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This article appeared in the Independent today, and for all the rhetoric around Wiggins and Froome tends to be about the people, I found it a good read about SKY itself and how certain benign ideas became malignant.
To this day, I am not especially bothered by the advantageous use of medicines and stimulants within limits; it is the lying that drives me crazy.
I mean, why can SKY or its individual riders not say,
"We do everything we can to improve performance, including a strict regimen of diet and fitness, while we also pursue the marginal gains to be found with the limits of - for example - caffeine and the various TUEs we might have access to. There are grey areas in cycling regulations that we will certainly consider exploring for advantage, but we will never endeavour to go beyond them."
Such an approach would be so much more honest than an absolute "clean riding" claim.
Anyway, I hope you find the article above as interesting and well-written as I did.
There are grey areas in cycling regulations that we will certainly consider exploring for advantage, but we will never endeavour to go beyond them.”
Didn't Shane Sutton say as much ? I know where your coming from but brutal honesty doesn't sit well in the world, and unfortunately gives amunition to those who'd work against them. I think Sky are carefull not to tell provable lies, but skirt around certain things a bit to much. Some of the false statements they've made can be put down to speaking before thinking, or investigating the question properly. The jiffy bag comes to mind with this.
Hard to get past this bit...
I read those words again now, as the bricks come tumbling out of the Team Sky edifice, and I wonder: did I do enough? Could I have pressed harder? Should I have somehow spotted something in Brailsford’s manner - a nervous cough, a fleeting shiftiness - that might have brought all this to a head sooner?
...without dismissing the writer as a bit of a fanny.
Better than the opinion piece I saw on The Guardian site though, which was basically "woe is me Sky have made me so sad".
The problem of admitting that they (or anybody else) would push it to the limit of what is legally allowed, is that the rules of what is legally allowed would then be looked at - and probably amended to stop such teams/individuals taking advantage.
Who remembers the time when having asthma was a major obstacle to competing at the highest level? whilst nowadays it's positively an advantage in cycling.
PEDs are part of the highly paid modern sport. The Mexican boxer Canelo recently got caught with clenbuterol in his blood ... but because it was within the levels expected from somebody who has eaten cheap Mexican steak a few times a week ... it is being overlooked (and overlooking why a multi-millionaire boxer who only socialises in the best places would eat cheap meat too).
Thanks for sharing
While we're linking to newspaper pieces: