Sky TUE saga. Is it some sort of witch hunt?

As per Nickc’s comment, and from the 1950s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fausto_Coppi

Bartali and Coppi appeared on television revues and sang together, Bartali singing about “The drugs you used to take” as he looked at Coppi. Coppi spoke of the subject in a television interview:
Question: Do cyclists take la bomba (amphetamine)?
Answer: Yes, and those who claim otherwise, it’s not worth talking to them about cycling.
Question: And you, did you take la bomba?
Answer: Yes. Whenever it was necessary.
Question: And when was it necessary?
Answer: Almost all the time!

As for

all this criticism yet none made of teams who employ riders who are convicted drugs cheats and are still getting the benefit of that cheating. Some are even team leaders.

Not sure that’s true. Teams and riders with a dirty reputation get discussed and criticised all the time, but unless it’s a new development why would it be considered news? Sky set themselves up to be whiter than white, all about not crossing ‘the line’ which made up part of their kit design, and they have been found wanting.

On the subject of MPs asking questions, 20 years ago the old British Cycling Federation had its problems
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sproat-puts-a-spoke-in-cyclings-big-plans-1312454.html

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199697/cmhansrd/vo961121/debtext/61121-22.htm

But some rebranding to British Cycling and it was all fine
http://www.bikebiz.com/index.php/news/read/bcf-to-rebrand-itself-as-british-cycling
https://spokeydokeyblog.com/2016/05/01/the-20-year-scandal-cycle/

SKY could have them set themselves up as just another cycling team , but decided to be this totally pure team that succeeded on nothing other than perfect training and finding new marginal gains, sadly they have visited a grey area and spent far too much time in it, does it just proove natural talent and shed loads of effort can not win anything sporting now?

Can’t believe I missed this… 😉

The problems are many. As CTM has pointed out this is the explanation v.3. The other two previous have been rubbished. And yet some people think everything is coming up smelling of roses. I’d lay money on v3 being bullshit too. And nice little ‘separation’ from the affair by Brailsford. Just like with Lieanders…

Sky claim to accountable and transparent when they are plainly neither. I too believe they’ve gamed the TUE system and that is cheating in my book.

The cockup vs conspiracy would be all well and good if sky weren’t claiming all this marginal gains, no stone unturned bullshit. Brailsford looks like a bumbling idiot at times. Doesn’t square with his ‘mastermind’ behind it all image.

And what is also shocking is that a women’s coach employed by BC suddenly becomes errand boy for Sky. WTF is all that about. No wonder some in the women’s squad complain bitterly about their treatment. They should be bollocked on high for this, failure to separate the corporate from the national, it’s public money after all….

Oh and ‘witch hunt’, sounds a bit, well, you know, Armstrongy.

Matches Shanes pity you don’t believe in miracles speech to a t. 😆

Enemies of the people.

The Breakaway by Nicole Cooke is worth reading.

New era?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cycling/2016/12/23/british-cycling-hope-new-era-appointing-stephen-park-performance/

https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/about/article/20161111-British-Cycling-begins-search-for-new-chief-executive-0#0OAF16pCwkQQ4gwD.99

New era?

What, another one? 😉

What I find confusing about this whole affair is why is it possible to get an exemption to take drugs on a Tuesday?

And still there’s no “credible” evidence that Sky or the British cycling team have cheated or broken any rules. Pushed those rules to the limit to gain all advantages possible yes, but so what that’s what winners do.
I’m so with Shane Sutton on this, but you lot seem to be having fun so just carry on 😆

no “credible” evidence that

Are we still talking about Brailsford showing the other day?

Because a BC employee flying 900 miles to just deliver a readily over the counter decongestant for a Sky rider just isn’t credible.

This was leaked for a reason, I wonder when that’s going to come out?

Keep at it metallheart your having a ball. And “credible” means just that, something you could present in court or a proper enquiry not just blah,blah,blah. Which untill anything “credible” or shock horror “proof” comes out is all this thread and others like it is.

Because a BC employee flying 900 miles to just deliver a readily over the counter decongestant for a Sky rider just isn’t credible

If the story (as told) is true, that he was going out there anyway and was asked to take an additional package then it’s perfectly credible. And as mentioned earlier in this thread, why would anyone risk buying a medical item in a country where you don’t know the formulation? Drugs aren’t all the same – remember the Scottish skier Alain Baxter at the winter Olympics who won bronze and was subsequently DQd and stripped of the medal for testing positive due to using a readily available over the counter inhaler which, in the States, contained a banned substance but in the UK was perfectly legal.

Riders and staff are flying/driving in and out of teams all the time (not just Sky, every team) and it’s quite routine to “just deliver” [x] while you’re out there. Or for the mechanic to say “oh will you just take [item] back to the service course” and the team member may not be any the wiser what it is.

