The Maginot Line worked out so well didn’t it?

I’ve read about this situation sounds like a test that isn’t fit for purpose / got messed up somehow.

This is something I’ve been wondering about, could it be taking ages because the evidence presented casts doubt on the veracity of the test, and that means that UCI/WADA will have some serious scrambling around to do to not get utterly shat on by the athletes who’ve been banned becasue of it? If you’re banned by a test that is later proven to be unreliable, can you sue for loss of winnings/associated sponship/damage to your reputation?

MIke – evidence.  the AAF for a start

then there is all the evidence presented to the HOC plus what we know about the steroid use under the TUEs and the mysterious jiffy bag and so on along with the conveniently missing laptop.

Most is circumstantial however for sure.

Now some see all this and see only  innuendo and smear, some see a load of signposts all pointing in one direction

None of us are going to change our positions and I understand the point of innocent until guilty but my personal opinion is at the very best gaming the system and being caught out going too far.

MIke – evidence.  the AAF for a start

Which is evidence of what exactly?

then

Most is circumstantial however for sure.

and not related to this case or time period

Now some see all this and see only  innuendo and smear, some see a load of signposts all pointing in one direction

What I don’t see is any real evidence there, I see speculation, extrapolation and at best some kind of circumstantial evidence

You might not change your already established conclusion but I’d suggest not claiming you have lots of evidence or all the evidence points to etc.

Jiffy bag? Are you saying that Froome is guilty by association then?

I expect your next move will be posting a photo of Froome, Wiggins, Jimmy Saville and Queen Liz all in the same room and claiming they’re all lizards.

MIke – evidence.  the AAF for a start

It’s not evidence of actual performace enhancing drug use.  The fact you keep calling it ‘a steriod’ doesn’t make it the same as performance enhancing steriod abuse.

Molgrips – the steroid that I refer to with Froome is his use under TUE of prednisilone before he won one of the big races a year or two ago.  Dubious if not as stinking as Wiggins use of steriods under TUE.

Wada believe that large systemic does of salbutomol is performance enhancing hence the limit.  A limit that is very geneously set so as to not get false positives but that Froome went over by a huge amount.

When we have a pattern of behaviour by a team over a long time then that again is evidence of that teams actions.

For what its worth I don’t believe any top team could withstand the scrutiny aimed at Sky and I don’t believe there are any clean winners of major tours.

i think i’ll drop out of this argument as there is no point when people don’t actually read what you type, after every post i’ve been called some sort of fanboy, when every post i’ve pointed why i’m not a fan of Sky!

If any of you are into your podcasts though – those of you interested in the science, listen to Bespoked BBC podcast this week, the “haterz” can listen to it and froth at the mouth….

**** your science, I’m a (working) design engineer. I use rule of thumb which is built up over years of experience.

Fan I wis a wee loon, back in the eighties, you had climbers and you had timetriallers.

Climbers were small and skinny (not alien like like they are today) and timetriallers were beefy. The tour was a mix of both and the fight was (usually) between the two types as climbers can’t push big gears and tters have bulk.

When tters (eg Indurain) start passing the climbers on the hill, something ain’t right.

When climbers are putting in the fast times on the flat then something ain’t right….

Losing weight and increasing power? Well, I need a Scotty from star trek meme/gif…

So, no I don’t buy your pseudo science bullshit.

Especially not after miraculous transformations from zero to hero in three weeks. Sorry, but i will always remain suspicious in these circumstances.

Well, that’s my mind changed..

OK, i’ll bite here, if science has nothing to do with it whatsover, i’ll put myself forward as a candidate, spent 20 years as a rugby prop-forward, most of those years at 18 stone, but with about a 32 inch waist. So a big old lump, but with one advantage, at 18 stone, i could run 100m in just over 11 seconds, so with a low centre of gravity and a good sprint, i was often at the breakdown before the back row and had a decent career, i played to international level and for the army in Union and paid my way through Uni playing league.

After breaking two vertebra in my neck, i gave up, got fat and after a few years bought a mountain bike purely because it looked strong enough to carry my weight without breaking. i broke out my old sports science text books, brought a few new books on training and so forth, and i knuckled down with the realisation that i would never be a racer but enjoyed long days on the bike, but i have gone on to ride events like Dragon Devil at 186 miles and 4500m of climbing and Newcastle to London in 19 1/2 hours which was 310 miles, i did that through applying a bit of thought to it, applying a bit of science, how do i get up a climb, i lose weight and i try to up power that is sustainable not just the explosive power of the first 3 seconds of a scrum.

