Team Ineos (Formerly the Sky thread)

[DirtyWorks]

"When the blood passport was introduced it was also more than anything a PR thing and most disconcerting when the first five riders were banned on the basis of their blood profiles all were riding on teams whose sponsors had terminated their commitment and announced their withdrawal from the sport.

"Similarly in 2008 those who were popped for CERA all happened to be riding with teams whose sponsors who prior to the Tour had decided to leave the sport, Saunier Duval and Gerolsteiner.

"In light of this I find it hard to accept that the TV channel Sky - who also pays for rights to broadcast the Tour Down under 2012 for instance - is allowed to not only sponsor British Cycling but a Pro-Tour team as well.

from a Verner Moller interview by FMK on SB Nation

Good find! Very good find!

 

[thehog]

Quite so. But what that has to do with Wiggins, I know not. Cat 2 riders don't tend to win many medals on the track in the OGs, do they?

My observation was in response to BigBoat's comment about Wiggo having a higher power to weight ratio than Lance. If he did, he'd climb faster than Lance, but he's about 10% slower up hills than Lance, from which it's safe to conclude that Wiggo's power to weight ratio is less than Lance's.

More the point is that the cut off between "doping" and "not doping" is not Armstrong/Pantani.

Even in the that era the guy coming in 26th was doping.

 

[sniper]

"When the blood passport was introduced it was also more than anything a PR thing and most disconcerting when the first five riders were banned on the basis of their blood profiles all were riding on teams whose sponsors had terminated their commitment and announced their withdrawal from the sport.

"Similarly in 2008 those who were popped for CERA all happened to be riding with teams whose sponsors who prior to the Tour had decided to leave the sport, Saunier Duval and Gerolsteiner.

"In light of this I find it hard to accept that the TV channel Sky - who also pays for rights to broadcast the Tour Down under 2012 for instance - is allowed to not only sponsor British Cycling but a Pro-Tour team as well.

from a Verner Moller interview by FMK on SB Nation

well i'll be mf damned.
excellent find indeed.

this is as dark and sinister as it gets.
downright maffia praxis.
i'm lacking time to make a thread, but this deserves its own.

 

[Wallace and Gromit]

2011 Tour winner, 2010 Vuelta winner made to look stupid by doms.

Nibali's 2010 Vuelta win is hardly the stuff of greatness though is it? He's a decent enough GT rider, but nothing more, whose main helper - Basso - was clapped out from the Giro. Even so, who are these doms of whom you speak? He finished third, so it's unlikely he was made to look stupid by anyone.

Evans got beaten by his own team-mate and was a pale shadow of his former self so provides no meaningful performance benchmark.

Wiggins and Froome beat a collection of either kn*ckered or not very good rivals. The stronger GT riders in 2012 targeted the Giro, the Vuelta, were banned or were injured.

Never seen anything like it my life.

Ever.

You really are a drama queen aren't you?

You make many excellent points, but the over dramatisation/over-spinning is a bit wearing, if truth be told.

Never seen anything so annoying in my life.

Ever.

Except your blatant falsehoods.

They make me laugh, though.

Really loud.

 

[clotho2]

Why is it that we the fans or even the cyclists are expected to take the word of anyone in any cycling event ever again when the question is doping? Do I think Wiggins and Team Sky were doped during the 2012 TDF? Yup! DO I think the doping continues during the London Olympics? I sure do!

You see, there are some of us who read. We read about doping in not only cycling, but in sports in general. Sometimes you can watch a player and just figure they're doping. Recently I've been focued on the tennis players. It hit me about Nadal during a USOpen I think it was about two years agin. The rain backed up players and he was absolutely livid trying to get a court.. Being a Spaniard, I watch him closely. *A side not: Since reading "The Secret Race" my mind goes back to lots of things that seemed innocuous about TDF before. However, they all come together now to spell doping.*

Back on track, Team Sky can protest all they want about training. My goodness Tyler taught us that training isn't enough to overtake a doped up peloton. And I never say Wiggins' or Froome's name on the list for top VO2 Max. Nor is armstrong, LeMond is on the list. So, with all the microdosingand even more all the undetectable pharmos, why on earth would anyone believe Team Sky rode a clean TDF. Afterall, it was Brailsford who said "I strongly suggest you don't do that" when Wiggins felt obliged to hand over his test results. Did Brailsford know something Wiggins didn't know? Or was Wiggins feeling superior like lance armstrong? Was that his "bam" EPO right in the front of the fridge moment?