That’s not just Sky, that’s perfectly normal logistics across all the teams. Bikes, kit, clothing and a million & one sundry items being flown, driven, posted around the world.

Frankly I’m surprised they even remember the specific package, there must have been dozens of cases where “a package” has been delivered and it’s just as likely to be a box set of DVDs for whiling away a long transfer as it is to be medical supplies!

Looking at it another way, what do we think is worse…

Admitting that you were just a little bit dirty but didn’t break the rules, or clamming up and letting people assume the worst?

Wiggo could have dealt with his allergies in a number of ways. He apparently chose a legitimate way that also potentially has a performance benefit.

Personally I think they’d have been better off just copping to that.

Wiggo could have dealt with his allergies in a number of ways. He apparently chose a legitimate way that also potentially has a performance benefit.

Wasn’t the choice of treatment made by two medics, the team doctor and an independent consultant. Do you think they were ‘in on it’?

Please people, the errand boy wasn’t a Sky employee, he was (allegedly) the British Cycling woman’s coach. He should not have been involved in any way whatsoever with Sky dealings (sic). Taking meds or dvds( 😯 ) or whatever. Sky=/=BC.

And I also find his claim he didn’t know what was in the package he was transporting across international borders lacking credibility. Here, please deliver this Jiffy bag to Wiggo in France. What’s in it? Oh, don’t worry about that, it’s not important…. I mean it’s not like there’s a history of transportation peds for cyclists, oh no.

And at the airport when he’s asked that question everyone gets asked ‘has anyone asked you carry something for them?’. Nope, just this Jiffy bag….. C’mon!

two medics, the team doctor and an independent consultant.

Was one of them Dr Leinders by any chance?

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/jan/22/geert-leinders-life-ban-team-sky-doctor

Wasn’t the choice of treatment made by two medics, the team doctor and an independent consultant. Do you think they were ‘in on it’?

I’d have expected the choice to be made by Wiggins, with the doctors explaining his options.

And “credible” means just that, something you could present in court or a proper enquiry not just blah,blah,blah. Which untill anything “credible” or shock horror “proof” comes out is all this thread and others like it is

you mean like the evidence for “he who must not be named” doping?
If you can’t see that, at best, sky are making themselves look dodgy then there’s no point in talking to you about it – see hora in the years before the Oprah show. They’re either guilty of TUE-doping/fiddling or they’re clean and so are guilty of the biggest failure of situation management in cycling history

I don’t know that sky were cheating but unless Brailsford is actually a bumbling idiot, mismanaging the whole thing and getting all these tour wins on pure luck, they have been evasive, untruthful and bloody shifty-looking throughout this process. All that having marketed themselves as being “just cleverer” and beyond suspicion and implied (probably correctly) that most of the other contenders are off their tits on the juice.

What I do know is that I now don’t view them as any different to the rest. That “sky train” that they used to run was the spitting image of US Postal but I was willing to accept that maybe it was just top pros riding to their power meters. Now, hmmmm …..

Please people, the errand boy wasn’t a Sky employee, he was (allegedly) the British Cycling woman’s coach. He should not have been involved in any way whatsoever with Sky dealings (sic). Taking meds or dvds( ) or whatever. Sky=/=BC.

You aren’t making a proper argument here metalheart – what if the time spent by BC staff on Sky was actually recharged?

Taking meds or dvds ( 8O) or whatever.

See you don’t believe it but I know for certain that that has actually been done. Similarly, one rider got a big bag of his favourite brand of coffee delivered since it wasn’t available in Belgium. Food is commonly delivered especially in some of the more remote villages where the Tour stays, they’ll send someone 100+ miles out of the way to buy a load of fresh chicken or fish. 20 teams of riders plus hundreds of journalists, support crews etc and a million fans turning up in a sleepy little backwater town has a habit of emptying the local supermarkets of everything!

What if, what if, what if indeed. What if they didn’t? And I’m not making a proper argument!

What if Sky were actually transparent and weren’t on explanation v3 (after the previous two being debunked), eh?

What if sky hadn’t hired Dr Leinders. Or got a TUE for Wiggo, or, or, or….

Just imagine the Ukrainian women’s teams coach had delivered a bag of Astanas favourite coffee and Rocky boxset for them, eh?

It’s version 3 people. Not something I’m wildly making up to suit. This is what sky and BC have been saying. The first two were wrong… And Emma Pooley wasn’t particularly happy about it either. Strange, it only being coffee and dvds….

Someone else sticking the knife in:
Former British Cycling coach says ‘culture of fear’ exists

If people haven’t done already, you can watch the Select Committee video here: http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/fe5a6178-448d-44cc-835d-7ee6cd91b6e4

Nicole Cooke: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2016/dec/29/nicole-cooke-team-sky-british-cycling

I don’t think she’s happy about it…. Strange that, the BC women’s road coach off on errands for Sky, organising men’s camps and completely failing to do his supposed actual publicly funded job…..

ETA: a handy resume of the situation – http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/wiggins-and-team-sky-under-fresh-scrutiny-over-medical-package-delivery/

No surprise that riders that left British Cycling with an axe to grind are jumping on this. Even Jonathan Tiernan-Locke surfaced after Wiggins’s TUEs came to light and claimed Sky were handing out Tramadol like sweeties.

The high performance culture at Sky and British Cycling I’m sure is pretty pressurised and uncompromising and there were probably some athletes that could handle it and prosper and some that couldn’t and were dropped. I’m also sure over the years Sutton and Brailsford made enemies who are now taking their chance to, as they see it, get payback.

That’s as maybe but Cope himself admits he did practically chuff all for the women, which shows just how much they were valued!

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/cope-i-dont-know-what-was-in-the-package-for-team-sky/

And sometimes people were just treated like shit and they have cause to be bitter, no?

ETA: have to laugh at the * at the bottom! the chump couldn’t even get the supposed race right….

And sometimes people were just treated like shit and they have cause to be bitter, no?

Sure they can be bitter but we should take into account that they have their own agenda when they appear commenting on something unrelated to their own experience with British Cycling, Sky Brailsford etc.

Sure they can be bitter but we should take into account that they have their own agenda when they appear commenting on something unrelated to their own experience with British Cycling, Sky Brailsford etc.

Sure, but the converse is also true, i.e. That Sky & Brailsford are dirty and have their own agenda. Infact, it’s obvious, they do have their own agenda. Which is why the decongestant wheeze as v3 reason doesn’t cut it for me. If it was always thus, why try drag Pooley and lie about Wiggins have knobbed off (when there’s a video of him after the race on the bus….). Why did they feel the need to lie in the first place?

Tramadol usage at Sky was raised by Michael Barry back in 2014, leading to them taking a defined stance against its usage as in this Guardian article.

No surprise that riders that left British Cycling with an axe to grind are jumping on this. Even Jonathan Tiernan-Locke surfaced after Wiggins’s TUEs came to light and claimed Sky were handing out Tramadol like sweeties.

He actually said it happened at the 2012 road world championships where he was part of the British, rather than at Team Sky. Accusation since denied by Luke Rowe and someone else, Thomas maybe.

If you want to spin it to fit the Daily Mail narrative, you need to point out that the GB team doctor at the worlds was Richard Freeman, who was also working for Team Sky at the 2011 Dauphine and was part of the Wiggins TUE process.

The MPs Select commitee are interested in the people paid by British Cycling but who seem to be working for Team Sky

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cycling/2016/12/29/british-cycling-warned-issues-dual-team-sky-roles-2011/

In particular, Cooke suggested that Cope’s role – he carried the package to France at the behest of Team Sky despite being a British Cycling employee – and his “moonlighting away from his publicly funded role” as the women’s road team manager at British Cycling, potentially cost Britain’s women a medal at the 2011 road world championships in Copenhagen.

It noted a “lack of clarity” surrounding the dual roles of many involved in both Team Sky and British Cycling but said that it was being addressed by British Cycling. Sutton, for instance, then the head coach at British Cycling as well as Wiggins’ personal coach at Team Sky, was to spend his time in 2011 “almost exclusively with GBCT [the Great Britain Cycling Team]”.

Thanks for the link Paton, interesting read.

Further reading

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2016/dec/29/nicole-cooke-team-sky-british-cycling

What do you think Sky are actually up to then Metalheart? We don’t need evidence, just your speculation on what doping products they’re using.

Personally I still think the Jiffy bag is a red herring, though I believe the tramadol claims and think they’ve made Wiggo’s TUE look very suspicious with the appalling way they’ve handled it.

Overall my take on it is that they’ve probably done a couple of morally dubious but legal things which they now regret – but feel they can’t come out and say that.

What do you think Sky are actually up to then Metalheart?

To be honest, I reckon it’s probably just the usual (I thought LA was on something fancy and new and was actually shocked to find out it was just the big five!). And whatever makes them into skeletal Belsen lookalikes. That’s just not natural. Rasmussen was the same, so whatever Leinders did for him, it sure worked.

Didn’t the Jiffy bag rear it’s head as if it was kentacort then taking it at the end of the finishing day of the dauphine would’ve been a violation?

Yup. It’s the appalling way they’ve handled it that’s made me surer than ever that something ain’t right.

So, Wiggins urgently needed an over the counter medication at the end of a race, and team sky decided that the best way to deliver it was 48hr courier via a senior member of BC. This is explanation V3.

This is a team that races predominantly in Europe, is it unreasonable to think that their supply chain would at some point take account of ‘urgent’ medical need outside of the UK ? Otherwise the transportation of similar medical packages would be a regular thing, non?

Their evasive behaviour over the ‘package’ is the most obvious and seemingly deliberate way to draw the maximum possible attention to it, which means it must be all legit, surely?