Will he ever get popped?

[Red Rick]

Bodies will drop before this gets out.

 

[Mayomaniac]

Bodies will drop before this gets out.

Or an Uci president being a sore looser after loosing an election and leaking everything.

 

[Squire]

I'm convinced it has to end at some point

My guess is that nothing major will happen, there will just be Team Sky style information drips here and there over the coming decade or so until it's basically proven that something was going on, but nothing significant will come of it in terms of official acknowledgement.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Unless something radically shifts in the way the wind blows, the only way it happens other than a Quintana/Froome type minor thing is going to be if the police get involved, there's a Balco type thing, or an AFLD 2008 scenario, where the guys out there have got something which is either undetectable as yet, or is not yet banned (but once they figure out what it is it will be), similar to the early days of EPO where the 50% test was all they had to try to keep a lid on it.

A lot of the progress was made during times where it was politically expedient to clean the sport up; the police involvement with Festina and so on harmed the sport in the late 90s, and the post-Armstrong era busts like Puerto and then Landis and Rasmussen in successive years at the Tour hurt the bottom line, so the sport had to show penance and efforts to clean up to win back trust of the sponsors, TV companies and fanbase. At the moment, we haven't had those busts in years and there are no Sellas, Sinkewitzes, Kohls or Freis telling us what they did and how, so it's easy to turn a blind eye. If sponsors and TV companies start baulking at what they're seeing, things may change but until then, anti-doping is about as threatening as Argentina in the World Cup final.

 

[Squire]

Unless something radically shifts in the way the wind blows, the only way it happens other than a Quintana/Froome type minor thing is going to be if the police get involved, there's a Balco type thing, or an AFLD 2008 scenario, where the guys out there have got something which is either undetectable as yet, or is not yet banned (but once they figure out what it is it will be), similar to the early days of EPO where the 50% test was all they had to try to keep a lid on it.

A lot of the progress was made during times where it was politically expedient to clean the sport up; the police involvement with Festina and so on harmed the sport in the late 90s, and the post-Armstrong era busts like Puerto and then Landis and Rasmussen in successive years at the Tour hurt the bottom line, so the sport had to show penance and efforts to clean up to win back trust of the sponsors, TV companies and fanbase. At the moment, we haven't had those busts in years and there are no Sellas, Sinkewitzes, Kohls or Freis telling us what they did and how, so it's easy to turn a blind eye. If sponsors and TV companies start baulking at what they're seeing, things may change but until then, anti-doping is about as threatening as Argentina in the World Cup final.

Another shift that has happened, I think, is that because of social media, the dependency relationship between actual media and riders/teams has done a 180 turn. Which isn't really inviting cycling media to look at things with a particularly critical eye. I also think the public in general care less about sport being a beacon of morality now compared to previous times.

 

[canina82]

I'm convinced it has to end at some point

Why are you creating a new thread?

 

[canina82]

Too big to fail.

100% this. It happened with Usain Bolt for example.

 

[Berniece]

Why are you creating a new thread?

What’s the problem with it? It’s a different sub-subject about Pogacar. Happens quite often that we discuss specific topics of a rider separately

 

[Black Betsy]

The more people he abuses and pisses off, the greater the chance he'll get his comeuppance. Lance would have been fine if he wasn't such a bag to everyone and/or didn't try a comeback. But Pogi is only mean to a couple rivals.

How many rivals did Froome pissed off? I'm thinking of The Mechanic, Ulissi, maybe Gregory Henderson?

 

[zarathustra]

He will never get caught. Years after retiring from his career, he will publish a book titled: If I did it: Confessions of the cheater.

 

[Red Rick]

things may change but until then, anti-doping is about as threatening as Argentina in the World Cup final.

oof

 

[Red Rick]

I think currently the best parallel is probably just Usain Bolt, with the exception that his competitors all got busted cause reasons.

 

[Krzysztof_O]

I think currently the best parallel is probably just Usain Bolt, with the exception that his competitors all got busted cause reasons.

Usain was winning Olympics on McNuggets.
Pogi is winning Tours on porridge.
Nothing will happen until they ban those products.

 

[awavey]

I think the interesting thing will be what happens when del Toro or Seixas start to beat him, will he graciously exit the stage and retire knowing he was the best of his era, or will he attempt to show he's still the boss of the new kids on the block...youd have to say Pog of the last few years would have been the former, the way Pog has been riding this year its definitely the latter.

and thats when mistakes happen, and when suddenly you might find you get popped.

lots of the people cited who we assume got away with it, we of course have no evidence they did, ultimately left quietly not trying to prove they were still the greatest.

Armstrong of course could have done the same, but chose to come back because he still thought he could prove he was the best and better than the latest crop of riders. and that absolutely created the snowball effect in the process to take him down.

 

[ashhutch1997]

Too big to fail.

No cyclist will be anywhere near as big as Lance Armstrong, and he fell....

 

[ashhutch1997]

It'll be interesting to the TDF viewing figures after stage 6, if people stop watching, then me might get caught, or most likely a slap on the wrist.

 

[awavey]

It'll be interesting to the TDF viewing figures after stage 6, if people stop watching, then me might get caught, or most likely a slap on the wrist.

Would Seixas have boosted them, in France at least, so the outcome ends up revenue neutral as they say ?

 

[Rob5091]

Olympics? They're still catching athletes from London...for a guy with a near pathological need to win skipping last Olympics seemed odd. Does cycling even do any retrospective testing? Or is agsinst everyone's human rights too?

The ITA have a nice new vault to store samples for up to 10 years. USADA wont let the ITA do the testing at the 2028 Olympics, so Pogi should be ok!

 

[Bronstein]

No cyclist will be anywhere near as big as Lance Armstrong, and he fell....

Too big to fail from the UCI's perspective. It took the FBI and a large number of witnesses testifying under oath to force Armstrong's confession.

 

[yaco]

The ITA have a nice new vault to store samples for up to 10 years. USADA wont let the ITA do the testing at the 2028 Olympics, so Pogi should be ok!

Of course USADA won't let the ITA do the testing because they have been protecting USA athletes for at least 40 years. USADA is a joke of an organisation.

 

[awavey]

Best audience peak since start of the race for the final stage apparently, FranceTV reported 8.3million, so guess that kicks that can down the road

 

[Rob5091]

Best audience peak since start of the race for the final stage apparently, FranceTV reported 8.3million, so guess that kicks that can down the road

The ASO will be rubbing their hands together in glee.Talking of which I see a new deal was signed for up to 2030.

 

[pastronef]

we thought about a "scare" for about 48 hours when the night testing news came out. nah, no problem. look at the Montmartre attack. he will never ever get popped.

 

[Epicycle2]

If Lance had given Floyd a job he might be in the midst of a Texas gubernatorial run right now.

I think the fact that almost no riders are getting busted says a lot about this era. The protection Lance got was from the carnage of the rest of the peloton getting busted and banned. Nowadays it seems like there's blanket protection, either through doping methods that evade controls or with some modern equivalent of sending samples down the drain instead of to analysis.

 

[topcat]

Yes, he will get popped when the results come back from the ITA (things that go bump in the night) testing.