So, do we think Wiggins is clean?

He “must” be clean, he is one of us. 😉

I certainly hope so, especially as I went to the effort of growing sideburns before watching/supporting him in the TT, but my view on most pro sport is (sadly), ” who knows?”. Cycling is no exception. In my blissful state of ignorance I will continue to celebrate his success and hope that my innocence is not shattered at some later date. I think that is the best one can hope for in pro sport these days.

Why would the sport suddenly be clean? What’s changed? Genuine question.

A drug dose 180 times below the level that would cause any effective performance effect…

Ah but you forget the belief is it’s actually a blood bag that he used and the traces were from pre-season training when he had the blood extracted. He had plasticisers in his blood but that wasn’t allowed to be discussed in the CAS case. NY Velocity covered it with Michael Ashenden.

If Ashenden thinks that Contador was blood doping, that’s good enough for me. He’s been caught doping, never admitted anything and came out in support of Armstrong (until it became damaging to Saxo’s chances of a license).

Unrepentant doper.

BD has it with this…

Compared to the astonishing speeds and 1990s-style heroics of the Vuelta last year, the TdF looked very much like a panyagua effort.

I watched the TdF and hoped to also enjoy the Vuelta. Turned off after a couple of stages – the whole thing looked like a circus. On the TdF, those who attacked in the mountains one day were hanging on afterwards. In the Vuelta it looked like day after day attacks with no penalty to be paid following an “all out” effort – and Sky faded…

I hope Wiggins is clean, I think it much more likely that he is clean than those going back just a few years, however I would not be surprised or shocked if he was caught doping, just disappointed.

Millar = far from a hero, he got caught otherwise he’d still likely be doping. At least he admitted it and has tried to help clean up the sport since
Contador = got caught but still maintains innocence and therefore cannot be trusted
Wiggo = personally I think he’s clean but he can’t be above suspicion, no pro can. I’d also like to see him post blood values, I don’t really see them as top-secret info that rival teams can use (at least post them up after the TdF).

You could ask this question of every sportsman? So what? He is innocent until proven guilty. Personally l am not interested in speculating on something the cycling authorities are handling for us. Why do we even need to talk about it, it’s just malicious chatter. Caveat : I don’t like wiggo, l think he is a prick, incredible cyclist, admirable achievement, but a knob.

Again, from personal experience I’d believe the ex-doper. They’re the ones who undestand what they’ve lost.
Look at the other famous doper…. Millar.

The difference between Contador and Millar is Millar said sorry, Contador claimed he’d eaten some dodgy steak imported from a Spanish butcher that no one could rememeber the name of.

I’m pretty sure you don’t know me, you have no idea what I have or haven’t achieved, so you have no right to blurt out those absurdities.

Wasn’t this the whole point of your thread? Blurting out absurdities about others achievements.

Should we start casting aspersions about your drug taking, after all, we’ve never seen you pass a test!

michaelmcc – Member
It just doesn’t really seem to make sense that someone could win the tour without some performance enhancement when half of them seem to be on something, if not all.

Why would the sport suddenly be clean? What’s changed? Genuine question.

I’d also put money on it being clean for the majority. There’s no way teams are at it anymore, and with whole teams being expelled for a single rider being caught there must be pressure on the riders not to dope.

And look at the reduction in average speed and attacks over the last few years. If one person was doping we’d have something that looked suspiciously like Contador in the Vuleta. Not that him winning is a sign of guilt (although I’m suspicious), I’m happy to put that down to him being better preared for the vuleta having had the whole season off to prepare. Although Armstrong used the same ‘tactics’ (OK Bertie was on a ban, rather than a tactic) for the TDF……………

In a word, no.

#waits for the thought police to call#

What was he (Contador) caught with?

Drugs he was not alowed in his body- also indications of blood transfusions
In short he was caught cheating.

A drug dose 180 times below the level that would cause any effective performance effect…

so he is rubish at it? is this your defence of him?

quote]I have to laugh at people who think guys like Wiggins and Evans are clean yet guys like Contador aren’t.[/quote]
I have to shake my head in disbelief at someone who defends someone who has failed a drugs test then laughs at folk who defend those who have not. Why exactly are you ignoring the evidence?

