Team Ineos (Formerly the Sky thread)

[Dear Wiggo]

They don't? what's this then?
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/astana-looks-to-join-mpcc

It's one day, vs 3 years.

When they win the Tour and a bunch of other races, dominating the bunch all year, and then have their PR officer's brother cite their cleanliness every chance he gets, then we can talk

 

[JimmyFingers]

And as I said about Brailsford before, I feel that to say that he had been naïve enough to believe Yates, de Jongh, Julich and Barry had never been involved in any doping ever, credits him with way too little intelligence for my liking, suggesting that Rogers had all the fairest intentions in the world when he used a guy who was banned from acting as a doctor or pharmacist due to abusing that position to dope professional athletes, and was simply unaware of the implications of that, credits Rogers with too little intelligence too.

The chances that Rogers didn't dope are minimal, and are unnecessary to bother debating IMO. But as I said, whether he did or didn't is moot, he shouldn't have been hired in the first place.

And therein lies the crux of the matter. Clearly Brailsford isn't stupid, and more so there are other people within the organisation that aren't stupid. Pragmatism meant they exploited the burden of proof: you can claim zero-tolerance and hire people that have never tested positive and bingo,you have zero-tolerance.

But that's a smokescreen for the ignorant, the informed know there are more than just questions marks over many in the pro-peloton, and Rogers is a proper example of that.

For me this is as close to as fact as we will get: Sky hired these people with knowledge of their suspect past and choose to give a blind eye to it. And here it is dependant on your level of cynicism as to why.

I think one reason is that they didn't see the whole USADA thing coming. If they had, not only do I think they wouldn't have hired those characters, I don't believe Sky would have happened at all. Reservations were strong IN BC about a road team because of doping taint, if they had seen Lance's outing coming that would had cemented their decision to stay away.

And without the USADA, they would have got away with it. Reliant on an ignorant public of a niche sport in the country of their target demographic, who you would struggle to get to name a proven doper like Landis, let alone suspect ones, they thought it wouldn't be noticed by the fans or the media. And without the USADA they would probably be right. I think in a nod to Garmin perhaps, while operating under a facade of zero-tolerance, the reality was they were hiring people with suspect pasts but those whom they were confident were clean and repentant. As I said, depends on your cynicism level.

And now they are caught out, dependant on staff's honesty and restricted by employment law to properly purge the organisation and try to move it closer to the original ideal upon which Sky was formed.

And yes they failed to uphold it, this much is clear. Again it boils down to your cynicism levels or personal bias whether you think this is forgiveable or not. I still think (so an opinion) that despite the mistakes they are trying to do the right thing.

Just not very good at it. But then, who is?

 

[Le Baroudeur]

On the first point, Andreas Klöden made a point during the 2008 Giro to state that only a few of the teams had strong internal testing regimes. Slipstream was one, High Road another, CSC another and Astana the other.

Just to clarify, the testing regime at CSC wasn't so much internal, but rather, and importantly, it was wholely independent of the team, being designed and run by one of the sports and teams foremost critics and experts at the time, with no restrictions in scope, and strict financial and organisational barriers between the testers and the team. Further, all test data and results were published in full for transparency.

The testing started in 2007, and concluded when the Biological Passport system came online to replace it (being an all but identical testing system afaik).

The Astana testing was based on the CSC programme, with the exclussion of Armstrong who had his own test programme iirc?

These internal tests aren´t created to prevent riders from doping, but to avoid doped riders risk to test positive later in UCi/Wada tests.

I think, whatever managers and DS say in public, towards their riders, they´re all like Tinkov: do what you want to be fast, don´t get caught.

See above... I'm not sure how this correlates with the CSC test programme at all? I see how it might with teams that do do there own tests internally, but again, it would be just as beficial to the team to remove and prevent issues by control of offending riders. Just because a team doesn't want a scandal, doesn't mean they aren't actively discouraging or working against doping, and pushing out riders that don't get the message?

 

[JimmyFingers]

It's one day, vs 3 years.

When they win the Tour and a bunch of other races, dominating the bunch all year, and then have their PR officer's brother cite their cleanliness every chance he gets, then we can talk

I thinks this gets down to the brass tacks: you are basically saying that proof is in performance, no just suspicion. For Sky to be innocent, they would be losing.

The antipathy towards Sky is clearly generated, in a large part, by their PR of being clean. By saying their clean and winning, and by espousing constantly a mantra of marginal gains, they are more a target. Sky was the most successful team in 2012 yes, but dominance? The rider that topped the rankings was from Katusha, the winner of the Giro rode for Garmin, the Vuelta for Astana. OPQS dominated the one-day classics (which Sky won none of). Where Sky dominated were the short stage races and the Tour de France, and through Mark Cavendish, who you felt won inspite of them rather than because of them. In the Worlds they manged a silver from EBH, no more.

