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Coe, Cookson and Reede

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 Chris the Tall 19 Aug 2015
I wonder how the British press would react if there were Russians in charge of the UCI, IAAF and WADA, at a time when their athletes were at the centre of doping suspicions ?

Or alternatively, are Brits still regarded as the ones most likely to play by the rules, and the most trustworthy to enforce them ? And if so, will we see David Beckham going for FIFA president and Princess Anne for the IOC !
 balmybaldwin 19 Aug 2015
In reply to Chris the Tall:

Are you saying there are Brits at the centre of doping suspicions at the moment then?

I know the stuff about Froome, that seems to be without evidence other than he's beating everyone else (with no accusations thrown at people he is marginally beating (Quintana, Valverde, Contador) despite 2 of those being convicted dopers.

I thought the athletics scandal was non-british athletes?
In reply to balmybaldwin:

I'm looking at it from a Russian (or Chinese, or Turkish, or French) perspective.

The athlete under suspicion is Farah. Actually it's his coach, but such technicalities are easily forgotten. And I agree that the only evidence aginst Froome is based on performance (and a dodgy but legal TUE last year).

Both have missed a couple of tests - but the system allows that because of the difficulties of sticking to a schedule.

But put on a tin-foil hat and you've got a conspiracy to give favourable treatment, protect the British heros and further the glory of the empire and motherland !!!
cb294 19 Aug 2015
In reply to Chris the Tall:


> .... And I agree that the only evidence aginst Froome is based on performance (and a dodgy but legal TUE last year)....


And being involved in a team that employs or maintains contact to people convicted of doping in a cycling context. Also, releasing power readings that are not explaining anything (no way they have a 6% uncertainty due to oval gear rings). Finally, simply by looking at the guy and his teammates. Never been so clear cut what they are doing (unfortunately not how) since someone forgot to delete the shoe sizes from a list of Carl Lewis´ sponsored equiment!

CB
1
In reply to cb294:

> And being involved in a team that employs or maintains contact to people convicted of doping in a cycling context.

Hilarious ! No other team does as much as Sky to avoid employing with links to doping, but that just gives people a stick to beat them with should someone slip through the net.

> Finally, simply by looking at the guy and his teammates. Never been so clear cut what they are doing (unfortunately not how) since someone forgot to delete the shoe sizes from a list of Carl Lewis´ sponsored equiment!

Clear cut ? Never has a team been under more scrutiny, with so many people desperate for evidence that they are cheating. And yet nothing has been found - no disgruntled riders/doctors/soigneurs/DSs who've been let go under a cloud (and there's been enough) have come forward to spill the beans.

Which is not to say that we can be sure they are clean, but merely that there is no evidence to the contrary, other than performance. And if you think that winning a race is proof of cheating, then there's no point in following the sport.
cb294 19 Aug 2015
In reply to Chris the Tall:

> Hilarious ! No other team does as much as Sky to avoid employing with links to doping, but that just gives people a stick to beat them with should someone slip through the net.


This is exactly the Sky worship I find so ridiculous. Quite the contrary, they went through some effort to whitewash the vita of some of their employees.

I posted the following on a recent thread, and am too lazy to rephrase, so apologies for copy/pasting:

- At the time of Wiggins´ first tour victory they still employed Dr. Geert Leinders, who is now banned for doping activities before his time with Sky. Unlikely he forgot everthing he knew when switching employers, so what is the exact, other expertise he had been hired for?

- Same with Servais Knaven, convicted by a French court in 2001 as a doper. Why did Sky go through the farce of having these court documents reexamined by some shady, ill defined "expert gremium" that absolved Knaven from the same accusations? Why him, what does he know/do?

- Why have Peter Verbeken (ex US postal) as a physio? According to Brailsford, Verbeken never knew anything about doping in the Armstrong years, which is either a lie or proves blatant incompetence.

- Why do the Sky riders look as if they were anorexic, without apparently losing either stamina or power? As one German newspaper put it, the other teams also don´t serve pork knuckles and dumplings for breakfast, so what is the supposed difference in diet that gives the Sky riders their power / weight advantage?

