Yes, I think that Salbutamol Dog's performance is like a teflon suit wrt the AAF. Can you imagine the problems that would occur if the AAF was upheld and SD's GdI results were voided? Terrible, terrible outcome. It now does not matter if SD can demonstrate the high levels in urine with a legal inhaled dose or not. He's gonna walk.

But, again I am new to this, why wouldn't Tom Dumoulin (yes I am Dutch), try and attack tommorow? His chances are slim, but probably better than attacking in the mountains today (as he tried several times at the end).

He could. Wouldn't work though.

There’s no way he could put 48s into Froome on such a flat short stage.

So let's just play it out. Let's say TD WANTS to attack and tries to. Here's how you do it, you get in a break.

But the thing is, breaks only happen because the racers want them to happen. TD could try 10 times to get a gap, and every time Sky most certainly would shut it down. Ever wonder notice in every stage breakaway, the rider has zero GC threat. They are X athlete in 89th position 48 mins down. Joined by 10 others with the best placed guy in 38th, 22 mins down. There are likely attacks on just about every stage that get pulled back for various reasons until pretty much the one that has the least amount of issues gets the freedom to go.

It may have been in the Lance era but I remember there was like a top 10 GC guy trying to get in the break, and all his breakmates were yelling at him because they knew they were doomed and 10 mins later, it was caught. Of course this is often times not seen on tele because it's 28 mins into a 6 hour stage and no tv cameras are following it.

So it's not so much that it's ceremonial, it's ceremonial because the tactics of creating GC time gaps isn't there on flat stages. It's why it's almost unheard of when GC time changes on flat stages, it's either crash/flat and/or sketchy crosswind that causes time changes.

Essentially TD's team would have to go all Breaking Away to Chris Froome (I hope you get the reference).

---

Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Thanks I think I've got it now. I saw Froome escape yesterday and everyone told me "nah, he won't make it", yet he did. But I understand what you're saying. I'd still be rooting for Tom tommorow though. ;)

The only time I remember was actually when Froome took advantage of crosswinds to bridge to Sagan at the tour to gap the GC contenders. Otherwise, I’ve never seen GC time changes on flats.

I thought one of the best flat stages I've ever seen was I believe in 2013 Tour when Contador took advantage of a crosswind and gained like a min with like 30k to go in a stage. It turned into almost an team time trial to the line, and it actually didn't turn out to matter much as he didn't ride well in the mountains, but it was one of the most brilliant bike tactic stages I had ever seen. It literally became 2 groups of roughly the same size riding against each other, just really brilliant racing.

---

Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

There's nothing to root for. There is a gentleman's agreement that the last stage on a grand tour is a procession for the GC and to be contested by the sprinters.

The only time I've seen the gc change on the last day was the '89 Tdf, which was a shortish TT. Now that was exciting to watch. No one gave Greg a chance. But with his Tri bars he overcame fignon who was wobbling all over the place with a disc front wheel.

Yeah that was a great move by Froome at the end of the race is the move which ultimately won him the Tour. But only happened because of the major cross winds.

Any replay of that anywhere? I’ve only been following cycling for the last 3-4 years

It was Stage 13 of the 2013 Tour:

Part 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utqI6KMsZnc
Part 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPkO8SBMPbA

^^^^This.

In the TdF the rule is no attacks until the finishing laps in Paris (and then only by non-GC guys). The rest of the race is a slow roll with lots of photo ops. Giro is the same way. As mentioned, the exception is when the last stage is a TT.

---

ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

Although 1 year, when there were still bonus seconds at the Tour, Vino grabbed one of the intermediate sprints to leapfrog Leipheimer from 6th to 5th, I believe. Of course, probably no one else would've done that, Vinokourov being the kind of person he is.

Thx. 4 hr trainer ride tomorrow. Between champions league final and this, I have it covered.

Let me here temper my previous remarks re Froomie's Excellent Floyd Day Out. I took a couple of pulls on the puffer and went on a nice little morning ride. Might hit Bed Bath and Beyond later. I don't know if we'll have time......

After Zoncolan I had the thought, "Nobody can suffer like Froome". I think that's a bullshit thought, one of many I have. If you saw Yates in the post stage 18 interviews, he was beyond wasted. These guys at the World Tour level can all suffer. Or they're not there.

And the same guys that could hang with Froome up Sa Collabra in Mallorca in January are getting bottles and in the grupetto when Froome is up the road for 80k.

I think many in the pro peloton have used cortico roids to transform their body composition to be able to even complete a GT. There are guys with 420 ftp who weigh 150 pounds NATURALLY, and they have team guys following them around in the off season with body fat pincers telling them to ride for 5 hours with water and bananas to lose 1.5 kg. . It's completely insane.

I think so many over the years have sought an "unfair" advantage in many ways. And that's the rub. What is unfair? It's about the money. The rest is conversation.

I don't condemn them to burn in hell. The awful thing they did was be part of the problem and take spots from guys who said no. But back when it was an industry standard, well, why not? That said, I'm not buying their clothes or staying at their hotels or posing for pix with them. But I get why they did it. Amateur Masters cheats, of which there are many, I find far more heinous and pathetic and should be kicked in their synthetic testosterone filled nuts.

I don't think Sky has a program to cheat. I do think Brailsford is a massive tool and hypocrit and has huge pressure on him to win the GT's. And he will look the other way if he has to. They have a big budget, buy the best talent and hope. They are no more organized than any other WT team and have no superior approach.

What I believe is that many riders have their special bottle, their Billy Baroo putter for big moments. I think Tramadol may be rampant. It's the kind of drug that masks the pain that kills the superhuman effort. I do not buy the old "Wow, didn't Froome's form really kick in at just the right moment? Brilliant!"

Anyway, awesome to have kicked this Giro around with the group. Great, respectful and fun discussions, and great racing. Just a little blown away by Froomie Day.

To quote Tony Soprano, "All in all though, it was a pretty good visit."

Every great athlete is on something. I don’t believe any of them are clean. Pretty much every major NFL NHL NBA MLB soccer players. Just look at them and look at the players from 80’s and 90’s. How does a sprinter and swimmer and 10k specialist dominate 3 Olympics? How is it that top 2 sprinters in men and women are all from a tiny island in carrebean? All great marathoners are from 3 countries in Africa? You have countries that push it on athletes, governing bodies that turn the other way and take the money, a sporting company that has hired special docs and has a history of supporting dirty athletes, not to mention commercial bullying tactics.
It’s a waste of time to care about records.
I just watch for entertainment purposes and do my best in my hobbies.

For a sport that is dying for fans and viewers, neutralizing the GC on a day that would have been riveting is the dumbest thing I've ever seen.

*Yes I'm very aware of cycling tradition, but its 2018 and it might be time to make some decisions for the good of the sport.

All these "gentlemen agreements" always come on flat as pancake easy stages. If this was a mt stage as the final stage, they'd have no procession, they'd show up ready for a fight. It's a gentlemen's lap because it's an stage that cant/wont break up the GC. That's precisely why they have an gentlemen's agreement. ETA: The gentlemen's agreement is only there because it's a flat stage. This isn't your local cat 5 race where you can just breakaway off the front and TD "itt" his way to time gains. That move would be meet with such a shut down force that they'd boot his ass to the back of the peloton for stupidity. No one that wants to go in the break wants an GC guy in their break, because it means shut down before it starts. So it's not that they all are saying we give in. It's that the race profile won't allow any gaps to form for GC to matter. Like I said it's unheard of in cycling for a flat stage to result in GC time changes unless they get an unfortunate flat/crash and/or a crosswind (and people will know those locations likely weeks ahead of time based on predictable locations).


ETA: So no this was not going to be riveting. Nothing about a flat stage is riveting except the final 20km and when the break will get caught and which sprinter will win and which GC will *hopefully* not get crashed out. You can't attack flat stages for GC time, everyone knows that...that's precisely why they can all enjoy the process of finishing an GT.

