Team Ineos (Formerly the Sky thread)

[Dear Wiggo]

out of this world? how do you know? brajkovic is 12 kg lighter than froome and isn't much worse.

57kg? Where'd you get that figure?

 

[Joachim]

Funny also that there is nobody representating Sky at CCN.
May not be a coincidence though considering Ashenden's recent observation that sophisticated microdoping is widespread among the peloton's new age teams.
?

Garmin being the other new-age team, which is probably why Vaughters wasn't there either

 

[Dear Wiggo]

pro-doping:
6) They're McQuaid's best friends. Phat 'predicted' Wiggo's TdF victory long before they had reached Paris.
7) Wiggo not publishing his passport data
8) Wiggo refusing to take Kimmage on board during the TdF
and tenerife hasn't even been mentioned yet.

you've missed very important points against doping:
4) Because Vaughters says so
5) Because Millar says so

3b) Their performance compared to their previous performance.

 

[sniper]

Garmin being the other new-age team, which is probably why Vaughters wasn't there either

indeed, being DS of Garmin is Vaughters' only job. Couldn't think of another reason why he should be invited.

 

[The Hitch]

Is there a summary of points for/against SKY doping? There’s certainly no evidence but I’ll try to arrange from strong to weak points. I can think of the following, feel free to add.

For doping:
1) Dr. Geert Leinders and Dr. Fabio Bartalucci. We know the story, both dope doctors hired after SKY’s abysmal 2010 performance.
2) Their dismissal. If SKY had nothing to hide, why fire them AFTER they won the tour?
3) Their performance. This seems like a major point in some people’s arguments, it’s sad in a way that our sport has come to this, questioning performance. We all saw it, dominant in the mountains, dominant in the time trials. People say Wiggins never attacked like a doper, but certainly he didn’t need to. Froome TTing faster than Cancellara was weird for me.
4) Undedectable AICAR. No one can argue that SKY had the skinniest riders, personally I can’t think of any riders with lower BMI’s.
5) Team policy, more importantly changes of policy. Not hiring from outside UK, not hiring personnel with known doping past, certainly changed quickly.

Neither here nor there:
1) Froome’s ‘incurable’ bilharzia, making his blood passport useless. Praziquantel cures more than 85 percent of individuals, retreatment of patients with residual infections results in cure in more than 80 percent.
2) Wiggins’s behaviour also seems a big issue for some. Eg. Calling trolls the C word, ‘never raced against Armstrong’, trying to pay less taxes etc.

Against doping:
1) Everything else.
2) No evidence.
3) British riders don’t dope.

You dismiss people who ask questions as trolls?

So therefore isnt wiggins also a troll since he said this

"unfortunately now the suspicion is out there that you can't win the Tour de France unless you're doing something. That's unfortunate if he is clean but at the same time you can't blame people for the doubt that's there"

It's going to be difficult and you can't blame people for doubting the credibility of the Tour for perhaps the next 5,6,7 years

Why are we trolls for applying the same standards to wiggins that wiggins has no problem applying to anyone not named Bradley?

 

[The Hitch]

Funny also that there is nobody representating Sky at CCN.
May not be a coincidence though considering Ashenden's recent observation that sophisticated microdoping is widespread among the peloton's new age teams.

On that topic: has anybody at Sky made any official or unofficial statements wrt CCN? Something like "Way to go boys", "Keep up the good work guys", or a variation thereof?

If you believe Bailsford's propaganda he is likely to believe that CCN are wasting their time since Bailsford already won the battle against doping in July 2012 so they are fighting something that no longer exists.

 

[BroDeal]

2009 7 days in the high mountains

The Tour where the Pyranees were essentially eliminated being used as evidence of how mountainous the current Tours are. LOL. That's a good one.

 

[martinvickers]

The Tour where the Pyranees were essentially eliminated being used as evidence of how mountainous the current Tours are. LOL. That's a good one.

2 HC and 4 cat in three days in the pyranees, several MTFs and four hard alp days isn't exactly soft country...

 

[BroDeal]

2 HC and 4 cat in three days in the pyranees, several MTFs and four hard alp days isn't exactly soft country...

You must have watched a different Tour than the rest of us.

 

[martinvickers]

You must have watched a different Tour than the rest of us.

Maybe from you. Don't presume to speak for anyone else. They can type for themselves.

 

[roundabout]

Maybe from you. Don't presume to speak for anyone else. They can type for themselves.

