It is now clear that Froome intends to win the Vuelta, and perhaps I should have seen it coming with all the talk of changing his schedule to peak later. However, this makes it interesting in terms of Sky at the Vuelta as the entire team must also be geared towards winning the GC, as at the TdF, and we would expect therefore the team to dope at similar levels to the TdF if we assume (as many do here) that they are protected by the authorities.
But we aren't seeing that. Barring Konig, (who I would put in the same category as Porte, Pouls and Landa a well paid super domestique with a proven track record of performance) the team has completely failed to control the race and has left Froome repeatedly exposed at key moments. If Yates had been totally juiced and hadn't lost 1min 15 seconds to Chavez on the last climb then Froome would have been in danger, so that was a critical stage for the team to get right but they went AWOL again.
This to me supports the position that Sky domestiques excel at the TdF because they deploy their strongest team built of riders who would be GC leaders on other teams, but get paid more to be a domestique at Sky. The logic then being that the reduced performance at the Vuelta is primarily down to the lower quality of domestique selected rather than issues around doping.
In short, whilst I still cannot believe Froome is credible at all, I'm not convinced by claims that the whole of Sky are at it and I'm still waiting for another Sky rider to exhibit massively suspect performance at Sky compared to anything they have produced elsewhere.
But we aren't seeing that. Barring Konig, (who I would put in the same category as Porte, Pouls and Landa a well paid super domestique with a proven track record of performance) the team has completely failed to control the race and has left Froome repeatedly exposed at key moments. If Yates had been totally juiced and hadn't lost 1min 15 seconds to Chavez on the last climb then Froome would have been in danger, so that was a critical stage for the team to get right but they went AWOL again.
This to me supports the position that Sky domestiques excel at the TdF because they deploy their strongest team built of riders who would be GC leaders on other teams, but get paid more to be a domestique at Sky. The logic then being that the reduced performance at the Vuelta is primarily down to the lower quality of domestique selected rather than issues around doping.
In short, whilst I still cannot believe Froome is credible at all, I'm not convinced by claims that the whole of Sky are at it and I'm still waiting for another Sky rider to exhibit massively suspect performance at Sky compared to anything they have produced elsewhere.