hiero2 said:
Actually, LS, a pretty good post. Sky did seem more than a little blind-sided by the lack of fan faith, and shouldn't have been.
However, to be honest, you miss the mark saying that Sky and Wiggo did not respond when they got caught out. Witness Wiggo's public acknowledgement of his outburst and acknowledgement of similarity, etc etc. I think, if I recall, that he even apologized. Also, while we are not part of all the conversations, it certainly seems to me that the Sky re-exam of the dopage palmares of their squad and staff is itself a public self-flagellation. We should be careful about chastising Brailsford et al for not being as publicly presentable and acceptable as Max Headroom. He is human, eh?
The re-examination of the dopage palmarès of the squad was damage limitation. If the Armstrong thing hadn't blown up big, Sean Yates would still be there in the team car today. Wiggins' apology for his outburst was similar: he acknowledged that he had made a PR faux-pas by insulting the audience and needed to limit the effect this had. The fact that the Armstrong case was big enough to make mainstream news, and guys like Michael Barry and Mick Rogers were named in the various documents meant some serious re-appraisal had to be made in order to preserve face. They quietly jettisoned Leinders into the night the day before the Reasoned Decision, and had it not been for Rasmussen and the Rabo thing blowing up you could bet they could have buried it pretty conveniently with everybody distracted by the LA fallout.
Brailsford is human, and he can make mistakes. But for a guy who pins his reputation on being seen as successful and clean, the following "mistakes" are pretty huge ones:
- hiring a doctor like Leinders. Brailsford wasn't there for the interview, but trusted the interviewer. Seemingly his trust was misplaced. Brailsford also advised that Leinders came highly recommended. He has not specified who highly recommended him, and if they are still at the team. Did Matty Hayman or Flecha raise any concerns? If not, then Hayman should go too. If so, then their concerns were ignored despite their experience of Leinders at Rabobank, and in which case Brailsford is either a fool or a liar. Leinders may never have done anything shady at Sky, but his presence, once a slight ringing of an alarm bell, is now a whopping great klaxon going off at all hours.
- hinging a plan to win the Tour on racing in dominant control fashion in the mountains, allowing riders to draw deliberate parallels to the template of Indurain's Banesto train and Armstrong's Postal train
and then being unprepared for fans considering this looked like doping. Wiggins' outburst may have been unplanned and a case of good, honest anger at being challenged, but surely the team weren't so self-absorbed that they wouldn't recognise that their clean, controlled racing would look to the layman like the same tactics as the dominant dope squads of years gone by, and give Wiggins a few trite soundbites to parrot in the press conferences and interviews to assuage people's doubts?
- Not formulating plans to deal with these accusations quickly to prevent doubts becoming full-scale disbelief (and often disgust); when two months after the Tour Brailsford has announced an investigation into Leinders' past, then been silent on the matter until forced by an interviewer, who he then runs away from, this does not look good. All the while questions are going unanswered and the requests for more information on all sides are going ignored. Say what you will about Vaughters, but he engages with the fans, even those who he knows hate him and don't believe a thing he says. He may not convince us, but at least he goes out of his way to at least
try to show he's running a clean team.
Team Sky's action plan for showing how clean they are appears to run as follows:
1) say we are clean
2) win lots of races in dominant fashion following template of 1990s doping teams
3) reiterate we are clean
You know who else said they were clean? Bernhard Kohl. Lance Armstrong. Leonardo Piepoli. Alejandro Valverde. Danilo di Luca. We didn't believe them - why should we believe Sky?
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