If any of the charity money is linked to him in any way in which it can be considered part of his assets, then it’s even worse than I thought.

While not “charity money”, Livestrong.com was always a for-profit organisation, unlike Livestrong.org. To me, that’s a very uncomfortable setup

His argument about just how much he would lose is such common sense it’d be a weird one for a doper to give and still be able to rationalise doping to himself.

Dopers have a track record in that regard: “Why would someone in my position, with my medical history, take something like that?” – Lance Armstrong on growth hormone, in 2001.

So this Dr Betty Martini… I take it her full medical title is “Betty Martini”, yes?

Again, what has changed?

The drug tests still don’t work… it still takes the odd bit of police work to actually catch cheats. And there aren’t many Travis Tygarts.

There’s still bags of money in the sport, and huge pressure to keep a team in the money.

Enforcement is still mainly in the hands of organisations who don’t really have much interest in busting their top players, because they’re the ones who drive public interest and therefore cash.

We’re not in 60% HCT land, as I said, but if elite athletes can get away with it, history tells us they do it.

Countless scandals, years of failed drug enforcement corrupted by clever doctors and conflicted interests, long lists of grand tour winners either busted, implicated or compromised…

Don’t you think perhaps the burden of proof shifted to the SPORT, not to its fans, some time ago?

Still, at least Sky didn’t hire any doctors with long alleged histories of doping in teams known to have been filthy.

What? Oh.

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.

I like Pentax. Downside is a lack of high quality (super expensive) long telephotos. Upside is a huge availability of brilliant old manual lenses

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

They’re bringing back Megarange?

I’m a cyclist. I ride bikes.

I reckon I’ll probably clock up my fifth kilometre of running in about 2015

The expense scandal was basically because they were/are underpaid on the rob,

FTFY

“No expenses at all” just isn’t realistic (unless you can tell me why the MP with responsibility for the outer Hebrides should be much worse off than the MP for Westminster). They just have to keep it reasonable, and not take the piss, just like in any other job where work related expenses are reimbursed (like mine).

I wouldn’t want my expenses to be considered part of my perks. I get paid expenses when I have to travel to work, which can often mean international flights. It’s not a perk, it’s travel for work. I make a point of staying in non-fancy hotels, and hunting around for a good value place to eat, rather than just doing £30-40 a night in hotel restaurants that are crap value anyway.

At no point do I buy duck houses, big TVs, or do any of the other cliched expenses stuff like lapdancing and getting sloshed on the company ticket. Maybe I’m the exception to the rule, who knows.

I guess in the course of that I probably run up five-figure expenses in a year, but none of that is any perk to me, it’s just the cost to my company of sending me places to work. But the day I take money from that that is nothing to do with normal business expenses, in a defined set of rules, is the day I’m breaking criminal law, no matter what I’m paid.

Another patient debunking by the Met Office: http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/addressing-the-daily-mail-and-james-delingpoles-crazy-climate-change-obsession-article/

Oh really….in 2007 its Hadley Centre for climate change research produced a briefing document for the Government claiming its state of the art computer models left no doubt: man made global warning was a very real threat which needed to be urgently addressed by the policy makers.

and why did the Christmas Eve data contradict that? It’s predicting a SLOWING OF THE RATE of warming, not a lack of warming, not a reversal. The decade preceding this one was the warmest on record. 2012 was the 9th warmest year on record by some measures.

The whole thing is immensely complex to model, and there are lots of datasets, and they won’t all match up, and using a single one as the basis of ANYTHING is tabloid dumfeckery, but a shallowing out of a rate of growth in one set of data doesn’t disprove warming, it just indicates an increased amount of uncertainty in where things are predicted to go from here.

Lewis Page of the Register has constantly pressed an AGW-sceptical viewpoint. His opinion alone proves or disproves nothing.

The MetOffice is releasing experimental data based on its open analysis in an open manner. They don’t claim their data is everything, nor does a small readjustment in their data mean that a whole branch of science is “BOLLOCKS”

The way I see Alex Jones is:

Which makes more money?

a) Being the loudest and most outrageous commentator on conspiracies and gubbins?

b) Being the second loudest and most outrageous commentator on conspiracies and gubbins?

As I say, he’s playing a character, I’m sure of it.

I remain a fan of Armstrong he is an extraordinary man

O’Reilly said she was slightly nervous before the publication of the interviews, but had no idea that the retaliation from Armstrong and others would be so strong. Armstrong sued O’Reilly and the Sunday Times, which had serialised the book. The legal battle lasted three years. “He was suing me for more than I was worth,” O’Reilly said. “I was worried he would bankrupt me.”