Listen, those riders will always dope. Always! they can't help it. It's a part of their daily regimen. Tyler told Davd Walsh when asked, how many TDF do you think lance would have won clean? Tyler said, one. Maybe. I agree. lance armstrong was nothing but a guy filled to the hilt with PEDs. If he got cancer again, I doubt he would care. Cancer patients are virtual lab rats. Sorry, but it's true. They get all sorts of drugs thrown at them to test. I have no doubt this is how lance found out about some of the things he used in TDF. Oh, he is a despicable person. I think Wiggins is headed down the same path. I think he'd love to be the new "force" in the peloton.

 

[thehog]

Nibali's 2010 Vuelta win is hardly the stuff of greatness though is it? He's a decent enough GT rider, but nothing more, whose main helper - Basso - was clapped out from the Giro. Even so, who are these doms of whom you speak? He finished third, so it's unlikely he was made to look stupid by anyone.

Evans got beaten by his own team-mate and was a pale shadow of his former self so provides no meaningful performance benchmark.

Wiggins and Froome beat a collection of either kn*ckered or not very good rivals. The stronger GT riders in 2012 targeted the Giro, the Vuelta, were banned or were injured.

You really are a drama queen aren't you?

You make many excellent points, but the over dramatisation/over-spinning is a bit wearing, if truth be told.

Never seen anything so annoying in my life.

Ever.

Except your blatant falsehoods.

They make me laugh, though.

Really loud.

Can I tell you a secret?

I've been calling out these dopers for a long time. Back in 1999 I faced the same ridicule. They had lots of science stuff and stories to back up the domination.

I held strong and was proven right.

I face the same retribution again. Coincidently Sky had prepared all the science stories for the fans ready to throw back at the bone idle w+nkers.

I've heard them all before.

Warming down. Reverse periodisation. Always had a big engine etc.

But I guaranteed none of these people would have ever guessed that one day Chris Froome would not only be punching 500 watts in a TT but he'd be climbing Alpine climbs with one hand whilst gesticulating to other riders to "hurry up".

Never seen anything like it.

Sad part is Lance will eventually throw Pat and Hein under a bus and then we'll know how it all works.

Until that day.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

And for all the frothing at the mouth the climb of Roche de Belle Filles caused, when Sky shredded the peloton, it was a short climb and saw each team member burn themselves up for a 1k before dropping back, none of it physiologically improbable

Bear in mind that Rogers was the first to be dropped after doing his turn, then rode back to the group through a haze of dropped riders including favourites to win the race, former GT winners and known former dopers. Mick Rogers, of Freiburg and Ferrari fame, who hadn't done anything of note outside a time trial since May 2009, and even then was a mere shadow of his former self in the chrono.

Just because something's not physiologically impossible doesn't mean it is necessarily clean.

Comparing climbing times to Armstrong and Pantani and saying the times are more realistic, therefore more clean, is a misleading fact. In the days of Armstrong and Pantani, you could juice up to a much greater extent, therefore in order to gain that significant advantage over your opponents, you needed to be more juiced up, to extraterrestrial levels.

I.e., to get to 1996 Hautacam speed relative to the competition, Bjarne Riis would require a lot more assistance than Chris Froome would need to get to 2012 PdBF speed, if we assume that both are similar natural talents (which is of course a massive leap of faith). This is because the péloton is cleaner than it was in 1996. Even the most ardent of clinic haters have to acknowledge this. But this does not mean that cycling is in any better position, or even that fewer people as a percentage of the péloton are doping; more that, because of the advances in anti-doping, the amount of dope that riders can get away with taking is but a fraction of what it was in 1996.

