Team Ineos (Formerly the Sky thread)

[Benotti69]

The UCI.

But I add that Sky and Team GB are one and the same, so Sky no doubt get advanced notice of OOC tests from GB anti doping.

But their closeness to McQuaid and ASO smells. Why did they need to make a presentation to ASO?

 

[taiwan]

@ MerckxIndex Good thinking. If the UCI wanted to identify and sanction them, that would be an effective way to use the BP.

 

[The Hitch]

It's not about a new found climbing ability, it's about working as a team up a hill. Sky played possum for that entire stage, BMC and Astana did the lion share of chasing the break on the flat leading up to the climb, then Sky just hit climb hard.

You have to put it into context: Kennaugh, Coltaldo, Haneo and Uran had no intent on getting to the top of that ride with the best climbers, so they didn't outclimb Rodriguez or Evans for example, they rode as hard as they could then dropped off went backwards. Uran was the only one of the quartet that finished at the sharp end of the climb anywhere near the main contenders.

And Cotaldo is not someone with 'new-found' climbing ability, he's won the baby Giro, and most impressively won Stage 16 of the Vuelta atop the Cuitu Negri. Remember that climb? Oof.

I think there's an exaggeration and re-writing of facts: Uran, Haneo and Cotaldo all have impressive climbing pedigree. They didn't beat Rodriguez or Evans, they rode tempo and burnt them off, before they went off the back to. They weren't pacing themselves to the top of the climb, they were pacing Froome, who waited and waited before attacking in the final k and winning by six seconds. Just six seconds. It wasn't that remarkable, just very well executed and timed, plus the speed and power are within plausible limits.

For all the frothing at the mouth in here there's a good chance Contador will win the race anyways.

Cataldo is a good climber but it should be noted that purito Rodriguez was saying after Fridays stage that cataldo was the man of the race so impressed he was.

Also your theory on how Evans eventually caught henao and cataldo means he was better may work in a time trial but it's not as true in a race situation where there is slipstream. Evans and co were behind wheels and therefore were saving energy.

Ultimately as a team leader paces himself whereas the domestiques go into the red until they no longer have to, then drop off but that doesn't mean they weren't better.

Still I agree cataldo henao and uran aren't that suspicious (compared to others on sky)

What most definitely was suspicious was once again- froome. And the team at Paris nice.

 

[Catwhoorg]

The UCI.

But I add that Sky and Team GB are one and the same, so Sky no doubt get advanced notice of OOC tests from GB anti doping.

UK Anti-doping does the OOC testing, not the BCF.

Are you suggesting that organization is corrupted ? If so on what basis ?

Why did Cav miss an OOC test then due to a whereabouts failure if he knew it was coming? (that was during his time at Sky IIRC)

 

[BYOP88]

And Cotaldo is not someone with 'new-found' climbing ability, he's won the baby Giro, and most impressively won Stage 16 of the Vuelta atop the Cuitu Negri. Remember that climb? Oof.

Marco Marzano won the baby Giro. He didn't set the world alight with his cycling skills. Eric Baumann won the U23 version of Paris Roubaix, yet didn't get anywhere near a top 50 in the 'real' version. Evgeni Petrov did the U23 worlds double in 2000, beating Cancellara in the ITT. Yet I can not recall Petrov pulling up any trees in the pro ranks during one day races or ITT's. Popo won pretty much everything at the U23 level(including Paris-Roubaix) and has won nothing of note since.

 

[Catwhoorg]

what space?
why?
Sky pays Walsh a trip to Tenerife and Walsh is gonna do what exactly?

If it were Kimmage, would you feel different ?

 

[bobbins]

UK Anti-doping does the OOC testing, not the BCF.

Are you suggesting that organization is corrupted ? If so on what basis ?

Why did Cav miss an OOC test then due to a whereabouts failure if he knew it was coming? (that was during his time at Sky IIRC)

There is a close relationship between BC and UK Sport.

Remember BC also do their own testing, as I expect many other feds and teams do.

What happens to these results though is anyones guess.

 

[thehog]

Marco Marzano won the baby Giro. He didn't set the world alight with his cycling skills. Eric Baumann won the U23 version of Paris Roubaix, yet didn't get anywhere near a top 50 in the 'real' version. Evgeni Petrov did the U23 worlds double in 2000, beating Cancellara in the ITT. Yet I can not recall Petrov pulling up any trees in the pro ranks during one day races or ITT's.

Jimmy found Google. He hadn't even heard of Cotaldo before.

Cuengo won the Giro. He can't even keep up with the clean riders at TR.

I'm impressed with Cotaldo. 3 months at Sky and he can drop Evans.

