Team Sky boss Sir Dave Brailsford believes the WorldTour outfit’s computers have been hacked to obtain Chris Froome’s training data in an attempt to prove he is doping.
Brailsford made the revalation at a press conference in Pau yesterday in response to being asked whether Froome can expect to be quizzed over doping now the race has entered the mountains.
He said: “It’s part of the game, isn’t it? If he does well [today], the rest of the Tour it’s ‘How do you know he’s not doping?’
“The question of how to prove a negative is always going to be a difficult one. We think someone has hacked into our training data and got Chris’s files, so we’ve got some legal guys on the case there.
“I would never mention a name but ethically and morally, if you are going to accuse someone of doping, then don’t cheat.”
Froome faced questions over doping during the 2013 Tour de France, which he won, and has consistently maintained that he is riding clean.
The 30-year-old, who is the only current cyclist known to have testified to the UCI’s Cycling Independent Reform Commission, has also said that people on social media who use riders’ power data to try and find clues they may be doping are “clowns.”
Brailsford added: “I used to worry about it a lot more but I don’t any more. It’s part of the game. Just try to be honest, tell the truth, be open.”
Yesterday, a video appeared on YouTube showing the Mont Ventoux stage of the 2013 Tour de France, won by Froome, overlaid with what purported to be the rider’s data.
The latter had apparently been supplied by Antoine Vayer to Twitter user @oufeh – that account has now been deleted, and the video taken down from YouTube.
Vayer, who from 1995 to 1998 was a trainer at the Festina team, raised suspicions Froome and Wiggins Sir Bradley Wiggins shortly before the 2013 Tour de France when he published his e-book, Not Normal? An insight into doping and the 21 biggest riders from LeMond to Armstrong to Evans.
As outlined in a report on VeloNews at the time, he said Froome’s performance the previous year had been “miraculous,” with Wiggins’ yellow-jersey winning exploits at the 2012 Tour merely “suspicious,” according to the scale devised by the author.
Responding to the publication, Team Sky said at the time: “Both Chris and Bradley have received your email and each has considered their response.
“They have been asked many times before about their stance on doping and their approach to performance.
“It’s all already firmly on the record; neither has used banned substances or illegal practices. Team Sky’s approach to conditioning and coaching is also well documented.
“We know exactly how our riders prepare and perform and the true science behind this. And we have our own accurate data that we can rely on to support this.”
53 thoughts on “Chris Froome’s training data hacked, says Sky boss Sir Dave Brailsford”
The first thing to note is no
The first thing to note is no denial the figures are correct.
So I suspect this was a leak not a hack and it just says to me all performance stats should be published. Many now do it voluntary on Strava and it helps. What have the pro’s got to be worried about by publishing it ?
Anything that helps the wider debate should be welcomed.
Now we see the figures from two years ago people can debate what they mean.
ianrobo wrote:The first thing
Eh ? Where on earth is the logic in that ?
A team, any team, is leery about publishing all their data as it’s a potential advantage to other teams – Sky, amongst others, have said this for a while and it’s not exactly rocket science is it ? That said Sky, and perhaps others – I don’t know, have previously let it be known they doshare their data with the anti-doping and relevant agencies. I also have a number of power profiles from Sky riders downloaded from when they published such things from time to time – has that now stopped completely ?
“The question of how to prove
“The question of how to prove a negative is always going to be a difficult one. ”
It’s not. Release data, test results etc. The data that was ‘acquired’ looks dodgy as dodgy can be.
Quote:The first thing to note
And no denial that the denial has ever been denied either!! Oh my god the world is about to collapse!
The idea that some armchair internet ‘export’ with a grudge and no clear background in sports science or biochemistry etc can post something they cooked up in their bedroom from dubious sources and have this treated seriously as ‘evidence’ is just pathetic.
If there is a genuine concern, they should go straight to WADA, not post conspiracy theory’s on the internet.
Contador and Nibali are not treated like this……
Must be Mad wrote:Quote:The
yes they are FFS.