I learnt exactly how many grams of carbs per hour i needed, i learnt how best to get those carbs into me. I found that after 6 hours plus, i needed to start introducing protein back into the mix again etc. i applied some thought…

To say all sports science is baloney is daft..

To say that a TT’er can’t be a climber and visa versa is bull too. TT is putting out “X” amount of power that you know you can sustain for “Y” amount of time in its simplest form. You look at Dumoulin and Froome and those that can TT, and that is essentially what they are doing on a hill, they know the climb, they know where the red-line is for their power output and they know what they can sustain, then they go about fuelling it right.  It can be dull and makes the sport more like a science class, when all you look at is numbers, maybe the racing of old was more exciting, but that is modern sport.

You have to be a climber AND a TT’er to win GC, simple as that.

Look at Yates, for his build and the fact he is the shape of a climber of the 80’s, his TT was brilliant in the Giro, therefore he must be on drugs? It simply could not of come from training, knowing it was his weakness, knowing he needed to give it all to stay ahead (and ultimately probably went to far in to the red to do so) – must all be drugs!?

Do i believe cycling is clean, no, not at all, i think it is “cleaner”. Times and top speeds having come down show that. Do i think Sky and Froome, are 100% clean, i don’t know. i think Sky have definitely flaunted the grey areas, but no more than any other team probably and a lot less than some. But to say the advances in sports science and physiology are all b**locks, is just plain daft?

Scud – actually I have read your input and you seem have the best grasp of all this of anyone that is commenting.  We are not actually that far apart – just that you are prepared to give the benefit of the doubt.  I am not.

Do i believe cycling is clean, no, not at all, i think it is “cleaner”. Times and top speeds having come down show that. Do i think Sky and Froome, are 100% clean, i don’t know. i think Sky have definitely flaunted the grey areas, but no more than any other team probably and a lot less than some.

this I can completely get behind bar you are giving the benefit of the doubt in that you “don’t know” if they are clean.  I don’t know either – none of us can but I believe they are not clean

In general.  Sky publicly claimed to be a new paradigm of cleaner than clean bike racing.  they have been proven to be liars ( NO needles)  they have been proven to be gaming the TUE system.  There is a lot of circumstantial evidence of going beyond exploiting grey areas ( the jiffy bag, the lost laptop, unexplained large amounts of banned drugs).  The result of this is in my eyes they have no credibility and I don’t believe a word coming out of the team.

Molgrips – the steroid that I refer to with Froome is his use under TUE of prednisilone before he won one of the big races a year or two ago.  Dubious if not as stinking as Wiggins use of steriods under TUE.

So, the rules allow medical use of certain drugs, but you think playing by the rules is cheating?  These drugs do have a medial use, right – so should a cyclist NOT use a drug to help a medical condition, when the rules allow it?  If you are suggesting that the medical condition was invented for the purposes of increasing performance – well that’s very cynical, and you may as well give up because what you’re effectively doing is trying to tear down a sport we enjoy watching  just because YOU’re a miserable cynical bugger.

they have been proven to be gaming the TUE system

Proven to be gaming the system?  You mean making up medial conditions when none existed?

MIke – evidence.  the AAF for a start

Getting an AAF is only evidence of having an AAF. Nothing more.

Apparently there are around 150 AAFs in cycling a year.

Around half of them turn into bans. The rest are either no case to answer, a TUE is present or the evidence provided means no further action.

There are a few reports giving statistical breakdowns on the WADA website if you are interested.

It’s those cheating rascals in team Novo Nordisk I can’t stand, blatantly using banned drugs under TUE…

😉

The thing is i hate drugs in sport at all levels, it makes an unfair playing field, and to read some of the books of the Armstrong era and of those that tried to ride clean and the bullying that went with that is despicable.

What i personally find interesting, and why i think i am drawn to sports that have real extremes, such as grand tour cycling, is because i like to see, read and learn about people right on their physical edge, the are “freaks” and most of the time are one sneeze away from illness, that after 3 weeks of racing it can come down to seconds beggars belief. I think the issue is, you have to have some faith, otherwise i’ll just become bitter and the sport too far tarnished for me to watch it again.