Look at the 2007 Tour for example, 23 seconds between Contador and Evans. If a guy like Contador was doping and Evans was’t the gap would be closer to 23 minutes.

Yes this is the pull figures out the air without any evidence type argument that will sway the haysayers..I feel certain of it.

I have to laugh at people who think guys like Wiggins and Evans are clean yet guys like Contador aren’t. Look at the 2007 Tour for example, 23 seconds between Contador and Evans. If a guy like Contador was doping and Evans was’t the gap would be closer to 23 minutes.

You assume that Contador would be as good as Evans if he wasn’t doping. That’s one of the really sad parts of this whole saga – like most people I believe Evans is clean, and if he’d been competing on a level playing field against other clean athletes the chances are he’d be discussed in reverential terms as a legend of the sport with multiple TdF wins under his belt.

Meanwhile you also assume that current drugs use results in the same huge advantage drugs had 10 or 15 years ago, when available evidence suggests that isn’t the case.

Wiggins dope? I really don’t think that he is that stupid.

The difference between Contador and Millar is Millar said sorry, Contador claimed he’d eaten some dodgy steak imported from a Spanish butcher that no one could rememeber the name of I can’t be bothered looking for.

Receipts produced by Astana — Contador’s team during the 2010 Tour — showed that the butcher belonged to Grupo Larrezabal, which sold the cuts of beef that Contador’s lawyers argue triggered the clenbuterol positive.
😉

I hope that hes clean. Thats all we can say really.

We? Is that everyone on STW or all cycists in general? Is that the same ‘We’ that worshiped Lance Armstrong?
Not everyone is so naive.

Does it really effect any of us.

I hope there not for there own sake, but in the long run LA doping didn’t effect me in the slightest, all it did was turn another child hood hero into nothing, Like batman,and spiderman and santa and the easter bunnyand the tooth fairy.

I don’t think anyone can deny that at the time he was an inspiration, but they come in many forms.

Let them have there time and enjoy it.

That’s a bit odd MrSmith? What is wrong with the quote, the subjective bit (hope) is in the first person singular and the objective bit (we don’t know) correctly addressed in the plural. Pretty well written IMO.

We? Is that everyone on STW or all cycists in general? Is that the same ‘We’ that worshiped Lance Armstrong?
Not everyone is so naive.

When I’m as old as you I hope I still retain my positive outlook on life and I don’t become bitter.

Hmmm. You did become a teensy-weensy bit bitter when the Lance thing took off 😉

Receipts produced by Astana — Contador’s team during the 2010 Tour — showed that the butcher belonged to Grupo Larrezabal, which sold the cuts of beef that Contador’s lawyers argue triggered the clenbuterol positive.

I seem to recall some comment about there not being any good meat in France and that was why they drove it across Spain and France to get it to him. Oddly, seeing most French butchers I’d be inclined to call bullshit on that. They may have a receipt but I doubt that’s where the clenbuterol came from.

When I’m as old as you I hope I still retain my positive outlook on life and I don’t become bitter

I’m very positive thanks, I only have to read some of the posts on here for a life affirming boost.

Wiggins dope? I really don’t think that he is that stupid.

Or as Duclos said, you’d have to be stupid to get caught and with a good doctor you won’t.

Let’s face it, unless you spend your life with him, no one can state that he’s either definitely clean or not. It’s a question of belief, interpretation and credibility.

On the one hand, logic says that cycling has been dirty as hell for year and that people have always been able to get around the tests so it’s very unlikely that the sport is clean now. In addition, Sky hired Leinders who has a far from clean background although that clearly says nothing about what he’s actually done at Sky.

On the other hand, detection has gone away from simply checking for a specific drug or a simple (eg over 50%) value both of which can be avoided to something more clever (but arguably less black and white) – eg blood passports/profiling/etc. Thus far and in recent times, doping is all about making the blood carry more oxygen. Manipulation of that is easier to identify with the testing as is though clearly not foolproof. Nowadays, I reckon dopers have to be lucky as well as very careful to avoid detection. In the past you didn’t need to be lucky.

