Escarabajo said:
2009 Wiggins was with Garmin-Slipstream. No giants leaps since he came to Sky. So if he is doped now, he must have been doped then with your logic.
Froome I agreed on.
Why isn't the Giro a good reference for Porte? Was he doped then? Then not doped when he performed bad? But now doped again when he shows climbing legs like in the Giro? We can at least agree that he has dropped a lot of weight this year, can we not?
Rogers? This is his first injury free year in a long time. Has his performances been extraordinary? Not as I can see. Good, yes, but noting extreme at all. He dropped yesterday and did a weak timetrial today.
- Feb 20, 2010
- 33,064
- 15,272
- 28,180
Hog also predicted the meltdown in the interview!Pedaaldanser said:Do you have a crystal ball?! It seems to be coming true
Wiggins' ITTs this year are nonetheless far in advance of anything he achieved as a pure ITT specialist.Marcus135 said:
Of course, nationality SHOULD be irrelevant, but there are an awful lot of people who will happily throw the Iberian peninsula on the fire.Parrot23 said:That's right. Big elephant! Yet Cobo is really hard to read too.
Nationality is irrelevant, but not with Sky, it seems.
(Bertie is my favourite rider: remember when he attacked on that rainy stage last year when behind already? Classic. Guy's got the heart of a lion, even if dodgy like Sky.)
You know what yesterday's rant was basically saying?Big Doopie said:
"I'm sorry you hate excellence".
Geordiedave said:
Brailsford? Hmmm.... It would be an interesting exercise getting a 48 year old as a test guinea pig to see just how ethereal a program can be conjured by Sky's cabal of doctor miscreants. Then, tone it down some to make it sellable to the UCI et al and useable by Wiggins, Rogers, Porte etc.
Nah. I don't believe it either. No way Brailsford is doping.
Dr.Sahl said:
Generally, and for the love of the sport; I believe any rider is clean to the contrary have been proven. As for EBH; again: NO WAY!!!
- Nov 7, 2009
- 11,100
- 5,291
- 28,180
norwegian said:
LOL. For the love of the sport, you believe your countryman is clean. Got it.
- Jun 14, 2010
- 34,930
- 60
- 22,580
Marcus135 said:
lol anything to get on froome, when Wiggins is clearly the problem. Wiggins was no tt specialist. He was in the sence that he could do jack **** on climbs but when was the last time you saw him win a tt in a gt. ( i remember winning giro 9k tt by 1s when it was his early season aim). Even in prologues which he would specialise in, he was getting his *** handed to him and in anything over 20k he would struggle to make the podium.
BroDeal said:
Big leap? Not at this point. That remains to be seen, we haven't reached the Alps and the Pyrenees yet, so we really can't say at this point. In Paris-Nice, Dauphine, Romandie Wiggings has been good in the mountains but not spectacular, he hasn't dropped riders exactly, he wins thanks to his timetrialing and being consistent. He has improved his timetrialing a bit but it was also very good in 2009. In 2009 he climbed well but couldn't follow the strongest, some of them who are not in this years tour.
Geordiedave said:
Since you often ask us to provide facts and stuff, I would like you to answer a few things..
Can you tell me why Sky hired the staff they did (doctors etc) ?? do you even know them.
Do you think its normal that a mediocre rider, that never did anything remarkable, suddenly can ride with 450w+ up the MT and then attack and win against the few last GC's riders that are left ???? (hello Froome)
As for Wiggins, he looks very suspisious, but I wont call him as a doper yet, but he sure looks like one, he peaked all season long and from his crazy transformation he didnt get any weakness ?? you believe that ?...
Another note, casual tour fans that I know, have no clue whatsoever who Froome and Wiggins are before the tour and introdution in the TV, they know most of the other GC's and 2nd tier, even young talants such as Taaramae..
That tells me something ^^
Bala Verde said:
Because they just came into cycling and arrived with ideas from outside road racing.
Sometimes having a different way of looking at things can give you a huge edge in a field.
You ask different questions, you have a different set of reference points, you get different answers.
(Remember Sky fell on their faces in the first year - partly because they were doing things differently.)
So, that's why I believe Sky could come up with legit breakthroughs the long-serving teams would be unlikely to find - they have a fresher set of eyes.
However, if it turns Froome from a nobody to the 2nd best GC rider in the world (outside of AC), then it's a breakthrough that, IMO, needs to be explained for it to be believed.
- Mar 18, 2009
- 14,644
- 81
- 22,580
The Hitch said:
Wiggins was the type of ITT specialist that Millar has become. Occasionally Millar can win something if none of the top riders or there or those riders don't bring their A game. That limits his chances to the Giro, Vuelta, and small stage races. Millar won't be challening the Fabulous Fab in any race that Cancellara cares about, and Canc has to be using the TdF as prep for the Olympics. He cares.