I love following coverage of the Tour Divide, Trans Continental and the great Mike Hall, because to me that really is what i love seeing in it’s purest form, people pushing themselves to do extraordinary things.

ha, ha as to Novo Nordisk team, my 8 year old daughter is T1, so the way they race, really does impress me!

This is something I’ve been wondering about, could it be taking ages because the evidence presented casts doubt on the veracity of the test

These things take ages simply because there is a lot of money and many lawyers involved. Any case involving a high profile athlete who can afford a good legal team usually takes a significant amount of time to play out. That’s just the nature of the legal process. If you are contesting a testing result, the obvious lines of defence are either “my testing process was invalid” or “I accept the test result, but I returned an adverse result because of {insert valid excuse here}, not because I was doing something naughty”.

There have been a number of cases where athletes have used the “invalid testing process” defence (e.g. Diane Modahl successfully won an appeal because she argued that her sample had degrated after being incorrectly stored in a heated room for 3 days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Modahl#Fight_against_positive_drug_test).

Some people have suggested (i.e. more speculation) that rather than questioning the circumstances of Froome’s specific testing procedure, Sky might try to challenge the fundamental validity of the Salbutamol test itself. That sounds like a tougher defence. As mentioned earlier in the thread, a couple of studies have questioned Salbutamol testing, but these studies have themselves been criticised, so I don’t think there has been any serious evidence (so far) that the Salbutamol test is inherently flawed.

No molgrips -What I am saying is the drugs they used under TUE are normally only given to people ( especially in Wiggins case) who are extremely unwell and would be hardly able to walk let alone ride a grand tour.  the illness would be there but instead of using the least strong drug possible to treat them in the lowest possible dose they used the strongest possible drug in the highest possible dose simply because it had performance enhancing effects.  IE the illness was an excuse to use a PED / a means of getting the TUE

3 of team skys grand tour wins were won by riders who had a serious enough illness to require extremely powerful drugs in the weeks before.  Its not really credible.  If the illness was that severe that they required injections of very powerful steroids they would not have been able to ride.

( I can’t remember if Froomes prednisilone was injected or oral)

(edit – I checked – Froomes TUE was for oral)

In Wiggins case the steroid used is normally only given under the care of a hospital consultant to people in hospital and is also a well known PED

Read this molgrips

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/sep/23/bradley-wiggins-former-doctor-questions-use-banned-steroid

In Wiggins case the steroid used is normally only given under the care of a hospital consultant to people in hospital and is also a well known PED

Read this molgrips

and the UCI did?

After the UCI Therapeutic Use Exemption Committee (TUEC) has reviewed your application, you may be given authorization to obtain treatment.

The UCI TUEC is composed of independent experts in the fields of clinical sports and exercise medicine. It is the CADF, independent entity mandated by the UCI to run the bulk of its anti-doping program, that provides administrative support to the TUEC,

http://www.uci.ch/clean-sport/therapeutic-use-exemptions/

I know there have been some updates but the UCI have oversight over the process.

We are now heading into morality and reading of the rules to maximise what you can do.

Do you have clear evidence of people taking things that were not approved by the UCI?

What TJ says about Wiggins is all correct, but the key thing is that he didn’t break the rules, so there was no doping offence. However, you might well argue that there is a case to tighten up the TUE procedure to stop people legally deploying unnecessarily powerful drugs in the future.

One thing that puzzled me about the Wiggins case was why there were not more riders using the loophole. The UCI website publishes the total number of TUEs they issue:

Year    TUEs granted
2009    239
2010    97
2011    55
2012    46
2013    31
2014    25
2015    13
2016    15
2017    20

http://www.uci.ch/clean-sport/therapeutic-use-exemptions/

I believe this covers all the elite riders in the top tier testing pool, because they have to get TUEs through the UCI, not via their national governing bodies. The big drop off after 2009 is because the rules around Salbutamol changed, so a TUE was not required for normal inhaler use.

The numbers seem quite low in recent years, and I would have expected more teams would be taking advantage of the system, unless Sky had genuinely spotted a performance enhancing treatment that no one else knew about.

“Sky might try to challenge the fundamental validity of the Salbutamol test itself.”

I think this is exactly what Sky will do which is why this is taking so long to sort..

