Justinr said:
I followed that until the last paragraph, but thats by the by. Your second paragraph hits the nail on the head for me. If someone signs up to ZTP after (lets assume this has happened) a grilling from Brailsford then in my mind that is fair game for Sky to ditch them if things come out. That's their look out and Sky can claim to have done the right thing.
Also originally Sky said they would only recruit people not from the cycling world. Again noble but in hindsight silly. If you're running a GT campaign, a minor stage race, or even a classic you really need an experienced DS. So they look for one. Well (in hindsight) we all know that a clean one of those is not easy to find, but at the time they could recruit one on the basis of "not being implicated". And I think that could be fair at that time.
Is it perfect? No. Does it mean they are doping? No, not necessarily. Does it raise the suspicion and possibility? Well yes - but no more than any other team (and I say that because this thread runs and runs and as I see it there are 25% supporters and 75% others). Maybe its because for the others everyone is happy to either say they are or they aren't. I don't know.
I wonder if this tends to ignore the timeline of events. They did hire a BUNCH of guys with shady pasts, ran the team happily for a while then when people started pointing out how dodgy these guys actually were, they let them all go. Pretty horrible stuff to do with your friends and co-workers. All to save public face, but having nothing to do with actual impact. Pretty political and pretty slimy IMO. Yates was none too pleased.
Then you have a guy who anyone can verify was a doper and they keep him on? Why? I think saying it's not perfect is letting them off too easily. They've been dishonest, deceptive and have thrown colleagues and employees under the bus when the heat came on. And all the while maintained the "clean team" and "zero tolerance" stance for anyone who would listen.
Does it mean they're doping? No, it just means they're willfully lying. And no one can tell me that Brailsford and the management team didn't know who these guys were when they hired them, out of some naiveté regarding road cycling. If you have a stated ZTPolicy, you would simply do a quick check on all these guys, you wouldn't just blindly hire whomever was recommended. Anyone with 2 minutes on their hands can find out anything about any of the guys they hired.
I've been in executive roles and managed large teams (not in sport). No one would have a hiring philosophy and simply fail to do the smallest effort to ensure that policy was enacted. This is not a case of missing the details, this is a case of willfully doing the opposite of what is stated. It's not possible to know for sure what the reasons are, maybe they are just simply that you can't hire experienced team managers and directors with no links to doping. Maybe it's a clear effort to conceal a business-as-usual top team.
Given the team's results, it's pretty tough to ignore the latter as the strongest possibility. But the "we didn't know when we hired them" argument isn't maintainable anymore. They know. They knew. They simply didn't care and kept up the facade. And guys paid for it with their livelihoods.
Sad state of affairs.