 

[sniper]

If it were Kimmage, would you feel different ?

it's not kimmage. and for good reasons. they don't like kimmage.
they denied kimmage on the Tour last year, remember?

check kimmage's twitter, for instance.
unlike walsh he's not shoving his suspicion under the table.

sky are going for walsh, and I think that is a win-win situation.
i think walsh is on the bandwagon.
i hope he proves me wrong.

 

[Bernie's eyesore]

Cataldo is a good climber but it should be noted that purito Rodriguez was saying after Fridays stage that cataldo was the man of the race so impressed he was.

Also your theory on how Evans eventually caught henao and cataldo means he was better may work in a time trial but it's not as true in a race situation where there is slipstream. Evans and co were behind wheels and therefore were saving energy.

Ultimately as a team leader paces himself whereas the domestiques go into the red until they no longer have to, then drop off but that doesn't mean they weren't better.

Still I agree cataldo henao and uran aren't that suspicious (compared to others on sky)

What most definitely was suspicious was once again- froome. And the team at Paris nice.

The team at Paris Nice wasn't all that good was it? Not that it needed to be, Lopez looked like he could ride on the front all day on his own if need be. He even had to hold back in the sprint on stage 3 because he wasn't allowed to risk denying Porte bonus seconds.

 

[JimmyFingers]

Jimmy found Google. He hadn't even heard of Cotaldo before.

Cuengo won the Giro. He can't even keep up with the clean riders at TR.

I'm impressed with Cotaldo. 3 months at Sky and he can drop Evans.

Silly boy. Do you not remember the 2012 Vuelta? I seem to remember we had words often during it. I watched stage 16, I saw Cotaldo win on that monster hill, a very good talent. Doesn't suit your obfuscation of course.

 

[JimmyFingers]

Marco Marzano won the baby Giro. He didn't set the world alight with his cycling skills. Eric Baumann won the U23 version of Paris Roubaix, yet didn't get anywhere near a top 50 in the 'real' version. Evgeni Petrov did the U23 worlds double in 2000, beating Cancellara in the ITT. Yet I can not recall Petrov pulling up any trees in the pro ranks during one day races or ITT's. Popo won pretty much everything at the U23 level(including Paris-Roubaix) and has won nothing of note since.

What I was saying is that Cotaldo has pedigree, that is all. He is a strong climber, winning the queen stage in the Vuelta last year.

 

[JimmyFingers]

Cataldo is a good climber but it should be noted that purito Rodriguez was saying after Fridays stage that cataldo was the man of the race so impressed he was.

Also your theory on how Evans eventually caught henao and cataldo means he was better may work in a time trial but it's not as true in a race situation where there is slipstream. Evans and co were behind wheels and therefore were saving energy.

Ultimately as a team leader paces himself whereas the domestiques go into the red until they no longer have to, then drop off but that doesn't mean they weren't better.

Still I agree cataldo henao and uran aren't that suspicious (compared to others on sky)

What most definitely was suspicious was once again- froome. And the team at Paris nice.

Actually I almost qualified my post by saying Froome's was the most eyebrow raising performance, not the domestiques.

 

[Netserk]

Silly boy. Do you not remember the 2012 Vuelta? I seem to remember we had words often during it. I watched stage 16, I saw Cotaldo win on that monster hill, a very good talent. Doesn't suit your obfuscation of course.

You do know that Gerrans also have won MTFs from a breakaway.

 

[hrotha]

What I was saying is that Cotaldo has pedigree, that is all. He is a strong climber, winning the queen stage in the Vuelta last year.

Cataldo.

He won from a break by the way.

 

[JimmyFingers]

Cataldo.

He won from a break by the way.

Ok, so does that mean he can't climb then?

Where did he finish on the T-A stage?

[edit] Just looked it up, 26th, 2.09 minutes down

 

[Tyler'sTwin]

Is that not an explanation why they have to perform at the highest level all year round. Otherwise you'd see anomalies/unexplainable variations? You basically need to establish a different baseline?

I think that would just make the doping more obvious as these guys had blood profiles before 2012. How plausible is a significant change in baseline blood parameters in your mid-20's/30's?

 

[thehog]

Silly boy. Do you not remember the 2012 Vuelta? I seem to remember we had words often during it. I watched stage 16, I saw Cotaldo win on that monster hill, a very good talent. Doesn't suit your obfuscation of course.

Hence why you can't even spell his name!

 

[JimmyFingers]

So he actually lost time on Rodriguez, a minute and a half, and also lost a minute to Evans.

So who dropped who?

Henao finished behind both of them as well

 

[JimmyFingers]

Hence why you can't even spell his name!

