Team Ineos (Formerly the Sky thread)

[Alphabet]

Best line you ever wrote. Genius

Now, you're just being pedantic.

 

[JimmyFingers]

Now, you're just being pedantic.

I think the word you're looking for is 'facetious'

 

[dolophonic]

I think one of the reasons people are looking at Sky differently is their self admitted "special " relations with the ASO / UCI.
I don't remember Green Edge or Garmin having meetings making "presentations" etc...
I think they are all dodgy.. not just Sky but Sky are looking extra "special"

 

[Benotti69]

That's where I'm going wrong then: I'm a Celt

Plenty of Celt related threads in here should your bloodlines feel the need.

 

[thehog]

Best line you ever wrote. Genius

It would be better if you could provide the names of the doctors which are more 'dodgy' than Lienders.

Without evidence you cannot be believed.

Why say it if you don't believe it yourself?

 

[Alphabet]

I think one of the reasons people are looking at Sky differently is their self admitted "special " relations with the ASO / UCI.
I don't remember Green Edge or Garmin having meetings making "presentations" etc...
I think they are all dodgy.. not just Sky but Sky are looking extra "special"

Exactly this. Sky are targeted much more by fans because their performances are far better than everybody else's. It's not because they are English or because Wiggins is a thoroughly dislikeable person and it's not because they claim to be a clean team. It's purely performances. If Sky had raced like, I dunno, Argos did at the Tour, then no one would be interested enough to create a 1000+ page thread.

 

[thehog]

Exactly this. Sky are targeted much more by fans because their performances are far better than everybody else's. It's not because they are English or because Wiggins is a thoroughly dislikeable person and it's not because they claim to be a clean team. It's purely performances. If Sky had raced like, I dunno, Argos did at the Tour, then no one would be interested enough to create a 1000+ page thread.

I think the term you're looking for is 'not normal'.

Sky are 'not normal'.

Froome-dawg is ET.

 

[ebandit]

hoggie...hoggie............full of............

It would be better if you could provide the names of the doctors which are more 'dodgy' than Lienders.

Without evidence you cannot be believed.

Why say it if you don't believe it yourself?

hoggie as a seasoned veteran of the clinic i'm sure you know already......
..........to make it easier several were even described in usada's reasoned decision

so if you know already..............you're just trolling?

 

[ebandit]

!

That's where I'm going wrong then: I'm a Celt

and i'm a w*nker

 

[The Hitch]

Very solid response. There's a real danger here in a clinic that the 'anglophone' accusations have become so lazy and endemic here that they are are instead demonstrating the bias they're are supposed to attack.

The thread has reached 10 000 posts because there are so many sky fans who claim sky are clean dragging the argument out.

There are no movistar fans who do this on the movistar thread so that 1 died long before 10 000

Its pretty simple really and those of you who haven't figured that out ( even as others explained it to you.many times) have some catching up to do.

 

[The Hitch]

Exactly this. Sky are targeted much more by fans because their performances are far better than everybody else's. It's not because they are English or because Wiggins is a thoroughly dislikeable person and it's not because they claim to be a clean team. It's purely performances. If Sky had raced like, I dunno, Argos did at the Tour, then no one would be interested enough to create a 1000+ page thread.

Yeah but why think logically if you can just cover your eyes in the belief that everyone else is being racist.

 

[DirtyWorks]

Exactly this. Sky are targeted much more by fans because their performances are far better than everybody else's. It's not because they are English or because Wiggins is a thoroughly dislikeable person and it's not because they claim to be a clean team. It's purely performances. If Sky had raced like, I dunno, Argos did at the Tour, then no one would be interested enough to create a 1000+ page thread.

You are missing the point entirely and maybe that's intentional.

2012 comes along and historically top 5-20 guys are dominating all specialists. 2012 ends and these same riders return to their historical norm of 5-20 placings. That is entirely consistent with a doping program.

Unless you have done some kind of competitive athletics, I don't think you will understand how difficult cracking the top-3 is when your performance norm is in the 5-20 range.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Personally, i find the Mick Rogers argument quite odd. Sure he have a suspicious past. But if you take a look at his former performance and compare it to now, doesnt it suggest that he speaks the truth? I mean he couldnt climb with the best when the top contenders where clients of Ferrari and Fuentes. And with those doctors out of the picture, he is now able to climb along quite a bit, at least longer than he could before. Now when the VAMs are not the same and the w/kg are lower. Isnt it what we would expect from a clean rider back then and the same clean rider now?

Except that Rogers was a client of Ferrari too, so with those doctors being supposedly out of the picture, you'd not expect Rogers to improve his position, would you?

Of course there is, given that Sky may very well be planning to win next year's Tour in the exact same way, with the exact same core of riders.