So successful yes, dominant no. So many races in the season of huge significance they didn't win that they tried very hard to do. When Boonen broke away at P-R with 53k to go there were 3 Sky riders in the lead group, combined they couldn't get him back. In M-SR they tried and failed miserably in delivering Cav to the line.

I suppose all that does is re-focus attention to the 'core' of the TdF team, and the one that one Paris-Nice, Romandie and Dauphine, around which suspicion mostly revolves. But it also should dispell a dominant season. Sky won fifty times, 15 of those were Cavendish alone, but they lost a hell of a lot too

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Just to clarify, the testing regime at CSC wasn't so much internal, but rather, and importantly, it was wholely independent of the team, being designed and run by one of the sports and teams foremost critics and experts at the time, with no restrictions in scope, and strict financial and organisational barriers between the testers and the team. Further, all test data and results were published in full for transparency.

The testing started in 2007, and concluded when the Biological Passport system came online to replace it (being an all but identical testing system afaik).

The Astana testing was based on the CSC programme, with the exclussion of Armstrong who had his own test programme iirc?



See above... I'm not sure how this correlates with the CSC test programme at all? I see how it might with teams that do do there own tests internally, but again, it would be just as beficial to the team to remove and prevent issues by control of offending riders. Just because a team doesn't want a scandal, doesn't mean they aren't actively discouraging or working against doping, and pushing out riders that don't get the message?

I wasn't trying to call out CSC or anything, more that I didn't actually know anything about their tests and controls, but plenty have had suspicions about the Riis-led squad.

The reason for mentioning them was solely to do with comparing Stapleton's announcing Rogers was clean in 2007, thanks to the excellent internal controls at the team run by himself, to Andreas Klöden's interview with Gazzetta dello Sport during the 2008 Giro.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/csf-group-navigare-counters-klodens-accusations

"At the Giro, there are only four teams with a tight control system - Slipstream, High Road, CSC and Astana... [Davide] Rebellin and [Riccardo] Riccò, I don't know how often they have controls like me. I don't want to talk about the team of Priamo."

Now, while you may point out that Klöden's dopedar was pretty accurate, picking out two guys on two dubious squads who tested positive later that year, and it is interesting how he picked out Priamo from CSF-Navigare even as Pérez Cuapio, Baliani, Pozzovivo and of course Sella floated around the mountains, as after all Sella's testimonies showed Priamo to have been the dealer at CSF, however he trumps up the tight internal controls at Astana, but we know that that team continued to dope under Bruyneel. Without a more objective source, do we just accept Klöden's testimony that 2008-era Astana have tight doping controls, or are we entitled to suspect that the tight control may have been used for less (or more) sanguine purposes?

It's ambiguous, because as we know from testing full stop, a lot of guys slip the net. But we also have every reason to suspect in the wake of subsequent positives and the USADA case that doping continued on under Bruyneel.

 

[Ferminal]

Just to clarify, the testing regime at CSC wasn't so much internal, but rather, and importantly, it was wholely independent of the team, being designed and run by one of the sports and teams foremost critics and experts at the time, with no restrictions in scope, and strict financial and organisational barriers between the testers and the team. Further, all test data and results were published in full for transparency.

The testing started in 2007, and concluded when the Biological Passport system came online to replace it (being an all but identical testing system afaik).

The Astana testing was based on the CSC programme, with the exclussion of Armstrong who had his own test programme iirc?



See above... I'm not sure how this correlates with the CSC test programme at all? I see how it might with teams that do do there own tests internally, but again, it would be just as beficial to the team to remove and prevent issues by control of offending riders. Just because a team doesn't want a scandal, doesn't mean they aren't actively discouraging or working against doping, and pushing out riders that don't get the message?

Yes Astana used Daamsgard. It was such a good independent program that they managed to wrongfully dismiss a rider they considered to be a doper.

 

[Le Baroudeur]

Yes Astana used Daamsgard. It was such a good independent program that they managed to wrongfully dismiss a rider they considered to be a doper.

Ouch, who was that, and did they give a reason for the suspision?

 

[Spencer the Half Wit]

It certainly helps to explain it like that. I am directly quoting him from an interview.



I'd like to see how you have heaps of advisers without having them advising you - and that's the same team he rode for in 2011, not like all of a sudden the back office staff changed to any degree.