If I had to put money on it, I’d be pretty happy to say Wiggins is clean. He’s come from the right background, he’s been on the right teams, he’s said the right things and there are some good reasons why doping would be a real risk for him.

But sadly the logic says that I can’t state that he definitely is clean and in some ways that’s the worst legacy from Armstrong and the many others.

You can safely say that modern doping is not just

all about making the blood carry more oxygen

it’s about marginal gains through doping at undetectable levels to improve every aspect of physiology; strength, power, oxygenation, recovery, coordination… . What Duclos refered to 20 years back as “équilibrage hormonal” is just using lots of different substances at undetectable levels that make a marginal difference but add up all these marginal gains and you end up with a big gain. Duclo’s justification was that it was the only way he could reamin in a state to do his job – read his book.

be nice if he was clean, but wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t.

They may have a receipt but I doubt that’s where the clenbuterol came from.

On the basis that it’s been banned in food production throughout the EU since ’96, I’d agree. 😉

I’m sure I read somewhere that the times of the TDF rides had slowed markedly compared with the former averages – indicating a lack of drug assistance?

indicating a lack of drug assistance?

or indicating the need to not do it to the extent they once did?

You do have a good pint Pigface…

A 460W TT isn’t slowing IMO. Tours in which the sprint teams dominate the first week with stage-long duels and leaping on evry break are faster than Tours with a dominant team and not much sprint interest. Climb rates were high, very high even, when the chips were down.

Read
Bradley Wiggins: My Time

Read
Bradley Wiggins: My Time

I’ve been trying to since Christmas but find it a great cure for insomnia 😐

I’ve been trying to since Christmas but find it a great cure for insomnia

I’ve given up on it a few times now

A 460W TT isn’t slowing IMO.

Was the TT not after a rest day?
Its not exceptional for a TT but do they do it every day – no its about 400 watts whichis less than LA was doing

Climb rates were high, very high even, when the chips were down

Its almost like they can go fast for short periods but not for ever

Everyone knows the times on the climbs have come down so i dont really know what point you are making

Its a really pointless debate the doubters will continue to doubt as you cannot prove a negative

PS Excellent point aracer – cadel may well have been LA if everyone had been clean- thankfully he did at least get one

Haave you selectively removed the link I posted from your memory, Junkyard? You missed “oval rings” the first time and asked me for a link, found it, but seem not to have registered the information it contained. I suppose I’ll have to link it again, hang on.

Edit: Sky power, sorry it was Froome at over 467W up a Vuelta climb, Wiggins was only at 45OW in the TT.

I read it I thnaked you i commented on it and I gave you an example of the translation Google provided so no not forgotten it thanks

However you seem to have failed to read the bit about TT- of course they will be able to do more for shorter periods – there is no great surprise in that and hardly proof of cheating. I suspect I can get about that for a very short period of time [ seconds]

Its not like anyones 10 mile TT wattage is the same as your 100 mile average now is it.
I though[ one of ] the main effects of the PEDS were to aid recovery and stop the effects of tiring over the duration of the tour and to enable harder training and that is why the wattages and climb times were higher

As I said in reply to that post the link to the Vueleta results showed about 400 watts per average which was about 6 watts per kg and way below LA 6.6-6.8 watts per kilo

As for Froome – it was obvious to anyone he was pooped in the Vueleta and he would not have been with PEDS i assume

anyway the key point is that climb times are slower now – not that they cannot produce high wattages for short periods it that they cannot do it every day for 6 hours
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/jul/10/tour-mountains-science-of-sport

So, in terms of what that means for Wiggins and co at the front of the stage, it predicts about 6.4 to 6.5 W/kg. Over 16 minutes, that’s not at all unreasonable. To give you some context, calculations of climbing power output in the Tour de France in the 1990s and 2000s often estimated that top riders maintained power outputs of 6.4 to 6.5W/kg on the Tour’s HC climbs, most of which take over 40 minutes to climb. So in other words, there was an era where the best riders were maintaining similar power outputs to what we saw on Saturday, for three times the duration. Put differently, all those riders would probably have been a minute clear of this current generation on this climb…

also her ere Alpe D Huez
http://www.sportsscientists.com/2012/07/tour-in-mountains-analysis-discussion.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FcJKs+%28The+Science+of+Sport%29

The graph below was put together by Alex Simmons, and it shows the time on the famous Alp d’Huez climb as a function of power output. There’s a lot of data there but slide your finger across from a time of 38:30. That’s the kind of performance (or faster) we saw in the previous generation. Then consider the more recent times – Frank Schleck did 40:46 in 2006, the first time in 12 years they didn’t break 40. The best performances in the last 3 years are all slower than 41 minutes. That fits well with what I’ve added to the graph in blue and yellow – those are the equivalent performances to two climbs in the 2010 Tour, where riders simply don’t get above 6W/kg anymore. Not even once, let alone repeatedly during the race, as they once did.

oh and a BBC one just to annoy you 😉

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18921784

Like i say for short periods they can do the super human outputs but they cannot do it for ever – it is the longer outputs we need to look at and when we do it is obvious that people are slower now and doing less watts per kg

it proves nothing but it is what one would expect if they were no longer doing PED

It will be interesting to see what comes out of the Padua investigation. According to the magistrate “nothing has changed” and there are a couple of EPO variants in use that cannot be identified using the current tests:
http://road.cc/content/news/72609-doping-padua-magistrate-says-nothing-has-changed-cycling

It’s this kind of stuff that makes me cock an eyebrow at David Millar’s assertions that “Doping is just a non-subject to the young guys…To them it’s the dark ages of the sport.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/nov/05/david-millar-cycling
You don’t have to be an expert on cycling to see that doping is still very much a live issue (and always will be).

Sorry, double post

I know that comparing TT speeds is not an exact science as course and conditions vary but they have got faster over the years and very closely followed high power outputs related to better (worse?) doping. With the exception of Obree’s superman and paper boy positions aerodynamics have played a smaller role in the gains than increased power ouptputs. (check out the history of hour records and estimated power outputs)

52km/h is silly fast whichever way you look at it. Faster than this lot on EPO, cortisone and growth hormone protocols in 93 anyhow. Have a look at the history of TT speeds and associated power outputs, Wiggins really isn’t less powerful than “the dirty generation” that went before.

Stage 9 – 59 km ITT 1993
1. Miguel Indurain en 1h12’50”
2. Bugno Ã* 2’11”
3. Breukink Ã* 2’22”
4. Rominger Ã* 2’42”
5. Zulle Ã* 3’18”
6. Bruyneel Ã* 3’50”
7. Jaskula Ã* 4’00”
8. Alcala Ã* 4’05”
9. Louviot Ã* 4’28”
10. Roche Ã* 4’30”
27. Armstrong Ã* 6’04”

All under 49km/h and Armstrong before Motorola discovered EPO at 45km/h

I know he is not less powerful for short periods but he is much less powerful when you make him ride a complete tour over three weeks as shown by times. watts per Kg and climb times

You can keep posting TT times but as I am not disputing that short efforts are still [broadly] equivalent it serves little purpose.

to repeat

anyway the key point is that climb times are slower now – not that they cannot produce high wattages for short periods it that they cannot do it every day for 6 hours

I’m sure I read somewhere that the times of the TDF rides had slowed markedly compared with the former averages – indicating a lack of drug assistance?

We all know that things aren’t as bad as in the days where loads of riders had 60%+ HCTs, and powered along with blood like treacle (before riding all night on rollers to stay alive).

But riders don’t have to beat Bjarne Riis, 1996. They’ve got to beat the bloke next to them today. I’ve read plenty of stuff, including from people like Mike Ashenden, that suggests that a much more careful doping plan based on microdosing and smaller transfusions would slip through the tests pretty easily.