Years ago riders were experimenting with drugs like AICAR and GW 1516. Both drugs are ridiculously dangerous, especially the latter, and IIRC banned since 2008/9. My suspicion would rather be that they found a novel way to adjust bodyweight that will probably not even be banned yet.

- And finally, two missed doping tests with excuses that very much sound like the dog ate my homework....

Call me cynical but the entire testing charade proves nothing at all. How often was Armstrong tested negative, never mind the disappeared positive tests?

CB
 Mike Highbury 19 Aug 2015
In reply to Chris the Tall: Which nations votes was Coe seeking when he made his statement about a declaration of war?


In reply to cb294:

Not a sky worshipper, but when I hear Dave Brailsford, I find he makes a lot of sense

Sky tried to avoid hiring from within cycling at first, which was part of the reason why their first season was such an ignominous disaster. It was also a tragic one, with the death of a spanish soigneur from a bacterial infection during the vuelta. So they realised there was a need for the appropriate expertise. Leinders was hired in the aftermath of that and, at the time, his reputation was unsullied. Maybe more diligence was required, but once hired you can't just sack someone without cause.

Be honest, how many people who were involved in road cycling in the 90s and 00s won't have worked on a team where some doping was taking place. But whilst Sky get murdered over Leinders, hardly an eyebrow is raised when Nibbles employs Pantani's doctor. Sean Yates leaves Sky under a cloud of suspicion, but goes straight to Tinkoff.

Trying to make an issue out of Knaven and the physio is daft when every other team is packed to the rafters with doping convictions or dodgy connections.

As for the "testing proves nothing cos Armstrong never tested positive argument" - things have changed. Look at Caruso - a retest from 3 years ago. Yes they might be micro-dosing or using undetectable drugs, but evidence that this is possible is not evidence that Sky are doing it.

cb294 19 Aug 2015
In reply to Chris the Tall:

I don´t believe the other teams are clean either, Astana being the most blatant. The majority of TdF GC riders will be onto something, illegal or not (yet), and have been since the first tour.

However, you can´t in all fairness claim that Sky is avoiding hiring people with a doping history, and then plead that everyone else is doing it too when I list some people with a doping history who do or did work for them. This looks like naive fandom to me. Did you not find the massive spin to discount the findings of the French court concerning Knaven a bit embarrassing?

Same with the power data. Are you really willing to believe that they do not know the actual values due to the oval chain rings? Fair enough if they are no willing to share these values, but using this "uncertainty" to claim that Froome has power values generally accepted to be achievable unmasks this as a cheap PR exercise. Again, taking this claim at face value requires some fan blindness.

I agree that there is no proof that any current Sky riders are doing anything actually illegal. However, it appears obvious that the team have hit on some scheme that allows them to improve their power to weight ratio (at least for their GC riders) that other teams have not yet managed. Experience, e.g. from Armstrong coming back from his cancer treatment lighter but stronger, indicates that this is not diet and training alone.

As for your suggestion that all winners are doped:

http://www.der-postillon.com/2013/06/gesamtsieger-von-tour-de-france-2013.h...

(Sorry German only, but it is a Swiss satirical paper claiming that UCI had decided that any Tdf winner is automatically banned for life, with shorter penalties for stage wins and podium placements, just to save the effort....)

CB
 Timmd 19 Aug 2015
In reply to cb294:
> Same with the power data. Are you really willing to believe that they do not know the actual values due to the oval chain rings? Fair enough if they are no willing to share these values, but using this "uncertainty" to claim that Froome has power values generally accepted to be achievable unmasks this as a cheap PR exercise.

I hardly follow the Tour at all, and don't really mind who wins, but why does any of the above unmask it as a cheap PR exercise?

Why should it? Is what I'm wondering.
Post edited at 16:57
 Stig 19 Aug 2015
In reply to Timmd:

CB is an idiot - ignore him.