In the end, as part of a settlement, the Sunday Times wrote an apology. O’Reilly paid no money, she said. “Emma suffered from the lawsuit the most,” Walsh said this week. “This woman was an opponent of Lance Armstrong and was completely vilified.

Suing ordinary people for telling the truth? Extraordinary.

I don’t see why any discipline of cycling, or any team, or any other sport for that matter, warrants any free pass or assumption of innocence with regard to doping.

Any sport where there’s good money involved (and I presume big name track stars don’t turn up at sixes for free), and where the oversight doesn’t lend itself to actually catching doping, is likely to have some doping going on, whether that’s individuals or teams.

When you look at how poor the testing regime has been in cycling over the last few decades, and extrapolate that to sports like football where the money is bigger and the testing is even worse, I think it’d be crazy to assume there’s no doping. Even though it might not provide the same overwhelming advantages in football as it does in cycling, long-distance running, or power sports, it’s still going to give SOME advantage. And in football all you need to do to survive in a division, or go from 5th to 4th, or whatever, is beat the other teams at the same level as you. Stamina can be a big differentiator if all else is equal.

What the USADA case has shown is that technical measures have consistently been overwhelmed by the stuff the riders do to get around them. It took a tenacious individual in the form of Travis Tygart, using “good old fashioned police work”, to quote The Wire, to bring down an almost untouchable man.

Sadly there are very few Travis Tygarts out there.

I’m minded to think he’s clean too. At least you can see the seriously brilliant TT technique, a legacy of his pursuit days. I want to feel more convinced than I am about some of the others, and the team haven’t been helping.

Without doping in the sport Kimmage would need to find a new line of work.

He’s a noted (edit: Multi award winning) sporting biographer and a very good writer. I’m sure there are easier paths to making a living than the fight against doping.

In terms of opening up surely nothing other than full access would be accepted? If so how on earth are they to do their job. Would you want someone with you 24/7? it’d be impossible.

I’d love teams like Sky to do something that’ll mean that if their guy is standing on the podium on the Champs Elysees this July, we can all look at the background and say with complete confidence that they did it clean.

How that might be achieved, well, not sure, but there’s plenty of room for improvement. Maybe invite Ashenden to work with the team for some of the buildup, give him access to data and the riders. They’re happy to work with all manner of scientists all day long around nutrition, psychology, etc, so why not another? Hell, hand him all the data going back a few years… if they’ve nothing to hide then you’d hope someone like Ashenden would then be in a position to say “these guys are the real deal and they’re still winning”.

Funding’s a question of course, but you’ve got people like Jamie Fuller pouring money into the effort right now, and while of course he’s got interests in selling sportswear, he’s also a relatively impartial party in the whole doping area, I’d like to think.

I mean, that’s just one idea, it’s not meant to be the only answer.

I amnotsure what more folk expect Sky or Wiggo to do tbh.

Open up, and no more Leinders moments. Simple.

I actually do not believe he gives a damn about cycling, i think his pursuit of Armstrong was more about the fact Armstrong mocked him and crossed him.

That’s a baseless couple of statements in my opinion. He was fighting against doping before Armstrong came to the top. Why shouldn’t he go after the biggest fish… what he saw as the greatest bad affecting the “greater good”? As for not giving a damn about cycling… blimey, what a statement. He’s from a cycling family, he’s cycled all his life and still does – look at his conversation with Landis where he’s firmly encouraging Landis to keep riding even if it’s just for fun. There’s plenty of statements which suggest he’s still in love with the sport, and none that I know of to back up your assertion. You can’t assert he’s “acting through spite” and then criticise him for that spite, it’s a straw man.

In terms of performances now, sure, the W/Kg is down from the EPO free-for-all era, but that doesn’t mean there’s not bad stuff going on. Microdosing, more subtle methods, etc. After all, you don’t have to be better than Pantani, you have to be marginally better than the bloke next to you. That italian prosecutor recently spoke about Chinese EPO and other as-yet-undetectable things. Sky could surely take journos to training camps and protect their training secrets through NDAs while being open enough to inspire greater confidence, especially after all this backtracking around Leinders.

I believe (correct me if I’m wrong, I’m quoting second hand) that Walsh concluded with the line “If you put a gun to my head… I would say you won clean. But I’d still be relieved to hear the click of the empty chamber”. He’s supportive… but there’s some worry left there, isn’t there?

Edit -double post

Kimmage has an axe to grind because wiggins at the 11th hour went back on an agreement that kimmage could shadow the team during the ’11 tour. So they must be doping. Not that someone in the toughest race in the world doesn’t want a chippy tosser under his armpit 24 hrs….

