Team Ineos (Formerly the Sky thread)

[Dear Wiggo]

Given the involvement of Steve Peters to keep various British trackies' "inner chimps" under control, it seems reasonable to conclude that being right mentally is a very significant element of maximising performance on the track.

Or it is in fact completely random, and the psych is purely a beard...

Just seven weeks ago, Steve Peters seemed to be a cure for all sporting ills. A quiet word from the good doctor in your ear and you’d be strong, focused, a winner – like his clients Steven Gerrard, Luis Suarez or Ronnie O’Sullivan.

How things can change. In this World Cup, Peters’ famed 'inner chimp' has fallen from the highest branches and hit the ground with an almighty crash.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/wo...Gerrard-Cos-World-Cup-woes.html#ixzz35hLyoggI

I'm going with Dr Steve Peters being a Carmichael influence on anyone in elite sport. YMMV.

 

[gooner]

Peters is a Chris Carmichael cover for Ronnie O'Sullivan doping.

Anyone who has read up on him will have seen him say it can take up to 2 years in some instances for his methods to have an effect. Going into a World Cup and working with most of the players for the first time, was never going to provide some miracle effect in such a short period.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Anyone who has read up on him will have seen him say it can take up to 2 years in some instances for his methods to have an effect. Going into a World Cup and working with most of the players for the first time, was never going to provide some miracle effect in such a short period.

Like I said: a beard.

ie Carmichael claimed to be the coach of Armstrong, and the reason he did well. He wasn't, and he wasn't.

Same for Peters.

If an athlete does well with any Peters input, it's "this guy is da bomb". If, after 2 years, the athlete improves athletically or learns how to dope and does well, Peters is "da bomb".

If Peters has no effect, it's coz he needs more time. Up to 2 years in some cases.

In fact all cases other than the cyclist, yes?

 

[gooner]

Like I said: a beard.

ie Carmichael claimed to be the coach of Armstrong, and the reason he did well. He wasn't, and he wasn't.

Same for Peters.

If an athlete does well with any Peters input, it's "this guy is da bomb". If, after 2 years, the athlete improves athletically or learns how to dope and does well, Peters is "da bomb".

If Peters has no effect, it's coz he needs more time. Up to 2 years in some cases.

In fact all cases other than the cyclist, yes?

I don't think he has had much of an influence with Sky themselves. Recently I was reading in an article that Brailsford was trying to take him on the road scene permanently. That doesn't sound like he was very much hands on with the team.

The cyclists I mainly see eulogising about his work are Hoy and Pendleton. He was long-term with them AFAIK.

 

[gooner]

Millar in The Telegraph today.

“Of course I have regrets,” he hastens to add. “I wish to God I hadn’t cheated. I made the wrong decisions. But there is nothing you can change about it. I wouldn’t go back. Christ, I would hate to go back and have to go through it all again. If Hell exists that is it.

“But on the other hand it was the making of me. Of course, if the sport had been like it is now back then I could have had a totally different career. If teams like Sky were around.

“It’s like society. There are always going to be cheaters,” he says. “But whereas before it was systematic and you’d have organised crime. Now it’s very much petty crime. You have the odd desperado.

“The most important fact is that you can win the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the biggest hardest races, clean. I know Ryder Hesjedal, I know Bradley Wiggins, I know Chris Froome, I know Dan Martin, they are four guys I know and trust implicitly have won those races. So if that’s possible then it’s possible to win any race clean

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/ot...r-admits-drug-hell-was-the-making-of-him.html

 

[pugdog]

Thank you! I needed a good laugh today.

 

[Granville57]

Millar in The Telegraph today.

“But on the other hand it was the making of me. Of course, if the sport had been like it is now back then I could have had a totally different career. If teams like Sky were around.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/ot...r-admits-drug-hell-was-the-making-of-him.html

So no love for Garmin from St. Millar?

 

[42x16ss]

So no love for Garmin from St. Millar?

A dig at Cofidis and maybe Saunier Duval.

 

[peloton]

Millar in The Telegraph today.





http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/ot...r-admits-drug-hell-was-the-making-of-him.html

Let's not forget this from St. David:

Millar saw from close up how Contador dominated the recent Giro d’Italia. For Millar, Contador’s consistency is a sign of his unique talent.

"Alberto Contador is untouchable as rider, he is a physical freak and we in the peloton have known that for a long time and respect his supreme talent. I would be very surprised if he didn't end up as the greatest Grand Tour rider in the history of the sport. It’s a tragedy that he has got mixed up in this Clenbuterol thing but I am keeping an open mind on his case,” Millar told the Telegraph.

