Team Sky. The all clean team!

[Winterfold]

dimspace - I agree you can start reading stuff into that Brailsford quote if you want. It is a bit less definitive than he has been...

Losing 7kg while maintaining your power would make 5 minutes difference on a climb like Ventoux for a rider who can put out 400W for an hour. At my rather meagre 250W it makes nine minutes difference which means rice cakes and no beer for me before having a crack at les cingles this year.

Is it how you shed that 7kg without losing power that is raising eyebrows or Wiggin's power? Presumably as a pursuit rider noone doubts his ability to put some serious power down.

I think a lot of the improvement is down to psychology and self-belief - the guy was a bit hit and miss and fragile before 2008 (haha) and obviously hit the bottle after Athens 2004.

If the GB Shrink has sorted his head out, he's off the beers, focussed, lost 7kg and maintained his power then his performance last year does not seem too outrageous.

It's not like he blew the whole peloton off his wheel for 100k or took off from Chalet Reynard at 30kph...

Anyway, that's what I'm going to keep telling myself for now

 

[Anonymous]

Dave Brailsford video interview here
http://msn.tv2sporten.no/sykkel/knallharde-antidopingkrav-i-team-sky-3100042.html
discussing how they went about hiring riders, blood passport, doping etc..

the gist of it..
we asked to see the blood passport.. any rider not signed off we didnt sign them.
we found it useful looking at the profiles.. blah blah
he hopes the bio passport continues and gets more sophisticated
this team is going to "try" and race clean
there will be no tolerance, or certainly no systematic doping on the team
but there is always the chance you will get on rogue rider..

dave b.. not done yourself any favours there mate.. the "try" doesnt look good, and correcting yourself when you said tolerance, and changing it to no systematic doping looks like a backtrack...
the rogue rider defence is good though, sounds too much like yuo get caught, we hang you out to dry..
really not helped himself.. :/

I'm still not convinced. The interview gave me the impression they acknowledge that the riders are their own men and will make their own decisions on some things. That seems to be the Sky ethos - the riders take more responsibility. It seems more realistic to say "we're not going to dope, and there's no pressure on the riders to dope, all we want is them to be the best they can be clean" than to say "we will always be clean".

But then it also doesn't condemn doping - "there's no pressure on the riders to dope" [but if they choose to do that themselves...]

I don't know. I'm going to keep the faith for now.

 

[Anonymous]

I have faith, but i think with his "try" and a few other vauge answers hes not helped himself..

 

[BikeCentric]

As I said if you dont have anything to go on, they maybe you should just STFU.

Yep, you're definitely Irish.

 

[maltiv]

Dave Brailsford video interview here
http://msn.tv2sporten.no/sykkel/knallharde-antidopingkrav-i-team-sky-3100042.html
discussing how they went about hiring riders, blood passport, doping etc..

the gist of it..
we asked to see the blood passport.. any rider not signed off we didnt sign them.
we found it useful looking at the profiles.. blah blah
he hopes the bio passport continues and gets more sophisticated
this team is going to "try" and race clean
there will be no tolerance, or certainly no systematic doping on the team
but there is always the chance you will get on rogue rider..

dave b.. not done yourself any favours there mate.. the "try" doesnt look good, and correcting yourself when you said tolerance, and changing it to no systematic doping looks like a backtrack...
the rogue rider defence is good though, sounds too much like yuo get caught, we hang you out to dry..
really not helped himself.. :/

He's just being realistic. It's not like he can guarantee that all riders on the team will race clean at all times. He can't be like "no rider on team sky will ever dope" cause that's not realistic. They will try their best to stop riders on the team from doping.

Really, stop looking too much into this stuff. If any teams does systematic doping, it's not like they're going to "hint" that they do so on their team presentation...

Nowadays I guess it's really impossible to say anything about doping at all without the clinic coming up with some crazy conspiracy theory anyway

 

[Anonymous]

He's just being realistic. It's not like he can guarantee that all riders on the team will race clean at all times. He can't be like "no rider on team sky will ever dope" cause that's not realistic. They will try their best to stop riders on the team from doping.

Really, stop looking too much into this stuff. If any teams does systematic doping, it's not like they're going to "hint" that they do so on their team presentation...

Nowadays I guess it's really impossible to say anything about doping at all without the clinic coming up with some crazy conspiracy theory anyway

i was looking into it from the point of view, as a sky fan, knowing that the press and the internet forums would jump on every word, i was analysing what he said and how it could be read. and from that point of view I think he did a very poor job of spelling out Sky's doping policy..

I think he could have done a much firmer, we will ride clean, if a rider dopes, hes out, there will be no doping tolerated.. End of.. I guess i would have liked him to be a little tougher.. It was all a bit too ambigious, and there are many who will pick up on those ambiguities..

 

[Anonymous]

I had to chuckle when I read this interview with Russ Downing:

http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest/438738/downing-adapts-to-embrace-new-challenge.html

"...and Rod's put me on the programme through the winter."

I'm sure it's just a turn of phrase, talking about his training, but I'd also like to think it was worded so as to be a bit of a wind-up to all those already claiming they're doping!

 

[Anonymous]

I had to chuckle when I read this interview with Russ Downing:

http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest/438738/downing-adapts-to-embrace-new-challenge.html

"...and Rod's put me on the programme through the winter."

I'm sure it's just a turn of phrase, talking about his training, but I'd also like to think it was worded so as to be a bit of a wind-up to all those already claiming they're doping!

Russ downing of course is signed up to bikepure..

That will be the Downing humour showing through, i think he got that line from Brad..

 

[ChrisE]

French teams don't have to shout about their anti doping programmes because all French riders undergo year round longitudinal testing conducted by the FFC.

Funnily enough, the year this was introduced was the year Armstrong decided he just had to move across the border to Girona...

Don't mean to split hairs but RR in post #72 said this testing began in 1999. LA moved to Girona I believe in 2001.