Cycling

[bennydorano]

So is Thomas a doper now too? Thought it was just Froome? Sorry, you gave Porte a touch too. Is it just the most talented ones, who get paid the most money, the cosseted protected riders, that dope or is it systemic effecting Roche, Diegnan et al? This of course would also implicate Sir Dave Brailsford & cast doubt on the UK track cycling success of the past decade as well. So is a grand scale conspiracy or what?

Thomas can climb as well as any super domestique, that's all he done today,he's a hugely talented strong man &  is undoubtedly capable of a lot more - if he stopped (or had stopped) trying to be a multi-discpline superman.

[gerry]

i suppose dan is a doper too the way he closed the gap yesterday.  any chance we can enjoy the tour for what it is.  these sky dope questions have be going on for years with still no proof.  i expect if sky where a  french team leading the tour they would be less questions

[muppet]

So is Thomas a doper now too? Thought it was just Froome? Sorry, you gave Porte a touch too. Is it just the most talented ones, who get paid the most money, the cosseted protected riders, that dope or is it systemic effecting Roche, Diegnan et al? This of course would also implicate Sir Dave Brailsford & cast doubt on the UK track cycling success of the past decade as well. So is a grand scale conspiracy or what?

Thomas can climb as well as any super domestique, that's all he done today,he's a hugely talented strong man &  is undoubtedly capable of a lot more - if he stopped (or had stopped) trying to be a multi-discpline superman.

Cillian Kelly ‏@irishpeloton  1h1 hour ago
Before this week Thomas had never finished in the same group as Froome on any mountain stage. 15 mountain stages in six different races

[gerry]

ur point is

[muppet]

I suppose it is his breakthrough year.

At 29.

[Dinny Breen]

http://www.cyclingnews.com/http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/ucis-suspicious-list-leaked-from-2010-tour-de-france

UCI's suspicious list leaked from 2010 Tour de France

6 Linus Gerdemann, Christian Knees, Egoi Martínez, Alessandro Petacchi, Francesco Reda, Mauro Santambrogio, Geraint Thomas


From six to ten, the circumstantial evidence of possible doping was "overwhelming". According to the paper, some of the riders located to the top of list have already been singled out by the biological passport and evaluated by the panel of nine experts, even if no procedure was opened. "Still, some of the files' commentaries are damning. Recurrent abnormal profiles, enormous fluctuations, identification of the used doping product and means of administration..." wrote L'Equipe's anti-doping expert journalist Damien Ressiot.

Appreciate most of just want to enjoy the racing but after Lance Armstrong I have zero respect for that sport.

They should call it Formula 1 Cycling and at least then we know it's about drugs, mechanics and athletic ability.

[gerry]

no bother dinny so dont watch it, or read this tread

[Dinny Breen]

no bother dinny so dont watch it, our read this tread

Yea probably good advice. Enjoy!

[bennydorano]

So is Thomas a doper now too? Thought it was just Froome? Sorry, you gave Porte a touch too. Is it just the most talented ones, who get paid the most money, the cosseted protected riders, that dope or is it systemic effecting Roche, Diegnan et al? This of course would also implicate Sir Dave Brailsford & cast doubt on the UK track cycling success of the past decade as well. So is a grand scale conspiracy or what?

Thomas can climb as well as any super domestique, that's all he done today,he's a hugely talented strong man &  is undoubtedly capable of a lot more - if he stopped (or had stopped) trying to be a multi-discpline superman.

Cillian Kelly ‏@irishpeloton  1h1 hour ago
Before this week Thomas had never finished in the same group as Froome on any mountain stage. 15 mountain stages in six different races

Hmmmmm... His job as a Super Dom is to do the donkey work, bring him so far and then let Froome work his magic. It was clear in today's stage that Thomas & Porte swapped roles so Thomas was the last man, Porte normally is and would therefore normally be the man nearest to Froome. You'd think Thomas was swanning up the climb like Pantani to read some of this stuff, he was in a group of 7 or 8 hanging like a snotter.