If it’s a price to pay for confidence and transparency, they should have MTFU’d. Instead they kicked him off and closed ranks, which was at best ill-considered, at worst very suspect

When people repeat lines like “Kimmage has an axe to grind” it sounds just like the words Armstrong used to use against him and others. It’s little different to Emma O’Reilly being described as an “alcoholic prostitute”, or all the vitriol against Travis Tygart (lost count of the number of people who parroted the camp’s line that he was “just making a name for himself”). Kimmage has his livelihood on the line, such is his passion for fighting doping in the sport. Yes, he’s abrasive, but better that (by far) than most other journos who have toed the li(n)e and in many cases got rich from hanging onto the seatposts of dopers. At least Kimmage gives a damn about the future of the sport.

Cycling needs a few more Kimmages and a lot less Liggerts and Watsons

As far as I can see he has suspicions because of the nature of Wiggins’ performance, nothing else.

That’s clearly not true. He’s citing a number of things, including Leinders, a perceived shutdown of openness last year, and the performances of members of his team.

It’s up to Sky to be open enough that the performances of Froome, Rogers, etc, don’t leave reasonable questions. Only a few years ago Wiggins was saying teams that employ “certain types” of doctor shouldn’t be allowed on the Tour. Then suddenly they have a doctor who arguably ticks that box in thick marker pen, and when questioned, they mumble about an internal enquiry for yonks (which we don’t hear about again) until that doc’s contract runs out and he quietly goes

I don’t believe that one team just trains harder than every other team. Maybe they train better… Okayyyyy…. But when that’s happening at the same time that doctors like that appear on the payroll… When domestiques in their thirties start climbing better than in their previous (very suspect) peaks, then we need enough openness to believe it, not sweaty rants at press conferences. “We’re clean because we say so and we train hard” has been done before.

Mike Ashenden last year spoke of “inner circles” even at next generation teams. I hope to god this team is clean, i really like them, i travelled to support them from the roadside in France last year. i want them just to set it all out so it’s obvious. As cycling fans we should be saying to the sport, fool me once, twice, three times, we were dumbarses. But fool us again and we’d be astonishingly massive dumbarses. Is it too much to ask to be able to celebrate this success without having to rely on “of course they’re clean, they’re British and they said so”?

Are there as many questions about Boonen’s 50km break or that or Cancilara (sp?)

In certain places, certainly.

I wish drivers didn’t habitually drive too fast for their visibility of the road ahead. I’m tired of hearing “I came round a corner and had to slam on the brakes” type stuff from motorist. Everyone should be conditioned to expect an unlit skip to have been dropped in the road somewhere ahead. Perhaps using actual skips

I just realised on the A24 (Mickleham Bends) they all think they’re recreating the Olympics.

What do you mean by this?

Road tyres. The Chilterns are soul destroying this winter

some teams are have been doing their best to be clean for years for sure. Garmin and yes Sky

Hiring one of the dodgiest doctors of the recent doping era doesn’t really help me to trust Sky’s words. Garmin are a different kettle of fish I think: Vaughters is very open on twitter and even the Clinic forum on CN

Some of the abuse of Kimmage, including here, certainly shows that mud sticks, even after the chief mud thrower is busted. He’s been right all along, and he’s been the target of horrendous abuse from those whose cheating he fought.

What has Kimmage done wrong, exactly? Is sky untouchable? They can just employ whatever dodgy doctor they feel like without being questioned? Or close up on promised transparency? Then ride up mountains at 25mph led by domestiques who then leave the team promptly when a new declaration become a condition of staying?

The burden of proof is on cycling.

If you don’t like your marmalade extra-thick cut, we’ll probably never be friends.

There’s a great range at Waitrose by the way. Even own label stuff

I tried it for a month. Saw little value if you didn’t own lots of power/HRM gadgets

I think they’re struggling to find a good premium offering without blanking out features to free users that are becoming seen as expected. Tightrope to walk, that is

Weasel – Member
OK, so not exactly HIT but when I joined Strava in the summer and tried to get decent placings and KOM’s on my local trails, I (and others) noticed my weight drop, fitness increase and speed go up.

Me too, I’ve probably never been faster on my punchy local climbs, even pre-knee-knack

My RHAs came with the slipperiest earbuds ever. A dab of moisture or sweat and they fall out constantly

By the way, thanks for the CTC tip, especially the iPhone app. Didn’t know they’d done that. Hampshire County Council in particular should keep me busy with it. Their roads are ridiculously awful.

The ones that just look like puddles are always bastards. This one did for two inner tubes the other day, and the shock even threw the cover off my rear cateye light. Very sharp front edge on it.