However, and this is worth noting, this does mean that an amount of doping that would turn you into mediocre pack fodder in 1996 might be an amount of doping that would turn you into an unstoppable force now.

 

[JimmyFingers]

Bear in mind that Rogers was the first to be dropped after doing his turn, then rode back to the group through a haze of dropped riders including favourites to win the race, former GT winners and known former dopers. Mick Rogers, of Freiburg and Ferrari fame, who hadn't done anything of note outside a time trial since May 2009, and even then was a mere shadow of his former self in the chrono.

Just because something's not physiologically impossible doesn't mean it is necessarily clean.

Comparing climbing times to Armstrong and Pantani and saying the times are more realistic, therefore more clean, is a misleading fact. In the days of Armstrong and Pantani, you could juice up to a much greater extent, therefore in order to gain that significant advantage over your opponents, you needed to be more juiced up, to extraterrestrial levels.

I.e., to get to 1996 Hautacam speed relative to the competition, Bjarne Riis would require a lot more assistance than Chris Froome would need to get to 2012 PdBF speed, if we assume that both are similar natural talents (which is of course a massive leap of faith). This is because the péloton is cleaner than it was in 1996. Even the most ardent of clinic haters have to acknowledge this. But this does not mean that cycling is in any better position, or even that fewer people as a percentage of the péloton are doping; more that, because of the advances in anti-doping, the amount of dope that riders can get away with taking is but a fraction of what it was in 1996.

However, and this is worth noting, this does mean that an amount of doping that would turn you into mediocre pack fodder in 1996 might be an amount of doping that would turn you into an unstoppable force now.

While you may have questions over a performance, it can never be seen as proof of doping. I believe I am in good company in that opinion (Sports Science blog). However you create an unanswerable paradigm when you counter that the speeds they were riding and power outputs aren't indicative of doping, so instead they are doping to a specific, acceptable level, within physiologically acceptable parameters, but enough to give an edge over the rest of the peloton. Marginal gains doping indeed.

Ultimately it boils down to where you start from; are cyclists assumed to be doping until they are [proved clean, or are they assumed clean until proved otherwise? If its the latter then the inference of guilt is legion, is the former the conclusion is equally easy: unlike dopers of previous eras they didn't fly up those climbs with arses like elephants, their achievement is explainable through training and tactics cleanly applied.

 

[DirtyWorks]

their achievement is explainable through training and tactics cleanly applied.

Hahaha! When the inevitable Sky doping scandal breaks, I'm going to PM you this gem.

I get that you believe it like religion despite all the scandalous stuff breaking practically daily by those terrorists at the UCI, but that doesn't make it so.

 

[Benotti69]

While you may have questions over a performance, it can never be seen as proof of doping. I believe I am in good company in that opinion (Sports Science blog). However you create an unanswerable paradigm when you counter that the speeds they were riding and power outputs aren't indicative of doping, so instead they are doping to a specific, acceptable level, within physiologically acceptable parameters, but enough to give an edge over the rest of the peloton. Marginal gains doping indeed.

Ultimately it boils down to where you start from; are cyclists assumed to be doping until they are [proved clean, or are they assumed clean until proved otherwise? If its the latter then the inference of guilt is legion, is the former the conclusion is equally easy: unlike dopers of previous eras they didn't fly up those climbs with arses like elephants, their achievement is explainable through training and tactics cleanly applied.

via doping Doctor

 

[bianchigirl]

Now why would wiggins blow his wad over comparisons between sky & us postal? Tactically identical yet instead of accepting a compliment wigans goes off on one then publishes a rant straight from the mouth of pat mcquaid about the clean ethos of the Anglo Saxons - because they know they were found out on the bf & had to counter the 'uk postal stating the bleeding obvious you're doped sunny jim and we all know it' knowledge of the jade, cynical, seen it all before long term fans of the sport.

