I don't think anyone ever doubted that Team Sky had a brilliant strategy for that stage. But this interview is, apart from explaining the strategy, just a collection of the usual Team Sky phrases when it comes to suspicious behavior "we are trying to be transparent" "he was 100% clean" "we understand there are doubts" bla bla bla

They are just building up their house if cards, its impressively high already, and its still growing. One day it might all fall apart, but it doesn't seem to me like it will ever become a solid building.

All the usual BS from DB

No doubt there was a plan but listening to him bang on about transparency, a plan, attention to detail

There's a cognitive dissonance here. This is a man who is explaining how they figures out how to get 90 grams of carbs in to CF for a big day out but at the same time employed a medic who did not manage controlled drugs appropriately, lied about sending a package to a rider, could not remember what was in the package, lied about riders receiving injections.......

It was a good ride, tactically brilliant but does not mean that it was not assisted.

To bring a lav room phrase over. The DB/CF/sky ball washers will explain it all away but brailsford is not whiter than white

Very good read and interesting to see the level of planning that goes into something like that. No idea whether other teams are similarly prepped i.e. DuMoulin said he was expecting Froome to try something like that, in which case were his team also planning out power levels, nutrition, etc to respond? Or was the plan simply to do his best to stay with Froome which he couldn't then do.

Re Sky and Brailsford, I get why they're defensive, but they have to recognise that by claiming they were going to be whiter than white, and also by being the richest and most successful team (in GTs at least) they have painted a very big target on themselves and therefore need to actually be the most transparent team, not just talk about it. When they started out they did some good things like refusing to hire anybody previously associated with doping, and clearing people out if a doping past emerged (albeit too late in the case of Leinders). Their behaviour over the last couple of years has not been whiter than white, and certainly hasn't been transparent - the Wiggins TUE and mystery package made them look shambolic. If they want people to have more faith, in my view they should take the following steps:
- Don't make ambiguous statements about doing some things differently with hindsight. Come straight out and admit where they've screwed up - Wiggins TUE and mystery package for a start - and tell us what processes have been put in place to avoid a repeat from happening
- Adopt a no TUE approach. If a rider is sick enough to need a TUE they should pull him from the race.
- Don't let riders race when there is an open doping case going on. Maybe Froome is innocent, and holding all 3 GTs is certainly an astonishing achievement, but the credibility of the sport is more important. They can't know for sure that Froome is going to be cleared, and if he isn't then even if in their eyes it's a miscarriage of justice it's going to make cycling look like a joke. Especially if this isn't even resolved until after the Tour so we're potentially in a position where the results of all 3 GTs are going to be changed in one go. UCI are also massively to blame for the case taking this long to resolve - how can it possibly take a year?!
- Give more access to some credible cycling journalists and sports scientists. Maybe that means they can't write about what they're seeing until a few months later to avoid giving away potentially sensitive information to the competition, but

So 14 year olds in sport science at school learn about the required carb level for performance but all the elite cyclists and their team medics and physiologists etc never thought to use this knowledge... what a load of absolute shit.

No. Apparently you have a reading comprehension issue.

The same people who can't control medications. Know what they prescribed to whom. What they sent to whom. What they accepted delivery of do apparently have the ability to calculate power, nutrition and a strategy.

They are either staggeringly incompetent and were lucky on stage 19 OR lying about their modus operandi and executed an exact plan o stage 19

You can't have it both ways

His point there wasn't "we worked out 90 grams per hour is a biohack"....his point was something like.... "we got him the 90grams per hour and water requirement without him carrying it up himself by putting feeders every 10 minutes...and this was faster"

Great, we now get to have two threads on a Triathlon forum were people discuss whether a cyclist is doping.

No way, there's too much money at stake... not worth the risk

It's patently obvious they don't dope because they said so

Why did Brailsford have to text Kerrison to ask what they should do?

The 'plan' (if riding faster than everyone else can counts as a plan) was working, what would Kerrison suggest?

Only 2? It must be a slow day.

Only one high profile player I can think of that's ever been caught out (played for the team I support) wasn't actually doping as such from what I could gather he was taking these slimming/caffeine pills.

He was frozen out the team and then later put on loan and sold, but hey doping goes on in sport so all of football must be on it despite not one being caught out yet!

The Football Association in England carried out 3250 doping tests last season. Problem is there are about 4,000 professional footballers in England, and about 600 just in the Premier League. So even with a focus on the top league, players are probably getting tested at most only a couple of times per year. That's a fraction of what an elite cyclist gets, so not hard to avoid. And England has one of the most thorough anti doping regimes in football - Spain managed to go a whole year recently without testing a single La Liga footballer and then got suspended by WADA.

Sky have been operating for 7 years under probably the most rigorous anti doping regime in sport, with one adverse analytical finding and no bans to date, and everybody still thinks they're dirty. So given how relatively lax anti doping controls are in football, a lack of failed tests really doesn't give much assurance!