Support road.cc

Like this site? Help us to make it better.

Are cracks appearing in the Walsh / Sky love affair?

Walsh has been very quiet since puffer-gate and the subsequent revelations about Froome's TUE at the TdR - but today, in an article for the Sunday Times, he broke his silence.

I've only seen quotes from the article on the CN website, but the following is quite telling:

"What has happened to the team’s belief that TUEs should not be sought for riders in competition? Farrell says he was unaware this ethical position existed within the team. Froome says he never heard of it. But Peters has said it did exist at one point and the team are in only their fifth year," Walsh writes. "As in the case of the appointment of (former Rabobank doctor) Leinders, Team Sky talk the talk of high ethical standards but do not walk the walk."

Finally, from Walsh's own mouth - Sky talk the talk, but do not walk the walk!

I'm sure Walsh hasn't delved too far below the surface in this article, but it's a start!

If you're new please join in and if you have questions pop them below and the forum regulars will answer as best we can.

Add new comment

88 comments

Avatar
bashthebox | 9 years ago
0 likes

I'm not sure I compared Froome to Coppi except to hold up the daftness of moaning about a 3 and a half minute time gap being an obvious indicator of doping.
Almost every winning margin in the (major) EPO era was 4 mins or more, sure - but what about mr 2nd place? So he wasn't doping? Do me a favour.

Look, there may be doping going on, there may not. But there's no evidence to prove it either way so it all comes down to heresay and assumptions. Sky aren't doing everything the way we want, perhaps - but which team is? Full transparency is a ludicrous thing to demand in the context of professional sport unless every single team is doing it 100% of the time. If they're not, then it's not a level playing field is it? Even then, the weaker teams have so much more to gain from full transparency than the stronger ones, so it's never gonna happen.

Avatar
daddyELVIS replied to bashthebox | 9 years ago
0 likes

I'm not sure I compared Froome to Coppi except to hold up the daftness of moaning about a 3 and a half minute time gap being an obvious indicator of doping.

I wasn't saying it was an obvious sign of doping (and I understand your Coppi comment - apologies for twisting that), I was throwing it out there to question how much of a winning margin can be down to Sky's 'marginal gains', especially when some believe Sky are not any more advanced as most other top-level teams.

Have you seen the interview between Froome (& Cound) and Kimmage? Fair play to Froome for taking it, but it does illustrate that Sky maybe aren't all that! A great interview and worth a read - it's in 2 parts BTW - apparently 3 hours in all.

Avatar
Stumps | 9 years ago
0 likes

Coppi - Froome ?

Its the same arguement that got bounced about re Ali - Tyson.

In the end its different era's and different times so you will never know. Both are / were fantastic riders.

Avatar
bashthebox | 9 years ago
0 likes

Was he though? I mean, is that something you can possibly know?
There's 70 years between them competing, training, nutrition, technology, attitudes, money - so much is different. Christ, there's enough differences in the last 10 years that it's hard to compare today's athletes to the era of massive EPO abuse.

Avatar
daddyELVIS replied to bashthebox | 9 years ago
0 likes
bashthebox wrote:

Was he though? I mean, is that something you can possibly know?
There's 70 years between them competing, training, nutrition, technology, attitudes, money - so much is different. Christ, there's enough differences in the last 10 years that it's hard to compare today's athletes to the era of massive EPO abuse.

I'll be guided by the palmares - please don't argue that Froome may be on a level with Coppi  24

Avatar
bashthebox | 9 years ago
0 likes

And Coppi won by 28 minutes, before there was any sophisticated doping of any sort. So what's your point, again?

Avatar
daddyELVIS replied to bashthebox | 9 years ago
0 likes
bashthebox wrote:

And Coppi won by 28 minutes, before there was any sophisticated doping of any sort. So what's your point, again?

There was no point - hence "just sayin"

But, while you mention it, I wonder where Froome would have finished back then  39 I know one thing, Coppi was more than 6.5 times the rider Froome is  103

Avatar
fukawitribe replied to daddyELVIS | 9 years ago
0 likes
daddyELVIS wrote:
bashthebox wrote:

And Coppi won by 28 minutes, before there was any sophisticated doping of any sort. So what's your point, again?

There was no point - hence "just sayin"

Then just say what you mean and stop this ridiculous alluding to then "Oh but I never actuallysaid that" nonsense. It's banal and tiresome.

Avatar
daddyELVIS replied to fukawitribe | 9 years ago
0 likes
fukawitribe wrote:

Then just say what you mean and stop this ridiculous alluding to then "Oh but I never actuallysaid that" nonsense. It's banal and tiresome.

