Team Ineos (Formerly the Sky thread)

[ToreBear]

or determining the size of the golden parachute / fix a spot for them with another team

That is a very good point! This is something that could take a lot of time.

 

[DirtyWorks]

classic. He was young and stupid and stopped after a few years. It all happened a long time ago. He doped on his own and didnt see anything.

Approved UCI anti-doping message #1b, post bio-passport revision.

They are still using it 10+ years into ridiculous performances and we're just supposed to believe it and move on. The UCI is responsible for their own destruction keeping this up.

Nothing to see here. Cycling is all clean! High-fives all around.

 

[postmanhat]

No, but they are the team who said they were not going to hire them.

Yes, really stupid decision in many ways. I suppose the only other option was to do a volte-face and admit they were wrong, Lib-Dem stylee

 

[DirtyWorks]

It doesn't accuse Sky of being the second coming of USPS and doing team-wide doping, as is the prevalent opinion among many here, this is true.

This is you labeling this thread and injecting a great deal of hyperbole where there should be none. Something is going on with the historically (as in 100 years of performances) dominant SKY performances of 2012 followed by firings seemingly tied to a bygone era and you aren't helping get at it.

I'm interested facts surrounding Sky performances. I'm not the only one either. I'm all for knocking down bad ideas. I've had plenty of bad ideas knocked down and done the knocking myself. Your hyperbole gets us nowhere.

 

[Velo_vicar]

Somewhere in between.

I can't believe there's anybody here who isn't, or at least wasn't at some point, in love with cycling, and had a desire at some point to see a cleaner sport.

The best and most revered poster on this forum is an absolute and indisputable cycling nut - and produced some tremendous investigative work against Armstrong over the years. Detailed, insightful and accurate.

That said, the modus operandi of a core group is to throw as much s*** as possible and see what sticks. And not much does. See this thread. There's some questions which Sky need to be called out against, but much of the dot joining and amateur psychology is laughable at best.

People wouldn't come back here if they didn't enjoy the thrill of the chase. And if most looked themselves in the mirror and were honest, I think they'd have to agree that they enjoy that more than they would achieving the ultimate, and impossible, aim.

It strikes me that there are few people who want to be the next RaceRadio. But the key for RR's credibility was exactly what you said the 'detailed insightful and accurate' nature of his posts. RR must be flattered by all the wannabes.

 

[JimmyFingers]

This is you labeling this thread and injecting a great deal of hyperbole where there should be none. Something is going on with the historically (as in 100 years of performances) dominant SKY performances of 2012 followed by firings seemingly tied to a bygone era and you aren't helping get at it.

I'm interested facts surrounding Sky performances. I'm not the only one either. I'm all for knocking down bad ideas. I've had plenty of bad ideas knocked down and done the knocking myself. Your hyperbole gets us nowhere.

That is a selective criticism, isn't it, given what is written in this thread. I wonder how many times you could find Sky referred to as UK Postal, or how many times Wiggins has been called an abusive name. What about the picture of Wiggins smoking while on holiday, which was immediately seized upon and assumed to be weed. How about the mocking photo Blackcat posted of Obi Wan Kinobi? Or how about the chap that told me Britain is totalitarian like eastern Germany and capable of state-sponsored doping: his reasoning was we had so many CCTV cameras.

Does any of that help get at the truth? People in glass houses shouldn't through stones, or selectively police or ignore posts because it suits their agenda.

 

[thehog]

That is a selective criticism, isn't it, given what is written in this thread. I wonder how many times you could find Sky referred to as UK Postal, or how many times Wiggins has been called an abusive name. What about the picture of Wiggins smoking while on holiday, which was immediately seized upon and assumed to be weed. How about the mocking photo Blackcat posted of Obi Wan Kinobi? Or how about the chap that told me Britain is totalitarian like eastern Germany and capable of state-sponsored doping: his reasoning was we had so many CCTV cameras.

Does any of that help get at the truth? People in glass houses shouldn't through stones, or selectively police or ignore posts because it suits their agenda.

