Doping

The Wiggins thing is clearly exploitation of TUEs. Look at the timing of each of the three: before his GC attempt at the tour in 2011, before the the next big attempt at the tour in 2012 and finally before going for the giro the following year.

Also doctors prescribing injectable steroids for asthma does not happen in the real world.

Sure he technically stuck to the rules, but not the spirit of the them.

5g of creatine is much cheaper than a kilo of steak, and a tad more convenient. Monohydrate would be about £0.02 per gram.

Sadly this seems to be the case.

Brad has always come across as a pretty up front, no nonsense kind of guy, and whatever else results, his reputation is damaged. His autobiography clearly contains nonsense.

Does that make tomato puree pharma?

Only if it's sieved :)

His autobiography clearly contains nonsense.

1. He didn't write it.
   
2. It's not written under oath.
   
   

He seems to have made a mistake and its all a bit meh but why do you seem to have to defend him?

Because injustice gets my goat.

He's done nothing wrong. How hard is that for people to understand? Everything he's done is above board and legitimate.

Legit yes. above board, hmm...

Sounds like he was def. dancing a little along the line and being a little sneaky, makes his hammering of Armistead seem a little much also.

The trouble is, bending the rules to the extent it seems they've been bent just works towards delegitimising the sport as a whole.

I've been a massive fan and defender of Wiggins so I'd like to hear him come out forcefully and justify it.

But as lots of disappointed people have said, it doesn't look good.

Meanwhile, in Russia, we have a state sponsored doping system.

Suddenly the attention on that has gone. Funny.

Meanwhile, in Russia, we have a state sponsored hacking system

ftfy

That's been dealt with in this thread already.

And Russia are busy bombing aid convoys and hospitals in Syria.

There's only three reasons Wiggins would have had the injections - either he was really ill and needed them, or he thought he might become ill and had them as a prophylactic, or he wasn't ill and took them to improve his performance.
If he was really ill then it was pretty unlucky that he fell ill before each of the three biggest targets in his road racing career and no other time.
Lizzie Armistead did nothing wrong - she didn't even miss three tests as one was adjudged not to have been conducted properly. But Wiggins called her explanation 'ludicrous' and 'ridiculous'. Well, now the boot's on the other foot.

she didn't even miss three tests as one was adjudged not to have been conducted properly

She didn't even miss two - one of the other violations was an audit check where her whereabouts declaration didn't match her true whereabouts, but no test had been attempted.

I'm a bit conflicted here, as I suspect a lot of others are. Quintana had issues in the TdF due to "allergies" supposedly, so this could be seen to be preventing a known issue, hence the timing....IF it has a performance enhancing effect too, so much the better.
Has anyone got a link to a study that shows how this juice might help a grand tour winner?

I can't believe in this day and age people are selling complete drug labs on the internet...

https://www.nutribullet.com/

Way less fun though.

ALL THE STEAK!

All the Hollywood movies are true then... they really are the bad guys...

What we all really want to know is...

How much of this stuff do I have to take to be skinnier than skinny and will I be dead first?

The timing of the allergy injections before the Tours can look dodgy if that's what you want to see, but it doesn't take a leap in judgement to see it as Wiggins really not wanting to get hayfever during the biggest events of his career.

Even the Russians were only taking pills to stop them getting hayfever.

Pills and a fuck tonne of EPO and 'roids.

Did they get hayfever though?

Well they were a bit sneezy and congested but that was mostly down to the lines of cocaine they were also railing.

The thing that annoys me the most about this whole Fancy Bears hacking is that they're getting what they want, to muddy the waters around doping by trying to paint some legitimate, legal use of drugs to help with illness/asthma in the same light as systematic, state run doping programmes.

Something I read recently about the current political climate in Russia is that we need to remember we look at everything from a different perspective. From inside Russia it is seen as the West often ganging up against them, and so hacking Hilary Clinton's emails, annexing Crimea, trying to take over Ukraine etc. is all done in the context of trying to push back and get on a level footing.

The popularity of cycling means it's a good way for them to get the media to focus on these TUE leaks and distract from the bigger picture. I'm sure there is probably still some pros using drugs, micro dosing while training so it won't show up in competition, etc. but hacking the WADA TUE list isn't going to catch those people.

the West often ganging up against them

Any wonder? They evil. Obvs.