Why would anyone care what the Russians think? They already think the world is out to get them. Put your house in order first...
 balmybaldwin 19 Aug 2015
In reply to cb294:



> Same with the power data. Are you really willing to believe that they do not know the actual values due to the oval chain rings? Fair enough if they are no willing to share these values, but using this "uncertainty" to claim that Froome has power values generally accepted to be achievable unmasks this as a cheap PR exercise. Again, taking this claim at face value requires some fan blindness.

It is a well known fact that all measuring devices have a degree of uncertainty in them, sometimes this is due to the method of measurement, sometimes this is to do with the accuracy of the device used to measure, and sometimes simply measuring something changes the value. If you saw the press conference, you will know they published both the raw reading, and the reading they adjusted by 6% - both were within what is considered normal.

If you would care to look at the manufacture's specifications for any cycling power meter, you will see that they give an accuracy estimate or tolerance that the unit is expected to work within. You will also note that they are designed to work with standard drivetrains, not asymmetric rings. therefore further extrapolation is required to get to a figure of the true output. - You may ask what's the point of the measurement if they are not accurate - the point is they are consistently inaccurate, and can then be used very effectively to measure gains or losses in performance over time.
In reply to cb294:

> However, you can´t in all fairness claim that Sky is avoiding hiring people with a doping history, and then plead that everyone else is doing it too when I list some people with a doping history who do or did work for them. This looks like naive fandom to me. Did you not find the massive spin to discount the findings of the French court concerning Knaven a bit embarrassing?

My understanding is that Team Sky have never knowingly hired someone with a doping history. They have however hired people who have later emerged to have have such history (Leinders, Rogers, De Jongh, Yates) and with more diligence might not have hired them in the first place. I seem to remember hearing that the hiring of Leinders, undoubtedly their biggest mistake, was linked to sense of panic that followed the death of Txema Gonzalez.

I've no idea whether Knaven doped or not, but it seems he passed the rigorous grilling by Steve Peters in 2012, whereas a number of others did not. Do you think the evidence against him is strong enough to stand up in an employment tribunal ?

My point is that it is a bit harsh to take Sky to task for not quite meeting their standards when they are the only ones trying to reach what may be an impossible standard.

Can't be bothered to argue about the power data - too many variables involved to try and prove anything.
 malk 19 Aug 2015
In reply to Chris the Tall:

"I've known Alberto [Salazar] 35 years, since 1980. He's a good friend of mine"
nuff said..
 wbo 19 Aug 2015
In reply to malk:
What does that mean? Or just conspiracy fairy stories.

I've heard rumours about Salazar for 20+ years, but I also know someone who's known Salazar 35 years , certainly isn't a friend but does say that Salazar always trained damn hard so maybe he's clean, maybe he isn't.

If I was a Russian athlete or coach I'd be feeling rather uncomfortable rather than worrying about conspiracy theories
cb294 20 Aug 2015
In reply to Stig:

And the prize for the most intellectual contribution on this thread goes to Stig.

Anyway, some user names are like tattooing "idiot" on one´s forehead, so no further comment needed.

CB

cb294 20 Aug 2015
In reply to balmybaldwin and Timmd:

In any elite sport, the differences between the top competitors are much less than 5-6%, regardless what parameter you measure. Distancing your competitors on a mountain stage will require a difference in power output of maybe 1%, so this is the range in which you will have to measure, and, importantly, in absolute not relative numbers.

Are you seriously telling me that a team as professional as Sky (or any of the other tour participants) do not calibrate for the oval drive trains? Of course they know, but are not willing to release the numbers to the other teams (again, this would be irrelevant if the numbers were relative).

Fair enough, but if you include such a fudge factor you can maybe argue that a given athlete was repeatedly able to produce a given power output, but you cannot conclude that in absolute terms this performance was in the physiological range. It is this extrapolation, which is not scientifically justified, which turns the whole thing into a PR exercise.

CB
cb294 20 Aug 2015
In reply to Chris the Tall:

The problem is not that Sky hired people with a doping background (as you correctly said above, it would be hard to find someone who was inside cycling in the 90s who would not be in some way involved in doping). However, the way Sky are put on a pedestal as a team that has a policy to avoid any doping connections, when clearly they don´t (and quite likely can´t) makes we want to throw up.