Not that I wouldn't like to see the data, mind.

Both sides would like to see the data. It would go a long way towards assuaging the doubts, no matter what they look like, about Sky's transparency and willingness to confirm their statements about their clean agenda. However, at this point in time it's almost not worth it - both sides are filled with Betonköpfe who will either explain away any variation with ever-more-fanciful theories, or pounce on the minutest, easily explicable variations.

When he started spanking a dopped up Pantani in the mountains. If Wiggins or Froome do the same to a doped up Contador or Schleck then that would tip the balance. For me wheel sucking up mountains and not being able to react to a change of pace is not suspicious, so I'm not that suspicious of Wiggins but the jury's still out on Froome.

See to me, Armstrong had already shown talent pre-cancer. He was a former World Champion and a strong guy in the hilly classics. Yes, those results were almost certainly doped in retrospect, but when he started dropping guys like Pantani he wasn't a GC nobody. Froome was an almost total nobody who didn't even have a contract for 2012 before the 2011 Vuelta. And while Lampre and Garmin have both since admitted they were looking at him for 2012, there's no way they'd be offering him anything commensurate with a GT podium rider's money if he didn't have that breakout. To me, when a rider breaks out, it isn't the height that they jump, but how far it is over their previous expected level that is the deciding factor on whether I believe in it or not. I baulked far more at Froome's breakout than, say, Henao's or Stannard's. I baulked more at Froome's breakout than Cobo's because, a) Cobo performing as if on dope is not surprising, and b) Cobo had won races like País Vasco and mountain stages of two GTs before that.

Precisely what I thought when I saw that post.
That post could have fit into nearly any other team just as well.
What makes Sky stand out and what is the reason for all these haters is their dominance. It could be an indication of doping but only could be considered proof in alignment with other factors and in that, all teams actually have the same problem.

A similar example is with Katusha who have had their WT licence withheld due to their ethical aspects. What makes it such a farce is that Katusha seem to only be a scapegoat considering that their ethical aspects are certainly not much worse than teams like Astana or Lampre.

Exactly as Hitch said, the other teams, with perhaps only the exception of Garmin, do not bank the majority of their promotional materials on the understanding of cleanliness. And yes, the dominance does play into it - but so does the willingness of fans to believe them, whether they do believe them, or don't but want to be able to. They get masses of results, therefore they are at the forefront of discussion. This is an anglophone forum with many Britons and others who have had more access to interviews with these riders than others so are more emotionally invested in them, whether pro- or anti-, therefore they are mentioned often, and the saturation of discussion with Sky-related bickering results in polarizing debate. They have all manner of shady behaviours and connections, but here's the kicker that makes them different to most others: they insist in their PR that they don't.

10,000 Clinic posts say something different.

Em, Garmin, anyone? Garmin make far more PR of their anti-doping efforts. Which given the set up of the team is ientirely understandable. Sky are no different in terms of what they claim than say GreenEdge. Where are the 10,000 posts on GreenEdge?

If GreenEdge started riding the Tour to hell with some miracle transforming Australian stars, I can think of a handful of Aussie posters here who would make 10.000 posts just between the few of them. The number of posts are related to many things.
1) Exposure - Sky have been easily the most visible team this year.
2) Timing - Sky were also the most visible team at the Tour de France, when board traffic is at its highest, and also the most casual fans are here as well, resulting in lots of in-fighting, but also repetition. Also, the London Olympics, Wiggins' accident, the Cavendish transfer saga and Wiggins winning Sportsperson of the year and Brailsford Coach of the year has ensured that they are in the spotlight, and many interviews and public appearances have perpetuated discussion in this thread.
3) Suspicious behaviour - Sky have not exactly been watertight in making sure they cannot be suspected other than on their performances; PR gaffes or ambiguous behaviour (the ZTP allied with the 'not-ZTP-related' retirement of Yates, Brailsford running away from the CN journalist who asked him about the investigation of Leinders, the quiet removal of Rogers) have continued throughout the latter half of the year thus making sure that those discussions don't close off entirely.
Also, of course

The thread has reached 10 000 posts because there are so many sky fans who claim sky are clean dragging the argument out.

There are no movistar fans who do this on the movistar thread so that 1 died long before 10 000

Its pretty simple really and those of you who haven't figured that out ( even as others explained it to you.many times) have some catching up to do.

 

[King Of The Wolds]

Has it been covered here that Sky aren't abandoning Tenerife after all, they're sending Edvald Boa Hagen there sometime a couple of months into the new year.

So just sit back and watch Boasson Hagen, after having done one of the 'magical' Tenerife camps, go on to win a couple of the biggest classics out there.