The new improved wigans - who couldn't get over a speed bump in Poitou charente - looks & sounds like the biggest duck you ever did see

 

[Libertine Seguros]

While you may have questions over a performance, it can never be seen as proof of doping. I believe I am in good company in that opinion (Sports Science blog). However you create an unanswerable paradigm when you counter that the speeds they were riding and power outputs aren't indicative of doping, so instead they are doping to a specific, acceptable level, within physiologically acceptable parameters, but enough to give an edge over the rest of the peloton. Marginal gains doping indeed.

Ultimately it boils down to where you start from; are cyclists assumed to be doping until they are [proved clean, or are they assumed clean until proved otherwise? If its the latter then the inference of guilt is legion, is the former the conclusion is equally easy: unlike dopers of previous eras they didn't fly up those climbs with arses like elephants, their achievement is explainable through training and tactics cleanly applied.

There is a potential explanation of it all being clean, and there are no beyond-the-realm-of-possibility performances, for sure. But I look at the riders involved and the history of the sport and contend that case history leads us to draw the opposite conclusion. Sure, you can say innocent until proven guilty, but in that case Basso's 2006 Giro must be contended to be clean, since he was only caught for intending to dope. There is a chance that four riders can be head and shoulders above the rest of the péloton, and it could be statistically likely that they would be clean. But given that these are somehow all on the same team and not leading four different teams, and who the four riders are, I think that statistical likelihood reduces greatly.

Put bluntly: I believe it is theoretically possible for a rider to do what Team Sky was doing in the Tour clean. But given some of the names we're talking about (including guys who were on the verge of losing their pro contract before being reborn as the best climber in the péloton, and a journeyman with no results in a couple of years who has been involved in not one but two doping scandals) and the way Sky have talked the talk about clean cycling but not shown the requisite openness to make their pomp and circumstance believable, and the history of the sport telling us time and again that when this kind of performance happens, doping is the inevitable conclusion to make (Banesto train, Gewiss at Flèche Wallonne, Mapei Roubaix, LA-MSS in Asturias, US Postal train, T-Mobile), it's a lot harder to believe that Team Sky did what they did in the Tour clean.

 

[The Hitch]

Bear in mind that Rogers was the first to be dropped after doing his turn, then rode back to the group through a haze of dropped riders including favourites to win the race, former GT winners and known former dopers. Mick Rogers, of Freiburg and Ferrari fame, who hadn't done anything of note outside a time trial since May 2009, and even then was a mere shadow of his former self in the chrono.

Just because something's not physiologically impossible doesn't mean it is necessarily clean.

Comparing climbing times to Armstrong and Pantani and saying the times are more realistic, therefore more clean, is a misleading fact. In the days of Armstrong and Pantani, you could juice up to a much greater extent, therefore in order to gain that significant advantage over your opponents, you needed to be more juiced up, to extraterrestrial levels.

I.e., to get to 1996 Hautacam speed relative to the competition, Bjarne Riis would require a lot more assistance than Chris Froome would need to get to 2012 PdBF speed, if we assume that both are similar natural talents (which is of course a massive leap of faith). This is because the péloton is cleaner than it was in 1996. Even the most ardent of clinic haters have to acknowledge this. But this does not mean that cycling is in any better position, or even that fewer people as a percentage of the péloton are doping; more that, because of the advances in anti-doping, the amount of dope that riders can get away with taking is but a fraction of what it was in 1996.

However, and this is worth noting, this does mean that an amount of doping that would turn you into mediocre pack fodder in 1996 might be an amount of doping that would turn you into an unstoppable force now.

LS, once again, totally owning the discussion

unlike dopers of previous eras they didn't fly up those climbs with arses like elephants

Wiggins did considering his level and he really did fly on the tts.

their achievement is explainable through training and tactics cleanly applied.

With many significant questionmarks.

If you doped Mario Cipolini he wouldnt go as fast up climbs as Lance. Would that make the achievement "explainable"?

Please tell me why you think Lances climbs were not "explainable", and what it is about Wiggins, or hypothetical uberdoped Cipolini, that makes their performances more "explainable"?

 

[The Hitch]

Hahaha! When the inevitable Sky doping scandal breaks, I'm going to PM you this gem.