Problem is Jimmy you participate in the same manner.

First you told us they're not as fast as Pantani or Armstrong so no doping. Then you started telling us about warming down and then you went on about Cav & Wiggins not knowing they don't even live in the same country as each other.

You've been exactly the same. You just find the next talking point and put it out there as clean team Sky.

As many have pointed out; what has significantly changed in cycling that its suddenly clean at the top end? Especially when a team dominate by such a large margin.

You're not helping these discussions because you started on this forum trying to beat everyone up. To your credit you've calmed down but you still have nothing to show why the sport has changed in the last 18 months.

Fact remains you have no idea that they're clean. History shows us that Tour de France winners in the last 20 years use drugs. Fact.

 

[JimmyFingers]

Originally Posted by King Of The Wolds
Somewhere in between.

I can't believe there's anybody here who isn't, or at least wasn't at some point, in love with cycling, and had a desire at some point to see a cleaner sport.

The best and most revered poster on this forum is an absolute and indisputable cycling nut - and produced some tremendous investigative work against Armstrong over the years. Detailed, insightful and accurate.

That said, the modus operandi of a core group is to throw as much s*** as possible and see what sticks. And not much does. See this thread. There's some questions which Sky need to be called out against, but much of the dot joining and amateur psychology is laughable at best.

People wouldn't come back here if they didn't enjoy the thrill of the chase. And if most looked themselves in the mirror and were honest, I think they'd have to agree that they enjoy that more than they would achieving the ultimate, and impossible, aim.

This x 1000. Very good post. I think I am misunderstood here: I am not in denial, I am not here to run interference, I am not here to be a fanboy, I want the truth too but I also want a fair hearing for the riders. I hate the bully-boy tactics of some posters, the mocking, desultory posts belittling those that disagree with them, dismissing out of hand people's points, twisting points they make, quoting them out of context, and conveniently ignoring responses when they don't have answers.

Yes Sky have questions to answer, but dressing them up as UK Postal, replacing Lance with Wiggins and confident assertions they are working with Ferrari doesn't to help anyone get those answers, it just obscures the truth further. There's a regularly misquoted post of mine where I try to stress that Wiggins isn't Lance, well I think there is a huge element of transference: many are transferring their feelings about Lance and about USPS and the other teams onto Wiggins and Sky and condemning them out of hand. I just want a more reasoned debate, without the hyperbole I was just accused of bringing to it.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

It doesn't accuse Sky of being the second coming of USPS and doing team-wide doping, as is the prevalent opinion among many here, this is true.

It asks good questions, particularly the deafening silence from the majority of pro-tour teams. You get the feeling they are just waiting for the storm to blow over, hoping their past doesn't get scrutinised too closely before they are able to carry on as before. At least Sky are trying to do something, misguided or not.

very glad to see the back of Yates anyway.

But the problem is, the teams that haven't made a big song or dance of their positive morals won't be expected to uphold that standard. By making the promises they had no hope in hell of keeping, as Brailsford himself noted when getting to the quote in that article about 35+ guys, they made a rod for their own backs.

Oh, and you know the whole "sign a paper to say you're clean" policy? That's been done before.

At Katyusha.

Nobody ever called Katyusha out on not acting against doping, or for hiring guys with dubious history, mainly because nobody ever believed Katyusha had any pretence of being a pink-fluffy-unicorns-dancing-on-rainbows cuddly clean team.

 

[Telmisartan new]

Problem is Jimmy you participate in the same manner.

First you told us they're not as fast as Pantani or Armstrong so no doping. Then you started telling us about warming down and then you went on about Cav & Wiggins not knowing they don't even live in the same country as each other.

You've been exactly the same. You just find the next talking point and put it out there as clean team Sky.

As many have pointed out; what has significantly changed in cycling that its suddenly clean at the top end? Especially when a team dominate by such a large margin.