---

Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

The way I look at this, pro athletes and teams will push the boundary of the box of rules you put them inside. They will maximize without getting caught (or they may). It's not a sham. This has been going on since the days of Jacques Anquetil and Vince Lombardy and Maurice Richard and Lasse Viren. Really it's pro sport, so its just easiest to assume that EVERY ATHLETE and EVERY TEAM is pushing the written rules and going into the grey zone. It's like speeding....drivers speed to the limit that the police enforcement and generally accepted driving behaviour will allow. When a driver ventures too far outside they get nailed. I don't buy the arguement that clean athletes get spots taken by cheaters. It's like any profession, at the ultimate level of performance, leaders and organizations maximize what they can do inside the rules and enforcement....every now and then you get a company on NASDAQ who plays the loopholes too far and go on the wrong side of what is legal thinking they found a loophole that gets shut on them hard. They may have nailed Jose Cruz for shooting up, but at the same time there were a ton of players in MLB shot up to the gills and we all enjoyed the homerun derby....until we were told the obvious that they were doped (doh....did you see rookie Barry Bonds vs Bonds before retirement???). In any case, as I said, if Froome was doped on Friday and he just may have been, I'm not sure that Thibault, Dumoulin, Carapez, Reichenbach, Lopez were squeeky clean either. The numbers for Froome were not that much better than those guys. Froome had the best body composition of all those guys and yes he may have gone over the legal limit to get there, but whatever. For example Reichenback looks like a doughboy compared to Froome.....not that he is, he's ultra lean compared to anyone on ST.

In any case, cycling gets a bad wrap because it actually does something to keep a lid on doping. Of all major sports it has the most active program and because of that, it gets slammed. It was pretty funny, I was talking to a close friend of mine, who is a former 2:23 marathoner, riders and former and now current hockey player.....his words, "No hockey does not have a doping culture, doping does not matter in hockey." I replied, "really, are you really that clueless that you think that in a power endurance sport with no testing with all that money on the line, that the Pittsburgh Penguins, or Boston Bruins would be on bread and water when they have access to all the best medical advice that the Pittsburgh Steelers and New England Patriots have?.....do you really believe that? If so, you have no clue about pro sport".

In any case, cycling gets a bad wrap because it actually does something to keep a lid on doping. Of all major sports it has the most active program and because of that, it gets slammed.

-------
I think what I find most frustrating is the unfairness the IOC dictates with it's doping programs for each olympic sport. The NBA dictated a few years ago that if the IOC wanted Kobe and Lebron in the Olympics the only way was drug testing only happened in the 6 months run in to the olympics. And the IOC wants the eye balls on Lebron so of course they let it happen. So cycling has and likely always will (along with T&F) take it on the chin in regards to doping.

---

Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

I'm assuming you didn't watch the stage? This was far from your run of the mill flat stage. It isn't the champs. The course was extremely technical and challenging. The group was blistered to bits the second they started racing, that is the entire reason they neutralized the GC halfway through the stage. There would have been splits and tons of opportunities.

I didn't see it. I gave up hope after Froome didn't falter yesturday in the only hope to change the final GC at that point.

ETA: Your point stands, just re-read the cyclingnews live feed. Sounded like the stage could have led to atleast some good racing as many were not ready for the conditions of the road. I always hate the "neutralize or not" BS that riders discuss mid ride......makes me go back to Spartacus who would push the pace when the cobbbles took out the other team's leaders then cry foul when his own leader went down and he wanted it neutralized.


So to your point, if today's stage was ceremonial, put it on a ceremonial stretch so that they don't have that type of rider discussion mid stage.

---

Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

NBA and NHL cannot afford to have IOC driven positive drug tests on their stars. They know from baseball that having your homerun king equivalents test positive is bad biz because moms and dads don't want to believe that the only way Johnny boy makes it to the pros is do what the pros are doing....IOC wants the stars for their TV rights so money talks. I would not be surprised if you dope test every MLB player today on this week's games using the WADA code the number of positives would be insanity relative to cycling. At least in cycling, whatever doping the guys are doing is under a threshold....big 4 sport is a free for all.

Actually they do. Several World Tour teams are surprisingly unprofessional in so many ways - both as to relating to training and science, as well as organization.