Comments on: Portly Richie sparks the scaremongers into a frenzy

By: AnnieCompton

AnnieCompton — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 19:43:17 +0000

First the SKY haters said Wiggins was too skinny to time-trial, and now Porte is too fat. Sad, really sad.

By: Tideplay1

Tideplay1 — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 04:58:34 +0000

Is it possible that they are better because the rest were doping and now they are mediocre.

By: Ali_VS

Ali_VS — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 20:32:16 +0000

Best article published on this site. And fair play for publishing it when Overlord is one of the main pot-stirrers.

By: ThomasKnox

ThomasKnox — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:17:44 +0000

thecrankset Maclaren was obviously on drugs. Actually humor aside, I think you are spot on. I think they are clean and employing a new style of training that will revolutionize how rider approach their preparation. Could they be using PED’s ? Anything is possible, but the question I would ask if I was competing against SKY is not “if they are doping” but “what if they are not”. Welcome to the future.

By: RickyBlayney

RickyBlayney — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 16:30:38 +0000

Wow, well said SaddleBlaze. Couldn’t agree more with all that. The whole doping subject that seems to be all some people can tweet about 24-7 is getting extremely boring. Indeed, I’ve come to the conclusion that these Kimmage v2.0’s you talk of are desperate for Sky to be the next US Postal, desperate for another Lance, and desperate for the scandal to continue. The ones with so many followers should be doing more to promote their sport — one that has had its problems, sure, but one that is doing more than any other sport to tackle the issue.
Cheats will always exist but when it comes to drug cheats cycling is doing its best and can only do so much. With what’s in place now there’s a pretty strong deterrent to most riders and if that doesn’t stop them then there’s a good chance they’ll get caught. These same people will praise other sports without ever questioning them while gladly throwing cycling into the fire.
I doubt there’s organised doping in Sky, it seems hard to believe. Does that mean one or two riders aren’t doing their own thing personally? No, but that’s why we have testing. Porte’s victory in Paris-Nice was fantastic and good for Friebe for pointing out a few facts about why it was far from inhuman. I can’t half see why it’s getting tiresome for him arguing these points against some random Twitter warriors hell bent on finding the next Lance.

By: wmdhn

wmdhn — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 14:47:24 +0000

Fans need to be more realistic, you say? Given cyclings history I don’t think it’s inappropriate to question a team which has the best riders & results, some vague doping links (i.e. Leinders, some staff were former dopers) and some transparency issues (firing everyone who confesses to doping, not allowing kimmage on the teambus IIRC).
Of course it’s not proof at all. But I don’t even think it’s cynical to question the best riders of the best team when only a few years ago organized doping was still widespread (i.e. fuentes & ferrari clients). Time and time again we learn that doping detection is embarrassingly easy to circumvent.
Sure, it could be better preparation, training and teamwork. But it might as well be doping.
(N.B. it’s pretty strange that mostly sky seems to be targeted, though, I guess you could ask similar questions about teams such as OPQS)

By: Saddleblaze

Saddleblaze — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 11:24:30 +0000

Joachim2 Hi Joachim (Rodriguez?). Thanks for your thoughts. Saddles can confirm to the contrary that he’s no Team Sky fan boy – not in the slightest. I admire their work ethic and what they are doing, but I’d be one of the first to highlight how dour they can make bike racing – reducing it to powermeters and minor gains. But it’s damn effective.
Anyway, the point of the article was not to write a staunch defence of Sky – merely to highlight the erroneous ways of a scattergun approach to accusations merely because such a thing is de rigueur. I never said that Sky are “almost certainly clean” but highlighted the possibility that perhaps it’s not so hard to comprehend how such a dominant team has emerged from the sorry mess of the past 20 years. It’s certainly a line worth considering – and one much more brave than they whole ‘they must be doping it’s US postal mark two groundhog day’ argument, which is getting rather tired.
By all means, do your research like Kimmage and Walsh and uncover something nefarious. And if you do, Saddles will be the first to applaud you. But that’s not what the majority of people are doing – they’re just throwing around accusations and insinuations on Twitter. Daniel Friebe’s point wasn’t that Sky are beyond reproach but that we’re all still bound to some sort of journalistic code – just because Armstrong flaunted this in the past doesn’t mean we can simple let our guard down and become slanderous and libelous and bitter with every 140-character bundle of bile.

By: surroundedbh

surroundedbh — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 12:18:54 +0000

potatopotato in what way is this a “typical British” response? As a nation we don’t have the road racing history of other countries because of old traffic laws which discouraged it. Time has moved on we got into Road cycling cause the authorities noticed we were f good at track racing. BC and SKY applied hard and fast training techniques and built a different (clean) team culture and won.
As to Joachim2 asking what is so different to the SKY techniques, ref Andy Schleck and his stated reluctance to train to the numbers and doing it on “feel” = his (bridesmaid) results haul. SKY train to a set crieteria find that it works and hey presto start winning.

By: potatopotato

potatopotato — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 09:47:21 +0000

Seems to be a typical British response to me, still coming from their imperial past and their island mentality. They always feel morally superior to th rest of the world. The British wouldn’t dope because they aren’t like the rest of the world they are gentlemen.

By: surroundedbh

surroundedbh — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 09:08:56 +0000

Training is everything, recent comments by English rugby coaches on the difference between the English performances and the French allude to the different training regimes i.e. The French teams don’t train hard enough. Cycling is all about conditioning. The point being that in rugby The two top teams in Europe have totally different approaches.