You're not helping these discussions because you started on this forum trying to beat everyone up. To your credit you've calmed down but you still have nothing to show why the sport has changed in the last 18 months.

Fact remains you have no idea that they're clean. History shows us that Tour de France winners in the last 20 years use drugs. Fact.

I don't know why you bother Hog, he's not worth it.His crush Laura Trott would run a country mile if she seen some of the aggressive nutters posts.

 

[JimmyFingers]

Problem is Jimmy you participate in the same manner.

First you told us they're not as fast as Pantani or Armstrong so no doping. Then you started telling us about warming down and then you went on about Cav & Wiggins not knowing they don't even live in the same country as each other.

You've been exactly the same. You just find the next talking point and put it out there as clean team Sky.

As many have pointed out; what has significantly changed in cycling that its suddenly clean at the top end? Especially when a team dominate by such a large margin.

You're not helping these discussions because you started on this forum trying to beat everyone up. To your credit you've calmed down but you still have nothing to show why the sport has changed in the last 18 months.

Fact remains you have no idea that they're clean. History shows us that Tour de France winners in the last 20 years use drugs. Fact.

Yes but they're not as fast as Pantani and Armstrong, are they? And not just Sky the whole peloton. That tells us that either the peloton is much cleaner than it was, or that they're doping in different ways, keeping under 50% and soft-pedalling with an eye on the power-meters not to trigger any adverse analytical findings. That becomes a matter of opinion.

And that's where mine differs from yours, to an extent. I think if you read more of my posts and took time to understand what I was saying you would get I'm not saying they are clean 100%, but I'm far from being convinced they are dirty. You talk about warming-down, that comes into the whole marginal gains guff, but given that performances are now within physiological plausible parameters you shouldn't dismiss the possibility out-of-hand that it works. For me Brailsford's approach is the cornerstone of British cycling resurgence and encapsulates riders like Hoy and Pendleton on the track side, as well as Wiggins and co on the road. If you're going to tell me the entire basis of that success is doping then you need some very hard facts to convince me.

And much harder than the one you finish your post with.

It has been an education participating in this forum and I have learnt a lot about the athletic performances I watch in all disciplines. However I'm not yet prepared to write off Sky and others in the peloton yet, and I need more than speculation to do that.

I also think right now Sky are making positive moves while so many other teams sit still and wait for it to blow over. That for me is a good position to be taking, even if they are being clumsy trying to do that. The cynics say it is a PR move but maybe they are just trying to get things right.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Yes but they're not as fast as Pantani and Armstrong, are they? And not just Sky the whole peloton. That tells us that either the peloton is much cleaner than it was, or that they're doping in different ways, keeping under 50% and soft-pedalling with an eye on the power-meters not to trigger any adverse analytical findings. That becomes a matter of opinion.

Combination of the two. The péloton is objectively cleaner than it was 10 years ago, and the lack of those superhuman figures is testament to that... but as we are forever finding more riders and teams entangled in webs of deceit and doping, we are realising that still a huge number are doping. It's just that what you can get away with is way, way less than it was.

Therefore, doping to the kind of level that would see you as mediocre pack fodder in 2002 could be enough to make you win things now.

Also, testing has become more sophisticated, so there is no longer the kind of vagueness of the days of everyone at 49,9% hematocrit. You can't dope like the old days. However, there are still advantages to be made by doping, so people still do it.

 

[bpickford]

What about Mr 2001 Paris-Roubaix, Servais Knaven, in all this doping purge? Nobody seems to have been focussing on him too much. Rode for TVM 1994-99 (enough said), and beat proponents of clean cycling such as Museeuw, Hincapie, Dierckxsens, Wesemann, Tchmil, etc to win P-R. Suspicious?

 

[Wallace and Gromit]

Fact remains you have no idea that they're clean. History shows us that Tour de France winners in the last 20 years use drugs. Fact.

Nice to see you've ditched those pesky percentages.

 

[cycladianpirate]

You have to admit that this is a tricky one.