I get that you believe it like religion despite all the scandalous stuff breaking practically daily by those terrorists at the UCI, but that doesn't make it so.

Why on earth would you think Sky would get caught. lance almost got away and he frickin told everyone he met he doped when 1 to 1.

Doping is a conspiracy by definition. And a succesfull conspiracy is 1 that never gets oficially found out.

 

[roundabout]

Rogers had a good (first half of) 2010 and was sick in 2011. Sure, him being there on the Glandon after Evans attacked and his ride on the PdBF was very much surprising and he is very much a journeyman, but it's slightly unfair to say that he had no results in 2010 and (has an explanation for) 2011.

 

[Caruut]

Just because something is technically possible for a once-in-several-generations talent does not make it a good explanation of how a bunch of nobodies became the best cyclists in the peloton. If the awesome foursome of Wiggins, Froome, Rogers and Porte were such golden boys, why had none of them ever performed to that level in their lives? To me, trying to justify what Wiggins does by saying "it's physiologically possible" is like saying to a friend to "go away and flip a coin 100 times, and I'll give you a pound for each heads" and then believing him when he comes back and says it was heads every time.

Yes, it's possible that he isn't telling you a lie, but it's 1/1048576 that it was actually all heads, so do I assume that my friend is having me on or that something with a probability of less than one in a million just happened? In both scenarios we don't really have any way of knowing the truth, since the friend goes away and we know that there are ways of circumventing the tests. For me it is a case of weighing up the facts and coming to the most likely answer, not just saying that the answer you want to believe might be true.

 

[ferryman]

Just because something is technically possible for a once-in-several-generations talent does not make it a good explanation of how a bunch of nobodies became the best cyclists in the peloton. If the awesome foursome of Wiggins, Froome, Rogers and Porte were such golden boys, why had none of them ever performed to that level in their lives? To me, trying to justify what Wiggins does by saying "it's physiologically possible" is like saying to a friend to "go away and flip a coin 100 times, and I'll give you a pound for each heads" and then believing him when he comes back and says it was heads every time.

Yes, it's possible that he isn't telling you a lie, but it's 1/1048576 that it was actually all heads, so do I assume that my friend is having me on or that something with a probability of less than one in a million just happened? In both scenarios we don't really have any way of knowing the truth, since the friend goes away and we know that there are ways of circumventing the tests. For me it is a case of weighing up the facts and coming to the most likely answer, not just saying that the answer you want to believe might be true.

The A team. It's all in Tyler's book. All laid bare. Groundhog day methinks.

 

[roundabout]

They have all also lost weight this year.

Allegedly.

 

[ferryman]

They have all also lost weight this year.

Allegedly.

If you do 20 squillion kliks of training on Teide it appears anything is possible.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

"When the blood passport was introduced it was also more than anything a PR thing and most disconcerting when the first five riders were banned on the basis of their blood profiles all were riding on teams whose sponsors had terminated their commitment and announced their withdrawal from the sport.

"Similarly in 2008 those who were popped for CERA all happened to be riding with teams whose sponsors who prior to the Tour had decided to leave the sport, Saunier Duval and Gerolsteiner.

"In light of this I find it hard to accept that the TV channel Sky - who also pays for rights to broadcast the Tour Down under 2012 for instance - is allowed to not only sponsor British Cycling but a Pro-Tour team as well.

from a Verner Moller interview by FMK on SB Nation

And it still is nothing more than a PR thing.

JV publishes Ryder's ABP values - via an apologetic (for the most part) CaptainBag, 4 months "out of sight out of mind" after the Giro.
JV makes spurious claims supporting certain inconsistencies raised by CaptainBag.
I query the values and other more glaring (for me) inconsistencies.
I ask, "does the ABP prove cleanliness" x 2.
JV does not answer. <------ telling part right there.

Alas for JV and huntelk my analysis of those values is not complete, but a poor internet connection is slowing down my research.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

The A team. It's all in Tyler's book. All laid bare. Groundhog day methinks.

