You don't need to dominate to win, you just need to be a tiny fraction faster than everyone else.
Winning 7 out of 8 Grand Tours is domination, whichever way you look at it.
Besides which, "What constitutes dominating?" really is splitting hairs - the issue is doping.
The basic facts are: A clean team hires blood doping doctors and consistently beat world class dopers with climb times that are comparable with doping eras. They try to cover up/deflect doping stories (Brailsford/Daily Mail), destroy / lose laptops, and lie about illegal drugs ordered, as well as order dodgy TUEs before big races.
They are of course clean, as that's what they claim, and we all know this is the new clean era.
They are of course clean, as that’s what they claim, and we all know this is the new clean era.
I think you're willfully misinterpreting the general attitude of UK cycling fans, which IME is now that Sky were definitely not squeaky clean, but also probably not organising blood or EPO-based doping.
Wiggo's halo is permanently tarnished. Rules have definitely been bent. But it's by no means clear that Froome was cheating - he may just have been the best rider in the best team with the best domestiques and the best budget.
The murkiness of the whole situation is the frustrating thing, but we've had to learn to enjoy the sport without the guarantee that what we're watching is clean.
he may just have been the best rider in the best team with the best domestiques and the best budget.
I agree this is a possibility. Just a highly unlikely one, given all the smoke.
Hiring Leinders to heal cuts and bruises, when everyone in cycling knew his practices.
Massive improvements in rider performance.
Regularly beating known dopers, with the Sky train dominating Mountain stages a la US Postal.
Plenty of lying and attempted cover ups.
dodgy TUEs
illegal Testostorone ordered
Based on cycling's past, all of this is very very suspicious, and given the fact they've already lied multiple times, I personally find their version of events highly unlikely to be true.
When I watch racing I do it with the expectation/understanding/knowledge that I'm watching doped riders. Its still a race, so I often wonder, does that change the enjoyment.
For me the enjoyment is tarnished because they pretend not to cheat. I wonder if they didn't pretend, would that make it more enjoyable to watch. Do I dislike the lying more than the doping ?
I'm sure a few of us watched in amazement at Van D Poles 1000+ watt up hill sprint the other day - that was good to see. But how many of us think he is clean ? Sure, its nice to think he is clean, but is it realistic ?
Does it matter ?
I’m sure a few of us watched in amazement at Van D Poles 1000+ watt up hill sprint the other day – that was good to see. But how many of us think he is clean ?
Well I try to default to thinking they are clean, especially a youngster of his pedigree racing the classics (where the day-after-day recovery benefit of doping is not so relevant).
The last racing I remember watching and actually getting angry while the race was still happening was Chris Horner winning the Vuelta, and that was back in 2013.
Oh the ironing - using Valverde's palmares as a stick to beat Sky 🤣 Thanks to the Spanish judiciary he was the only Puerto cyclist not to get a ban - along with the Spanish tennis player, motor racing driver, footballerists and athletes who all had a perfectly normal, professional relationship with a gynaecologist...
Thing is cycling is such a brutal sport at the top level, that I don't think it will ever be clean. I think it is a lot cleaner than it was, especially compared to the crazy EPO era. But someone will always try to break the rules.
There will be riders and/or staff that will know who this was for, but nobody will say anything unless they are desperate to sell a story. A bit like Floyd Landis, if he had been given a spot on the team with Amrstrong after his doping ban ended he would have never spilled the beans and nobody would be any more the wiser and Armstrong would still be regarded as a major cycling hero.
The thing I would like to know is who paid for Freeman’s defence?
This farce,sorry trial has gone on for over 2 years which must have cost someone a fortune!,did the former team Sky pay for this to stop him dropping the rock on them? Now he has been found guilty how long will it be before Freeman flogs his story to the tabloids?
This farce,sorry trial has gone on for over 2 years
Hasn't a lot of that time just been adjournments because he was troubled in his health?
There do seem to have been loads of hearings though, so it's a valid question.
Sutton is a massive bellend.
I thought not, given Freeman's claim.
Oh, you said is, not has.
Perhaps if the sponsors did more about the cheating it would become harder to cheat and not worth it. So Sky need to ask for their money back from everyone in the team.
