It’s blatant. How would you like a rejuvenation cocktail?

Agreed, where there's money there's dope!

I think there is still a valid distinction to be drawn between pushing the envelope of what you can get away with within the letter of the laws versus completely ignoring the laws and getting away with whatever you can.

I think what we are seeing currently in the peloton is mostly the former, whereas what we were seeing in the 90s and early 00s was mostly the latter. It's still far from perfect but I think teams getting marginal gains from questionable TUEs (which the UCI have still signed off on), from legal but likely to be restricted soon drugs like Tramadol, or from taking right up to the legal limit of allowed substances like salbutamol, is a whole lot better than getting massive 20% gains from clearly banned doping like EPO, HGH, testosterone and blood transfusions.

I do also think that Froome and Sky get a lot of abuse because people just don't like them. Froome was having cups of piss thrown at him before any of this salbutamol stuff came out! People don't like him because Sky are dominant and dominant teams make for more boring racing. Some of the Europeans don't like him because he's British (in the same way there was always resentment of USPS for being so American), and some of the Americans don't like him because having seen so many of their own heroes torn down they assume everybody is doping. He's been accused of being a boring rider who can't handle a bike and looks ugly (I hope this week has finally laid to rest the first 2 of those points). And even the Brits haven't taken to him because he was born in Kenya and/or they hold the Wiggins thing against him. It is ironic that it's Froome who is being chased up the mountain by a guy dressed as an inhaler when Yates seems to be universally popular and has actually served a ban for asthma drug use without a TUE. Yes his team took responsibility but their explanation has been accepted without question - would Sky be afforded the same respect?

https://www.theguardian.com/...itish-winner-cycling


Shame Froomie doesn't have a badass nickname

Weezer
The Inhalorator
Mr. Stem

Don't have the same panache

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Mr. Stem is awesome haha.

Wasn’t rooting for Froome at the beginning l, but after that stage 19 I am happy to see him win.

Before the Giro started, I decided that it wouldn't be a success unless we saw at least one drunk fan in a giant inhaler costume chasing Froome uphill.

Sure enough, there it was - right as he was making his attack on the Finestre.

Coincidence?

As Giro spectacle winds down the question on my mind is this: does ASO allow Froome to ride Le Tour or block him? RCS got the show they wanted (so far) but is ASO willing to take the Lance-era risk all over again?

That's the problem. When everybody was getting a 20% boost from EPO, the playing field was more or less level. If nobody doped, Pantani and Indurain would still win.

Now, it seems, we are back to "a peloton of two speeds" were most teams can only do low level doping, but one team still can do blood bags on the last rest day.

There lies my resentment for Froome. He is, in my opinion, not in the "would win even if they didn't dope"-category of Indurain, Ullrich and Wiggins. Rather he is in the "doped up donkey"-category of Riis, Ricco and Rumsas. Armstrong falls somewhere in between as I'm pretty sure he had at least one honest Tour win in him.

I don't think Lance had a single undoped Tour win in him. If you read what his first wife said (in his first book) when he made his comeback, Lance was wishy washy about being "totally committed" which if you read between the lines also includes the full dope program and he was fully "committed" by the time he beat Zulle in the 1999 TdF. And he needed some luck on the Passage gu Gois which ended up being pretty well his margin of victory on a fully doped Zulle (we're talking about Zulle who in 1998 rode for Festina and moved to Banesto in 1999...Banesto, you know the choirboy team of Delgado-Indurain-Iles Balaeris-Movistar). But Lance was a 16 year old phenom beating Allen, Pigg and Tinley in triathlon so he had some pretty darn good sport genetics out of the gate.

In any case is the ASO has the chance to have Froome at the start line "clean and off the hook" damn right they will have it since he is the holder of all the grand tour titles and 4x winner of the TdF. He will sell hits and eyeballs (as he just did at the Giro).

I am not sure how you come up with the list of guys who would win if they did not dope. Every protour rider was winning at some leve at some point without doping as a kid, but we have no proof which riders' physiology responds better to doping. A kid with a natural hematocrit of 48 sshould respond less to doping that brings him to 50 than a kid who is naturally at 42. The thing is we don't know whose physiology started where in an unenhanced mode and how much is due to natural training and how much due to dope enhancement.

How do you think Sky are getting away with a level of doping that nobody else is? Why do you think the likes of Porte, Nieve or Landa haven't taken Sky's doping secrets with them to their new teams? And if Froome is a "doped up donkey" then why did he spend 2 and a bit weeks of the Giro suffering and leaking time to the leaders? Surely it would have made more sense to dope a bit more in the first two weeks to stay in contention so that he wouldn't need a solo 80km attack to win the race?

Your analysis makes absolutely no sense. It also doesn't explain why nobody else on the Sky team appears to be a doped up donkey, since every time they try to win a GT without Froome they fail miserably.

They, like USPS, have more economic resources than the rest. They can afford "motomen" and lawyers.


Because those teams do not have the same resources and do not have a national federation that turns a blind eye. Or maybe the just didn't want to be a part of such an organisation, but can't speak out without incrimination themselves.

Because the way to gain an edge over your competition nowadays is to have the "motomen" and dirty doctors to make it possible to do blood bags *during* the race.


They probably don't have either the mentality to go all out on doping or the mentality to be a team leader.

This is of course just speculation based on the many similarities with earlier cases of organised doping.

I'm not saying he won any tours without doping but I think he could have won one with some luck, if everybody was clean.


I agree

I have several friends who raced at that level and I have also watched even more TV coverage than you. The "donkeys" are spoken about as "freaks" and the real talents as "freaks of nature" (or similar wordings in different languages). The Danes speak differently about Riis and Rolf Sørensen for sure.

Another Great Giro! As for Froome I am pretty null on the subject, but I am impressed with the minute gained on the descent. Tommy D. is a classy rider and I am a fan. I hope he recovers for the TDF!

Big congrats to Ivar on the last day comeback to beat Trail in the Slowtwitch Velogames league.

Trail was in first place for almost the entire Giro and lost on the last day!

See everyone in the TDF league!

A random brain-dump.

Froome’s FTP is like 420ish isn’t it??
Every time the Velon power data flashed up as the Sky train (the Stem Cell perhaps we could call them!) set up his move he was doing 350. That’s not ‘not-normal’ for a do or die mountain stage.

His attack up Finestre from there was 397w average... a Sweetspot interval!!

Then he had huge recovery on the descent- albeit a white knuckle one.

And then he would have had time gaps to the scruffy, disorganised chase group piped into his ear.

Combined with the attention to detail with the nutrition and the fact he was executing a preconceived plan whilst the others clutched at defensive straws means there really isn’t a fishy smell to any of this.

I do wonder how busy the myriad of Giro threads would have been without him there too...


On a slightly different topic (perhaps pertinent right now if your name is Coach Chad ;) ) but Froome runs double sided Stages no??
Do they account for his osymetric chainrings before they Ant+ to the Velon gadgetry?? Or is the data they (Velon or Froome!?!) use therefore flawed??

https://www.velon.cc/...-and-takes-race-lead

Dang, that was a tough league. Between Froome and Viviani, my team won six stages, the GC, and the points competition. Formolo squeaked in with a top 10 in the GC, and Woods and Gesink earned some useful points. But we finished at the bottom of the table. (Well, I did have Aru on the team.)

Thanks for keeping the ST league going. Here's hoping for a comeback at the Dauphine and TdSuisse before the TdF.

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"Human existence is based upon two pillars: Compassion and knowledge. Compassion without knowledge is ineffective; Knowledge without compassion is inhuman." Victor Weisskopf.

Well done for posting some sense. He made most of the time on the descents, and then had a more or less one to one TT battle with TD. The last climb they climbed more or less the same time. Sestriere Froome was a little quicker, but not a lot.

yes, if we trust that TD is clean (as seems to be the general feeling, as much as anyone trusts any pro athletes) then froome's performance was not vastly different.
the catch is that he had not previously been showing anything like the form to be able to do that. there was an article on cyclingnews the other day saying that you can't ride yourself into form during a grand tour, if the fitness isn't there you're not going to get it that way. i'm not sure that's quite the same thing - froome has the fitness base from 5 years of being the top GC man and a big pre-season. we know the principle form = fitness - fatigue. but we also know that performance can be poor if you taper too much, despite in principle having high fitness and low fatigue - you get rusty. that is where froome was at to start (deliberate strategy) so for 2 weeks he gained fitness (to some extent, though no rest means limited benefit despite the efforts) and fatigue, much like everyone else. the difference is that he started with lower fatigue than everyone else so by week 3 he'd shaken off the rust and his form = fitness - fatigue was in a better place than everyone else's. especially compared to yates who had great form in the first 2 weeks but then fatigue overcame him in week 3.

to be clear, i'm not saying froome is clean - i find his medical history concerning - just that i don't see his giro turnaround as being especially unbelievable in context and comparison to TD. incredible in the loose meaning, not the specific not credible.

More or less, but not completely. There were almost certainly some guys who either would have been stars or at least "really good" who instead struggled to just keep a job. Or guys who chose not to become pros in the first place because they didn't want either to dope, or to be chumps trying to compete against dopers while clean.

Those are tragic figures. I could name some guys, but of course few would know their names.

The other tragic figures are the guys who are just amazing athletes, but get accused of doping because their performances are so extraordinarily that they have the characteristics of doped performance. It's very difficult to tell who these people are. Particularly if they're already sanctioned dopers.

Both types of people are victims of dopers.

Cyclingnews is full of shit claiming that you cannot gain fitness during a grand tour. The more accurate statement is that you gain fatigue through a grand tour, but one can absolutely gain fitness off 4-7 hours of training per day. The problem is the fitness does not show because of the fatigue accumulation especially if the athlete poorly manages recovery. Sure, SKY may monkey around on the grey zone maximizing recovery approaches, but so do all the other teams (it's like not Sky grads like Landa, Nieve, Porte and others can't take the SKY recovery monkey business to other teams).

Once Froome (or anyone starts gaining fitness after starting in a lower state of fatigue due to being a bit undertrained, then his relative performance vs the field may appear to be better, while others gain fatigue and have already maximized fitness gains (you can't be at max fitness forever). So in addition to pacing out a grand tour so you can minimize fatigue there is gaining fitness.

One more thing....gaining fitness while losing weight simultaneously is a disaster in terms of feeling sharp in that when you are eating into body reserves daily, you just gain fatigue. If you already come in with body composition optimized, then on a daily basis after training you gain less fatigue because you're topping up to where you were, not topping up only to a smaller body that is shrinking over the race. I don't have a Froome weigh in before an after (does anyone) , but his body composition looked excellent before the Giro. Did Froome employ monkey business grey zone tactics to get to superior body composition before the Giro, while being on light training load? Well, that's another topic. But he showed up ripped and by all accounts under trained so that he can peak in late July with a small mini peak last week. It's not like he has been hiding what he was planning to do, it was known to everyone from day 1, except we were all counting him out after the 2x unplanned deck hitting stress loads. While is he was squirming around in pain, (and having to devote body resources to rebuild his body from those), we all figured that he had no chance until he threw the hail Mary on Finistre.

Having said all that, Sky planned his week three surge along with his teammates' form really well, or they are able to get week three blood bags when no one else can. It's all the realm of posibility, but I don't think the delta in his performances (and his teams') are glaringly blood bag worthy. My feeling is if he did, so did Dumoulin, and the rest of the chasers down Finistre.

Right...because bombing down a technical descent just takes some handling skills and balls. It doesn't require any additional effort, exertion, or fitness than someone riding with more caution and will be just as fresh at the bottom of the hill as the guy who descended 1 minute slower.

It's no wonder that all the top downhill mountain bikers, skiers, and snowboarders are 350 pound out of shape fat asses who simply use gravity to go faster while taking some risks. Makes sense...

Making time uphill or downhill - no one would really care if Salbutamol Dog was simply Froome Dog (no pending AAF). The FACT that the AAF is swinging in the wind while SD performs some pretty unbelievable feats of strength at a grand tour that many thought he should skip (although it was totally legal for him to participate) while riding for a team with some ... ahem ... questionable ethics... Is it really so hard to connect the dots here? I'm not proposing anything one way or the other, just saying - without any ambiguity - that the circumstances bring the performance into question.