Do you try to be 'pro active' like Sky are apparently trying to do and risk being labelled a bunch of hypocrites, or do you just do what everyone else does and keep quiet and let someone else take the shot and shell?

The number of posts on this thread suggests (to me at least) that what irks people is not that they believe that Sky is doping (after all, isn't everyone in Cycling?), but that they claim not to be.

OK. But just assume (for the sake of argument if nothing else) that a genuinely clean team came onto the playing field. Wouldn't it be fair to say that the only way that they could establish their credentials would be for them to be absolutely hopeless?

Perhaps a team of utter losers might restore your faith in cycling.

I could arrange one in an instant.......with funding

 

[Dear Wiggo]

i Both were part of the TVM team that got raided in 1998 in which the docter, DS and soigneur got arrested and convicted by the french police after they found a complete pharmacy in a team car (104 ampules of EPO amongst other things.) As there was no test for EPO in those days all the riders walked free despite many if not all of them being dragged by police to the local hospital for blood, hair and urine samples.

3 weeks = 21 days
EPO every second day = 10 days
104 ampules / 10 days = 10 ampules /day every second day
riders / team = 9

Theory: everyone was on it (team program, supplied by soigneur - seems likely), or soigneurs are happy to provide dope to teams other than their own (seems unlikely)...

 

[thehog]

nice to see you've ditched those pesky percentages.

99.9999998%

 

[Libertine Seguros]

You have to admit that this is a tricky one.

Do you try to be 'pro active' like Sky are apparently trying to do and risk being labelled a bunch of hypocrites, or do you just do what everyone else does and keep quiet and let someone else take the shot and shell?

The number of posts on this thread suggests (to me at least) that what irks people is not that they believe that Sky is doping (after all, isn't everyone in Cycling?), but that they claim not to be.

OK. But just assume (for the sake of argument if nothing else) that a genuinely clean team came onto the playing field. Wouldn't it be fair to say that the only way that they could establish their credentials would be for them to be absolutely hopeless?

Perhaps a team of utter losers might restore your faith in cycling.

I could arrange one in an instant.......with funding

A genuinely clean team might be more forthcoming with transparency than Sky have been. They committed to honesty and transparency, and then have given us secrecy and half-truths. Even the likes of Jimmy have admitted that Sky couldn't have looked more suspicious if they'd tried.

Now, if they showed us the files, there's no guarantee that fans wouldn't see what they want to see in them - i.e. those that want Sky to be clean would delude themselves into reasoning behind any suspicious deviations, and those that want Sky to be dirty would pick up on the minutest, easily explicable variations as evidence of some maniacal sinister doping plot. But at least they'd be following up on their promises, which might make them more believable when they make other ones.

 

[DirtyWorks]

...but given that performances are now within physiological plausible parameters you shouldn't dismiss the possibility out-of-hand that it works.

you are taking the fact riders aren't hitting ridiculous W/Kilo as evidence that in this case Sky is not doping. But it's simply not true. The problem is highlighted by a small group of Sky riders just had the most dominant performances over the course of most of a season shattering historical performances only to return to historical norm late in the season. That is a classic, post-EPO off-cycle doping performance.

. However I'm not yet prepared to write off Sky and others in the peloton yet, and I need more than speculation to do that..

When the scandal breaks, I'll be looking for a post saying you were wrong. Because it's going to happen just like it did with Wonderboy.

 

[sittingbison]

Yes but they're not as fast as Pantani and Armstrong, are they? And not just Sky the whole peloton. ..

This aspect has been looked at many times in this and other threads. Its a fallacious argument, its in reverse.

What you SHOULD be looking at is comparing them to the figures of riders presumed to be clean of oxygen vector doping. So the question becomes "Are they as fast as Lemond and Hinault?" Now, given these two are pretty much the greatest ever riders in history, would it be of some concern if the Sky domestiques are outperforming them?