Why give Knaven a "grilling" at all, except as a PR exercise? He was convicted as doper by a French court of law in 2001, which is some time ago. I would have preferred Sky to say that they hired him anyway because he is a highly experienced cyclist and has changed his mind on doping matters, rather than organize some daytime TV pseudo trial to whitewash his history.

I don´t mind people being given a second chance, but they should be up front about what they did.

CB
In reply to cb294:

> He was convicted as doper by a French court of law in 2001, which is some time ago.

Not entirely true, and I suggest you you'll learn more by reading inner ring than the daily mail

http://inrng.com/2015/03/servais-knavens-sky-zero-tolerance/

Likewise with power meters - the consensus amongst cycling journos is that they are great for riding at an even and therefore efficient level in a race, far less use use for comparisons between riders due to numerous factors (including, but not just, oval rings). The tabloids may believe you can prove doping by the output, but thats tabloids for you.
Moorside Mo 20 Aug 2015
In reply to cb294:

> The problem is not that Sky hired people with a doping background (as you correctly said above, it would be hard to find someone who was inside cycling in the 90s who would not be in some way involved in doping). However, the way Sky are put on a pedestal as a team that has a policy to avoid any doping connections, when clearly they don´t (and quite likely can´t) makes we want to throw up.

This paragraph and particularly the last line, suggest the problem here isn't really Sky, it is you and your seemingly violent reaction to the simple premise of trying to maintain a higher standard of probity in a sport with a very murky past.
cb294 20 Aug 2015
In reply to Moorside Mo and Chris the Tall:

Aarrgghh, typed a long reply only for it to disappear.

First off, I don´t believe that I have been arguing at tabloid level, but then again I have called some of you Sky worshippers, so fair enough. Maybe some reasonable debate can be had somewhere in between.

I agree that Sky (or any other pro cycling team for that matter) is not per se the problem. I don´t even care if they hire staff with a doping background, or even if some of their riders (or GC riders of other teams) are doping. Indeed, I assume that most GC riders are on something or other, legal or not, maybe just more intelligently than in the 90s. We don´t want to go back to the situation of 1996, when riders spent the night before the mountain time trial walking their hotel corridors, as lying down would have presented a lethal stroke risk. Incidentally, I knew a participant in that tour who is now in permanent care after suffering a stroke on his home trainer.

What I object to is the way Sky´s line about zero tolerance towards doping history is uncritically bought by some of their fans (which would not matter) and large parts of the press, despite being patently untrue. This matter very much, as the press must not buy the spin of one team and give them a blank pass, otherwise we are back to the Armstrong years, where the collusion between a criminal team and the anti doping agencies almost killed off the competition. Similarly now, if there is no scrutiny of the dominant team by the press, do you guys expect it to come from WADA or UCI?

As to the power meter issue, they are mainly used for riders to pace themselves during training and racing. I agree that for this relative consistency for the readings of one rider are essential, while absolute values are merely nice to have. However, I don´t believe for a moment that the pro teams don´t precisely establish parameters like power output and oxygen consumption in a lab setting, and then calibrate the mobile units to a high degree of precision.

Anyway, regardless of whether your theory (power meters only give relative data) or mine (teams know the exact values but will keep the secret) is true, such numbers cannot invalidate the calculations from weight and rate of ascent that put Froome´s performance even above that of Pantani. Thus, I call their publication a cheap PR stunt.

As for Knaven, your link seems to support my reading, in that they knew about his back story (of course they did, that is why they hired him!) and then cleared them in a staged exercise. Again, I don´t mind Knaven working in cycling, but object to the uncritical treatment by the press.

CB

 balmybaldwin 20 Aug 2015
In reply to cb294:
from your Pantani comment...weight and rate of ascent tell you very little about the power outputs on their own on top of this you need accurate wind heading and speed, climatic conditions etc to get an accurate reading... especially when you consider the zig zag nature of mountain climbs.

In addition to that, Pantani was riding nearly 20 years ago now, and technology in all areas has improved to a great extent.