Moose McKnuckles said:LOL. For the love of the sport, you believe your countryman is clean. Got it.
Its odd people do that, I've known several riders from my country was doping to the gills and I claimed it... you know what ?? I got right about it too..
What I hate the most, is when its team wide doping, it ruins the tour totaly... This tour reminds me so much about the old USP days... I almost dropped cycling back then.
I hope this wont be a new era with team wide doping, we know from history, that if one team does it and gets away with it, the rest will follow shortly.
- Nov 7, 2009
- 11,100
- 5,291
- 28,180
Dalakhani said:
They just came into road racing and arrived with ideas from outside of road racing? Really? Did Sean Yates provide those ideas? What ideas specifically?
- Feb 17, 2012
- 2,756
- 0
- 11,480
Hm, I wonder why people keep saying that Fabian has no chance of winning the Tour. If he wanted to he would have to lose weight and give up some of his power in the TT to be able to climb better. Well, that theory was pretty much buried today...
Moose McKnuckles said:LOL. For the love of the sport, you believe your countryman is clean. Got it.
Read my post again. You got it wrong.
Here's some logic: No proof=not guilty. Not guilty=legit winning. Untill this logic changes, Wiggins & Froome are clean and performing extremely well (and I truly hope they are, I don't know if I can believe it. Yet.).
iZnoGouD said:Wiggins celebration on podium remembered me of Landis celebration of the finish
You compare Wiggos win today with Landis win to Morzine or what?
Wiggo performed more or less as expected in a TT he has been preparing for all year. A good performance, but nothing extreme like Landis win.
- May 28, 2010
- 639
- 0
- 0
My response to this weekend's show of *strength* from team sky...
Saturday, stage 7:
I don't see anything particularly suspicious here. Yes, the UK Postal mountain train was in full flight, but Michael Rodgers, Richie Porte, and Chris Froome are certainly an enviable set of domestiques to have at your disposal. Clean or not, this is one of the teams with the most depth as far as climbers go in this year's tour.
The stage result is not all that unbelievable. Froome won this stage, but his (natural?) ability as a climber for the steepest of gradients shouldn't be doubted, IMO. He clearly has the physique to excel on this sort of finish. In short, I'm not suspicious of Froome winning.
Wiggins, on the other hand, was certainly a bit surprising on this stage. He's clearly lost weight and worked on his climbing, but to be one of the 3 strongest riders on La Planche des Belles Filles, a climb that averaged over 8.5% and maxed at 14%? There's no indication of any result in his past that shows he should be capable of this. For example, in last year’s Vuelta he was strong on the stage that finished at La Covatilla. This was a longer climb (10km), and although it still averaged 7.5%, it was a more consistent 7.5% and Wiggins barely held on to the leaders, with the help of Froome. I see this as consistent with the profile of Wiggins as a time trialist among GC riders, someone who can handle a climb that requires higher speeds and a more steady effort akin to a TT effort. Go ahead 9 months, and a pulling off a similar performance, ahead of more accomplished climbers, seems to indicate some sort of training breakthrough to me…
Sunday, Stage 8:
Nothing particularly interesting here. The UK postal train was less dominant, with Lotto pushing the pace and another select group forming. Not much to discuss here…
Today, Stage 9, ITT:
As far as the rest of Sky, today doesn’t tell us anything. 5 of their 8 riders were instructed to take it easy. Mic Rogers rode a decent effort to take 27th, but certainly not better than expected from a 3-time world ITT champion.
Wiggins clearly rode a great TT today, clean or otherwise. He killed the climbing section and managed to still be faster than anyone else on the flats as well. He did appear to take it easy on the corners in the final section of the course, but this is what he did with the technical sections of the prologue as well. Though this decision is suspicious when one is the yellow jersey in the Tour and has every reason to post as fast a time as possible in view of the upcoming mountains, I’m willing to write this off as a lack of confidence in his bike handling skills and a desire to not take any massive risks. The fact that he won the stage by such a margin is not impossible for a clean Wiggins, I don’t think, even if it is highly unlikely. Martin’s obviously off form, and Cancellara is as well, as evidenced by the fact that Chavanel and Van Garderen were so close to him today. The bottom line is that today was the perfect TT course for Wiggins. His team came right out and said it was the perfect length, and the decent amount of climbing suggests that it was best suited to a rider who can climb and do a flat TT (the second portion of the course). With his track and TT background combined with a new lower weight, I’m not at all surprised to see Wiggins beat Cancellara or anyone else on this course. Nobody could challenge him, though the massive margin over everyone but Froome is definitely more than suspicious.
Chris Froome’s result today is simply unbelievable. He’s 6’1” and 150 lbs. It’s just physically impossible to push a huge amount of wattage over the flat part of a TT course with a physique like that. Aside from his jaw-dropping performance in the TT of last year’s Vuelta, there’s little evidence to suggest that he’s always been capable of this sort of result. As one previous poster (sorry, forget who) pointed out, he also did have a second in a 52km British nat TT, but this doesn’t justify the result against far superior competition today or in the Vuelta last year. He clearly has the physique of a climber, so it’s reasonable that with good training he could perform better than ever before in the mountains at the Vuelta and this year’s tour, but simultaneously being one of the best in two ITTs, one of which was mostly flat, is preposterous. At least Wiggins has a track record of being one of the best time trialists in the world, over the course of several years. Hopefully we’ll be able to see the data from today’s TT for froome, as we did in last year’s vuelta. 5.8 watts/kg is humanly possible, but not the sort of performance that typically comes out of nowhere.
Conclusions:
The bottom line is we don’t know for sure who’s doping or isn’t, but certain riders sure look very suspicious. I don’t think there’s a team-wide doping project underway at Sky, based on the performance of the rest of the team at other races throughout the year. Cav was underwhelming at MSR and other classics, as was EBH. The performance of the Sky Train domestiques in the mountains is not outrageous as most of these riders have successful results as team leaders on their résumés as well. It’s simply a very well assembled team. While Wiggins dominance today is suspicious, his overall trend over the last 4 years has been consistent. After losing weight in 2009, he emerged as a Tour contender on a relatively easy course with a TTT. 2010 saw growing pains and a crash in the 2011 tour ruled him out without revealing much about his progress, though is victory in the Dauphiné that same year shows progress had already been made, as a result of doping or otherwise. He’s currently one of the strongest climbers in this year’s race, but he still could crack in the coming stages, and his TT win was to be expected against a weakened field of specialists on a course tailor-made to his abilities. If he continues to climb better than most of the pure climbers, I will definitely become more suspicious. I believe that Froome, on the other hand, must be doping. He simply came out of nowhere last year at the Vuelta and has repeated this miraculous form again at this year’s Tour despite another bout of a blood disease this off season (A real cynic could even argue that the recurrence of the disease was simply an excuse for manipulated blood values). Despite being a flyweight climber, he turned out a time trial in which he gained time over everyone but Wiggins on the climb, and lost time to no one other than Wiggins on the downhill/flat. This, with no prior history of being a TT specialist (other than the similarly suspicious performance in last year’s Vuelta) raises more than a few red flags.
Of course, there’s always a way to explain this all away. At 27, Froome has just reached his physical peak, and Wiggins’ climbing abilities can be explained by a loss of 20 kilos. And maybe, just maybe, swimming coaches are the future of cycling
Saturday, stage 7:
I don't see anything particularly suspicious here. Yes, the UK Postal mountain train was in full flight, but Michael Rodgers, Richie Porte, and Chris Froome are certainly an enviable set of domestiques to have at your disposal. Clean or not, this is one of the teams with the most depth as far as climbers go in this year's tour.
The stage result is not all that unbelievable. Froome won this stage, but his (natural?) ability as a climber for the steepest of gradients shouldn't be doubted, IMO. He clearly has the physique to excel on this sort of finish. In short, I'm not suspicious of Froome winning.
Wiggins, on the other hand, was certainly a bit surprising on this stage. He's clearly lost weight and worked on his climbing, but to be one of the 3 strongest riders on La Planche des Belles Filles, a climb that averaged over 8.5% and maxed at 14%? There's no indication of any result in his past that shows he should be capable of this. For example, in last year’s Vuelta he was strong on the stage that finished at La Covatilla. This was a longer climb (10km), and although it still averaged 7.5%, it was a more consistent 7.5% and Wiggins barely held on to the leaders, with the help of Froome. I see this as consistent with the profile of Wiggins as a time trialist among GC riders, someone who can handle a climb that requires higher speeds and a more steady effort akin to a TT effort. Go ahead 9 months, and a pulling off a similar performance, ahead of more accomplished climbers, seems to indicate some sort of training breakthrough to me…
Sunday, Stage 8:
Nothing particularly interesting here. The UK postal train was less dominant, with Lotto pushing the pace and another select group forming. Not much to discuss here…
Today, Stage 9, ITT:
As far as the rest of Sky, today doesn’t tell us anything. 5 of their 8 riders were instructed to take it easy. Mic Rogers rode a decent effort to take 27th, but certainly not better than expected from a 3-time world ITT champion.