It was a reply to a posting about Sky's 'marginal gains' being able to justify a winning margin of 3 mins by a clean rider over the course of the TdF.

I was merely pointing out Froome's actual winning margin which was nearly 50% greater - that's all.

Then Coppi was brought into the argument from somewhere - not sure why Coppi and Froome are being mentioned in the same breath!  102

Avatar
bashthebox | 9 years ago
0 likes

I'm tempted to play along with the twitterati here, but I won't.

Everyone sarcastically says "pineapple and water" but that's really missing the point about the aggregation of gains thing. Some of the gains just aren't that marginal at all, and when we're only talking 3 minutes over the course of 90 hours riding (or, if you'd prefer, an hour or so of ITTs and maybe 8-10 hours of mountain passes) the difference between winning and losing is tiny. Teeny tiny. Even on my 11 hour example there, where the individual comes to the fore instead of being swept in the peloton, we're talking less than 0.5% difference between first and second.
Have a read of "Faster' by Dr Hutch, in which he talks to a lot of riders, coaches, nutritionalists and even psychologists, some of whom work for Sky. To take one huge example, the way the body converts the nitrates beetroot juice to nitrites can make the way your body uses its energy up to 16% more efficient. 16%! That's not marginal, that's vast. There's all sorts of examples like that in the book, and presumably those are the ones the teams assume everyone knows. If a team has the inside track on something else nutritional,technical or otherwise then it's unlikely they'll share that knowledge because they'd be giving away a legal advantage to their competitors.

Ok, the TUE thing does need to be hugely looked into - corticosteroids apparently make a massive difference to both your weight and your ability to soak up the pain, but there's not much illegal about them at the moment. It's sad that teams use them, but on the other hand you've got to assume the UCI will encourage teams to ensure their big names are competing in races - it's why people watch the sport, and in turn it's how the sport makes money. And if a team's been building one rider towards a GT and unlucky illness strikes, will they pull out and ruin their season, or take the TUE and hope they can compete?
Imagine Froome and Bertie caught a cold in Yorkshire, didn't take any medicine and were dropped by the Peloton before London? Suddenly the great battle we were promised is gone.

Avatar
daddyELVIS replied to bashthebox | 9 years ago
0 likes
bashthebox wrote:

Everyone sarcastically says "pineapple and water" but that's really missing the point about the aggregation of gains thing. Some of the gains just aren't that marginal at all, and when we're only talking 3 minutes over the course of 90 hours riding...

Froome won by 4' 20" - the biggest winning margin since the Armstrong years - just sayin'

Avatar
unclebadger | 9 years ago
0 likes

Surely the Biological Passport means that they cant be doing anything too exotic.

I wonder if an athlete is sick and then takes some medicine then is the potential PED benefit is balanced out by the fact he is sick in the first place?

The issue to me here is not that Sky used an exemption but that the TUE should be issued by committee and not by an individual.

Its all in the Pineapple Juice and water combo of course !

Avatar
mooleur | 9 years ago
0 likes

I think their statements were actually around having none of their *riders* having had past links to doping - back office staff-wise I think we can all agree that's nigh on impossible.

Avatar
daddyELVIS replied to mooleur | 9 years ago
0 likes
mooleur wrote:

I think their statements were actually around having none of their *riders* having had past links to doping - back office staff-wise I think we can all agree that's nigh on impossible.

Sorry, you're mistaken - they even went so far as to say they wouldn't even employ docs from cycling.

Avatar
mooleur replied to daddyELVIS | 9 years ago
0 likes
daddyELVIS wrote:
mooleur wrote:

I think their statements were actually around having none of their *riders* having had past links to doping - back office staff-wise I think we can all agree that's nigh on impossible.

Sorry, you're mistaken - they even went so far as to say they wouldn't even employ docs from cycling.

Sorry, I've never seen statements stating that they would never employ back office staff who had links to doping, note the use of the word *links* - do you have a copy or URL of the article stating this?

Avatar
daddyELVIS replied to mooleur | 9 years ago
0 likes
mooleur wrote:
daddyELVIS wrote:

Sorry, you're mistaken - they even went so far as to say they wouldn't even employ docs from cycling.

Sorry, I've never seen statements stating that they would never employ back office staff who had links to doping, note the use of the word *links* - do you have a copy or URL of the article stating this?

4th paragraph: http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2009/jun/28/tour-de-france-dave-br...

You may have seen this article from Kimmage and dismissed it as the work of a desperate man on a desperate mission, but I think he makes some very interesting and valid points: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/othersports/article-2177405/Bradley-Wig...

Avatar
mooleur replied to daddyELVIS | 9 years ago
0 likes
daddyELVIS wrote:
mooleur wrote:
daddyELVIS wrote:

Sorry, you're mistaken - they even went so far as to say they wouldn't even employ docs from cycling.

Sorry, I've never seen statements stating that they would never employ back office staff who had links to doping, note the use of the word *links* - do you have a copy or URL of the article stating this?

4th paragraph: http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2009/jun/28/tour-de-france-dave-br...

You may have seen this article from Kimmage and dismissed it as the work of a desperate man on a desperate mission, but I think he makes some very interesting and valid points: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/othersports/article-2177405/Bradley-Wig...

Thanks for those - I still stand by what I said, though, Brailsford did state previous violation - links to questionable people in sport aren't necessarily proof of any violation. It's only logical to assume that at some point, there are going to be staff involved at any level in any GT team that have had a brush with the darker past in some shape or form. That's just unfortunate fact. It doesn't, however, mean all their riders are doped up to the nines.

Avatar
farrell | 9 years ago
0 likes

It's when Dave Brailsford started coaching British Cycling.

If Sky do indeed have such a sophisticated doping programme and receiving special treatment from the UCI then Brailsford must be involved. It would be inconceivable that he isn't.

If Sky have the techniques to dope and disguise it, then British Cycling have them and have been using them too.

So, which truth is it you want?

Avatar
glynr36 replied to farrell | 9 years ago
0 likes
farrell wrote:

It's when Dave Brailsford started coaching British Cycling.

If Sky do indeed have such a sophisticated doping programme and receiving special treatment from the UCI then Brailsford must be involved. It would be inconceivable that he isn't.
If Sky have the techniques to dope and disguise it, then British Cycling have them and have been using them too.

So, which truth is it you want?

I've not inferred that I think Sky are doping, all I've said way way back at the start of the thread was that I thought Sky were niave in the past to make the statements about having no one involved with doping (we've already established this is nigh on impossible), and then the one about the use of TUEs they made too.

Nor did I say I thought they got special treatment, just that the UCI hadn't followed the rules for the issue of a TUE.

Avatar
crazy-legs | 9 years ago
0 likes
Quote:

I'm not entirley implying guilt by association, but if they were keen on a clean (as possible) team, you'd avoid guys linked to people who were dirty.

Quote:

someone connected to USPS/Festina/Ferrai/Puerto and so on should have been an instant no.

Ever heard of the phrase "innocent until proven guilty"?
Besides which if you took the "guilt by association" to it's logical conclusion, you'd rule out the entire pro peloton. It'd be very easy to link pretty much any rider back to doping via some sort of association.

There are certain instances where you can deny someone a job due to "guilt by association" but by and large, it's illegal.

Avatar
glynr36 replied to crazy-legs | 9 years ago
0 likes
crazy-legs wrote:
Quote:

I'm not entirley implying guilt by association, but if they were keen on a clean (as possible) team, you'd avoid guys linked to people who were dirty.

Quote:

someone connected to USPS/Festina/Ferrai/Puerto and so on should have been an instant no.

Ever heard of the phrase "innocent until proven guilty"?
Besides which if you took the "guilt by association" to it's logical conclusion, you'd rule out the entire pro peloton. It'd be very easy to link pretty much any rider back to doping via some sort of association.

There are certain instances where you can deny someone a job due to "guilt by association" but by and large, it's illegal.

As true as that may be, some of the associations are 'stronger' than others, I guess the benfit now this is all said with hindsight with the out come of the USADA USPS investigation and so on. At the time, it would have been a lot harder to make these statements.

Avatar
farrell | 9 years ago
0 likes

DaddyElvis, GKam, Glynr - Do you think all British riders, from 1997 onwards, should be stripped of every medal they have won?

Avatar
glynr36 replied to farrell | 9 years ago
0 likes
farrell wrote:

DaddyElvis, GKam, Glynr - Do you think all British riders, from 1997 onwards, should be stripped of every medal they have won?

Curious to the significance of 1997 here.

Avatar
daddyELVIS replied to farrell | 9 years ago
0 likes
farrell wrote:

DaddyElvis, GKam, Glynr - Do you think all British riders, from 1997 onwards, should be stripped of every medal they have won?

Why would I think that? I actually think you can cheat on a Monday but not on a Tuesday  3

Besides, I can't remember calling for any cyclist (past or present, track or road) to be stripped of any titles - why would I do that?

Avatar
fukawitribe replied to daddyELVIS | 9 years ago
0 likes
daddyELVIS wrote:
farrell wrote:

DaddyElvis, GKam, Glynr - Do you think all British riders, from 1997 onwards, should be stripped of every medal they have won?

....

Besides, I can't remember calling for any cyclist (past or present, track or road) to be stripped of any titles - why would I do that?

Read farrells reply to the questions about that. It seems to me he's merely taking the current situation and extrapolating back to get to one of a number of possible (though not necessarily correct) conclusions. If that conclusion was correct then, given your previous posts, presumably it should result in the medals being stripped.

It is not to say that conclusion is correct, or even probable - indeed that's probably part of the point - but seems inline with what you'd expect from a team so manipulative and with such evil intent as portrayed in the reasoning of a number of people on the intertubes.

Of course I might have that completely arse about face - in which case he'll hopefully correct me.

Avatar
farrell replied to fukawitribe | 9 years ago
0 likes
fukawitribe wrote:

Of course I might have that completely arse about face - in which case he'll hopefully correct me.

No, you are following the demented logic of it all correctly.

Avatar
daddyELVIS replied to fukawitribe | 9 years ago
0 likes
fukawitribe wrote:
daddyELVIS wrote:
farrell wrote:

DaddyElvis, GKam, Glynr - Do you think all British riders, from 1997 onwards, should be stripped of every medal they have won?

....

Besides, I can't remember calling for any cyclist (past or present, track or road) to be stripped of any titles - why would I do that?

Read farrells reply to the questions about that. It seems to me he's merely taking the current situation and extrapolating back to get to one of a number of possible (though not necessarily correct) conclusions. If that conclusion was correct then, given your previous posts, presumably it should result in the medals being stripped.

What I'm saying is two-fold:

1) I don't believe Brailsford's claims that a person can't control and be selective about cheating

2) I'm not calling for the stripping of medals or titles from convicted dopers - that a choice for the authorities to make.

My viewpoint is that top-level pro sport is awash with doping (both 'legal' and illegal) and the doping is way ahead of the testing. Therefore if you strip a title, how can you be certain the 2nd placed competitor (who then becomes the default winner) is 100% clean? You can't. Therefore if you strip a title, the only safe option is to have no winner (as is now the case with the 7 Tours from 99-05), but that would make sport a farce!

My issue with Sky is not that they may (or may not) be doping - any team in the pro peloton could be doping for all I know. My issue is that they promised so much about doing things differently, being transparent, being cleaner than clean, so we could be left with no doubt about their integrity and cleanliness. But, this has been PR guff and total BS. This is where I feel let down with Sky.

I've said at various times that I don't think the issue of doping in sport is a simple black & white issue - and when a rider gets popped for doping, I'm not usually too critical, as he's likely to be no more or less doped (over the course of a season of training and racing) than the next rider.

With Sky, it's the BS that gets right up my nose!

BTW, the one rider I am most confident about is Taylor Phinney - this is based on how outspoken he is against even 'legal' doping. Granted, we only have his word to go by, so we could be let down in the future, especially if his class (see his palmares as a 17 - 20 yr old) doesn't quite get him the results you may expect as a senior rider (a rider in such a position may get frustrated and be tempted!).

My own favourite riders, of course I have suspicions about - 1 is a convicted doper. But they are favourites none-the-less because I watch the sport as a fan, excited by classy riding, and I'm not naïve to think that pro sport at that level is fuel by bread and water.

I hope that clears that up!

Avatar
fukawitribe replied to daddyELVIS | 9 years ago
0 likes
daddyELVIS wrote:

I hope that clears that up!

Not really, no. Your entire argument is seemingly predicated on Sky behaviour being "total BS" and some over expectation of transparency e.g. as you once said

"If they were as clean and ethical as they say then they would have everything to gain from total transparency"

...it is not up to them to provide you with what you believe is sufficient.

I am not a Sky 'fan', nor am I blind to the possibility of skullduggery on their part, but I don't find much point in endlessly debating straw men either.

Avatar
daddyELVIS replied to fukawitribe | 9 years ago
0 likes
fukawitribe wrote:

....straw men

I wondered when they would arrive  17

Avatar
fukawitribe replied to daddyELVIS | 9 years ago
0 likes
daddyELVIS wrote:
fukawitribe wrote:

....straw men

I wondered when they would arrive  17

Well, you could always stop using them...  1

Pages

Latest Comments