The Sky-Con-O-Meter. Predictions on how much more ridiculous they can get

[mastersracer]

Nah Navarro didn't do as much damage. He went fast but still a big group by the end.

Rogers was extra terrestrial.

more hyperbole - the average was 5.2 watts/kg, Brajkovic rode the climb well below his threshold, TJVG actually had to slow down after he gapped Evans, so besides the one acceleration to close that gap the rest was a tempo climb. Hardly an extra terrestrial effort.

 

[thehog]

more hyperbole - the average was 5.2 watts/kg, Brajkovic rode the climb well below his threshold, TJVG actually had to slow down after he gapped Evans, so besides the one acceleration to close that gap the rest was a tempo climb. Hardly an extra terrestrial effort.

Awesome dude!

 

[BroDeal]

more hyperbole - the average was 5.2 watts/kg, Brajkovic rode the climb well below his threshold, TJVG actually had to slow down after he gapped Evans, so besides the one acceleration to close that gap the rest was a tempo climb. Hardly an extra terrestrial effort.

Yeah. Everyone is out of shape except for team Sky. Those bone-idle ****ers. If only they knew how to work hard at something like Wiggins. ****s.

 

[mastersracer]

Yeah. Everyone is out of shape except for team Sky. Those bone-idle ****ers. If only they knew how to work hard at something like Wiggins. ****s.

Who said anything about the rest of the peloton being out of shape? Rogers was simply setting tempo on a non-final climb. Sorensen used to do this for Schleck, etc. The point is, Rogers' performance was not extra-terrestrial. It was workmanlike. The front group rode it at tempo except for Evans, who made a dig but clearly was not having a good day (TJVG dropped him).

 

[knewcleardaze]

I picked it because it's my age but after I typed it it seemed a bit low, but given how many I would guess are clean 29th sounds about right out of roughly 200 riders.

But anyone have any ideas what Sky is actually doing?

I'd venture to guess EPO and testosterone.

 

[sittingbison]

...Rogers was simply setting tempo on a non-final climb...Rogers' performance was not extra-terrestrial. It was workmanlike. The front group rode it at tempo...

OK, this is my first post.

MR I have to disagree with your opinion, Rogers clearly accelerated when Evans went, to the extent that the peloton was disintegrated and only contained (from memory) 8 riders - four from Sky plus Nibali and VDB. This has been clearly mentioned several times and yet you still refuse to include it in your observations.

The other issue you refuse to discuss is the continual presence of Porte, Rogers and Froome at the front driving the tempo on mountain stages (forget them having rest days on the flats), who manage to keep the tempo high enough that noted climbers cannot escape, and other noted climbers get dropped.

Even the climb yesterday was informative, amongst all the drama of the Sagan climb and the tacks was the interesting spectacle of Rogers screaming up that extremely steep last three kms to rejoin after he had missed the jump.

MR there is no point in claiming the wattages are below 6.8 bla bla bla, every figure is completely biased by 20 years of EPO. The facts are they are cracking every other team and individual rider in this years race, including last years winner, veulta winners and giro winners (some of whom have been juiced).

Open your eyes, smell the roses, how can you possibly be happy with this travesty starting from the ascent of La Planche des Belles Filles through the time trial and then La Toussuire.

 

[La Vie Claire]

I picked it because it's my age but after I typed it it seemed a bit low, but given how many I would guess are clean 29th sounds about right out of roughly 200 riders.

But anyone have any ideas what Sky is actually doing?

Whatever they're on, count on the entire peloton to be on it next year. And Sky could not have picked a better time to sauce up -- this being the year of Queen's Diamond Jubilee and London Olympics. Wigans and Brailsford to be knighted for sure! Great Britain hasn't been this great since the war over the Islas Malvinas.

 

[xcleigh]

Whatever they're on, count on the entire peloton to be on it next year. And Sky could not have picked a better time to sauce up -- this being the year of Queen's Diamond Jubilee and London Olympics. Wigans and Brailsford to be knighted for sure! Great Britain hasn't been this great since the war over the Islas Malvinas.

umm they're on nothing until proven otherwise. The facts are they are riding fast but that's not really evidence of anything other than you can see they're riding fast. From this point there's a lot of conclusions being jumped to based on previous fast riders doping. Not exactly something you could hold up as 'evidence' of doping for the entire Sky team.

 

[xcleigh]

Your argument depends on the Wigo=Hinault comparison?

That's beyond ridiculous even if we assume the whole peloton decided to become clean with Wiggins...