Well, he is right.

The Pyrenees were neutered.

 

[Dazed and Confused]

Maybe from you. Don't presume to speak for anyone else. They can type for themselves.

On this subject Brodeal got at least one carte blanche.

 

[will10]

Well, he is right.

The Pyrenees were neutered.

Now the stage to Arcalis is fine. But the other two profiles hurt my eyes.

 

[Dazed and Confused]

Now the stage to Arcalis is fine. But the other two profiles hurt my eyes.

Christ, even Chelsea of '11/12 would have been able to get a result here.

 

[martinvickers]

Christ, even Chelsea of '11/12 would have been able to get a result here.

Am i to take it you guys think it's MTF or nothing then?

 

[Libertine Seguros]

2 HC and 4 cat in three days in the pyranees, several MTFs and four hard alp days isn't exactly soft country...

The MTFs in that race were this monolithic stage to the always-exciting Arcalis:

This incredible up-and-down all day fight to Verbier:

And this fairly typical stage to Ventoux:

So that's 3 MTFs, one of which at a low gradient to one of the least dramatic MTFs in the history of the sport, one a climb of just 8km in length where the next time it was climbed in competition it was won by a puncheur, and one genuine epic climb on a stage with little to no introductory climbs (not that Ventoux really needs them).

The other mountain stages in the Pyrenées were constructed with every intention of making them as non-decisive as possible. For example, here's stage 8:

Two cat.1 climbs, sure, but the stage would have been far better in the opposite direction; Agnes is not hard enough to justify going all out over when you've got more than 30km of flat to deal with. Maybe in the old days you could do that, but that's precisely the point I was making - nowadays, with race radio, better standards amongst domestiques and better control over the race, this stage will always feature the elites all coming in in the bunch.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Even worse was the next high mountain stage, one of the worst-designed stages in the history of the sport.

Aside from using the detested Tourmalet, what function does this stage serve? Even when trying to justify the Pau stage in 2010 we could hope that four major mountains would break the bunch up enough to make it more than just an unofficial rest day; with just two climbs - and two of the most overused climbs in the history of Le Tour to boot - and more than 50km flat after the descent from the final climb of the day, this was barely even a stage for the breakaway; if Caisse d'Epargne had had a little bit of help on the run-in, then this would have been Óscar Freire and José Joaquín Rojas sprinting for the win on a so-called high mountain stage. Certainly had Peter Sagan been around then, Liquigas would probably have chased down Pellizotti considering his chances in a two-up sprint against Fedrigo were worse than Sagan's chances from a bunch of 70.

Then we get to the first actually well-designed mountain stage of the race - and it's an intermediate stage.

The Vosges mountains are comparatively underused in the Tour, and a stage like this is an excellent way to use them - a potential banana skin with a tough climb with 20km to go. Not so tough as to make attacks inevitable. But an actual decent mountain stage. It was won from the break of course, and all the contenders stayed together, but that's not the organisers' fault for once.

After the Verbier stage shown above, we moved into the Alps proper, for another stage that would have been far better in the opposite direction.

The Col du Grand Saint-Bernard is pretty tough. Petit-Saint-Bernard isn't easy, but it is a real tempo grinder's climb. The kind that don't really produce explosive racing in today's world of power meters. Stick an MTF to Les Arcs or Montchavin and maybe it's a great stage, with the riders having to actually go to a finish with some real climbing in their legs first, but with a long gradual descent on a shortish stage with such gradual climbs it was never going to be a big shake-up. Maybe they could have added Colle San Carlo from Morgex in between the two climbs - at 10,5km @ 10% that would really have put some suffering into the legs and maybe made Petit-Saint-Bernard a bit more decisive.

Then, of course, we have this.

No complaints about this. This is the finest stage design Christian Prudhomme has ever greenlighted, and the first and only genuine, truly epic mountain stage of the 2009 Tour, both on paper and in execution.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Am i to take it you guys think it's MTF or nothing then?