That will make them squeak and spill the beans and act as a disincentive to other cheaters.
Contador entered 5 of those and lost every time (retiring in 2017).
Valverde entered every single one of those and lost every time.
2012 Contador won the vuelta beating froome in the process
2013 Contador beaten in tour by sky (ill in run up to it?) but still fourth
2015 Contador had won the giro, beating sky and crashed heavily in the tour losing multiple minutes
2016 tour, had lost three minutes in a crash before binning
2017 busted flush.
Not really sky dominating Contador and during that period did the doped up sky win any other GTs ? Vuelta in 2017, strangely little for such a doped up team.
Valverde has only been a tour contender in his head and Movistar planning meetings
Perhaps if the sponsors did more about the cheating it would become harder to cheat and not worth it. So Sky need to ask for their money back from everyone in the team.
Because as the hearing stated, there's no proof that any rider dope https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/56367117
This was a GMC hearing to determine Freeman's conduct, fitness to practice and if he ordered the Testogel knowing or believing that it was to be used for doping purposes.
The murkiness of the whole situation is the frustrating thing, but we’ve had to learn to enjoy the sport without the guarantee that what we’re watching is clean.
I'd like to believe Sky et al were not systematically doping, but I'm pretty sure marginal gains will have pushed the boundaries. Anyone thinking that any team is truly beyond any suspicion is naive I fear.
Have we destroyed the idea that Froomes improvement was due to the treatment for undiagnosed bilharzia?
Really hoped this thread was going to be half-life related
Wiggo lost 8kgs to win the TDF & it didn’t turn him into a world class climber - it just meant he didn’t get totally blown away on the climbs.
Sky didn’t always dominate on the mountain stages either. IIRC Movistar, on more than one occasion, ran them ragged.
Lying? I’d say they are economical with the truth. David Walsh might say “No smoking gun....yet”
Dogdy TUE? Without doubt, but thems the rules & they are all at it. Blame the game, not the player?...
(Let’s not talk about Froome’s shady puffer...I have my doubts but Sky’s explanation does seem just about plausible & is mostly believed).
There’s plenty of reason to doubt Sky, but as yet, no proof. Not yet anyway. There’s certainly no reason either to point the finger & say they were ALL at it. It does have hints of Armstrong all over again.....but I do believe everyone is innocent till proved otherwise.
FYI I FING HATE CHEATS.
Paris Nice highlights at 7pm on ITV4 (or 8pm on +1) has a discussion about the outcome if anyone is interested...
.but I do believe everyone is innocent till proved otherwise.
I agree. But also if it looks, walks and quacks like a duck.. given where pro cycling has been since forever, it's hard to believe in them either. So, innocent* but in the shade of a large cloud of suspicion that in this area doesn't seem to be going away.
*Then I remember the PEDs fine line of 'legal but shady'.
One of the things in this threads that annoys me is the lines. No previous track record. Not a great time trialist or f2f ride before this date.
It shows shows zero understanding of stage racing.
You only ride a time trial fast with your teams permission. You can ride 30 average time trials in your career because thats your job. They want you fresh for the next day. Then one day you get the order go for it. Save with climbing, same gc
Does anybody know why Brailsford wasn't questioned/ asked to give evidence? Is it because it's a GMC thing? His statements would be interesting.
The thing I would like to know is who paid for Freeman’s defence?
Most likely his indemnity provider. It's what every clinician pays annual fees for.
Strange use of the word Hero . He wasn't saving lives , just helping sportsmen train better.
I’ve long maintained that there is no way to prove an athlete is clean. You can either pass or fail doping control but passing is no indicator of clean.
working in the medical sector I’m not expecting the gmc to actually do much. There is little chance of him being struck off. I have seen cases of doctors making some serious mistakes causing life changing damage to patients and the gmc do nothing
Well they all seem suspect to me. The team Dr didn’t give them performance enhancing drugs without the riders knowing. That’s pretty impossible.
Come to mention that the team Dr would not give them banned substances without the team manager knowing
Not the same sport, but I know someone who was a dr for a professional football team. Everything they did went through the manager. They left when the club asked them to start doing stuff they didn’t agree with.