I think you'll find thehog made the comparison, not I. This was used as evidence that Sky had to be doping as the only evidence of a rider 'dominating' a tour and holding yellow for so long was (pre-EPO days) Bernard Hinault and his team. So yes thehog's comparison is weird in trying to prove Sky doped by comparing to a clean Bernard Hinault (or is there something thehog knows about The Badger too!!). I think comparing a clean Wiggins to a clean Hinault is a fair comparison in fact.Well spotted.

 

[Ferminal]

umm they're on nothing until proven otherwise. The facts are they are riding fast but that's not really evidence of anything other than you can see they're riding fast. From this point there's a lot of conclusions being jumped to based on previous fast riders doping. Not exactly something you could hold up as 'evidence' of doping for the entire Sky team.

Don't forget this one:

-Riding faster than a bunch of dopers behind them.

 

[Krebs cycle]

Again with the selective use of facts. RELATIVE to the peloton, Sky is on another level. This is not one guy, this is at least four. Cavendish is suddenly a climber. That's normal? Seriously???

After Wiggins and Froome, Rogers is the next best placed sky rider at 33min back. Porte is 51min back. RadioShack, NOT Team Sky, are leading the teams classification.

Only 9mins separates the top 10 riders, last year 10min also separated the top 10, yet all the way through the 70s and 80s, there is 20-30min separating the top 10. In 1979 the 10th placed rider was a whopping 44min back. In 1981 Hinault was 14min ahead of the 2nd place getter.

So either everyone needs to revise the idea that the 70s and 80s were a "clean" era and start claiming that Merckx, Hinault and Fignon were all doping in order to be so far ahead RELATIVE to the peloton, or accept the truth that Wiggins and Froome are no further ahead of the rest than Cadel was last year, or Shleck the yr before that, or Contador the year before that. You also need to accept the fact that the whole lot of them are climbing SLOWER than the EPO era bad boys or Contador and Shleck at their best.

 

[nuggs1]

People just can't except that things continuously improve. Usain Bolt came from nowhere and blew the opposition apart, You didn't see the athletics fraternity jump on the band wagon and claim he was doped up.

Cycling fans seem to want to maintain a self fulfilling prophecy about doping.

Only happy with an unfounded doping conspiracy.

 

[Cobblestones]

Add Wiggo doing leadouts for his sprinters to the list.

Didn´t Ullrich do that for Zabel once or twice in 1997?

 

[roundabout]

Huh, Bolt? You may want to read up on him. He may well be doping, but he also ran the 200 under 20 seconds at 18.

 

[nuggs1]

My point is Wiggins was world class on the track. Its not unrealistic that after 4 years of dedicated training to road racing he has been able to adapt his physical ability to a different discipline.

 

[Lanark]

After Wiggins and Froome, Rogers is the next best placed sky rider at 33min back. Porte is 51min back. RadioShack, NOT Team Sky, are leading the teams classification.

Of course they aren't, with two GC-men doing well in the team classification would require one domestique to never take a rest day. A terrible strategy. Altough US Postal was always the dominant team in the Armstrong years, they never won the team classification.

Only 9mins separates the top 10 riders, last year 10min also separated the top 10, yet all the way through the 70s and 80s, there is 20-30min separating the top 10. In 1979 the 10th placed rider was a whopping 44min back. In 1981 Hinault was 14min ahead of the 2nd place getter.

So either everyone needs to revise the idea that the 70s and 80s were a "clean" era and start claiming that Merckx, Hinault and Fignon were all doping in order to be so far ahead RELATIVE to the peloton, or accept the truth that Wiggins and Froome are no further ahead of the rest than Cadel was last year, or Shleck the yr before that, or Contador the year before that. You also need to accept the fact that the whole lot of them are climbing SLOWER than the EPO era bad boys or Contador and Shleck at their best.

Clean era? What are you talking about now? Merckx, Hinault and Fignon were all doping.

But comparisons to the 80's and before are completely useless. The Poggio was a formidable climb back then, now sprinters aren't even afraid of it. The difference between riders in all races has become much smaller compared to those days (which in part explains the conservative racing of today).

The problem isn't that somebody is ahead of the rest. Everyone is fine with accepting that there will always be somebody that's better than the rest. It's who is ahead that's the problem. Contador, Schleck and Evans all showed GC talent from a very early age (and are probably doping as well). Wiggins was a regular autobus-farer before his remarkable and virtually unprecedented jump in performance in 2009. Froome was categorised as barely employable by his DS. You have to go back to the likes of Santiago Perez and Aitor Gonzalez the last time we saw nobody's flying up the mountains and crushing the ITT's like that.

 

[roundabout]

My point is Wiggins was world class on the track. Its not unrealistic that after 4 years of dedicated training to road racing he has been able to adapt his physical ability to a different discipline.