"Does anybody out there seriously doubt that Contador was riding clean in the Giro d'Italia that has just finished? You don't win the biggest races in the world with such clockwork regularity and comparative ease, and in such style, by not being the supreme talent and clean. In my experience the profile of a doper is always much more erratic and unpredictable.”

"The rest of us mere mortals have "magic days" when every so often when we can take on the world. Contador's default setting is a "Magic day". His only departure from the norm is when he experiences merely an average day. They are the only two levels he rides at. My strong instinct is to trust that."

Funny.

Last seven Grand Tours for -

@vincenzonibali: 3-1-2-7-3-1-2.

For @albertocontador: 1-1-1*-1*-5*-1-4

For @chrisfroome: 83-34-DSQ-2-2-4-1
https://twitter.com/al_hinds/status/481265319076306944

 

[Digger]

Millar, who came back in 2006 from a two-year doping ban after admitting his guilt, is furious at Landis.

"He's reached the end of the road and I just find it disgusting," said Millar from his home training base in Girona, Spain. "He's a liar and a cheat and he has nothing left in cycling so he just wants to burn the house down."

After Landis' ban four years ago, Millar said he tried calling him to give advice on how to return to the sport. He never received a return call.

"If he had stood up and manned up four years ago, he'd be racing the Tour de France now," Millar said. "He'd have a different book out. He'd have not lost a penny. He'd be admired by young people. He would have a different life ahead of him. He'd be in a decent mental state. He'd be sober.

"And he'd be married."

However, many in cycling believe doping was widespread in the early 2000s. How does anyone know Landis is lying?

"That's the problem," Millar said. "Now he's lost the ability to tell the truth whether it is or not. That's what's despicable about it - and sad. Because I'm sure there's truth in some of it. But it doesn't mean anything anymore."

Millar is real class.

http://www.denverpost.com/sports/ci_15175682

 

[The Hitch]

Re the quote that appears in Jimmy Fingers' signature where jv says only 10% of riders actually warmdown, as a defense of SKy, wouldn't that be the 10% that is competing for GT's? So long as Sky's actual gt opponents rather than riders there for a laugh and a few breakway attempts, are doing warm downs and other marginal gains, it really doesn't matter what % are doing it as far as explaining their gt success goes.

Its like how walsh in his book gives this way overhyped example of the famous cheat and serial omerta defender David Millar having a sunbathe and it was given as an example of why Froome beat Contador and Rodriguez.

I don't really care what some veteran breakway rider who's got half his mind on his post cycling career and making as much money from his career of cheating and lies by working as a movie advisor and, tv commentator and considering running for the UCI, is doing on his penultimate Tour.

It doesn't relate to what GC riders are doing so.

 

[Beech Mtn]

On the subject of warmdowns - the breakaway guys and worker bees don't have to sit on rollers outside the team bus after the stage ends - they drop off the back of the bunch with several kms to go and ride in more slowly. That is their warmdown, and more energy-saving than riding the whole stage full gas and then sitting on the rollers in front of the TV+photographer cameras.

It's my opinion that JV was just spinning with that BS about only 10% warming down properly.

There's anti-doping theater from the UCI/WADA/etc: Look how effective our tests are!

And there's anti-doping theater from guys like JV/Sky/etc: Look how effective our marginal gains are! They allow us to ride clean and still beat those nasty, slack, unscientific dopers!

 

[Benotti69]

How old is the Mapei sports centre in Italy? Answer founded in 1996, 18years.

So the Italians have been studying sport, especially cycling, since at least 1996 and Sky think they know better!

More evidence Sky are full of it!

 

[DirtyWorks]

There's anti-doping theater from the UCI/IOC/etc: Look how effective our tests are!

Fixed that for you.

WADA and the NADOs are practically powerless. They can't open cases. They only test at the direction of an anti-doping authority, then post those values for the anti-doping authority to decide whether or not they'll open a case on a positive.

 

[hiero2]

How old is the Mapei sports centre in Italy? Answer founded in 1996, 18years.

So the Italians have been studying sport, especially cycling, since at least 1996 and Sky think they know better!

More evidence Sky are full of it!

The Italians have been closely studying cycling for many more years than that - I remember reading stuff back when I was racing - so it would have been from the 70's.

 

[Benotti69]

The Italians have been closely studying cycling for many more years than that - I remember reading stuff back when I was racing - so it would have been from the 70's.

Yes and no doubt the Dutch, Russians, East Germans and a whole host of nations and yet Sky claim they practically re invented the wheel......

 

[stutue]

Did they?

Or did they just say they focussed on the smallest of details...

Your problem, my poor fellow, is that you create myths, then believe them.

 

[Franklin]

Did they?

Or did they just say they focussed on the smallest of details...

Your problem, my poor fellow, is that you create myths, then believe them.