I think this is exactly what Sky will do which is why this is taking so long to sort..

Which as pointed out in the lawyers opinion before means that they risk a lot more if it goes wrong. The ban could have been done by now, here he is risking every race between the test and the verdict plus any ban on top of this.

It’s a high risk strategy if you are guilty.

Also if they are right is it a good thing that this is brought to light?

“In general.  Sky publicly claimed to be a new paradigm of cleaner than clean bike racing.  they have been proven to be liars ( NO needles)  they have been proven to be gaming the TUE system.  There is a lot of circumstantial evidence of going beyond exploiting grey areas ( the jiffy bag, the lost laptop, unexplained large amounts of banned drugs).  The result of this is in my eyes they have no credibility and I don’t believe a word coming out of the team.”

+1.

In addition, their “marginal gains” BS nutrition plan with SIS. Yet another highly dubious claim!

Ta KCR – I am astonished at the low numbers of TUEs.  I assumed all top riders were at it.  Puts Wiggins and Froome in an even worse light considering how many of the top riders are asthmatic.

good point about faith Scud – trouble is for me the Wiggins case and other sky shenanigans that have come to light destroyed mine.

What I am saying is the drugs they used under TUE are normally only given to people ( especially in Wiggins case) who are extremely unwell and would be hardly able to walk let alone ride a grand tour.

Normally, yes.  But pretty silly to apply normal clinical guidelines to people and situations that are nearly as far from normal as you can get.

Thing is – I don’t WANT to believe they are cheating, because it will ruin something I enjoy.  I will, if enough evidence appears – I initially believed Armstrong before I knew enough about cycling.  But for now I want to enjoy it and I want to support someone in a good race.  For me, the evidence is not yet enough to make me change my mind.

Let me ask, TJ – are you actually a cycling fan?  Do you or have you ever watched grand tours and enjoyed them?

I used to Molgrips. Mrs TJ does and still enjoys them so I see the odd bit but for me the Wiggins case meant I lost all faith.  Its such an obvious gaming of the system to gain an advantage.

“Thing is – I don’t WANT to believe they are cheating, because it will ruin something I enjoy.”

I struggle with this too – this year I’m going to try & watch the Tour fully accepting the possibility that most are gaming the system in some way to a lesser or greater extent…..

I’m not confident I’m going to succeed!

I struggle with this too – this year I’m going to try & watch the Tour fully accepting the possibility that most are gaming the system in some way to a lesser or greater extent…..

Id be disappointed if they weren’t. Look at what F1 engineers do. Go over the rules with a fine tooth comb to try and find and gain an advantage. Drivers cutting corners as far as they can get away with etc

This is no different. As long as they stay in the rules, I’m happy

“Thing is – I don’t WANT to believe they are cheating, because it will ruin something I enjoy.”

What has been defined so far is not cheating, you may not like the way the rules have been used but it is still within the rules, cycling does  not have the spirit of the game stuff in there like cricket etc. It has rules, if you go beyond these lines you will have been cheating.

“Thing is – I don’t WANT to believe they are cheating, because it will ruin something I enjoy.”

Is the cheating bit not part of the spectacle, drama and pantomime? Rather than ruining the enjoyment for me it is part of enjoyment itself.

It is entertainment after all. It’s not something that really matters.

A game is defined by its rules. If it is in the rules it is a legal move.

Dont like it? Find a new game.

The Maginot Line worked out so well didn’t it?

Jawohl! Klar… 🙂

😀

“Dont like it? Find a new game.”

Now you’re sounding desperate.

I like my heroes to not only be clean physically, but morally respectable too.

Perhaps my standards are just higher than yours…?

“What has been defined so far is not cheating”

Yet, others have been banned for having similar readings of the exact same drug?

Hmmmmmmm.

“What has been defined so far is not cheating”

Yet, others have been banned for having similar readings of the exact same drug?

Hmmmmmmm.

I know your struggling with the logic and rules so here we go again….

The aaf process is ongoing. Its different to a pass or fail drug test.

As part of the process the result needs explaining and understanding  Once this process is complete we can pass judgement.

If the test is found to not be representative of the amount consumed would you accept that its good to know that.

Is the cheating bit not part of the spectacle, drama and pantomime? Rather than ruining the enjoyment for me it is part of enjoyment itself.

It is entertainment after all. It’s not something that really matters.