Froome is not in. Wiggins wife made that abundantly clear, and there is another result from 2010 that proves it also.

 

[Caruut]

Froome is not in. Wiggins wife made that abundantly clear, and there is another result from 2010 that proves it also.

(I assume you mean the Vuelta 2011)

For me V2011 and T2012 show that if anything, Froome has been the most committed to the cause out of Wiggins' three key lieutenants. He had the chance to stab his leader in the back and didn't ride for himself until he had done all he could for Wiggins. In the Vuelta, I think the team made the call, and in the Tour the only real time he dropped Wiggins (and left him) was the stage win. Froome might be out of the Wiggins program now, but I think he was most definitely in.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

(I assume you mean the Vuelta 2011)

No, I don't. I mean 2010. Check Froome's performance at the Vuelta. Sky were dropping like flies around him from a bad blood transfusion (probbaly via people who had very little clue) and Froome was coming 3rd in the stage.

Froome is to Wiggins as Landis is to Lance. A stronger rider on the road, and kept in check with threats and pay packet in equal measure.

Hint: Brailsford and Vaughters fill the same role. Namely, "fix it" men who cover over the iniquities of their teams with plausible explanations and sufficient backpedaling so that Joe Public believes it, but the tail end of the bell curve, who read rider biographies and know the racers and then research threads of rider performance or team actions see a different story.

eg: 2010 Vuelta, Brailsford is NOT THERE. But reassures everyone the Txema virus is different to the one that way lays the riders.
2012 Giro, Garmin win it, Vaughters is NOT THERE. But reassures everyone Ryder "I know how to use a centrifuge" is clean.

Tell me how that makes sense.

 

[thehog]

While you may have questions over a performance, it can never be seen as proof of doping. I believe I am in good company in that opinion (Sports Science blog). However you create an unanswerable paradigm when you counter that the speeds they were riding and power outputs aren't indicative of doping, so instead they are doping to a specific, acceptable level, within physiologically acceptable parameters, but enough to give an edge over the rest of the peloton. Marginal gains doping indeed.

Ultimately it boils down to where you start from; are cyclists assumed to be doping until they are [proved clean, or are they assumed clean until proved otherwise? If its the latter then the inference of guilt is legion, is the former the conclusion is equally easy: unlike dopers of previous eras they didn't fly up those climbs with arses like elephants, their achievement is explainable through training and tactics cleanly applied.

Jimmy your not in good company at all.

You do realise that we're at the gates of uncovering the biggest corruption and fraud in the sport which involves not just a single rider doping, not just one team doping but top down all the way from the governing body all the way down to the gardener was involved in a grand coverup.

The very person at the centre of the coverup even after all that was able to comeback in 2009 and only retired in 2011. The governing has yet to recognise their involvement in the corruption.

This corruption also had science reports written by recognised institutions (Coyle) and there were all sorts of reports published to explain the domination of one man and one team just like Sky have today.

None of this has been resolved or even acknowledged. It wasn't 10 years ago it was only yesterday all this occurred.

Ferrari hasn't been suspended and is still in operation. Fuentes still has a client list as long as the telephone book.

As I've said before what has been the event that sport has cleaned up allowing a clean team to win the Tour? A race mired in drugs for 20+ years. The 2010 winner was stripped. You have to go back to 90/91 to even begin to think about finding clean riders.

So with all this knowledge you're telling me a group of 4 guys was able to dominate the race like never before in history and its all clean?

SERIOUSLY? Have we lean't nothing?

You only have to look a Froome who couldn't even keep up at the Tour de Romandie and 6 weeks later he's riding on mountain passes with one hand and not even the yellow jersey can keep pace! Science doesn't explain that. Because its not real.

You've been had.

 

[JimmyFingers]

For all the ranting that still doesn't constitute proof, whether you like it or not. It may be enough to convince you but I remain open to other possibilities. That doesn't mean I'm denying absolutely they didn't achieve what they did by nefarious means, that is one of the possibilities, I just choose to reserve judgement, which is a perfectly reasonable viewpoint to have