Wiggins clearly rode a great TT today, clean or otherwise. He killed the climbing section and managed to still be faster than anyone else on the flats as well. He did appear to take it easy on the corners in the final section of the course, but this is what he did with the technical sections of the prologue as well. Though this decision is suspicious when one is the yellow jersey in the Tour and has every reason to post as fast a time as possible in view of the upcoming mountains, I’m willing to write this off as a lack of confidence in his bike handling skills and a desire to not take any massive risks. The fact that he won the stage by such a margin is not impossible for a clean Wiggins, I don’t think, even if it is highly unlikely. Martin’s obviously off form, and Cancellara is as well, as evidenced by the fact that Chavanel and Van Garderen were so close to him today. The bottom line is that today was the perfect TT course for Wiggins. His team came right out and said it was the perfect length, and the decent amount of climbing suggests that it was best suited to a rider who can climb and do a flat TT (the second portion of the course). With his track and TT background combined with a new lower weight, I’m not at all surprised to see Wiggins beat Cancellara or anyone else on this course. Nobody could challenge him, though the massive margin over everyone but Froome is definitely more than suspicious.
Chris Froome’s result today is simply unbelievable. He’s 6’1” and 150 lbs. It’s just physically impossible to push a huge amount of wattage over the flat part of a TT course with a physique like that. Aside from his jaw-dropping performance in the TT of last year’s Vuelta, there’s little evidence to suggest that he’s always been capable of this sort of result. As one previous poster (sorry, forget who) pointed out, he also did have a second in a 52km British nat TT, but this doesn’t justify the result against far superior competition today or in the Vuelta last year. He clearly has the physique of a climber, so it’s reasonable that with good training he could perform better than ever before in the mountains at the Vuelta and this year’s tour, but simultaneously being one of the best in two ITTs, one of which was mostly flat, is preposterous. At least Wiggins has a track record of being one of the best time trialists in the world, over the course of several years. Hopefully we’ll be able to see the data from today’s TT for froome, as we did in last year’s vuelta. 5.8 watts/kg is humanly possible, but not the sort of performance that typically comes out of nowhere.
Conclusions:
The bottom line is we don’t know for sure who’s doping or isn’t, but certain riders sure look very suspicious. I don’t think there’s a team-wide doping project underway at Sky, based on the performance of the rest of the team at other races throughout the year. Cav was underwhelming at MSR and other classics, as was EBH. The performance of the Sky Train domestiques in the mountains is not outrageous as most of these riders have successful results as team leaders on their résumés as well. It’s simply a very well assembled team. While Wiggins dominance today is suspicious, his overall trend over the last 4 years has been consistent. After losing weight in 2009, he emerged as a Tour contender on a relatively easy course with a TTT. 2010 saw growing pains and a crash in the 2011 tour ruled him out without revealing much about his progress, though is victory in the Dauphiné that same year shows progress had already been made, as a result of doping or otherwise. He’s currently one of the strongest climbers in this year’s race, but he still could crack in the coming stages, and his TT win was to be expected against a weakened field of specialists on a course tailor-made to his abilities. If he continues to climb better than most of the pure climbers, I will definitely become more suspicious. I believe that Froome, on the other hand, must be doping. He simply came out of nowhere last year at the Vuelta and has repeated this miraculous form again at this year’s Tour despite another bout of a blood disease this off season (A real cynic could even argue that the recurrence of the disease was simply an excuse for manipulated blood values). Despite being a flyweight climber, he turned out a time trial in which he gained time over everyone but Wiggins on the climb, and lost time to no one other than Wiggins on the downhill/flat. This, with no prior history of being a TT specialist (other than the similarly suspicious performance in last year’s Vuelta) raises more than a few red flags.
Of course, there’s always a way to explain this all away. At 27, Froome has just reached his physical peak, and Wiggins’ climbing abilities can be explained by a loss of 20 kilos. And maybe, just maybe, swimming coaches are the future of cycling
Digger said:
Maybe this is the reason why he doesn't have a current employer, rock/boat and s*inking/ship sprang to mind!!
TRENDING THREADS
-
World Championship 2025: Men’s RR, September 28- Started by Berniece
- Replies: 2K
-
Teams & Riders The Remco Evenepoel is the next Eddy Merckx thread- Started by DNP-Old
- Replies: 36K
-
Teams & Riders Tadej Pogačar discussion thread- Started by Lequack
- Replies: 41K
-
Il Lombardia 2025, monument, October 11- Started by Krzysztof_O
- Replies: 792
-
Teams & Riders The Great Big Cycling Transfers, Extensions, and Rumours Thread- Started by RedheadDane
- Replies: 13K
-
European Championship 2025: Men’s RR, October 5- Started by Berniece
- Replies: 854
-
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram