People obviously think their opinions are equally valid as rules. Welcome to the age of social media.

Should you ever get accused of a traffic offence, or a work-related disciplinary issue, just say “I don’t think I’m guilty”. That should do it.

I’ve said it before, the problem isn’t Froome, it’s the UCI’s ineffective processes.

Lol@

Whilst funny on the surface, that ^^^ fan behaviour spoils the event IMO.

Froome’s ride was no doubt impressive, but when I heard about it the first thing I thought of was Landis back in ’06.

It seems I wasn’t the only one who thought this too;

http://road.cc/content/news/242491-george-bennetts-landis-comment-about-froome-was-compliment-not-insinuation

Compliment? Insinuation? You pays your money…..& I am a long way off handing mine over to Sky….

& I am a long way off handing mine over to Sky….

Freeview plus netflix for £7 a month is all you need.

Today’s final stage might be neutralised apparently, some riders not happy with course! 😆

Insane doses of Salbutamol does not make me a faster rider it allows me to perform as I would if I didn’t have asthma.

Tbh I’m past caring about people opinions and interpretations of the rules, this has been the best grand tour to watch in a very, very long time and I’ve loved every second of it (well maybe not this shit boring second stage).

Why has it been neutralised?

I’ve seen a whole load of tweets about time bonuses cancelled but just turned it on and it seems there’s a breakaway and time gaps being given but it just looks like a Sunday clubrun…

There’s a lot of road furniture, cobbles, dead turns etc. All fine in a belgian classic but probably a bit too crashy for what should be a processional stage with a sprint.

It seems the sprint teams don’t want the GC guys in the way and the GC guys don’t want to fight with the sprinters so they agreed to both ask the commissaires to neutralise time gaps/bonuses.

If you find that annoying, just remember what the last day of term before the summer holidays and imagine that the teacher was making you do an exam instead of messing about.

Not annoyed, I was just wondering how there seemed to be a Maglia Rosa group 8 minutes back from a peloton. But I guess that’s my fault for tuning in with only 40km to go!

Loving the Froodog! Top bloke in my book.

Landis back in ’06.

Not quite, as Landis went uphill faster than everyone else to gain most of his time. Froome gained most of his by plummeting like a brick off the Empire State Building down every hill.

And Landis gave the most wild eyed ,post ride interview since Shawn Ryder on the word.

If you want “full chat” climbing after a hard day in the mountains then look no further than Chicken Boy circa 07’…

Good job I’ve had dinner bikebuoy!

Congratulations to Froome from me, talented humble guy, to the naysayers get a grip, if it’s he’s not British enough when he has british parents, he’s juiced to the eyeballs when he wins the TDF to putting in a Landis performance when he has a negative for subutamol, which isn’t a banned substance by the way, when he is cleared of this technicality, i hope you couch surfing douche bags will make a public apology.

When he is rightly banned as the drugs cheat he is I hope you apologise?

😉

What banned substances has he taken, i’m all ears, you seem to have joined the braying mob, with little to go on other than social media innuendo, enlighten me then with some facts, not gossip and bile.

If he fails a test and its upheld then he’s broken the rules and will rightly be banned. Nothing to do with taking banned substances.

Personally I like him, and really hope he’s cleared. Makes a bit of a farce of the last two tours otherwise

Fergal – merely pointing out the daftness of the post above mine.

He has failed a test and his excuse is sheer nonsense.

What is his excuse, I’ve not seen an official statement just web rumours based on, well, not very much?

He has failed a test and his excuse is sheer nonsense.

Why are you still on this thread TJ ? You’ve voiced your obnoxious opinion over and over, why do you feel the need to keep repeating yourself ?

I can’t warm to Froome, but you cannot fault his preparation. Yates and Pinot came into the race at race weight, and no doubt in top form. Froome rode into form and peaked at the right moment…when it mattered, not a week before. It’s a three week race and is raced as much with the head as with the legs.

Some people seem to delight in pissing on others chips.

The 4 F’s – first find the trucking facts…..Froome used Salbutamol in an inhaler. WADA accepts that asthmatics should be allowed to use inhalers. Elite level athletes are more susceptible to exercise induced asthma than the general public Froome’s tests showed an ‘adverse analytical finding’ (AAF). There is no decision yet from the UCI regarding this AAF.

Any elite level athletes in tonight – feel free to correct my comments ^^^^.

As TJ should understand from his work in the NHS, bodies secrete and excrete at different rates.

Comments about Froome being a drug cheat are crass, ignorant and have no factual basis. That may change with advances in drug testing and samples being retained for long term future testing.

Froome won another Grand Tour; chapeau.

Now for Le (or is it La) Tour

There’s more than a few of you who need to read up on what exactly Salbutamol can & can’t do – depending on its form of ingestion. It isn’t just useful as a puffer!

If you really think pro-cycling has gone from the being as dirty as puddle of slurry to as clean as virgin snow in a few short years you’re, I think,  deluded..

Watch Icarus, read Breaking the chain…..do some research, doping & cycling go hand in bloody hand sadly!

I’d love our heroes to be clean…..but there’s way too much smoke & mirrors with TUE’s, Jiffy bags etc for me to believe it is.

FYI I race XC & train 15-20 hrs a wk regularly – no couch surfing here!

Professional sport and doping go hand in hand. I’m passed caring about it to be honest. They’re all at it to a degree so I just focus on enjoying the spectacle.

First up, on the inhaler issue it should have been sorted out by now. Letting this drag into the grand tour season is bad for everyone.

Also if you think the guy with the inhaler is bad form then I expect the tour to be much worse, they will have been collecting bottles to piss into for months and short of banning the sale of tacks in France…. Could be a lot of neutralised racing.

Big shame for Yates, was there and riding well until that last few days, made the racing racing.

It shouldn’t surprise me, but the BBC coverage of what is a magnificent achievement is absolutely disgusting. I just cannot understand the peculiarly British way of knocking people when they’re at the top. Was nice to see the respect given to Froome by the Italian public. Must make a nice change from the piss the French throw over him and the shit that the British media do.

facts…..

Froome used Salbutamol in an inhaler.

We don’t actually <span style=”text-decoration: underline;”>know</span> that this is the only route he used.  That’s pretty much the crux of this

WADA accepts that asthmatics should be allowed to use inhalers. Elite level athletes are more susceptible to exercise induced asthma than the general public Froome’s tests showed an ‘adverse analytical finding’ (AAF).

Yes. The TUE exists to allow it to be used at the high end of the normal usage and the threshold for an AAF is intended to be high enough to allow this but low enough to catch “alternative” uses.  Not all that much evidence that it works as this rule might suggest, but rules is rules all the same (perhaps only until they’re dismantled on appeal and then either dropped or rewritten)

There is no decision yet from the UCI regarding this AAF.

Criminal, that.  The longer it drags on the worse it all looks and the more likely that a fudge will be created IMO

As TJ should understand from his work in the NHS, bodies secrete and excrete at different rates.

I’m guessing that a lot of Froome’s off-season has been devoted to trying to demonstrate that he is different to the norm in this respect; maybe doing heavy days while using the stuff to the max allowed, to see what he can generate.  Of course, he’ll have used salbutamol in many other races so they ought to have lots of comparative data and not just this one result – he needs to hope that his general trend is to run high levels, even if this one is still “even higher”

Comments about Froome being a drug cheat are crass, ignorant and have no factual basis.

Agreed, or at least they’re deliberately inflammatory.  He has however returned an AAF which, if it can’t be explained away, will become a failed drugs test.  He is not innocent; he’s in limbo, awaiting the clash between his team of docs and lawyers and theirs.  I bet his are better funded.

That may change with advances in drug testing and samples being retained for long term future testing.

Did I imagine it or are they now routinely keeping all samples much longer than before ?

Im another who struggled to warm to Froome, but then i read his autobiography. Kid had a very strange upbringing, kenyan cycling authorities did all they could do put him down, he really had no choice but to switch his dual nationality to British.

If you see interviews away from the five mins after killing himself for 7 hours, he comes across much better, a very warm and nice guy but quite reserved.

I hope all this resolves positively and he hasn’t stepped over the (somewhat grey) line ‘re supplements, TUE’s etc. He’s a phenomenal athlete. But bag of spanners, Yes!

It shouldn’t surprise me, but the BBC coverage of what is a magnificent achievement is absolutely disgusting

Yep when Froome wasn’t in the action we got very little coverage, not even a semi live tt commentary which could have been the most crucial stage then back in it when Yates fell away.

Froome gained most of his by plummeting like a brick off the Empire State Building down every hill.

No he didn’t. He gained time consistently on every gradient, downhill, flat and up. There were only two short periods when he lost about 10s each, when the chasers managed to vaguely organise themselves for a few minutes.

It’s almost like the Froome apologists didn’t actually watch the race. (Or maybe not watched cycling for long enough to understand what happened last week.)

two short periods when he lost about 10s each, when the chasers managed to vaguely organise themselves for a few minutes

TBH, that’s how it seemed to me – sure, Froome was committed but it was a pretty shit “chase”

Whilst I am not a huge Sky fan, i think they have been dull in the past, they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t really. If Froome does something exciting and lights the race up like the other day, he’s on drugs, if they sit on the front controlling the race then they are dull.  if Yates wins 3 stages and does something exciting, he doesn’t get the abuse, Astana have had ban after ban yet seem to fly under the radar when it comes to grief?

I really wanted to see Yates do it, as he deserved as he gave absolutely everything, but it was interesting to see how Sky tackled the stage with Froome 80km breakaway, whilst every other team had their normal fuelling strategies, Sky had every member of their large staff out on the course in hi-viz jackets with bidon and gels/food for Froome, even Brailsford was dishing out food, so Froome had far greater access to nutrition. They asked Dumoulin if he had the same, and he said no, they’d just done what they always do.

Astana have had ban after ban yet seem to fly under the radar when it comes to grief?

Astana get loads of grief when they do what Sky do. Someone on this very thread described Aru as the villain of the piece.

Suggesting that Froome managed an 80km breakaway because he had recce’d the downhill and had food helpers is ridiculous. That is a typical Brailsford excuse designed to mollify the hard of thinking. If that’s all it takes to make a huge breakaway why do you think nobody else does it? And how much difference does grabbing food from a static helper make compared to having a car full of food at your shoulder? The very fact that Brailsford said it was entirely planned should raise other questions about known power outputs and expenditure, etc.

Well i bet you’re fun on a night out, why do you feel fuelling strategy can play now part?

Why recce’ing a route can play no part, Sky were the only ones that recce’d the Zoncolan stage well before the race?

If it is all about power output and nothing more, then why were his biggest gains over Dumoulin made on the descents, where Dumoulin didn’t take him on man to man, he decided to stay with the group in the hope they’d assist?

I think that Brailsford’s comments don’t mollify things, it actually takes something away for those that still see something magical in a performance from like that, people want to romanticise a great ride like that, and he turns round and explains it with cold calculated science of fuelling and breaking down every part of the stage and look at specific power outputs for each metre of it, doesn’t mollify it, it cheapens it.

They specifically interviewed Dumoulin about the strategy and he specifically said that they simply don’t have the budget and the staff numbers to emulate that. If Sky weren’t a team to emulate and try to ape that they do, then why do so many teams warm up on turbos now, or so many have their own chefs etc. Not saying it’s good, and that bringing it all back to science is exciting, but that has always been there way. There is a reason the number of sports scientistist, nutritionists, aerodynamics experts etc has tripled around British Cycling and Sky and the like. They have the money to be able to explore every angle, and yes that makes them dull, which is why i’ve never been a big fan, and why i found Yates exciting, but if you listened to the interviews with Matt White they had planned Yates race stage by stage as well what he did was very calculated, give it everything to get the time lead, even intermediate points, to take into the TT then try and hold on, ultimately it backfired, but it was very planned.

why were his biggest gains over Dumoulin made on the descents

The biggest loss was on the first descent, when Dumoulin waited to get the chase group together, giving up a minute in the process.

Not sure how Brailsford could’ve been at the side of the road handing out snacks – surely he was in the team car following?

Also doubtful about the fueling thing as I doubt the rest of the field were going hungry in comparison

Well i bet you’re fun on a night out,

Not sure what that’s got to do with a discussion about pro road racing. Is it a childish put-down, perhaps?

I wonder what the chat would be like if Domoulin had managed to take back a minute over the last few k’s? Only he bonked on the previous climb and was retching while crawling along as he tried to fuel himself. But somehow he managed to get himself up at the sharp end and attack the pink jersey!

so anyone questioning Froome has to look at that performance with the same cynical view yet somehow you are all bashing sky not the performances of others?

if anything it shows the importance of a well thought out strategy for a stage and how fuelling can go wrong, yet the bedwetters just want to see a conspiracy.

FWIW I’m not a sky fan but a cycling fan, I like various riders/teams of different nationalities, apart from Astana obviously.

OK, if i what i am saying is all pants, re-watch the stage and look out for the Sky kitted out helpers in hi-viz.

So yes he can go back to a team car etc for food, but that takes time, you see him take a number of bidons and gels from helpers.

They interviewed Alex Dowsett and he clearly admitted he had got his fuelling wrong on a number of occasions during the race, so to say that they can just have what they want, when they want is wrong, when they don’t have domestiques with them to go back the cars, then GC riders can struggle to take food from cars themselves outside of the feed zones, there is a reason that even with team cars, there is a reason they still have road side helpers. Sky are clinical, every metre of that stage was planned, they know down to the watt, what fuelling stragey is needed, what power output is needed for every given part of a climb to not allow him to go into the red.