Yes there are reasons to be suspicious - there always will be for any Team, but your ascertation that SKY are treated differently and not scrutinised by the media is pretty laughable considering the amount of negative press they receive on just this subject whilst at the same time the press are stony silent on Astana who had how many riders banned last year? at least one more already this year, are run by a convicted doper etc etc. and what about Movistar - don't see much questioning on how how they got 2 riders on the podium both within a couple of minutes of Froome despite being delayed by a major crash in week 1 loosing nearly 5 mins - not to mention they have one rider in particular (Valverde) who never seems to have a drop in form...

For info I'm not a great Sky fan... I certainly am a Wiggo Fan, but still a bit undecided on Froome, and I dislike the way sky's methodical and effective approach to tactics has made a good few recent tours "boring" however I do believe the onus is on other teams to buck up their ideas - some of the tactics in this years tour looked like the other teams were deliberately losing (Astana in particular - with crazy attacks at odd times in stages e.g. Attacking the group despite having more riders than sky and subsequently only dropping their own men, attacking 50K out etc - these things may work in the tour de Suisse on a rainy day, they don't work in a grand tour)
cb294 20 Aug 2015
In reply to balmybaldwin:

Yes, Astana is easily the dodgiest team around, and I cannot understand why they were not banned outright (OK, I can see the reasons, but not the morality of it).

However, I still think that some sectors of the UK press are reporting Sky press releases as if they were the holy gospel, and that several posters on this forum buy into Sky´s explanations far too naively.

To add some context to the power measurement discussion, I would like to recommend the following two blog posts:

http://sportsscientists.com/2015/07/great-power-great-responsibility-less-p...

http://sportsscientists.com/2014/07/the-2014-tour-performance-implications-...

Even though dealing with last year´s tour, the latter is also relevant with respect to my views about Sky getting preferential treatment by the UK press.

CB
In reply to cb294:

Do you really think there is a risk that Sky get a blank pass? Quite the opposite - they get dragged over the coals for not being able to sack Knaven, whilst the fact that Nibbles hires Emilio Magni gets barely a mention. Just google his name - virtually nothing, apart from a brief mention that he was at Mercatone Uni in the late 90s. Move along, nothing to see, look SQUIRREL !!!

> such numbers cannot invalidate the calculations from weight and rate of ascent that put Froome´s performance even above that of Pantani.

Explain the methodology for those calculations and comparisons. Where do the timings and weight calculations come from? How is the nature of the stage, the state of the race, the weather conditions, the amount of team support factored in ? How big is the sample ?

Now lets move on to the premise, namely that there is a finite and calculable limit of human capability on a bike. And that that limit was reached 15 years ago, and that no advances in legal training methods, tactics or bike design have been made since, and therefore the only reason that Froome could match Pantani is by taking the same drugs.

I genuinely don't know whether Vayer, Jalabert etc only speak up when a Brit (or a Kenyan) is winning, or if thats the only time when it gets reported in the UK. They are right to be sceptical, given the history of the sport. But they ought to be even-handed and they need a much better methodology for making their calculations.
 The New NickB 20 Aug 2015
In reply to cb294:

Do Sky get a free pass in the UK press? I don't think so really a quick google showed 6 national UK newspapers on the first page of results, all covering Froome's missed test. Admittedly none of those 6 from the News International stable. Lets face it though, most UK sports journalists, with some obvious exceptions, would struggle to name more than a couple of World Tour teams, including Sky. They certainly don't get a free ride from European media.
 Nevis-the-cat 21 Aug 2015
In reply to cb294:
You'd be hard pushed not to have any contact with someone who has doped if you run a cylcing team, albeit one with a zero tolerance policy.

It's not clear cut though is it.

He's not putting 2 minutes plus into his rivals at the end of the Tour like Hinault did. his winning margin this year was 70 odd seconds, against strong climber but a generally second string competition. The greatest margin was made in the first week, because Quintana was out of this depth doing repeated one day classics in the north, and was locked in some sort of Roche / Visentini situation with Valverde, who still had an eye on the podium.