Oh, for Christ's sakes. People seem to think that there's no 'third way', either you have a piece of crap mountain stage with 50km flat after the final climb, or you go MTF crazy. Have a look in the Race Design thread, or discussions of the GT routes. A lot of the time we want multiple-climb stages that mean that fatigue is a challenge, and good aggressive stages - descent finishes are actually ideal, as are stages with a super-difficult pass followed by an easy climb to the finish. Think of the 2003 Giro stage over Esischie and Sampeyre then the easy uphill finish to Pontechianale, the 2005 Giro stage with the beast that is Finestre followed by the easier Sestrière, or any number of classic stages finishing on Aprica - which averages just 3% - after the Mortirolo. The Le-Grand-Bornand stage of the 2009 Tour was Prudhomme's finest work, while País Vasco's 2010 stage to Orio descending after the double climb of Aia was one of the best intermediate stages in design that you'll see in quite some time. The best designed Giro stage this year was the one into Cortina d'Ampezzo with the descent finish, whilst who doesn't love a stage into Briançon with that tough little puncheur route through the Citadelle to open up small gaps if the big climbs like the Izoard couldn't? How many times has the Giro di Lombardia finished on a climb?

2009 included a bunch of tough climbs, but it included them - deliberately - in ways so as to make them as non-decisive as possible. We want the racing to be harder to control, therefore more exciting for as long as possible. Turning what are supposed to be high mountain days into unofficial rest days is annoying, as is the Vuelta's current habit of short flat stages with a steep MTF, because what's the point in watching anything but the last half an hour?

 

[Dazed and Confused]

Then, of course, we have this.

No complaints about this. This is the finest stage design Christian Prudhomme has ever greenlighted, and the first and only genuine, truly epic mountain stage of the 2009 Tour, both on paper and in execution.

Oh, this puppy looks good for a Friday stage. Who wants to win ffs?

Relentless action from km zero surely. No place to hide. Boys removed from the field of men.

 

[roundabout]

Heh, thinking back to the 5 days in the mountains in 1997, there were probably about the same number of climbs in the Alps and the Pyrenees as in 2009.

Aubisque-Tourmalet-Aspin-Azet

Aspet(?)-Port(?)-Envalira-Ordino(?)-Arcalis (inhumanly long as well)

Alpe alone I think

Glandon-Madeleine-Courchevel (and the race exploded on the first climb with about 5 people in the main group going to the last climb)

Forclaz-Croix-Fry-Colombiere-Joux-Plane

I would probably even say that 1997 mountains in total were harder despite "less days".

 

[BroDeal]

Then we get to the first actually well-designed mountain stage of the race - and it's an intermediate stage.

The Vosges mountains are comparatively underused in the Tour, and a stage like this is an excellent way to use them - a potential banana skin with a tough climb with 20km to go. Not so tough as to make attacks inevitable. But an actual decent mountain stage. It was won from the break of course, and all the contenders stayed together, but that's not the organisers' fault for once.

I think it is the organizer's fault. Prudhomme has pursued a strategy of minimizing the opportunities for GC contenders to separate themselves. He has tried to engineer Tours that are not decided until the second to last day. At the same time he has tried to maximize the opportunities for breaks to succeed. This might have something to do with the French not having any chance of winning the overall but having lots of riders always ready to for glory in a breakaway. This might also be why time bonifications have been eliminated. When the last of a break is up the road, a GC contender won't gain 20 seconds by catching the lead group. It is one more thing to work in favor of the break.

The useless mountain stages of the 2009 Tour serve both purposes. None of the GC contenders and their teams will waste effort when there is nothing to be gained, so the Voecklers of the peloton are free to get their time in the sun.

 

[will10]

Am i to take it you guys think it's MTF or nothing then?

Me thinks you need to get yourself to Libertine's Race Design thread for some education.

 

[martinvickers]

Me thinks you need to get yourself to Libertine's Race Design thread for some education.

It's hyperbole, will. Come on, for goodness sake!!

 

[Dazed and Confused]

I think it is the organizer's fault. Prudhomme has pursued a strategy of minimizing the opportunities for GC contenders to separate themselves. He has tried to engineer Tours that are not decided until the second to last day. At the same time he has tried to maximize the opportunities for breaks to succeed. This might have something to do with the French not having any chance of winning the overall but having lots of riders always ready to for glory in a breakaway. This might also be why time bonifications have been eliminated. When the last of a break is up the road, a GC contender won't gain 20 seconds by catching the lead group. It is one more thing to work in favor of the break.

The useless mountain stages of the 2009 Tour serve both purposes. None of the GC contenders and their teams will waste effort when there is nothing to be gained, so the Voecklers of the peloton are free to get their time in the sun.

This will stage will work if the first 40kms are cut off and then ASO finds a finish line right at the bottom of the last climb.

 

[thehog]

It's hyperbole, will. Come on, for goodness sake!!

I think he's right. You do need to school up.