Twitter's great for firing out innuendo laden guff

[bennydorano]

Good balanced article

Commentary: On Froome and not knowing
By John BradleyPublished 51 mins ago
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image: http://cdn.velonews.competitor.com/files/2015/07/20155082-275236-320x213.jpg

Cycling: 102nd Tour de France / Stage 11
It's not easy being yellow. Chris Froome (Sky) faces persistent questions about his remarkable performances. Photo: Tim De Waele | TDWsport.com
We have two interns at VeloNews. They're both 21. They love cycling. They love it with the enthusiasm of youth. They love cycling despite having discovered it while drugs were decimating the sport. They were 12 years old when Floyd Landis happened. Watching cycling without suspicion is as foreign to them as going through airport security without removing shoes. They never knew life before the inflection point.

Yet they think cycling is the best sport in the world. When I ask one of them how he reconciles that sentiment with what he knows about doping, he says he thinks the peloton is cleaner now but that he can't fully embrace a lot of winning performances. "I wonder about Froome," he says. "When he wins like he did, it seems suspicious."

Our interns might never get to celebrate Tour wins with the unchecked enthusiasm I enjoyed when LeMond pipped Fignon in '89. But they still love the sport.

No performance in pro cycling happens in isolation. Time is a river, and the waters of 1998, Lance Armstrong, 2006, pot belge, Puerto, and so on, swirl around every current rider. That makes the skepticism about Chris Froome (Sky) understandable. Or, rather, it makes skepticism understandable. Right now the doubt is directed at Froome less because his performances have truly been otherworldly than because we suspect anyone in yellow.


The only way to avoid suspicion is not to win. Nibali faced repeated questions about doping during last year's Tour and again in the offseason, when his Astana team continued to be, well, Team Astana. Froome fought off accusations in 2013. Bradley Wiggins had to respond to questions about his Tour win and Team Sky's dominance in 2012. (His answers were short, and most of the words he used contained only four letters.)

Was Wiggins clean? Was Cadel Evans? Do we suspect Froome, or the yellow jersey? Perhaps if he looked more graceful on a bike, we'd be more accepting. Maybe if he spoke as affably as Jens Voigt, we'd cheer for him more. He might have a bigger fan base if his arms didn't look like they should be blowing in the wind in front of a used car dealership. But the truth is he's not a fan favorite, and he's winning in a sport that has become emblematic of doping. That's tough to overcome.

The attitude of our sporting era is reflexive doubt. We scoff. We shrug. We rationalize the results until they fit with the way we see things. Wins by riders we've decided to believe in are evidence that people can race clean. Victories by anyone else are proof that the sport is still filthy.

But we don't know.

For a while, cyclists were doping in ways that the tests could catch. Reasoned Decision investigators were able to go back through the years and prove what many thought to be true. Year after year, race after race, the proof was strong enough to remove doubt.

We don't have that drumbeat of hard evidence now. The testers aren't catching as many riders. We can take that as an indication that the sport is cleaner, or we can take it as a sign that the cheaters have gotten smarter.

It's both, and proof of neither. We don't know.

Which performances can we believe and which ones should we dismiss? We don't know. Was Froome pumping enhanced blood on Tuesday or was it just that, as David Brailsford pointed out, his rivals had a bad day? We don't know. Certainly Froome's ride wasn't something out of the ordinary for him. He's been competitive in stage races at every level since turning pro. If anyone's rides seemed extraordinary on Tuesday, they were Ritchie Porte's (Sky) and Alejandro Valverde's (Movistar). Those guys were driving the pace up most of the climb and still finished well.

Calm down. I'm not insinuating that Porte has started doping or that Valverde hasn't stopped. We don't know. We don't know about the guy who grabbed the prime at your Tuesday night crit, the way we don't know about anyone right up until they test positive or someone finds conclusive evidence. I'm just saying that the accusations leveled at Froome might have less to do with his actual ride than with who he is and what he's wearing.

I don't think his win in La Pierre-Saint-Martin was proof that he's doping, nor even strong evidence of the fact. At 59 seconds over Porte in second place and 1:04 over Nairo Quintana in third, it wasn't even all that impressive by Tour standards, at least relative to the field. In 1986, Greg LeMond won stage 13 in the Pyrennes by over a minute. Five days later, he and Bernard Hinault rolled across the finish atop l'Alpe d'Huez together more than five minutes ahead of the third-placed rider.