Personally I am more inclined to believe the interview over a film recently aired, no doubt produced by Sky and their PR department vs a generally open and honest Wiggins in an interview right in the thick of a disappointing year, a month after they had a soigneur die and a bunch of riders withdraw from the Vuelta.

The film might have recently aired but that interviews in it were conducted over the whole year. The bit where he talks about the 2010 Tour was conducted at the start of the year before he had won anything. So unless he can see in the future or have unbelievable hindsight to foresee your argument about him going from good to crap to good between 09-12 I'm more inclined to believe the film.

 

[MatParker117]

I thinks this gets down to the brass tacks: you are basically saying that proof is in performance, no just suspicion. For Sky to be innocent, they would be losing.

The antipathy towards Sky is clearly generated, in a large part, by their PR of being clean. By saying their clean and winning, and by espousing constantly a mantra of marginal gains, they are more a target. Sky was the most successful team in 2012 yes, but dominance? The rider that topped the rankings was from Katusha, the winner of the Giro rode for Garmin, the Vuelta for Astana. OPQS dominated the one-day classics (which Sky won none of). Where Sky dominated were the short stage races and the Tour de France, and through Mark Cavendish, who you felt won inspite of them rather than because of them. In the Worlds they manged a silver from EBH, no more.

So successful yes, dominant no. So many races in the season of huge significance they didn't win that they tried very hard to do. When Boonen broke away at P-R with 53k to go there were 3 Sky riders in the lead group, combined they couldn't get him back. In M-SR they tried and failed miserably in delivering Cav to the line.

I suppose all that does is re-focus attention to the 'core' of the TdF team, and the one that one Paris-Nice, Romandie and Dauphine, around which suspicion mostly revolves. But it also should dispell a dominant season. Sky won fifty times, 15 of those were Cavendish alone, but they lost a hell of a lot too

Eleven wins from Boasson Hagen as well

 

[Mellow Velo]

It's one day, vs 3 years.

When they win the Tour and a bunch of other races, dominating the bunch all year, and then have their PR officer's brother cite their cleanliness every chance he gets, then we can talk

Meh, so now we have to have a very lengthy time span and multiple "cleanliness" strikes before Astana become hypocritical?
I didn't post the link in defence of Sky, but to show Benotti that Astana had just blown a hole in his rational.
As for your post, I hadn't realised Sky had been so dominant, all conquering for 3 seasons and that Astana won nothing of importance, this year.

 

[Ferminal]

Ouch, who was that, and did they give a reason for the suspision?

Gusev apparently tested positive, but after they sacked him it was found that the sample was not positive enough for a ban.

http://nyvelocity.com/content/features/2010/dirty-deal

This article is a great read.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

The film might have recently aired but that interviews in it were conducted over the whole year. The bit where he talks about the 2010 Tour was conducted at the start of the year before he had won anything. So unless he can see in the future or have unbelievable hindsight to foresee your argument about him going from good to crap to good between 09-12 I'm more inclined to believe the film.

I don't follow you at all - what are you talking about?

The film was by Sky Atlantic, and released this year.

 

[Spencer the Half Wit]

I don't follow you at all - what are you talking about?

The film was by Sky Atlantic, and released this year.

Sorry if I wasn't clear. He was interviewed in January of this year, i.e. before him winning everything in sight, for the film and talked about his poor performance in the 2010 Tour . Shane Sutton confirmed it and said "He couldn't pull the foreskin off a rice pudding" whatever that means.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Sorry if I wasn't clear. He was interviewed in January of this year, i.e. before him winning everything in sight, for the film and talked about his poor performance in the 2010 Tour . Shane Sutton confirmed it and said "He couldn't pull the foreskin off a rice pudding" whatever that means.

The interview I quoted was from 2010 - about his 2010 performance and in particular his Tour. He was coached by the same people as 2009 but in a better funded, better resourced team.

If you read the interview it's obvious what went wrong - he wasn't allowed to do it his way, the way he did it in 2009. In early 2011 Brailsford said they were going to relax their ZTP having already hired Leinders.

To come out in 2012 and have a bunch of new excuses for his 2010 performance, produced by Sky Atlantic, who need to set the best possible narrative for believability since 2010, where he has gone from strength to strength purely on the back of marginal gains.

No question I am prejudiced, but this film and in particular the reference to 2010? Not believable.

No mention of Kerrison anywhere either.

 

[Spencer the Half Wit]

The interview I quoted was from 2010 - about his 2010 performance and in particular his Tour. He was coached by the same people as 2009 but in a better funded, better resourced team.