It’s not just entertainment though. The same rules apply to everyone who races under UCI rules, from professional level down to weekend warriors. If you tolerate cheating at pro level, then where do you draw the line? Would you be happy to let kids juice up for a local cross race? I remember my disappointment when Robert Millar tested positive in ’91 and couldn’t take pro racing at face value at all after Festina in ’98. However, I love bike racing as a competitor, so I want to see the authorities fighting as hard as possible to keep my sport clean. That’s a battle that will never end, of course.

“In general.  Sky publicly claimed to be a new paradigm of cleaner than clean bike racing.  they have been proven to be liars ( NO needles)  they have been proven to be gaming the TUE system.  There is a lot of circumstantial evidence of going beyond exploiting grey areas ( the jiffy bag, the lost laptop, unexplained large amounts of banned drugs).  The result of this is in my eyes they have no credibility and I don’t believe a word coming out of the team.”

also +1 except I’m editing to say they have lost credibility and I am healthily sceptical about what they say.

But you can’t convict a criminal on trial on the basis of he committed a different offence in the past, you have to weigh and consider the evidence of the case in question. And while some may say that the evidence is already there, others will say (as I will) that the evidence is not yet cast iron either way, and needs to be examined properly. And in that respect I fall on the side of innocent until guilty.

Honestly, trolling and shouting aside i suspect most of us are either side of a very thin fence*, and convincing each other to swap sides won’t happen until more comes to light / the case is ‘heard’ fully. Can that be done in the light of leaks, and yes, in the light of Sky being able to out-lawyer virtually anyone else….. another issue but that’s not really Froome’s fault.

* some people are however still in a completely different field altogether, and are using a megaphone to get their views over.

I am astonished at the low numbers of TUEs

The totals on the UCI website are for UCI issued TUEs for the RTP (Registered Testing Pool) which covers all the top pro riders (from memory, when I looked at this a while ago, that was were about 1300 riders in the RTP). The page states:

If you are included in the UCI RTP, you must apply for a TUE directly to the UCI through ADAMS exclusively.

If you already had a TUE granted by your NADO at the time of your inclusion in the UCI RTP, you must apply for the recognition of this TUE by the TUEC through ADAMS exclusively. If that TUE meets the criteria set out in Section 4.0 of the UCI TUE Regulations, then the TUEC shall recognize it.

So my interpretation is that there will be some pro TUEs issued by national bodies that are not counted in that UCI total, but you could only do that with an existing TUE that is in force at the point you first join the UCI RTP. Any subsequent TUEs would have to be registered via the UCI. In summary, then, if I am reading the website correctly, those totals should be indicative of the total number of pro TUEs. As you say, it is a surprisingly low number, given the controversy around TUE abuse.

This article from the Inner Ring is pretty good on the current situation with TUEs:

http://inrng.com/2018/03/tue-reform-cortisol-tests/

Also, one thing that’s not aways mentioned re the Wiggins TUE is that it was reportedly applied for on the recommendation of an independent specialist – one Simon Hargreaves from Bolton NHS I think – who was consulted by Sky and not just by the team doctor, so the inference presumably is that he too would have been involved in ‘gaming the system’. I don’t think the Parliamentary Committee ever went that deep, he certainly didn’t seem to have been called to give evidence, though maybe it would have been covered by medical confidentiality.

Also, ironically, it’s not inconceivable that the reason Froome went over the urine test Salutamol limit was because he was reluctant to apply for a more potent solution using a TUE because he knew if it ever became known, he’d be accused of cheating.

I’m not defending anyone here before someone jumps down my virtual throat.

If I could be arsed I’d go find that link of Wiggins doctor at Garmin who was shocked at the prescription for asthma as, in his opinion, it was waaaaay over the top (and he also said wiggins didn’t need it to come fourth in the tour, after Lanceof course 🤣 ).

@scud: of course it’s not all sports science is bollocks. But the crap that some people have swallowed to explain stage 19 is impressive. If you managed to work out regimes that worked for you (not meaning any disrespect) then how can sky manage to ‘discover’ some unknown thing that explains it all away. Of course you need to good at both climbing and tting but winning stages in both against specialists is exactly what happened in the worst of the epo years. Applying occams razor…

one of the reason TUEs dropped is that you don’t need one for ‘normal’ use of certain asthma drugs…