- Apr 17, 2009
- 308
- 0
- 0
thehog said:
Not "alcoholic madmen"..?
Attack is the best form of defense. Classic from Lance's playbook.
I have been reading this thread over the past two days, and upon reflection, the only performance that really, really, is hard to believe is Chris Froome. Wiggins ... dubious, yes, but not spectacularly so. His performance was nothing like Armstrong's in the old days, remember, Armstrong would use his Postal train as a base to launch an unanswerable attack in the last few Ks, Wiggins just hugged Froome's wheel. As Nibali said in an interview, Wiggins' performances aren't really special, basically consisting of wheel-sucking his domestiques and other riders.
Reading yesterday's posts, I wasn't convinced that the evidence indicated Rogers and Porte doped to the gills. Remember, the whole climb was less than 6K. Boasson Hagen went first, for less than 1K. Big deal. Then Rogers went, and Rogers covered 1K before blowing up. Porte also covered 1K before moving to a side. To put that in perspective, these riders were asked to make tempo for one kilometer, then fall by the wayside. I do not really think this is outrageous. On the other hand, posters in this thread are correct to point out that such strategies rarely work out because supposed super-domestiques tend to underperform (witness Tejay Van Garderen dropping off the pace and failing to support Evans). So while Rogers and Porte may have been suspiciously successful, what they actually did, ride a high climbing tempo for 1 kilometer then ease off, is not suspicious.
The judgment would come from recovery time and repetition. In the Postal train, all domestiques had supernatural recovery and could come back the next day to blow up the peloton all over again. And yet we saw little sign of Rogers and Porte today. So I am not buying the team-wide domestique doping theory, not based on Rogers and Porte climbing 1K on the Tour's first climb. However, I will accept revisions to this opinion based on future events.
Froome, however, has no explanation or justification. He has no results that could justify the results he gets suddenly in GTs. His performances seem to me an insult to the intelligence of cycling fans everywhere, and I do hope team Sky see fit to send him home.
Wiggins as I say is a more complex phenomenon but I am not convinced that shifts in muscle mass on the order of 12kg in an off season cannot be accomplished without PEDs. As you all know, you must simply burn through your carbohydrate supply followed by your glycogen, burn off your fat, and your body will begin to eat its own muscle mass. Getting through the carbs and glycogen is not such a big challenge for an athlete, and at that point, it's a matter of how much fat must you burn. If your body fat is only 2-3% you can start consuming your own muscle fairly quickly and diminish your muscle mass considerably in 3 months or so. The idea that this can only be accomplished with an illegal PED is false. However I do not say that Wiggins is clean, only that I am not convinced his performances are impossible for a clean rider. What I have seen so far from Wiggins is possible clean.
Froome, though ... He needs to go away.
Reading yesterday's posts, I wasn't convinced that the evidence indicated Rogers and Porte doped to the gills. Remember, the whole climb was less than 6K. Boasson Hagen went first, for less than 1K. Big deal. Then Rogers went, and Rogers covered 1K before blowing up. Porte also covered 1K before moving to a side. To put that in perspective, these riders were asked to make tempo for one kilometer, then fall by the wayside. I do not really think this is outrageous. On the other hand, posters in this thread are correct to point out that such strategies rarely work out because supposed super-domestiques tend to underperform (witness Tejay Van Garderen dropping off the pace and failing to support Evans). So while Rogers and Porte may have been suspiciously successful, what they actually did, ride a high climbing tempo for 1 kilometer then ease off, is not suspicious.
The judgment would come from recovery time and repetition. In the Postal train, all domestiques had supernatural recovery and could come back the next day to blow up the peloton all over again. And yet we saw little sign of Rogers and Porte today. So I am not buying the team-wide domestique doping theory, not based on Rogers and Porte climbing 1K on the Tour's first climb. However, I will accept revisions to this opinion based on future events.
Froome, however, has no explanation or justification. He has no results that could justify the results he gets suddenly in GTs. His performances seem to me an insult to the intelligence of cycling fans everywhere, and I do hope team Sky see fit to send him home.
