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Define clean? Bread and water only?
I always struggle to understand why it's okay for you or I to have prescription drugs when required, but professional athletes should be prohibited from doing so. The WADA code is accepted across Olympic sports as the line between doped and clean sport. As long as Sky stay the right side of that line then they are clean.
andyp-
Well it's Sky that have gone out their way to present themselves as cleaner than clean.
Nobody is saying the riders shouldn't have had these substances-it's more to do with a provable medical need for them, which had previously not been clear or declared so people are then pointing out other contradictory statements made by the team/athletes as well as quite conspicuous anomalies in how records have been kept or relationships fostered with people who have a history of breaking the rules i.e Leinders.
Taking a substance with a TUE might be legal, but if the rider has no need for it then it's an abuse both of their health and the spirit of the rules even if the rules themselves technically haven't been broken. Unfortunately it just creates a context where it's very difficult to believe anything that's coming out of Brailsford's mouth and it looks far dirtier than it might have been if they'd just been as transparent as they previously claimed to be from the outset.
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So this is how you turn a track rider into a TdF winner... Agree that it probably wasn't illegal but still, doesn't sound upstanding or clean either and that's been their pr strategy