In 1986, rides like that inspired. In 2015, far lesser rides inspire letters like the one we received minutes after Froome had crossed the finish line Tuesday. It began, "One reason there is a proliferation of doping in cycling is because VeloNews and the rest of the media do not call out the obvious dopers," and ended, "I'm done watching this tour and have loss [sic] respect for the writers at VeloNews."

We call them out plenty. (Someday maybe I'll share some of the letters we get begging us to stop with all the doping stories.) Few people love cycling as much as the writers at VeloNews, and few are as aware of its problems. But whether you define "obvious" in journalistic, WADA, or legal terms, Froome's not an obvious doper. And we don't know.

We'll continue to call out the cheats. We're reporters first. We'll follow any smoke to see if there's fire. In 2006, after Landis made a mockery of the Tour, I wrote a column for Outside magazine in which I said I couldn't believe in pro cycling anymore. (Among the negative responses I got was one from a former pro whose career has since ended in doping ignominy.)

In that column, I wrote, "I refuse to let the cheats take away what has been the defining athletic pursuit of my life. Look, I used to love Woody Allen films, then he ran off with his lover's daughter, and now Manhattan creeps me out. But I still go to the movies. So if the pros want to pack their blood, slap hormone patches on their nethers, and trot out lawyer-vetted statements about how they've never tested positive for anything, fine. I'll be on my bike."

I'm in a much better place now. The drug scandals never robbed me of the joy of riding. And the efforts to clean up the sport — flawed but earnest — have restored enough of my trust that I'm comfortable being the editor in chief of a cycling publication. That doesn't mean I think everyone is riding clean. I'm not naïve. But I do think cycling wants to be clean and is doing more than any other sport to get there.

Mostly, though, I've accepted not knowing. As Froome has repeatedly said, you can't prove a negative. When someone fails a test, we know. Otherwise, it's down to faith. If Froome is in fact riding clean, he is the only person in the world who can ever know that for a fact. The rest of us, even those closest to him, can only believe.

Or not. It's our choice whether or not to live with the ambiguity. But we dont know.

[stew]

I used to love the tour but this year I find myself unable to watch it bar the highlights, not because of the riders but because the whole sport is immersed in a thick cloud of suspicion and negativity, and to me the winner of the tour will undoubtedly be looked at as a doper, as will 2nd and 3rd in all likelihood!

I dont know what the answer but Froome having a very good day in the saddle does not a doper make.

[bennydorano]

Great win for Steve Cummings & MTN. Teejay looks to be on the slide a bit, he'll do well to hold onto third (and bring my 40/1 place home).

Don't think this Tour is over yet, next week looks brutal, one off day by Froome and it's game on. Quintana & Valverde look capable of causing bother to him.

[Tony Baloney]

Spike? Most people would refer to it as his breakthrough year! You are well aware of the Bilharza episode, you choose not to believe it? The motorbike episode in the Giro you continually refer to also has an innocent explanation you presumably are aware of yet choose not to believe? Both of us have access to the same info yet draw differing conclusions. I still get a vibe from posters who think he's a doper that those who hold a different opinion are fucktards, yet in reality there is zero evidence of anything untoward.

I see Froome is to subject himself to physiological testing to try & placate the doubters.

Really? I would expect to see a natural progression upwards not one where he transformed himself from being a domestique without a team, to a Grand Tour champion and one of the best clean cyclists of all time (if you take your viewpoint). It wasn't a breakthrough it was a complete transformation.

Your right Benny, no hard evidence just circumstantial evidence. Its the complete lack of transparency by sky that grates with me the most. If they didn't try and portray themself as whiter than white then maybe they wouldn't annoy me as much.  They have led a concerted PR campaign with the might of the establishment and Murdoch media empire behind them. Personally I don't buy it at all. Personally I also don't think your a fucktard (your words) either, your entitled to your opinion but I get the impression that it would take Froome to get busted before you'd stop believing. I'm not trying to convince anyone to agree with me but I have my own opinions and its based on nothing more than the cumulation of evidence and the opinions of those who are detached from the gravy train, are proper investigative journalists and who know the sport.

FWIW David Walsh believes Froome is clean.

[gerry]

Looks like Sam could won a prize if he continues, although it's not one he would want.  It can't be easy doing your first tour and feeling poorly.

[heffo]

Anyone doing the Meath Heritage cycle this weekend?