Route for 2018
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/41649703
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Route for 2018
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/41649703
Anyone mentioned drugs yet?
which bit of Yorkshire are they riding this year..;)
Anyone think Froomie will win?
Win what? The Tour or his drug case?
I think the drug case has gone. If he'd been guilty he would have been banned by now.
And on....
http://road.cc/content/news/244402-u...fident-winning
And on....
I for one shall miss the increasingly impressive inhaler props from the fans if he doesn’t get in.
[QUOTE=shaunaneto;641429]And on....
http://road.cc/content/news/244402-u...fident-winning
And on....
In a statement, a spokesperson for Team Sky said: “We are confident that Chris will be riding the Tour as we know he has done nothing wrong.”
Unlike those similar claims of innocence in the past by Armstrong, Pantani, Virenque, Heras, Contador,... oh and, lest we forget, Wiggins.;)
[QUOTE=Graham Breeze;641434]and Chris said
'Throughout my career, I have done absolutely everything I can to show people I am doing things the right way.
'I have gone above and beyond, providing more data than my rivals.'
probably between puffs on his inhaler ;)
Just seen the Sky "jiffy bag" doctor give a BBC interview. Didn't believe a word he said. Conveniently ill enough to avoid giving evidence but still able to write a book, which happens to be published in time for the Tour de France, and no doubt will make him a fortune. Wouldn't trust him to prick my blisters!
Tend to agree Liani.
I bought in to clean sky.
But
They just dope in different ways.
I thought Brailsford was a top bloke before all this came out. He's as guilty as the rest, possibly more so.
Chris Froome's anti-doping case has been dropped by cycling's world governing body, the UCI.
Very Strange!!!!!
Ooh, I hadn’t thought of that. I’d assumed that because he beats loads of other blokes on bikes who are doped to the gills then he must be juiced too. Maybe he’s innocent after all. What about Wiggins? Innocent? Well apart from the wretched Weller hair . . .
I think we need an ultimate adjudicator who is an ex-Grand Tour winner, has the respect of the cycling world for his achievements allied to a reputation for integrity, independence and a willingness to express forthright views.
I have heard of someone who fits the bill - from Austin, Texas?
Or a Spanish steak muncher.
CL alluded to team bending the rules in some way.
I agree.
So what`s new this incomplete list takes you back to the 1880s :-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ses_in_cycling
it was the welsh wot started it!
What about those who were banned because of high urine levels of salbutamol in the past? Paid off?
Poor dear Christopher is innocent. The authorities say so so he must be. Let the racing begin
And the U ‘utterly’?
We all all know you’ll be watching it anyway Graham . . .
Very interesting details revealed about Froome's food intake - worked out to the last gram of carbs/protein/fat. So much for the rumours that he was on a low carb regimen.
Presumably the reason for releasing this is to imply that if they go to so much trouble with his food they would not make silly mistakes with his medication.
Is what Sky published true?
They seem to struggling at remember what's in packaging and lose laptops.
Hay-ho believe what you want 😂
Anyway, looking forward to the spectacle and competition of the race, Eurosport or ITV is the main decision to make. I'll be reading the excellent analysis on inrng.com. Hopefully there'll be some more "how the race was won" summary videos from Cosmo Catalano on eurosport's youtube as well.
But the most important thing is that I've finally been able to use the fantasy TdF team name I thought of 11 months ago - "Don't call me Lilian, Cal me Jane".
I have had to pick the eponymous hero purely for the reason of the team name despite thinking he won't be up to as much this year as he was last year (won a stage).
The sports scientist who provided the data to WADA on salbutamol levels in urine has come 'clean' and admitted his error.
Simply put, the analysis of human urine salbutamol levels relative to inhaled dose was performed on one class of sportspeople attracting great interest at the time....swimmers.
Urine samples were obtained after training when a known inhaled dose had been taken to correlate the amount in urine that is expected so that 'overdosing' cold be detected. Of course, after 5 hours of hard swimming, the urine was pretty voluminous and dilute.
This does not equate to the urine of a cyclist after 5 hours of hard cycling when the urine will be concentrated and therefore, comparing volume for volume, will contain increased proportions of excreted substances. This explains the 'high' levels of salbutamol in Froomes urine. It was just highly concentrated.
The base data was wrong. Therefore no case.
That makes some sense.
But as mentioned, what about those who have been done before.
Also surely this would be common across all cyclists using salbutemol so you would expect more to be getting busted!
I know very little about cycling and to tell the truth, have little interest.
But, as an outsider looking in, at a sport which appears to be riddled with abuse, doping and cheating... if the Sky team claim to be whiter than white, which they obviously aren't to some (greater or lesser) extent, then they are opening themselves up to scrutiny, criticism, and "lynch-mobs".
I agree with some of what you say. I just disagree with tarring everybody with the same brush and automatically branding somebody guilty before they have had the opportunity to defend themselves. I've no idea whether this clears Froome conclusively. But for some people no amount of evidence would be sufficient for Froome to clear his name. He is subject to trial by social media.
Your partially right Muddy.
But the sky handling of the Wiggins episode leaves serious unanswered questions.
A certain yank protested his innocence and claimed to have never failed a drug test.
A Spaniard claimed it was the steak.
The summariseor on the channel i watch is a confessed drug cheat.
Its now guilty until proven innocent in cycling. Sad but true.
PS if the press hadn't kept digging the yank would have got away with it.
The actual context is WADA needed a way to find out how much salbutamol was being taken. The idea was to test for the amount secreted in urine and correlate that to inhaled dose. This was several years ago and swimmers were under scrutiny at the time because of some amazing performances. So swimmers were chosen for the analysis. The lead scientist, Ken Fitch, now admits he failed to take the specific gravity of urine into account when presenting the data to WADA - who generalized the swimmers results to ALL sportspeople. Here is a quote from a recent article.
Fitch has been pressing WADA to change its rules for years. This is not the first time he has opposed WADA in a case. He did so in the case of Alessandro Petacchi, who produced an abnormal reading of Salbutamol in a sample at the 2007 Giro d’Italia. The sprinter ended up serving a one-year ban. Fitch still believes Petacchi to be innocent.
Having listened to the most recent Cycling Podcast episode, it appears that 56% of people who get an AAF for salbutemol don't have a case brought against them, so Froome is just about in the minority. What the total number is I don't know, so maybe the test does yield increased AAF hits in non-swimmers.
They seem to cover it fairly even handedly, even going into how much of a david WADA really is against sporting goliaths. There's also an interesting chat with Jonathan Vaugters (ex US postal in the Armstrong days, now head of Slipstream/Education first team) on all matters doping, dope testing etc. then vs. now. Well worth a listen https://thecyclingpodcast.com/podcas...two-episode-23