Data is fine when used against LA but not Froome, Sky fanboys can not get over this.
If the data was false Sky would have said so, it is not. So one we all agree it is true then the debate is over you interpret it baring in mind Froome two years later is lighter and said to produce more Watts.
Quote:with Wiggins’
I would have said simply winning the TDF is cause for suspicion. If I was Wiggins I would be pleased with that.
no idea but if the sport
no idea but if the sport wants to regain trust it has to be open. Why does a rider like Adam Yates publish his data when he is a possible GC contender in the future. I have not seen anyone give a real reason how power data really can help the opposition and certainly not if every rider’s data is published.
ianrobo wrote:I have not seen
You can start using basic data mining – who’s down on power leading up to races, whose HR is higher, what recovery times are like for riders under what conditions, temperature/slope/wind versus HR/power, riding style, peak power and duration and so on and so on.
I suspect you’re right that if everything is open then it might not matter so much, as everyone can potentially do this if they have the time, resources and technical ability to do it – many teams won’t though. I’d personally love to see it all mandated to be open but there are some things to consider to do so in a fair and equitable manner.
Does anyone have a link to
Does anyone have a link to the data please?
Did you see the video? The
Did you see the video? The guy is SUPERMAN, the best cyclist that ever lived. An inspiration to asthma sufferers everywhere.
This is what happens when you are disciplined enough to give up Nutella and pedal with a fast seated cadence. You can go from 400w to 600w attacks on the Ventoux and your heart rate doesn’t need to shift past 161bpm.
When you get to see the video you’ll see that Froome is the best rider ever. Even better than Armstrong was.
Interesting that it appears
Interesting that it appears these figures were used by Grappe and L’Equippe
Hacked ??
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2013/jul/18/team-sky-chris-froome-data?CMP=twt_gu
ianrobo wrote:Interesting
To be fair Brailsford said “We think someone has hacked into our training data and got Chris’ files” – so this could mean more than the Ventoux data which has already been circulated. If the bruhaha is about just the Ventoux data then i’m not sure what the issue is to be honest – that’s been dissected already and nothing untoward seen in it.. HR ? Was that there before – there was some talk about the blockiness of that in the data Vayer got along with the debate about HR lag.
fukawitribe wrote:ianrobo
To be fair Brailsford said “We think someone has hacked into our training data and got Chris’ files” – so this could mean more than the Ventoux data which has already been circulated. If the bruhaha is about just the Ventoux data then i’m not sure what the issue is to be honest – that’s been dissected already and nothing untoward seen in it.. HR ? Was that there before – there was some talk about the blockiness of that in the data Vayer got along with the debate about HR lag.— ianrobo
on top of that I would find it strange an hacker would not want everyone else’s data as well ? If someone believes the whole team is doping ? (I do not).
Quote:yes they are
Sorry, i missed the least time Contador and Nibali had their data hacked, mangled and spread across the internet. When was this?
If you cannot see the difference between a 400-odd page dossier compiled by USADA and youtube vid compiled by….. who? (Someone with a grudge? Someone without evidence to go to the authorities?) – then we are never going to agree on this
They don’t need to deny. THE DATA IS DIRTY. Who can prove where it really came from, and what edits/manipulation have or have not been performed.
If someone hacked Sky’s data to spread onto the internet, then they have an agenda, and a highly probable bias against team and/or rider.
Show me something which will actually stand up in court, and then I’ll take notice. Untill then, stop slinging the muck.
Must be Mad wrote:
Show me
WELL SAID, MUST BE MAD, WELL SAID.
Must be Mad wrote:They don’t
Look at what I posted from two years, the data was available then, Sky have not said it is dirty, so why do you ? They are only worried about the so called hacking ….
Must be Mad wrote:Quote:yes
Sorry, i missed the least time Contador and Nibali had their data hacked, mangled and spread across the internet. When was this?
If you cannot see the difference between a 400-odd page dossier compiled by USADA and youtube vid compiled by….. who? (Someone with a grudge? Someone without evidence to go to the authorities?) – then we are never going to agree on this
They don’t need to deny. THE DATA IS DIRTY. Who can prove where it really came from, and what edits/manipulation have or have not been performed.
If someone hacked Sky’s data to spread onto the internet, then they have an agenda, and a highly probable bias against team and/or rider.
Show me something which will actually stand up in court, and then I’ll take notice. Untill then, stop slinging the muck.
1)’data’ is the plural.
2) `froome is dodgy as hell.
Must be Mad wrote:
They don’t
Well Ross Tucker, of Sports Scientists, who spends a lot of time looking at data, analysing it and so on said the data on the video looked extremely accurate. In which case I’ll go with the guy with the PhD.
If Sky and other teams are serious about cleaning up the sport’s reputation they should make all this data available.
As he also said, it’s like Justin Gatlin trying to prevent someone from knowing how fast he runs the 100m in. There’s no great advantage to knowing the data, and I presume in his line of work he would know if there was.
Whatever possible disadvantage there might be is more than outweighed by the benefit to cycling of being transparent and open.
abudhabiChris wrote:As he
Rather different don’t you think ? One is highly tactical team sport over massively varied terrain and the other is a fast twitch blast down a straight track. That said, if I were a sprinter or a sprinters coach, i’d love to be able to examine all the competitions reaction times, speed off the blocks, time to full stride and stamina over the distance…
I’d go along with that – it might favour the larger, more resource filled teams though so be could be prudent to keep an eye on that.
I’ll post my data, I have
I’ll post my data, I have gone from 145W FTP to 305W FTP in 10 weeks. Astounding improvement 😀
Until someone is proven to using banned substances, then they are fine by me.
Something worth thinking
Something worth thinking about would be…
If Team Sky had or were doping then eventually, even in 10-20 years, they would get caught by testing retrospectively.
I would have thought that all contracts would have some clause in it somewhere that would allow Sky to sue any Team Sky riders caught retrospectively. US Postal lawsuit on Lance Armstrong.
So knowing this, would the riders in Team Sky take that risk. They could lose vast sums of money and financial assets when they were in their 40-50s and ruin their families.
Worth considering…
Sky say the data is true =
Sky say the data is true = it’s definitely true
Sky say the data is false = it’s definitely true
Sky say nothing about the validity = it’s definitely true
They can’t win, so they’re not saying anything which reduces how much it can be twisted.
possibly but we still have
possibly but we still have EPO positives now but all seem to be from ‘lower’ riders or Astana !
You will always get risk takers for the rewards. In every sport this occurs and cycling is no different.
For example do you believe Gaitlin is clean ?
I don’t think Sky are
I don’t think Sky are debating whether the data are ‘dirty’ or not – certainly not yet publically – but they were calling into question the analysis and interpretation of raw data.
This is perhaps not unreasonable, even Vayers own analysis in Not Normal is known to diverge from real data (e.g. extreme of 9% up the Tourmalet) and doesn’t take into account race conditions (e.g. wind, drafting) and unsure about power adjustments on the SRM/Osymetric in the specific case of Froome (no matter what SRM say about the matter) – but you can see why he was someone to pass the data to.
Much of the sane analysis i’ve read on the internet about this seems to suggest there is nothing particular that is really ‘unworldly’ about the performance – but it does seem to be right up there as far as what can be achieved. PEDs ?.. possible I guess.. one of the best in the world at the top of his form in in competition in race conditions ?.. maybe not so impossible.
Stop being stats geeks and
Stop being stats geeks and just watch the racing instead. You might even enjoy it.
Thanks for that. Probably the
Thanks for that. Probably the most credible “analysis” from us armchair enthusiasts out there =D>
Yes it is all about
Yes it is all about interpretation. Frappe says in 2013 it was possible but Froome has to have one of the highest known VO2 Max’s to do it.
Lemond’s is one of the highest ever and highest for a pro cyclist at 92
LA’s was 84
Indurain’s 88
http://www.topendsports.com/testing/records/vo2max.htm
Sky laughably say they do not test him, why ? Surely this is a key figure for any cyclist to know and improve ?
There are better measures of
There are better measures of performance now than vo2max for almost all athletic endeavours which is probably why Froome’s results aren’t published. Data is only useful if you can use it and there are better sets of data than vo2max.
Things that prove doping, it
Things that prove doping, it would seem:
the existence of power data
winning
even bothering to try to win
simply riding the tour
simply entering any race
looking at a bicycle
Froome has already said he
Froome has already said he can’t understand why his max heart rate is so low, but he has acknowledged that his lungs are 8 litres whereas a normal person has lungs of only 6 litres. Plus he uses oval chain rings and brings his own pillow to races.
AJ101 wrote:Froome … brings
I want one of those pillows.
atgni wrote:AJ101
The UCI will put a stop to that.
re: Froome’s pillow. Here you
re: Froome’s pillow. Here you go, they’re flogging one on ebay http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Chinese-Asian-Blue-White-Porcelain-Headrest-Opium-Pillow-/231617075715
AJ101 wrote:Froome has
….dodges carbs, never eats nuttella, attends meetings in a camper-van, washes his hands after taking a pee, never forgets his inhaler, warms-down on rollers – the aggregation of these marginal gains must be enormous!
Look, this data can be
Look, this data can be estimated fairly accurately. The physics of a bicycle climbing a hill isn’t exactly complicated. We know what are reasonable values for the ranges of the unmeasurable variables. The measured variables (time and the profile of the road) can be measured from charts and video to at least the same accuracy as the cycle computer – indeed better for road profile. Further, the longer, steeper and twistier the climb, the more accurate the estimations can get.
Indeed, the estimations can be *more* accurate than the power-meters given enough time on a sufficiently steep hill, given that the power-meter accumulates its errors while the estimation doesn’t.
There is no reason to doubt that we can give a very accurate power figure for long climbs, with reasonable error bounds. And there are scientific papers demonstrating this. To try dismiss this method as being highly inaccurate suggests the person doing so is either ignorant, or putting up a smoke-screen.
The one big criticism I would have of those presenting the estimations is that some do not present the reasonable range of the estimation. Instead, it is sometimes given as an exact figure. That’s wrong. At least some correctly give ranges though.
Paul J wrote: To try dismiss
I don’t think anyone was suggesting they are highly inaccurate were they ?
Indeed.
You would have thought an
You would have thought an organisation so closely linked to the Murdoch Empire would have a better appreciation for hacking and security protocol, after they were the masters of this kind of thing.
Quote:Who can prove where it
SKY have proved where it came from by saying their files were hacked.
I have no idea why they would want to store false details.
See above, SKY say the data is true.
EDIT: Whatever we have SKY know more than they’re letting on.
The choice of the word “hacked” is very telling. /EDIT
I’ve said it before, Johnny foreigner is suspected and the British fans have labelled them guilty by assumption.
A British Team is not even allowed to be suspected without pages of documented evidence.
Lance was pilloried for years before he finally came out and admitted it.
Conatdor was a doper before the minute levels of clem were confirmed.
SKY have their computers hacked and the files are dodgy/sources unreliable/easily explained.
This blind support is funny as there is no consistency in the argument. :))
Quote:
SKY have proved where
The data pulled off a sky server and the data posted on a website may or may not be the same.
This blind support for people with a unproven ‘facts’ is funny as there is no proof in the argument.
Must be Mad wrote:Quote:
SKY
no one doubts it is the same, only you.
BTW Vayer says this was leaked
Sky says it was hacked
I know who to believe
Quote:The data pulled off a
SKY haven’t said that though, have they?
Why not take a YouTube video and just add some spurious data? Why go to all the trouble of hacking SKY, to then change the data when you don’t have to.
And that would be how SKY should have reacted, but it wasn’t. They were hacked and the data detailed hasn’t beed shouted down as being incorrect.
If I make up a video with false data, there is no crime.
If I hack a file and change the data, I’m committing a crime.
Not logical.
Exactly, just a shame it’s not applied to all suspected dopers.
Tour de France has been a
Tour de France has been a great watch so far hasn’t it? I might even watch and enjoy it right to the end.
This is not going away
This is not going away ….
Antoine VAYER @festinaboy
Soon a new video impossible to hack even by the best hacker lawyer…
I would hope most people
I would hope most people would approach this as wanting to believe in Froome, but with a certain level of scepicism given the past of the sport and Froome’s outstanding performances. With this in mind, and given that any data set is open to mixed intepretation I actually assign some value, perhaps naively, to the integrity of Brailsford et al. We know that Team Sky apply total science in their approach and analyse performance deeply, such careful analysis of their athletes by such expert staff would surely reveal any suspicious markers. Would Brailsford stand on a global stage in support of a rider that he had any doubt over, knowing that these questions would be posed? Blind faith possibly but I don’t think he would. Are the likes of Vayer etc comparing apples with pears in their appraisal of performance given the passage of time since Pantani/Armstrong were lighting it up climbs? I hope that Froome is a freakishly good athlete who is lucky enough to be in a team who have the budget to command the best possible sport science and apply this to an exceptionally talented individual. We live in hope!
Who knows, and who cares?
I
Who knows, and who cares?
I watch the racing for the tactics, the effort, the skill.
Acknowledging that many riders are taking PED’s, I don’t really have favourite riders any more.
BikeBud wrote:Who knows, and
Yeah, nowadays I just assume they’re all doping. It makes it so much more enjoyable to watch the racing when you no longer care about PEDs.
Quintana loses 1′ 02″to
Quintana loses 1′ 02″to Froome on one of the hardest climbs on Le Tour, even Porte comes ahead of one of the world’s best climbers.
Nibali, Uran, Contador 2′ 50″, Valverde, TJ, Purito, etc…
And it’s all down to having 3 Shredded Wheat? =))
don simon wrote:Quintana
Noah there. let’s not forget Geraint Thomas. Out climbing the worlds’ best too.
He’s come on a bit has the lad.
If you look really, really
If you look really, really closely at the film of Kennedy’s assassination you can just see members of the Sky team skulking in the crowd ……
So someone has the ability to
So someone has the ability to hack into the computer systems of Sky and then post the data so it looks dodgy.
They are obviously after dirt and if they have the capability to hack the system they are certainly capable of altering facts and figures if the info they obtain doesn’t suit their purpose.
I have no way of proving this just like everyone who comes on here and slags Sky off as junkies have no way of proving it either.
Interestingly Thomas gave an
Interestingly Thomas gave an interview straight after the race and he almost actually smiled with actual joy. The stoic face and dry humour dissipated for just a moment!
While I’m not a huge Sky fan,
While I’m not a huge Sky fan, I do have a fair amount of faith in them being clean, the British public would be far quicker in condemning them if one of the riders was found to be doping than fans in Spain/Italy are of their riders.
All of the sports science and marginal gains work must be worth something otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it, if they’re the most high tech team out there then it’s likely that they would be able to get the most out of things like that.
The fact that this display came the day after the rest day is not that unexpected, Sky are likely to have studied the way to get the absolute best out of a rest day for the riders so that they can come in the next day fresh and ready to go. As commentators have been pointing out for years, the day following a rest day can often lead to riders not firing on all cylinders, if Sky have managed to eliminate a lot of this effect then of course their in form riders, who’ve had a relatively easy first week compared to some teams (and vs Movistar on the day who took up the race far too early) then the success of Froome, Porte and Thomas isn’t that huge a surprise.
I’m surprised there isn’t more suspicion towards Nibali’s sudden inability to get up a hill, last year he looked unstoppable, this year, when there’s greater scrutiny on Astana he’s riding like someone filled his water bottle with lead.
and no surprise we have a new
and no surprise we have a new vid from 2014 Vuelta
http://www.chronoswatts.com/news/80/SkyLeaks2