Really, since you have so much more experience riding GTs than Philippa York? Please, impart your wisdom here.

If you have nothing useful to add other than a shot about not riding Grand tours, at least amplify with what you want in term of wisdom...or just dont bother posting.. Its a stupid endurance sports forum that we are on. If the only people who can comment on here did grand tours, then we have no forum.

Neithere Philippa York does nor you have a monopoly on informed or uninformed opinion. It's a forum for cripes sake (and yes, its OK to simply take the diametrically opposite angle on anything I post just because its me who posted...its totally cool).

But, fans are supposed to be able to discussion without actually having ridden Grand Tours. Or go to another forum with your former grand tour riding poster friends and have a great discussion there.

You know no more or less about Grand tours than any other uninformed poster on this thread...even guys riding them don't even know the optimum approach (just ask some of the guys who have won them and what they know about their rivals who did not win). Pro athletes are not always the smartest guys and girls....they often have better genetics, but simply riding a grand tour, racing a diamond league 10,000, doing an ATP tennis grand slam, although on the surface making someone expert at them, does not mean they know everything all the time.

In any case, fans are entitled to opinions...that's why we have pro sports and sports fans. Fans are allowed any opinion they want on what the pros did. That's really what makes a sport a pro sport. If it is limited to only people who raced/competed, then the sport is no longer pro (ex Western States 100 or Ultraman Hawaii...largely no one cares).

Dev

Actually I don’t talk to hear the sound, or contradict one comment in next sentence. Or proclaim that someone who rode a dozen? GTs is “full of shit.” Your commentary on the post about how triathlon is like a GT is fascinating and all, so true, I don’t really know anything about that.

Hey, just cause Millar/York rode 18 Grand Tours does not mean that she can't be wrong about any given point especially racing today vs the 80's...that's like Terry Bradshaw mouthing off about Tom Brady (and he may or may not be right...the sports have changed a bit).

She wrote this:

Now, despite what anyone says, you don't ride yourself into form in a brutal three-week race. If you aren't in good shape at the start, the kicking you get each day adds up and you only become more and more tired. Add a fall – or in Froome’s case two falls – or injury of any kind and your recovery is highly compromised. Hence the comment from Contador that it was over for Sky's hopes. He saw the signs and understood the situation.

and she wrote this in cyclingnews:

''To bring in some context, we need to take a look at the race as a whole. Froome's Giro began with a fall in Jerusalem and was followed by iffy form and calls from ex-riders like Alberto Contador for the Team Sky leader to abandon ship and concentrate on the Tour de France. As a rider, when you hear such talk you know that things are dire. That’s because Contador raced with Froome, and he knows the signs, sees the grimaces, recognises the tormented hollow face we all saw after a few of the mountain finishes, and his conclusion was that the Giro was over for his former rival. We all thought Froome would take note. "

WTF? Now, York is an expert on physiology and the resident expert on whether someone can or cannot gain form over a 3 week period of racing and she's quoting Mr. Beef guy Contador as the expert (the same Contador that was done in the first few days of last year's Vuelta and rode himself back up to the win on Angliru and if Froome get's DQ'd a podium place on the Vuelta? Contador knows as much about Froome as Froome knows about Contador...whatever that is worth. Contador is probably bent out of joint that Froome emerged right after his beef suspension and he was unable to win after all that. So neither Contador, Millar (nor the badger for that matter) are that objective.

Sorry, but not accepting York's opinion (and that's all it is, she rode several grand tours and got some Giro podiums)....maybe sour grapes that she no longer has the highest Giro finishing position by a Brit (that would be second for her as Robert Millar). She may or may not have a clue on what form a rider may or may not gain, but her wide sweeping statement in bold and underline "now despite what anyone says". She is pulling out an opinion out of thin air with no scientific backing. Sure she rode Grand Tours in the 80's and its not like athletes were idiots then but that does not mean some approaches to training and recovery have not changed. Back then everyone rode every race

PS. that other thread discussion about an Ironman and a Grand tour most of you missed the logical connection in terms of analologies that the OP there made vs the physical comparison...obviously on the latter, they are entirely different and there is no physical comparison between the events.