So you'd see a guy, who's already won a genuine Classic and medalled at the WCs, and who's somebody that everybody's been tipping as a future Monument winner for several years, winning a couple of big races next year as more 'dots' of evidence?

With people like you around, the only way this thread is going to slow down is if they just go for mid-peloton mediocrity in every race.

By the way, Mellow Velo and I, earlier in the thread, did state that Sky hadn't abandoned Tenerife, and would probably be returning, for the valid reasons we also stated a few pages prior to that.

 

[JimmyFingers]

The thread has reached 10 000 posts because there are so many sky fans who claim sky are clean dragging the argument out.

There are no movistar fans who do this on the movistar thread so that 1 died long before 10 000

Its pretty simple really and those of you who haven't figured that out ( even as others explained it to you.many times) have some catching up to do.

You are rock solid in your conviction Sky are doping. So for you there is no debate, so it is Sky fans 'dragging out' this thread, rather than simply accepting the inevitable truth.

However not everyone accepts what they are told. I didn't come to the clinic looking for arguments and ****ing contests, although I got them. I came looking for answers because I had doubts. And while certain arguments tap into those doubts, and others undermine them, along with my own analysis of events, nothing yet has shown me anything definite.

I have always qualified my remarks as opinion, since I simply don't know all the facts, so while you may be happy dismissing my opinion in the manner you have, I would never do the same to yours. I know there is every possibility you are right, but equally I know there is an alternative, in fact a myriad of alternatives that may mean Sky, like much of the peloton, is neither completely clean or completely dirty, just somewhere in between.

 

[Alphabet]

You are missing the point entirely and maybe that's intentional.

2012 comes along and historically top 5-20 guys are dominating all specialists. 2012 ends and these same riders return to their historical norm of 5-20 placings. That is entirely consistent with a doping program.

Unless you have done some kind of competitive athletics, I don't think you will understand how difficult cracking the top-3 is when your performance norm is in the 5-20 range.

I don't understand. I never said Sky's performances were or were not consistent with doping. I was agreeing with the poster above me, as well as responding to what had become the current topic of perceived anti-British sentiment.

Did you quote the wrong post?

 

[biopass]

Except that Rogers was a client of Ferrari too, so with those doctors being supposedly out of the picture, you'd not expect Rogers to improve his position, would you?

True. But the fact is that Rogers improved in the standings. I just ask if that isnt what a clean rider would do? Considering the facts that the average speed in the Tour is slower, the best climbers no longer perform like superhumans in the HC Climbs.

I know that Rogers have been in Ferraris training camps, and i know that alone is close to admitting that you are on the juice. But again, imo his performance suggest otherwise.

 

[The Hitch]

You are rock solid in your conviction Sky are doping. So for you there is no debate, so it is Sky fans 'dragging out' this thread, rather than simply accepting the inevitable truth.

However not everyone accepts what they are told. I d.

Don't know what this has to do with anything i posted but ill play. No.i do not expect anyone to take my opinion as inevitable truth any more than you do.

I would though expect some people to aknowledge the possibility that wiggins or froome may dope purely on the basis that people in their position have been caught many many many times before.

Im also rock solid in my conviction that nibali is doping.. But none of the threads where me and others promoted that opinion ever reaches 10 000 posts because there weren't many liquigas to defend it. Which goes back.to the original post which started this where the guy made about how the lenght of this thread is purely down to people being racist against sky. The nibali and movistar thread comparisons totally disprove this ridiculous argument.

I have always qualified my remarks as opinion, since I simply don't know all the facts, so while you may be happy dismissing my opinion in the manner you have, I would never do the same to yours. I know there is every possibility you are right, but equally I know there is an alternative, in fact a myriad of alternatives that may mean Sky, like much of the peloton, is neither completely clean or completely dirty, just somewhere in between

And chapeau for that.

 

[will10]

True. But the fact is that Rogers improved in the standings. I just ask if that isnt what a clean rider would do? Considering the facts that the average speed in the Tour is slower, the best climbers no longer perform like superhumans in the HC Climbs.

I know that Rogers have been in Ferraris training camps, and i know that alone is close to admitting that you are on the juice. But again, imo his performance suggest otherwise.

Rogers' career has included time working under Ferrari and a couple of years with T-Mobile's blood program out of Freiberg University. Rogers was competitive at the Tour in 2006/2007 which are widely recognised to have been dirty races. Yet in 2012 he openly admitted in the press that he was putting out the highest power figures of his career. A top 8 climber in the Tour. An astonishing 60km pull over the Glandon and Mollard on the La Touissure stage making certain GT winners look like chumps as they were tailed off one by one.

Rogers is undoubtedly the most suspicious of Sky's awesome foursome.