You're chasing shadows

 

[BYOP88]

What I was saying is that Cotaldo has pedigree, that is all. He is a strong climber, winning the queen stage in the Vuelta last year.

I recall Ballan winning a mountain stage at the Vuelta a few years ago. Cataldo finished the 2012 Vuelta in 51st place, almost 2 hours down on GC. Guys like that are allowed to get in breaks, regardless of it being the queen stage or not.

EDIT: I'm pretty sure that Zabel, Thor H and O'Grady finished in the top 10 on a Vuelta mountain stage, circa 2004-06. I'll check that up later on.

 

[hrotha]

Ok, so does that mean he can't climb then?

Where did he finish on the T-A stage?

[edit] Just looked it up, 26th, 2.09 minutes down

No, it doesn't mean he can't climb, but it means you're being dishonest with the way to put forth the data.

 

[Catwhoorg]

it's not kimmage. and for good reasons. they don't like kimmage.
they denied kimmage on the Tour last year, remember?

check kimmage's twitter, for instance.
unlike walsh he's not shoving his suspicion under the table.

sky are going for walsh, and I think that is a win-win situation.
i think walsh is on the bandwagon.
i hope he proves me wrong.

The point is if Walsh (with a strong Anti-doping history) can be corrupted by a trip paid for by Sky, why wouldn't any journalist be under the same suspicion ?

 

[Tinman]

There seems to be a near consensus in the Clinic that Sky is achieving its remarkable results—dominating two stage races at the same time—by doping. If this is true, how are they getting away with it, and why aren’t riders on other teams, some of whom are likely also doping, unable to do so as effectively?

There are two ways a team like Sky might gain an advantage by doping. Frist, a better doping program for individual riders, and second, a team-wide doping program, which includes the domestiques. Based on the way Sky has been riding, a lot of suspicion has been focused on this second factor. But if that’s the case, it might actually be easier to detect than individual doping.

The passport basically tracks the ratio of hematocrit and hemoglobin to reticulocytes. This ratio has to be different from a baseline value to a very highly significant degree. Thus a rider may still blood-dope, but only up to a limit without getting caught. Any rider doping today is aware of this, and has a pretty good idea of to what degree he can manipulate his blood and go undetected.

If Sky or any other team has a team-wide blood doping program, extending to all of their riders, one would expect that all of their riders could be fairly near this limit. In this situation, while the value for any individual rider might not be significant, the value for the team as a whole most certainly would be. For example, suppose everyone on the team, as a result of blood doping, has a passport reading that is significantly different from the baseline at a level of p < 0. 1. A value like this would indicate doping 90% of the time, but this is not nearly significant enough to trigger further action against any individual.

But the odds of every rider on the team having a value like this is 0. 000000001, a slam dunk case for doping. Even if only some of the riders have values like this, it could be significant. The odds of four of nine undoped riders having blood values like this would be I believe roughly one in a hundred, while the odds of five riders like this would be one in a thousand. The odds of course would be even higher if these individual riders were even closer to the limit, say, having an individual probability of p < 0.05.

One problem with this approach, of course, is that ordinarily not all members of a team are given passport tests at the same time. But perhaps anti-doping officials should consider doing this in some cases where team-wide doping is a reasonable suspicion. Then there is the question of what kind of sanctions would follow a highly significant finding, at the team level. By the current rules, no individual rider could be sanctioned, but I think a highly significant result by team analysis would justify invalidating the team's results, along with further targeting. In any case, it would be a very interesting case where one could not prove that any particular rider on the team was doping, but could prove to a very high degree of certainty that someone was.

EDIT: I merged this post from yet another Sky thread

My personal conclusion is that the blood passport is totally useless now. There are now readily available EPO precursor stimulants that can be taken twice weekly orally that riders wont even realize they are taking. Who needs a blood bag program. Motoman is out of a job. These oral EPO stimulants can be mixed in with the vitamin supplements... so everyone, everyone can now ride at 50% Hct without triggering any testing algorythms. On top of that I do believe Sky has some Aicar or weight loss/energy metabolism drug that maybe even acts synergistically with the EPO approach. None of these drugs are testable. So a pretty fool proof program actually. If only they could control the social media better. And that's where Walsh now seems to come in?

The only way UCI/WADA can save this mess is to immediately introduce retrospective sample testing with life long bans. And issue some press realeases on new testing methodologies in advanced development, however vague they may be...They have to act in the strongest possible way, and fast, before the classics season and the GTs kick off...

 

[Ferminal]

Ok, so does that mean he can't climb then?

Where did he finish on the T-A stage?

[edit] Just looked it up, 26th, 2.09 minutes down

His Giro performance is more indicative of his ability as opposed to a once off breakaway.

(His Giro performance was pretty good I thought).