 

[thehog]

Yes but they're not as fast as Pantani and Armstrong, are they? And not just Sky the whole peloton. That tells us that either the peloton is much cleaner than it was, or that they're doping in different ways, keeping under 50% and soft-pedalling with an eye on the power-meters not to trigger any adverse analytical findings. That becomes a matter of opinion.
t.

The peloton is cleaner? You mean all those mid-ranked Italian cyclists who are about to be busted in Italy were beaten by a clean Sky? Not only beaten but smashed.

Don't make me laugh.

 

[hiero2]

You have to admit that this is a tricky one.

Do you try to be 'pro active' like Sky are apparently trying to do and risk being labelled a bunch of hypocrites, or do you just do what everyone else does and keep quiet and let someone else take the shot and shell?

The number of posts on this thread suggests (to me at least) that what irks people is not that they believe that Sky is doping (after all, isn't everyone in Cycling?), but that they claim not to be.

OK. But just assume (for the sake of argument if nothing else) that a genuinely clean team came onto the playing field. Wouldn't it be fair to say that the only way that they could establish their credentials would be for them to be absolutely hopeless?

Perhaps a team of utter losers might restore your faith in cycling.

I could arrange one in an instant.......with funding

This DID make me laugh! Yeah, man, right in one! On the other hand, cycling has EARNED every last cynic in the Clinic - and the peloton worked HARD to make sure they had PLENTY to be cynical about! It's a ****er.

While I get tired of the incessant negativity, I also recognize a good deal of value in it. Many of the cynics here were doubters before I was. And they care enough to keep their eye on the ball. We need people like that to turn this puppy around and get it on the right track.

3 weeks = 21 days
EPO every second day = 10 days
104 ampules / 10 days = 10 ampules /day every second day
riders / team = 9

Theory: everyone was on it (team program, supplied by soigneur - seems likely), or soigneurs are happy to provide dope to teams other than their own (seems unlikely)...

I think there was a lot of that in those days. The first I became aware of something was when 3 riders from the same team came in 1-2-3 in a one day. I forget the year, but I think it was about 94-95. It seemed pretty obvious it was a team program at that point. Don't get me wrong - I had no more than some doubt at the time. When more details came available years later, going back and re-seeing the race again, it clicked. Three cherries in a row - ka-ching! Jackpot!

 

[Dear Wiggo]

I think there was a lot of that in those days. The first I became aware of something was when 3 riders from the same team came in 1-2-3 in a one day. I forget the year, but I think it was about 94-95. It seemed pretty obvious it was a team program at that point. Don't get me wrong - I had no more than some doubt at the time. When more details came available years later, going back and re-seeing the race again, it clicked. Three cherries in a row - ka-ching! Jackpot!

Think it was Mapei @ Paris-Roubaix. Yeah there it is. Can't forget those jerseys.

http://www.dailypeloton.com/displayarticle.asp?pk=9122

 

[JimmyFingers]

you are taking the fact riders aren't hitting ridiculous W/Kilo as evidence that in this case Sky is not doping. But it's simply not true. The problem is highlighted by a small group of Sky riders just had the most dominant performances over the course of most of a season shattering historical performances only to return to historical norm late in the season. That is a classic, post-EPO off-cycle doping performance.

When the scandal breaks, I'll be looking for a post saying you were wrong. Because it's going to happen just like it did with Wonderboy.

Just to clarify yet again, I'm not taking that as evidence, more as an indicator that the peloton is generally cleaner. I'm also not saying definitively Sky aren't doping, because I just don't know for sure either way, unlike you and many others. My opinion (and I'm not stating a fact) is that there isn't a team-wide programme, but there is every chance some riders are. I am very suspicious of Mick Rogers and Froome.

I am quite prepared to see how this plays out, if I'm wrong I'm wrong, but if not I'll be looking for posts from you and plenty of others saying you were wrong.

Although I doubt the conspiracy theories will ever totally go away.

So am I clear? I have an opinion, I am expressing it. Until it is proved otherwise I am sticking to it

 

[Zam_Olyas]

If England GB or whatever is so against doping why is a former doping doctor given an OBE?