As to GMC, the rules of cycling determine you can’t give the drugs, a doctor could well be allowed to prescribe the drug for medical reasons
Does anybody know why Brailsford wasn’t questioned/ asked to give evidence? Is it because it’s a GMC thing? His statements would be interesting.
Because it was a Medical Practitioner's Tribunal. There were 22 charges against him
https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/freeman-tribunal-the-full-damning-list-of-allegations/
The purpose of the tribunal was to assess his fitness to practice, it was not about doping (or even really about cycling).
Sutton was a witness because he was used as the defence - the claim being that the testosterone was a quiet "add on" to the normal medical orders for the team to treat his erectile problems. He denied that.
During the whole hearing, none of it was specifically about Sky/Ineos, Dave B, Team GB, British Cycling or even really cycle sport in general. The way this thread has gone off into the usual anti-Sky "they must all have been doping" seems to be an indication that very few people have actually understood what it was about.
Strange use of the word Hero . He wasn’t saving lives , just helping sportsmen train better.
I believe the OP was suggesting that a Sky TdF winner might be going down.
And making what appears to be an unfounded assumption about the testosterone and that Jiffy Bag.
Unless I missed a link to that in the evidence?
crazy-legs link is worth reading.
Yes, my reference to "hero" in the future was a suggestion that this may lead to the loss of wins from a riders palmares, either olympic or uci. I'm aware that this trial is purely a medical trial about freeman, but the very fact that he's been found guilty of ordering testosterone "knowing or believing it was intended for a rider" means there will be a follow up investigation to attempt to determine who that rider was, and why and when it was used. It's not definite that it will lead to any convictions or sanctions, hell it's not definite that they'll ever determine who it was, but that possibility is there
Just because we assume that doctors know about this stuff, some don’t.
I actually assume doctors (especially jack of all trade GPs) know very little outside of their wide but shallow field.
What's interesting to me here is that some would want to see direct proof or evidence before thinking a rider (Sky, etc) was 'at it'. That's fair. Others look at the Freeman example, the 'marginal gains' vs some poor record keeping and TUE line-pushing against the background of road racing and it creates an impression. That's less fair, though we know not all crimes or cheats are proven or detected.
Would we say/think the same about politicians or business dealings for example, or personal relationships? Are we consistent?
Which side of things I sit on here is more emotive than evidential and it's not a position I'd call an opinion, just a reaction. An impression that makes belief near impossible. There's a few riders that I do believe in, some of them were on the Sky team though and this means the questions are there. It's sad really, the team and management did that more than any individual rider. I expect if I truly understood racing, the process, had followed every shred of detail in all this maybe I would trust them. Shouldn't need that level of understanding though, why isn't 'clean' easy to demonstrate, is it that hard to avoid contradictions and be transparent? Dunno. Interested because underneath all the scepticism I do want to see riders do great things and know they did it the right way. I think we do, still.
Edit to add - the link about the Freeman trial purpose sort of backs this up, we see a Dr ordering something banned and create links to riders. Those links are not evidence or even valid. What I do see is a team who weren't as on top of the details as they (very clearly) said they were, an example of credibility lost. I suppose what I'm getting at is that I'd support a team who didn't win but put the effort into total transparency and working harder to overcome the baggage that pro racing has. Would a sponsor? OT.. or maybe not - winning creates the pressure to flex or break rules but that's what's undermining the sport and why sponsors get wary.
I just saw this on Twitter. I've lost the original tweet now thanks to Twitter refreshing, but it was asking along the lines of "can we believe that a team who knew the weight of the paint on a riders bike world not know what the doctor was doing"
What I find most odd in this is Freeman's claim that the Testogel was for Shane Sutton. He was never going to admit to that was he? Far better to claim it was for himself.
Drugs have been in sport for a long time.
Paul Kimmage has suggested that this video sums up the root of the (Armstrong) problem
https://twitter.com/i/status/1267090147780280321
British Cycling (previously BCF) could possibly have done more, or handled things differently.
Darryl Webster was one of many talented British riders that was against doping in sport.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cycling/2019/11/21/speaking-doping-cost-career-insists-shane-suttons-former-team/
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-daily-telegraph-sport/20191121/281762746096391
Paul Watson was another talented British rider
https://www.veloveritas.co.uk/2016/08/17/paul-watson-aug16/
The people that speak out about doping in sport do not seem to stay in sport.