If you read the interview it's obvious what went wrong - he wasn't allowed to do it his way, the way he did it in 2009. In early 2011 Brailsford said they were going to relax their ZTP having already hired Leinders.

To come out in 2012 and have a bunch of new excuses for his 2010 performance, produced by Sky Atlantic, who need to set the best possible narrative for believability since 2010, where he has gone from strength to strength purely on the back of marginal gains.

No question I am prejudiced, but this film and in particular the reference to 2010? Not believable.

No mention of Kerrison anywhere either.

It's not uncommon for people to give multiple excuses for bad performances, some more valid than others.

The point I was making was that the interview for the film was before this thread, before the accusations of doping and before your theory to explain the 2009 performance, the subsequent dip in results and his miraculous performance this year.

It's not credible to say that in January he knew he was going to win everything this year and therefore had to excuse his 2010 performance.

 

[Mellow Velo]

The interview I quoted was from 2010 - about his 2010 performance and in particular his Tour. He was coached by the same people as 2009 but in a better funded, better resourced team.

If you read the interview it's obvious what went wrong - he wasn't allowed to do it his way, the way he did it in 2009. In early 2011 Brailsford said they were going to relax their ZTP having already hired Leinders.

To come out in 2012 and have a bunch of new excuses for his 2010 performance, produced by Sky Atlantic, who need to set the best possible narrative for believability since 2010, where he has gone from strength to strength purely on the back of marginal gains.

No question I am prejudiced, but this film and in particular the reference to 2010? Not believable.

No mention of Kerrison anywhere either.

You got that right.
You haven't seen the film, dismiss it as prejudiced and yet, you, yourself admit to being prejudice. So, you stick to the version that suits your views.
Not believable from a position of semi-ignorance is meaningless.

Watch the film. Taken on face value and the reasons given are quite believable.
Then it becomes a question of choice and level of cynicism.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

It's not credible to say that in January he knew he was going to win everything this year and therefore had to excuse his 2010 performance.

It was about as credible as Lance Armstrong's Tailwind paying $400+k insurance to SCA after winning what 2 or 3 Tours for a multi-million dollar payout for winning 6 in a row.

Add in meetings with ASO discussing Brad's power and training data and I'm prepared to believe they knew Brad was going to go well in 2012 - the Tour being the key event.

The only thing I am disagreeing with from your original post is that Brad was left alone in 2010 - his interview from 2010 says micromanaged, and I find that believable, and potentially impacting on his ability to do what he wanted. This is reinforced by what JV says his interaction with Wiggins was in 2009, reinforced by JV's general appearance of a hands off approach to team management.

 

[The Hitch]

I Sky was the most successful team in 2012 yes, but dominance? The rider that topped the rankings was from Katusha, the winner of the Giro rode for Garmin, the Vuelta for Astana.

Contador does not ride for astana anymore

 

[thehog]

Contador does not ride for astana anymore

Oh dear Jimmy.

You know a team has systematic doping when the fanboys try and play down the dominance

 

[Dear Wiggo]

You got that right.
You haven't seen the film, dismiss it as prejudiced and yet, you, yourself admit to being prejudice. So, you stick to the version that suits your views.
Not believable from a position of semi-ignorance is meaningless.

Watch the film. Taken on face value and the reasons given are quite believable.
Then it becomes a question of choice and level of cynicism.

I certainly didn't dismiss the film as prejudiced but I'd say it's about as believable as the independent Vrijman report. Are you seriously expecting me to believe SKY Atlantic are going to produce a film saying anything other than carefully worded scripts to help explain this farce of a Sky-dominated pro cycling calendar year?

Puhlease.

I already know they are contradicting what Brad himself said in 2010 - what more proof do you need?

All I am sticking to is what Brad himself said in an interview. ffs Mellow, wake up to yourself.

ETA: do you think the new, independent report / commission whatever into the UCI is going to be damning of the UCI in anything but the most trivial of matters? Sky are a media company - with a dedicated PR officer in Fran Millar. Check the latest update on how they handle potentially hostile media here: http://forum.cyclingnews.com/showpost.php?p=1083718&postcount=322

 

[Dear Wiggo]

If you're into reading I can highly recommend an English author by the name of George Orwell and his seminal novel 1984.

Every time Sky come out with something new it reminds me of newspeak and anyone questioning their performances as being guilty of thought crimes.

How dare you question the state!

2 years ago Brad was being micro managed - he had too many advisers and they wouldn't leave him alone like Garmin did in 2009.

January of this year he says 2 years ago he was left alone completely.

Are we at war with Oceania or Eurasia?