When you look at Froome's victories, and that of Wiggins, they actually hold up well agianst the vistories ofthe 70's and 80's.
Post edited at 13:41
In reply to Nevis-the-cat:

I'm not sure if Quintana was so much out of his depth as the Valverde situation didn't give Moviestar the same focus as team Sky. If it had been a straight shoot out in the mountains without the time dropped things may not have been the same. All credit to Sky's game plan, things could be all change again next year depending what happens on the road and the run up. Is Froome dirty? My gut feeling would say if he is he really has no idea what the head sheds are up to, so he's effectively as clean as he can be on a personal level.
 Nevis-the-cat 21 Aug 2015


What a lot of the haters don't realise is that when compared to the winning margins in the arguably recent past, i.e. after the pot Belge days and before EPO it was not uncommon to win a Tour with a 10 minute plus margin. Hinault did it twice, Fignon once and Lemond managed to put over 3 minutes into Hinault )politics aside) and Zimmerman in 1986.

These were the days where the drug of choice was nowhere near as potent as EPO or it's deriviatives. Gentleman and players - I mean, bags of your mechanics piss under your arm al al Polentier, with the amphete saved for the post tour crits.

nobody points the finger at Sean Kelly and look at some of his margins in the Paris Nice. A sore arse aside he would have put 7 minutes into Hererra had he won the Vuelta.

 Nevis-the-cat 21 Aug 2015
In reply to John Simpson:

Fair comment and I really think the Valverde situtaiotn meant there was an old style split int he movistar camp. Be interesting to hear what dowsett says if he ever leaves.

Froome, i think, had a better time on the cobbles and with the pace Sky and BMC were setting in the first week, than Qunitana. He's a featherweight and those cobbles and tempo runs around normandy must have been pretty exhausting. THe echelons and the split was a classic wrong place wrong time, but then again, if he had a full team behind him they would not have let it happen or had someone uop the road to pull back to.

As you say, Froome is as clean as we can grant him on a personal level. Are Sky dirty. I would say no, not because I'm a sky fan (I'm not) but I think it's just too dangerous on a reputational basis for Brailsford, British Cylcing and Sky, ergo Murdochs senior and junior would just not risk it.
 LastBoyScout 21 Aug 2015
In reply to Nevis-the-cat:

Agreed. It would have been a very different Tour if Movistar could have sorted their focus (they still got 2nd and 3rd, despite the crash), BMC hadn't lost Van Garderen and Contador wasn't tired from the Giro. I'm surprised that some of the other teams, notably Astana, seeing as they won last year, didn't seem to challenge the GC.

Against all that, Froome won by a tiny margin - a matter of seconds over 3 weeks. Sky are very "clinical", but only in the sense of tactics and training, which makes them pretty dull to watch, but gets results.

At the moment, I have no reason to doubt that Froome/Sky are clean - given the Armstrong saga, it would be professional suicide for those involved and finish British Cycling.

I couldn't care less about the Murdochs or Sky as a whole - the hacking scandal hardly shows them in a good light on underhand tactics - they won't go under, as long as their average customer can still watch the Premiership on their 52" telly.

Sky's PR as a cycling team might have back-fired a bit in places, but that's hardly surprising considering the pressure they're under.

I'm not particularly a fan of any team or rider - I just enjoy cycling and watching the races.
In reply to LastBoyScout:

I know people hate the term but it is a good way to describe Froomes win - aggregation of marginal gains. No big time gaps, but I think Froome gained time on about 6 differant stages (and only lost on two). Plus a very strong team with no distractions. And a very well-funded and extensive support team - and theres where Sky's success get dubious IMHO. Should teams be limited in how many support vehicles they can have ?

For those who like a non-tabloid analysis of what going on, can I recommend http://thecyclingpodcast.com/ - 3 very knowledgeable journos (and occasionally a rather mad italian). Well worth paying the fiver to get the specials. The one on the CIRC has many interesting interviews, including Antoine Vayer. Is he an expert, or a somewhat over-confident attention seeker, make your own mind up, I have !
 birdie num num 21 Aug 2015
In reply to Chris the Tall:

Training at altitude is a form of doping. Doping is the way forward in sport.

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