How many pursuiters finished top 10 in a GT in the last 20 years?

Bradley McGee.

Berzin. (haha)

Who else?

 

[nuggs1]

how many spent 4 years adapting.

 

[roundabout]

4? Wiggins was a pursuiter in Beijing and a GC rider in the 2009 Tour.

 

[hrotha]

how many spent 4 years adapting.

Wiggins didn't spend 4 years adapting. He started adapting in late 2008 at the earliest. The rest of this road career he was just doing his thing, doing well in prologues, less well in longer ITTs, and being in the autobus.

But if it helps, McGee had been a road pro since 1998, with decent results since 2000. He was top 10 in the 2004 Giro.

 

[xcleigh]

how many spent 4 years adapting.

Totally agree. When Wiggins was in the Autobus he was a track rider. I doubt he even did any specific road training as such. He was focused on track and a contract on the road is a nice little earner for a trackie with the odd TT/prologue and road stage win if you can grab the opportunity. The team he's in then has the Kudos of a world champ on the team so it's mutually beneficial. I certainly wouldn't speed up a mountain if I hadn't done any training for it and nor did he. However once he switched focus away from the track to the road and with road specific training there's no great mystery that a world class trackie can make the switch to world class roadie. (I will now await the laughs of derision from the conspiracy theorists and armchair scientists/doping experts).

 

[Benotti69]

Totally agree. When Wiggins was in the Autobus he was a track rider. I doubt he even did any specific road training as such. He was focused on track and a contract on the road is a nice little earner for a trackie with the odd TT/prologue and road stage win if you can grab the opportunity. The team he's in then has the Kudos of a world champ on the team so it's mutually beneficial. I certainly wouldn't speed up a mountain if I hadn't done any training for it and nor did he. However once he switched focus away from the track to the road and with road specific training there's no great mystery that a world class trackie can make the switch to world class roadie. (I will now await the laughs of derision from the conspiracy theorists and armchair scientists/doping experts).

so now we await all the world champs and olympic gold trackies to come flooding into the road scene to make their fortunes winning grand tours, or is it only sky that has the magic formula to turn trackies into roadies?

(I will now await the laughs of derision from the track to road conspiracy theorists and clean armchair scientists experts)

 

[xcleigh]

so now we await all the world champs and olympic gold trackies to come flooding into the road scene to make their fortunes winning grand tours, or is it only sky that has the magic formula to turn trackies into roadies?

(I will now await the laughs of derision from the track to road conspiracy theorists and clean armchair scientists experts)

yup if they have the necessary dedication and motivation to do so, why not? Or mountain bikers (Cadel Evans- Peter Sagan etc...), cyclo cross riders (Lars Boom) Robbie McEwen (junior BMX champ) etc..There's always cross over between the disciplines, some are a success some aren't which is quite normal. Some will be successful at GC some as sprinters some as great domestiques some as classics riders. I guess if Wiggins had just won a stage that would be fine as that's his 'level' and the insinuations at doping wouldn't have surfaced?

 

[Benotti69]

yup if they have the necessary dedication and motivation to do so, why not? Or mountain bikers (Cadel Evans- Peter Sagan etc...), cyclo cross riders (Lars Boom) Robbie McEwen (junior BMX champ) etc..There's always cross over between the disciplines, some are a success some aren't which is quite normal. Some will be successful at GC some as sprinters some as great domestiques some as classics riders. I guess if Wiggins had just won a stage that would be fine as that's his 'level' and the insinuations at doping wouldn't have surfaced?

That Wiggins would ride road as a nice little earner happily sitting in the grupetto does not sound like someone with the drive to become a GT winner!

Eddie Merckx who has been compared as someone who rode the track as well as the road would i am sure not just amble around at the back on the track.

Evans came from mountain biking and put his all into road as i am sure Wiggins did, but Wiggins found himself in the grupetto. That he was ambling along thinking this is easy money makes a mockery of the sport and shows little respect for Cofidis never mind the mindset of Wiggins.

GTs are not nice little earners for track cyclists that is for sure.

 

[Krebs cycle]

Clean era? What are you talking about now? Merckx, Hinault and Fignon were all doping.

But comparisons to the 80's and before are completely useless. The Poggio was a formidable climb back then, now sprinters aren't even afraid of it. The difference between riders in all races has become much smaller compared to those days (which in part explains the conservative racing of today).

Yes, I agree 100%. That is why I disagree with others who do use race results from the 70s and 80s as some sort of standard measure of "clean" performance. I don't believe you can make those comparisons.