Possibly Britains greatest road cyclist, Nicole Cooke, World Champion, Olympic Champion, etc.
https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/cycling/nicole-cooke-sexism-cycling-doping-bradley-wiggins-dave-brailsford-a7543696.html
Nicole Cooke wrote a excellent book The Breakaway.
Sports journalists don't seem to do journalism or ask difficult questions any more.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-shame-of-britain-s-sporting-heroes
But how do people such as Shane Sutton survive in sport?
https://www.smh.com.au/sport/cycling/sutton-accused-in-court-of-urine-in-coke-can-doping-cover-up-20191211-p53is7.html
Sports journalists don’t seem to do journalism or ask difficult questions any more.
Matt Dickinson, David Walsh, & Matthew Syed of The Times might disagree with that. Walsh in fact rowed back on his Sky book IIRC. Matthew Syed has criticised David Millar’s acceptance back into the fold too, though he’s been less damning of Sky. Dickinson has written a strong piece in The Times recently asking questions about Freeman, Sky & British Cycling.
But how do people such as Shane Sutton survive in sport?
Definitely questions around him - particularly after Cooke, Varnish AND Pendleton all complained about sexism in British Cycling with Sutton being directly named.
Matt Dickinson, David Walsh, & Matthew Syed of The Times might disagree with that. Walsh in fact rowed back on his Sky book IIRC. Matthew Syed has criticised David Millar’s acceptance back into the fold too, though he’s been less damning of Sky.
Walsh was a news journo, and is kind-of the exception that proves the rule.
Syed is more of a columnist & pseudo-intellectual AFAIK? I agree with him about Millar though, his fence-sitting when talking about Freeman on ITV4 last night was excruciating.
I'm not aware of Dickinson's work, but he appears to be a sports hack so you might get a point there.
There's definitely a strong tradition of "staying in your lane" among sports writers & broadcasters, fuelled IMO by the commoditised nature of sport and the sausage-factory nature of the media.
The last few years of Sky being hauled over the coals have seen a change though, they've arguably been given a tougher time by the UK media than Movistar or Astana might have got for the same offences.
Also, you can bet sections of the UK news (not sport) media would would have been only too happy to bring Sky down - considering the association with the Murdochs and the cliched (but kind-of real) "build 'em up and cut 'em down" mentality of news reporting.
But how do people such as Shane Sutton survive in sport?
Dunno if he's still working TBH.
Last I heard he'd gone to work with the Chinese track team. They might have considered him and his methods a good cultural fit?
If you stop and think, we don't actually know any more after the GMVC hearing than we did before. ie: Freeman ordered Testogel to be delivered - in a stroke of doping mastermind genius - to the Manchester Velodrome. He says it was for Sutton. Sutton says it wasn't. The GMC believes Sutton and calls him a 'credible witness'. And that's about it.
The bit about doping 'sleepers' and intent to dope an unknown rider doesn't seem to be supported by any actual evidence beyond the GMC thinking it's the only explanation for the testosterone order. Or have I missed something?
crazy-legs
Because as the hearing stated, there’s no proof that any rider doped.
Seriously? The team doctor was found guilty of knowingly ordering dope for athletes. But the team weren't doping?
There's no proof against any one individual rider, but there was doping at Team Sky.
NO - the only thing that was proven was that Freeman got testagel. NO proof of doping only the inference of it.
Has there ever been a TDF with a winner who did not use PEDs? From the early days of amphetamines and opioids to the modern use of highly suspect TUEs
tjagain
NO – the only thing that was proven was that Freeman got testagel. NO proof of doping only the inference of it.
The team doctor was ordering dope for athletes. To suggest there was no doping going on in that context is either being hopelessly naive or deliberately obtuse.
The team doctor was ordering dope for athletes. To suggest there was no doping going on in that context is either being hopelessly naive or deliberately obtuse.
& yet his boss, Steve Peters, told him to return the gel when he found out. Whilst Shane Sutton, who could have corroborated an (albeit embarrassing) alibi for the team, denied the stuff was for him. Doesn't seem like this was a team sponsored thing.
Questions:
1.Who was the testogel for?
2. Who knew about it?