Who can remember.

 

[Netserk]

Just to clarify, the testing regime at CSC wasn't so much internal, but rather, and importantly, it was wholely independent of the team, being designed and run by one of the sports and teams foremost critics and experts at the time, with no restrictions in scope, and strict financial and organisational barriers between the testers and the team. Further, all test data and results were published in full for transparency.

The testing started in 2007, and concluded when the Biological Passport system came online to replace it (being an all but identical testing system afaik).

The Astana testing was based on the CSC programme, with the exclussion of Armstrong who had his own test programme iirc?



See above... I'm not sure how this correlates with the CSC test programme at all? I see how it might with teams that do do there own tests internally, but again, it would be just as beficial to the team to remove and prevent issues by control of offending riders. Just because a team doesn't want a scandal, doesn't mean they aren't actively discouraging or working against doping, and pushing out riders that don't get the message?

Actually no.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/damsgaard-faces-criticism-over-anti-doping-programme

Belhage found that Damsgaard, by accepting the bike from the team, violated ethical standards and compromised Damsgaard's objectivity. Now that Damsgaard has created his own company, Radar, of which he is 100 percent owner, there is a direct economic connection between the team and Damsgaard which jeopardizes the project's legitimacy.

 

[Spencer the Half Wit]

It was about as credible as Lance Armstrong's Tailwind paying $400+k insurance to SCA after winning what 2 or 3 Tours for a multi-million dollar payout for winning 6 in a row.

Add in meetings with ASO discussing Brad's power and training data and I'm prepared to believe they knew Brad was going to go well in 2012 - the Tour being the key event.

The only thing I am disagreeing with from your original post is that Brad was left alone in 2010 - his interview from 2010 says micromanaged, and I find that believable, and potentially impacting on his ability to do what he wanted. This is reinforced by what JV says his interaction with Wiggins was in 2009, reinforced by JV's general appearance of a hands off approach to team management.

Nice strawman there.

In the 2010 interview, two months after the tour(?), he's hardly going to say "I rode crap because I went out on the lash and didn't bother to train". Also I don't read in the interview that he was micromanaged in 2010. Confirmation bias on both our parts maybe.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Actually no.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/damsgaard-faces-criticism-over-anti-doping-programme

I couldn't remember specifics but I did remember Damsgaard being kinda dodgy - thanks for the reminder.

There's a tragically ironic quote in the 2008 Garmin interviews about their clean ethos and internal testing, where they journo recounts a Spanish company offering internal testing and calls it dodgy coz they are offering it as a reverse anti-doping service. Yet CSC, Astana and Garmin were all touted as good guys and proving it whilst doing exactly the same thing.

The "right" way:

http://tourdefrancefacts.com/article/0,6610,s1-3-131-17647-2,00.html
Three teams in this year's Tour - Garmin-Chipotle, Columbia and CSC-Saxo Bank - participate in anti-doping programs, administered by independent testers. A fourth team not in the Tour, Astana, began such a program this year.

Teams handle results release in various ways. CSC-Saxo Bank, which participates in a separate but similar anti-doping program run by the Danish researcher Rasmus Damsgaard, publishes an annual mid-season release of results. (Damsgaard also has results sent directly to the UCI and WADA before even he sees them, to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest.)

The "wrong" way:

So what does all that mean? A clever athlete could still potentially dope and not go past these levels. In a development last week, two major Spanish newspapers wrote that Marcos Maynar, a Spanish doctor for the Portuguese LA-MSS team had propositioned 10 other teams offering to set up a kind of reverse anti-doping program. For a fee, he would conduct urine testing and steroid profiles on riders to ensure they would not test positive. Maynar denies the accusations. It is the job of ACE, Garmin's testing partner, to make sure that a clever athlete cannot fool his team.

 

[Mellow Velo]

Nice strawman there.

In the 2010 interview, two months after the tour(?), he's hardly going to say "I rode crap because I went out on the lash and didn't bother to train". Also I don't read in the interview that he was micromanaged in 2010. Confirmation bias on both our parts maybe.

I don't read anything in that article than contradicts what was said in the documentary.
Brad gives one example of what went wrong and goes on to expand upon why.
Sky got the tapering wrong and over complicated the racing phase.
It's one reason, not the only reason.
Indeed, the film's reasons; being back on the booze, training with less commitment and team mates giving less than truthful fitness reports to HQ are not exactly PR coups.

Interestingly, the interview also includes this:

The road ahead

Wiggins explains that he and Sutton are "going back to what we used to do and he's going to try to guide me through this."

Which also came out in the documentary.