Wiggins as I say is a more complex phenomenon but I am not convinced that shifts in muscle mass on the order of 12kg in an off season cannot be accomplished without PEDs. As you all know, you must simply burn through your carbohydrate supply followed by your glycogen, burn off your fat, and your body will begin to eat its own muscle mass. Getting through the carbs and glycogen is not such a big challenge for an athlete, and at that point, it's a matter of how much fat must you burn. If your body fat is only 2-3% you can start consuming your own muscle fairly quickly and diminish your muscle mass considerably in 3 months or so. The idea that this can only be accomplished with an illegal PED is false. However I do not say that Wiggins is clean, only that I am not convinced his performances are impossible for a clean rider. What I have seen so far from Wiggins is possible clean.
Froome, though ... He needs to go away.
will be interesting to see how it is and how much is reported. from what I read it wasn't a question straight about doping, but a question about people on twitter who accuse him of doping.
- Apr 11, 2009
- 2,250
- 0
- 0
Zam_Olyas said:
I don't see the latter. Invented script / associations? Link please.
I saw this 21 hours ago:
"Jonathan Vaughters @Vaughters
Before I go to bed, gotta say I was very touched by Wiggo taking a moment to thank me a few days ago. Down deep, he's a very good person."
https://twitter.com/Vaughters
gooner said:
+1
I think there is a disconnect between long term fans of the sport and newer fans which make up a large section of posters. I think looking back at those events is not quite the same as experiencing them when they happen, they dont have the same impact.
I dont know how anyone who followed the sport through Festina/the Lance years/Puerto/ Season 08 can be just expected to watch the sport without having suspicions or questions, we have seen it all too many times before.
How could anyone have watched SKY yesterday and not thought back to the Postal days and the first thing that comes to mind is????
Fact is when SKY first started and they talked about winning the Tour with a British rider they were laughed at as there were simply no possibilities and now there are two out of nowhere and guys like Rogers going better than ever seen before. Based on the history of the sport, that is suspicious straight up.
Perhaps it is due to the sport being cleaner but once again, the weight of history suggests otherwise. Either we are witnessing a massive sea-change in terms of non-doping or we have the same old, same old packaged in a slightly different manner.
Whilst many people go OTT with the definitely doped mantra, I see absolutely nothing wrong with people raising genuine suspicions/questions when things look really dodgy.
SKY were not so dominant today so we will have to wait to see how they perform in the real mountain stages but what they did yesterday was amazing and definitely suspicious looking.
Gloin22 said:
Indeed, very weak. There are at least a few logical easons they have such a medical team....
Must be a few....
Must be one....?
Can anyone help me here and explain why they hired a tainted medical team?
- Aug 13, 2010
- 3,317
- 0
- 0
Dr. Maserati
BANNED
- Jun 19, 2009
- 13,250
- 1
- 0
Zam_Olyas said:
Actually, I dont mind that Wiggins is upset. In fact if someone were clean that is the reaction I would expect, but it depends on what his comments were (as I have not yet read them).
If he attack the messenger are avoid the question, it would not look good - but if they are annoyed at the slur and attempt to be transparent that would be good.
- Apr 11, 2009
- 2,250
- 0
- 0
Zam_Olyas said:
Problem is that this basically proves Bradley's point in the first place.
Twitter is filled with garbage and (im)personation (in this case probably of Vaughters). I know that from another context outside of cycling. It's a real problem
Score +1 for Bradley on that. Minus 1 his foul mouth.
- Feb 20, 2010
- 32,513
- 14,297
- 28,180
Wiggins had to know comments like that were going to come though. He's been around the sport far too long to know that when somebody makes a radical change to their physiology, or their results suddenly improve massively, questions will always be asked.
If he's clean, then I don't blame him for being angry, but at the same time it would be better just to laugh it off with the, "well, people will say that" kind of thing.
He's been in this business for a decade or more. He knows what's what, and he can't have reasonably expected people to swallow Sky's 2012 whole without any raised eyebrows whatsoever. As pmcg76 noted, when Sky started with their rhetoric about a British Tour winner inside 5 years, it was met with some incredulity and raised eyebrows. Yes, the route is incredibly favourable, but Britain has gone from having one converted trackie who'd shown in an incredibly un-climber-friendly Tour parcours that they could compete in the upper end of GCs, without having really been tested on anything too tough, and a couple of guys with hope for the future but little else... and now they have a guy who wins every long TT he enters, climbs with the best and holds form without ever getting sick despite having lost tons of weight, and a pure climber par excellence who had very few results to point to until the end of August 2011 and yet is now the best climber in the péloton... but only in a couple of GTs when his illness lets him. And those prospects from when the team was set up? Well, they haven't come on at all really, they're still just prospects for the future.