You would have a point if only that the methods advocated by Sky lack any scientific support whatsoever. To put it in other words: They are focussing on details which are quite frankly useless. So how does it explain their superiority?

It's the enormous problem whcih makes believing Sky is clean almost impossible. Besides all the obvious lies and subterfuge:

How can a team with methods which are quite frankly bunk destroy the competition which is unlikely to be clean?

Is Bradley so talented that he can without dope somehow beat dopers which have been untouchable?

The only explenation would be that everyone rides clean now. Now I'm very much critical of mindless bashing every rider, but that hypothesis is about as believable as the one about a fat man living at the pole who doles out presents to the whole world at his birthday.

Is it proof? No. but the position that Sky is clean is truly one of faith, not based on logic. The logical position is overwhelmingly that Sky is cheating in a big, big way.

 

[Benotti69]

Did they?

Or did they just say they focussed on the smallest of details...

Your problem, my poor fellow, is that you create myths, then believe them.

oh dear another myth buyer..........yeah SKy were first with everything, keep buying the rapha gear full of marginal gains right there...the weight taken out of you wallet accounts for an extra 100watts.

What is the point in setting up a sporting centre for excellence if you ignore the details?

I bet the mapei centre spent years testing the right amount of pineapple juice to add to the water bidons.

 

[stutue]

Of course Sky don't have the monopoly on innovation, and you'd be surprised just how cagey most teams are about what they do. At this year's TdF, one of the hotels in Harrogate has several teams staying in it. Each team has stipulated a separate room for breakfast.....because they don't want opposing teams to see what they are eating.

 

[staubsauger]

Wasn't it more that Dottore Conchoni was reinventing the wheel and Ferrari perfectionated it!?

 

[SeriousSam]

You would have a point if only that the methods advocated by Sky lack any scientific support whatsoever. To put it in other words: They are focussing on details which are quite frankly useless. So how does it explain their superiority?

It's the enormous problem whcih makes believing Sky is clean almost impossible. Besides all the obvious lies and subterfuge:

How can a team with methods which are quite frankly bunk destroy the competition which is unlikely to be clean?

Is Bradley so talented that he can without dope somehow beat dopers which have been untouchable?

The only explenation would be that everyone rides clean now. Now I'm very much critical of mindless bashing every rider, but that hypothesis is about as believable as the one about a fat man living at the pole who doles out presents to the whole world at his birthday.

Is it proof? No. but the position that Sky is clean is truly one of faith, not based on logic. The logical position is overwhelmingly that Sky is cheating in a big, big way.

To be fair, Sky have taken PR management tailored to patriotic anglophones to unprecedented levels. It has worked remarkably well. A sizable portion of their fan base actually seems to believe that stuff like bringing your own pillows to hotels gives you 50 watts, or that every non-Sky rider is a lazy cheater who can't compete in the clean era of cycling.

Hammering such nonsense into the heads of people likely required novel psychological insights.

 

[SeriousSam]

Of course Sky don't have the monopoly on innovation, and you'd be surprised just how cagey most teams are about what they do. At this year's TdF, one of the hotels in Harrogate has several teams staying in it. Each team has stipulated a separate room for breakfast.....because they don't want opposing teams to see what they are eating.

And you actually believe this? For real? That competition-time nutrition involves some super secret stuff where real relative performance advantages are possible?

 

[More Strides than Rides]

There is no value to secrecy. Anything broad and sweeping enough is common knowledge or is easily learned, and anything subtle, or "marginal" is only so because it is so individualized. Diet is the perfect example. I know that I am exercising x ti target adaptation y, so will eat z. I don't care what anyone else eats because they are a,b,c or e,f,g.

That being said, so many athletes, even at the highest level, can have such inane ideas about exercise. Listening to the world's best talk about VO2 max and lactic acid is excruciating. Their secrecy compartmentalizes their own philosophies which are often wrong, and solidifies them against evelving research and practice.

Secrecy is frustrating.

So is claiming marginal gains as something more than it is. I'd say the biggest benefit of marginal gains is the placebo effect you get from thinking you're doing something beneficial. Anything that falls outside the definition of individualization and good logistics (so it lessens the anxiety in the athlete)isn't anything connected to performance. Cut out Nutella, but it's only a gain if a guy can't help but eat it with a spoon. If thats the case, its individualization, and not some divine marginal gain (and nothing for the rest of the team who controll themselves). But Sky choose a "holier than thou" attitude with this thing.

 

[proffate]

And you actually believe this? For real? That competition-time nutrition involves some super secret stuff where real relative performance advantages are possible?

Allen Lim doesn't care if your name is Dave Brailsford, you're sure as hell not getting a look at his grandmother's proprietary ricecake formula without paying $19.99 at your local bookstore.