applied for and how his results were affected at the time of year of pollen allergies.
 
"Peters insists that Leinders was scrupulously ethical in his time with Sky. ‘We agreed as a team that if a rider, suffering from asthma, got into trouble with pollen we would pull him out of the race rather than apply for a therapeutic use exemption on his behalf." (source: David Walsh, "Inside Team Sky")

I will confess that I have not read the book to know where exactly said quote appears
Page 81: https://books.google.dk/books?id=Iu...page&q="ethical in his time with Sky"&f=false
 
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Sunday Times journalist David Walsh, author of the book Inside Team Sky, has questioned the British WorldTour outfit’s commitment to its ethical policies following its application for a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) in April to allow Chris Froome to take part in the Tour de Romandie while taking medication to treat a chest infection.
 
"Peters insists that Leinders was scrupulously ethical in his time with Sky. ‘We agreed as a team that if a rider, suffering from asthma, got into trouble with pollen we would pull him out of the race rather than apply for a therapeutic use exemption on his behalf." (source: David Walsh, "Inside Team Sky")

I will confess that I have not read the book to know where exactly said quote appears, but I have heard a number of variations on the theme. Unfortunately of course it has become somewhat difficult to find a lot of these earlier comments because of the amount of articles and quotes that came from after the controversies started.

You are correct in Wiggins having TUEs for asthma long before Team Sky. I remember doing a post way back when where I analysed where in the year these TUEs were applied for and how his results were affected at the time of year of pollen allergies.
Which has nothing to do with Wiggins TUE which was the proactive prevention of pollen exacerbating asthma before competition began, because the maximal dose for what he was using under WADA code was leaving him with side-effects and not optimal according to Freeman and the TUE medical notes.
The TUE system doesn't exist to not be used remember, but clearly sending a rider on their way when they just collapsed on a mountain from an Asthma attack isn't good medical practice. This had happened in 2009 at FdeJ iirc and they injected the rider at side of road and he carried on with an rTUE.
 
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There were major figures in the sport who, reportedly, even as late as 1996 insisted that EPO is not doping.
I don’t recall for sure, but I didn’t think by 1996, only several years after EPO appeared to be be in wide use throughout the peloton, riders or DS’s were even acknowledging they knew of EPO use to journalists or others in public?
Of course it would be a crock anyways for someone to say, at that time, that a product only medically available to kidney-failure patients and that cost a thousand $ for a single injection was “not doping.”
 
I don’t recall for sure, but I didn’t think by 1996, only several years after EPO appeared to be be in wide use throughout the peloton, riders or DS’s were even acknowledging they knew of EPO use to journalists or others in public?
Of course it would be a crock anyways for someone to say, at that time, that a product only medically available to kidney-failure patients and that cost a thousand $ for a single injection was “not doping.”
It was in 1995, actually. It's an anecdote from a 2013 book by Belgian journalist Hans Vandeweghe, "Wie gelooft die renners nog?" (Who still believes these riders?).

Here's the relevant passage:

>>[Lance Armstrong] continued working with Michele Ferrari after his first Tour de France victory, despite the revelations that followed. Armstrong had sought out Ferrari in 1995 on the recommendation of Axel and Eddy Merckx, who had been familiar with Ferrari for a while. [...] Eddy Merckx was okay with EPO, but he wasn't an exception. I recall a discussion in November 1995 in the Green Bar of Club La Santa, during the Olympic training camp on Lanzarote. Among those at the table were José De Cauwer (Belgian national cycling coach at the time), Jean-Marie Dedecker (judo national coach), and Eddy Merckx (Board member of the Belgian Olympic Committee BOIC). When EPO was mentioned as a new substance, contemporaries Merckx and De Cauwer emphatically exclaimed together, "But EPO is not doping!"<<
 
It was in 1995, actually. It's an anecdote from a 2013 book by Belgian journalist Hans Vandeweghe, "Wie gelooft die renners nog?" (Who still believes these riders?).

Here's the relevant passage:

>>[Lance Armstrong] continued working with Michele Ferrari after his first Tour de France victory, despite the revelations that followed. Armstrong had sought out Ferrari in 1995 on the recommendation of Axel and Eddy Merckx, who had been familiar with Ferrari for a while. [...] Eddy Merckx was okay with EPO, but he wasn't an exception. I recall a discussion in November 1995 in the Green Bar of Club La Santa, during the Olympic training camp on Lanzarote. Among those at the table were José De Cauwer (Belgian national cycling coach at the time), Jean-Marie Dedecker (judo national coach), and Eddy Merckx (Board member of the Belgian Olympic Committee BOIC). When EPO was mentioned as a new substance, contemporaries Merckx and De Cauwer emphatically exclaimed together, "But EPO is not doping!"<<
Very interesting, thanks for that. Because coaches, whose riders were likely benefitting from EPO by that time, would say “it’s not doping” doesn’t mean that riders in general, or the anti-doping authorities, really believed “it’s not doping.” I’m sure Merckx didn’t believe oral cortico-steroids were doping either, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t doping.

Similarly, if riders are now using lugworm blood, luspatercept, or other newer blood-boosting products for which there is no testing yet, they know they’re doping, but will take advantage of the time it takes the testing system to respond with testing and thresholds.
 
that's where we differ. I don't feel the need to trust teams riders I have no connection with and I watch on tv
It's more that I feel the need to at least suspend disbelief enough to believe I'm watching a competition between sportsmen rather than lawyers.

The other place where we appear to differ is that if we are reduced to a budgetary competition, I find it very difficult to root for the overdog.

Seeing as you have distanced yourself from caring about riders' behaviours or words, can you enlighten me as to what it is about Thomas that drew you in? Personally I can't fathom why anybody would be excited by the riding of Thomas, and usually it has been his affable personality that has been mooted as the trait that people like about him. You've distanced yourself from suggesting that this is a factor with you, and you aren't British to have the patriotic angle, so I'm curious as to what it is that appeals outside of that.
 
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It's more that I feel the need to at least suspend disbelief enough to believe I'm watching a competition between sportsmen rather than lawyers.

The other place where we differ is that if we are reduced to a budgetary competition, I find it very difficult to root for the overdog.

well, Thomas didn't beat small riders/teams when he won his big races. and, unlike Wiggo and Froome, he never needed lawyers.