The change is considerable, and in Froome's case, sudden. It is crediting Wiggins with little intelligence to suggest that he got mad because he wasn't expecting suspicions to be raised.
If he's clean, then I don't blame him for being angry, but at the same time it would be better just to laugh it off with the, "well, people will say that" kind of thing.
He's been in this business for a decade or more. He knows what's what, and he can't have reasonably expected people to swallow Sky's 2012 whole without any raised eyebrows whatsoever. As pmcg76 noted, when Sky started with their rhetoric about a British Tour winner inside 5 years, it was met with some incredulity and raised eyebrows. Yes, the route is incredibly favourable, but Britain has gone from having one converted trackie who'd shown in an incredibly un-climber-friendly Tour parcours that they could compete in the upper end of GCs, without having really been tested on anything too tough, and a couple of guys with hope for the future but little else... and now they have a guy who wins every long TT he enters, climbs with the best and holds form without ever getting sick despite having lost tons of weight, and a pure climber par excellence who had very few results to point to until the end of August 2011 and yet is now the best climber in the péloton... but only in a couple of GTs when his illness lets him. And those prospects from when the team was set up? Well, they haven't come on at all really, they're still just prospects for the future.
The change is considerable, and in Froome's case, sudden. It is crediting Wiggins with little intelligence to suggest that he got mad because he wasn't expecting suspicions to be raised.
Libertine Seguros said:
then he would be accused of avoiding the question. basically wiggins while he always performs well will be in a no win situation regarding doping. and when he starts to perform not as well? obviously because he is off the dope.
- Aug 13, 2010
- 3,317
- 0
- 0
Does he really one across as a guy that would laugh it off? Of course the question has to be asked but you are really in a no win situation in the way you react (I think).Libertine Seguros said:
- May 19, 2011
- 4,857
- 2
- 0
pmcg76 said:
they may as well intentionally pull back a little to avoid more obviousness, after yesterday stage W said the stage is easy he and Froom did not even go full gas. Guess it made lots of people angry. After today stage, W changed his tone saying how hard and difficult this stage was.
- Feb 20, 2010
- 32,513
- 14,297
- 28,180
To be fair though, yesterday's stage was essentially flat until a 6km climb where they ripped everyone to pieces. Today's stage was up and down all day. Far harder to control.maxmartin said:
- Feb 20, 2010
- 32,513
- 14,297
- 28,180
Don't be late Pedro said:
Yes, true.
But at the same time, from a RACING point of view, laughing it off would show confidence, whereas losing it shows his competitors that he can be broken. A bit like Evans in 2008, when his outbursts at the cameraman and the 'don't step on my dog' events showed a psychological weakness.
- Oct 30, 2011
- 2,639
- 0
- 0
Attacking the character of those who doubt him is very bad, in my view, whether he is clean or dirty. He is allegedly a fan of cycling - he knows the history as well as any of us. To assume that you can perform well and not at least have to answer that question is ridiculous. He must have known it would be asked - if I had a clear conscience, I think I would be calm about it, but I am not Wiggins, and I'm getting into amateur psychology.
- Feb 20, 2010
- 32,513
- 14,297
- 28,180
Caruut said:
But then again, you're not the one leading the Tour de France and dealing with the pressure of that.
Let's not forget that Chris Froome was dealing with "you win and we kill you" type calls from fans at times in the Vuelta to add to the stress.
- Aug 13, 2010
- 3,317
- 0
- 0
Probably the last time he gives his mobile number to Wiggins and Brailsford.Libertine Seguros said:
TRENDING THREADS
-
-
Tour de Suisse 2025 - Men's (June 15- June 22)- Started by Tricycle Rider
- Replies: 1K
-
Giro d'Italia Giro d'Italia 2025 stage 20: Verrès – Sestrière, 205 km- Started by Samu Cuenca
- Replies: 1K
-
Giro d'Italia Giro D'italia 2025 Stage 16: Piazzola sul Brenta – San Valentino- Started by YavorD
- Replies: 1K
-
Teams & Riders The Remco Evenepoel is the next Eddy Merckx thread- Started by DNP-Old
- Replies: 31K
-
Giro d'Italia Giro d'Italia 2025 Stage 17: San Michele all’Adige – Bormio, 155 km- Started by Samu Cuenca
- Replies: 742
-
Teams & Riders Tadej Pogačar discussion thread- Started by Lequack
- Replies: 32K
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram