Doping

I do think there is a lot of the most appalling guff both from these MPs acting like Clinic conspiracy theorists and the hyperbolic press over all of this. For a more reasoned insight to the Sky team this is well worth a read:

https://www.lionelbirnie.com/blog/2018/3/5/1dm1u9ioiiygi09k0hsnj8z6c1z7kl

He does the cycling podcast and has spent time embedded with Team Sky.

Why is he releasing something 9 years on.....

This has been a gathering storm for a while, probably decided a good time to write it up?

Interesting to hear someone admit that they were embedded with the team for a week and had no idea TUEs/Triamcinolone were being administered for Brad but that they were open about it happening for Uran.

Points to the fact that they knew it was more controversial/illegitimate otherwise they'd have said, 'yeah wiggins' allergies are killing him atm, we need to do something about it... blahblah'

You read all three and that’s the conclusion you come to?

It's a pretty major contradiction in approaches to their athletes-why openly talk about Uran's need for a TUE but hide Wiggins'?

He himself says that the day the jiffy bag was delivered there's inconsistencies about when the bus was supposed to have left that retrospectively don't sit well.

Because as the writer also says context is everything that using something like it not being discussed is beyond even circumstantial evidence.

For clicks....

Depends on whether you hold Brailsford and Wiggins to their 'no needles', totally transparent schtick or not.

As an individual event, I'd agree it's circumstantial, but each instance and contradiction progressively creates a persuasive narrative where they're saying one thing and doing another.

Cope wasn't even in the same country according to Brailsford... something you'd think he'd check before replying to quite a major allegation of doping.

Yeah I get that.
I’m trapped in a I care don’t care loop it would seem.
I suspect this and the Froome scenario are both more about incompetence over anything else.
That’s not to say there is no guilt with that scenario.

I really thought Wiggins was just biding his time till the report was published and would then be able to flop out a photo of Michelle Cound wearing a Fancy Bears tee shirt and sitting on a crate labelled 'Testosterone Patches'.

Sadly...

You can hardly blame him. He's a cycling journalist and this is the biggest story in cycling, and he has a fairly intimate and unique insight to Team Sky. Its a good read.

That didn't actually occur to me. What did occur reading about the Dauphine was that the jiffy bag and its mysterious contents were delivered and whatever was in them was after the end of the final race. Technically anything up until midnight after the end counts as part of the race as far as a doping violation goes, but why on earth administer it after the end of the race, if for argument's sake it was the steroid?

I mean he'd just won the race, so received no performance benefit from it, would he have been taking it or something else for recovery? Incompetence as mentioned seems a defining characteristic of the Sky tale.

G. Thomas in idiotic quote shocker. ‘Easier to scrap tues’

Dear oh dear, maybe it's OK in Wales to suddenly have a great big hole in the week, but it would definitely cause all sorts of problems in stage races.

You are the guy that writes the jokes in Christmas crackers, aren't you?

No, your mum does. :)

Haha your mum haha that's brilliant

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cycling/2018/02/12/sir-bradley-wiggins-lost-medical-notes-intranet-claims-ex-sky/

That's a month old - it's lifted from cyclingnews.com and wasn't particularly insightful when it was first published.

I know the British media love to bring public figures down, but they are scraping the bottom of the barrel with this one, as the fact remains that with all the evidence presented so far, everything Wiggins did was within the rules.

Yes, didn't say much at the time. I guess the relevance being what the GMC investigation comes up with.

The snippet from David Walsh yesterday:

"Team Sky’s fear is that Sutton has provided a witness statement to Lawton which identifies the contents of the medical package as the corticosteroid Triamcinolone"

Why would he take it at the end of the Dauphine though?

Steven Redgrave's take on it:

http://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/latest-news/people-say-team-sky-stepped-ethical-line-can-prove-theyve-done-nothing-wrong-systems-wrong-372532

Doesn't really matter, does Sutton have a copy of a scribbled note from Phil Burt or a signed off docket from Freeman that it wasn't fluimacil

I'm just curious as to why you would be taking steroids at the end of a race, it does not compute.