 

[the sceptic]

True. But the fact is that Rogers improved in the standings. I just ask if that isnt what a clean rider would do? Considering the facts that the average speed in the Tour is slower, the best climbers no longer perform like superhumans in the HC Climbs.

I know that Rogers have been in Ferraris training camps, and i know that alone is close to admitting that you are on the juice. But again, imo his performance suggest otherwise.

Rogers said himself that he was better than ever this year though.

 

[Benotti69]

True. But the fact is that Rogers improved in the standings. I just ask if that isnt what a clean rider would do? Considering the facts that the average speed in the Tour is slower, the best climbers no longer perform like superhumans in the HC Climbs.

I know that Rogers have been in Ferraris training camps, and i know that alone is close to admitting that you are on the juice. But again, imo his performance suggest otherwise.

Consider the tours where multiple domestiques drop GC contenders on alps and cols. Then revaluate Sky's performance.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

True. But the fact is that Rogers improved in the standings. I just ask if that isnt what a clean rider would do? Considering the facts that the average speed in the Tour is slower, the best climbers no longer perform like superhumans in the HC Climbs.

I know that Rogers have been in Ferraris training camps, and i know that alone is close to admitting that you are on the juice. But again, imo his performance suggest otherwise.

But if the average speed gets slower and doping gets less, then the advantages of it become more pronounced, no?

In 1998 there were 20-something Riccardo Riccòs wearing out their brake pads on the switchbacks. In 2008 - which was not a clean Tour by any stretch of the imagination - Riccò stood out like a sore thumb. This is why Froome jumped out at me - his improvement was too much for this to be realistically used as a viable argument, because his improvement hadn't been on a level with anybody else... even Cobo. It had been far above and beyond, so it wasn't as simple as "clean Froome was left behind until péloton stopped doping", unless the entire péloton bar him was doping until the day of La Covatilla, then all stopped en masse. I also find it hard to include Rogers in the argument owing to the unlikelihood of his not having been part of that group of riders who ought to have been slowing down.

I remember some riders who had not been prominent pre-Puerto or during the Ferrari era who started performing at a higher level from 2007 onwards. In fact, I remember one particular case where a rider who had some very solid results in 2005 was being accused of coming from nowhere in 2007 and being an obvious doper, and I recall defending that rider as I felt it was grossly unfair to suggest that a guy must be doping, when with the péloton cleaning up and with him not performing up to that level pre-2007, it could equally have suggested, like you just did for Rogers, that that guy was (relatively) clean, and the slowing down of the péloton had brought him to the front. There wasn't the same weight of evidence against that guy than there was against Mick Rogers either.

That guy's name was Ezequiel Mosquera. Personally I thought the greater slur on Mosquera was the saying that he came out of nowhere. Mosquera's pre-2007 palmarès knocks spots off, say, Froome, and he had always done well in mountainous races and shown he was better the longer the climbs, with his recovery being the one real question mark about him prior to that Vuelta.

 

[Mellow Velo]

Don't know what this has to do with anything i posted but ill play. No.i do not expect anyone to take my opinion as inevitable truth any more than you do.

I would though expect some people to aknowledge the possibility that wiggins or froome may dope purely on the basis that people in their position have been caught many many many times before.

Im also rock solid in my conviction that nibali is doping.. But none of the threads where me and others promoted that opinion ever reaches 10 000 posts because there weren't many liquigas to defend it. Which goes back.to the original post which started this where the guy made about how the lenght of this thread is purely down to people being racist against sky. The nibali and movistar thread comparisons totally disprove this ridiculous argument.

You originally lay the blame at the door at Sky fans, but it takes two to tango.
How many posts did the Hog and Big Ring/Dear Wiggo make in those other team threads?

This thread died a while back and guess who brought it back to life, with nothing new to bring to the debate?

 

[ferryman]

You originally lay the blame at the door at Sky fans, but it takes two to tango.
How many posts did the Hog and Big Ring/Dear Wiggo make in those other team threads?

This thread died a while back and guess who brought it back to life, with nothing new to bring to the debate?

I was actually thinking of suggesting to the other mods on here that this thread is closed for 2012.

It's become stale with just thrust and parry without much else.

Not sure if there is a way to get a consensus on this without seeming to be favouring one side stopped me

 

[The Hitch]

You originally lay the blame at the door at Sky fans, but it takes two to tango.
How many posts did the Hog and Big Ring/Dear Wiggo make in those other team threads?

This thread died a while back and guess who brought it back to life, with nothing new to bring to the debate?

I didn't lay the blame on sky fans door. There not even any blame since i don't see what's wrong with a thread being long.

I responded to the poster who said the thread is long purely because of haters. the fact that sky fans also play a part in the length of the thread disprove his claim.