Tour de France 2013

They'll probably be doing lines of Charlie and some micro-dosing of EPO to keep a bit the legs going in all fairness.

Party time.

Yeah Froome shouldn't be surprised by the third degree, Wiggins got it last year and Froome's transformation is even more extreme than his (from IP/TT rider to GT contender).

Remember Froome got DQed from the 2010 Giro for hanging onto a motorbike. Now he's the best rider of his generation.

Back into the shed, where you belong, pom!

Discovered an interesting phrase when I was back in Malta a couple of weeks ago- "Ten pound Poms", these were Maltese who had taken the /Ozzie Governments offer of a £10 ticket to Australia after the second world war.

/csb

The thing is, doping is not just one thing. Taylor Phinney made plain his dislike of 'finishing bottles' which contain caffeine and pain killers and are handed out before the finales of races. To him it's a kind of doping. He also made it clear his team mates use them. It's not against the rules though. Do Sky use them? How many, if any, TUE certificates do they have?
Talking of what is illegal, I assume that when people talk about Froome doping they mean blood doping, since it's the only kind ever shown to make a huge difference. Though scepticism about Rolland and Voeckler after Europecars problems with cortisol might also be fair.
If it is blood doping, how are Sky (or just Froome) getting away with it? Blood doping to such an extent that it makes them unbeatable and yet no other team can figure out how to beat the bio passport and other controls in the same way? It doesn't add up to me.
And who is doing it? Brailsford and Kerrison? Has Brailsford always been dirty? With Hoy and Pendelton? Do people really think that? Or did he just decide to cheat at Sky? And those formerly clean BC riders agreed to go along with it? Or Wiggins was clean but Froome isn't?
Scepticism cuts both ways - if you are going to suggest Sky are doping you have to have some notion of what they are doping with, who is organising it and how they are getting away with it. The 'they must have some new unknown wonder drug' is just David Icke territory.

@dubtap

Not sure how that graph is relevant, as Brailsford is proposing to share actual power and physiological data so we would be out of the game of estimates that don't account for the variables. I appreciate there will be other unrecorded conditions / variables that may influence actual data, but the extent and significance should be reduced.

So Will, what you are suggesting is Lizard blood?

Jamaican lizard blood to be precise.

Discovered an interesting phrase when I was back in Malta a couple of weeks ago- "Ten pound Poms", these were Maltese who had taken the /Ozzie Governments offer of a £10 ticket to Australia after the second world war.
/csb

Not just Maltese. It was pretty much anyone from Europe.

My grandfather, for example.

More incoherent blah

I don't know how to deal with this bunch of non-sequiturs.

You could try a reasoned response to the points you studiously ignore because they don't fit your obstinate 'scepticism'.

I'm trying to structure them into a group of coherent and distinct points before rebutting them. I will get back to you.

Thanks to blood doping I can keep my breath baited all day.

Ha - on second thoughts you have raised some interesting points. I will try and give a reasoned response. Bear with me.

Were those feed bags at the start of the climb legit or did the teams taking them cop a penalty?

Thanks to injections of bear semen extract I can do that all day too.

The thing is, doping is not just one thing. Taylor Phinney made plain his dislike of 'finishing bottles' which contain caffeine and pain killers and are handed out before the finales of races. To him it's a kind of doping. He also made it clear his team mates use them. It's not against the rules though. Do Sky use them? How many, if any, TUE certificates do they have?
Talking of what is illegal, I assume that when people talk about Froome doping they mean blood doping, since it's the only kind ever shown to make a huge difference. Though scepticism about Rolland and Voeckler after Europecars problems with cortisol might also be fair.
If it is blood doping, how are Sky (or just Froome) getting away with it? Blood doping to such an extent that it makes them unbeatable and yet no other team can figure out how to beat the bio passport and other controls in the same way? It doesn't add up to me.
And who is doing it? Brailsford and Kerrison? Has Brailsford always been dirty? With Hoy and Pendelton? Do people really think that? Or did he just decide to cheat at Sky? And those formerly clean BC riders agreed to go along with it? Or Wiggins was clean but Froome isn't?
Scepticism cuts both ways - if you are going to suggest Sky are doping you have to have some notion of what they are doping with, who is organising it and how they are getting away with it. The 'they must have some new unknown wonder drug' is just David Icke territory.

The case against Sky is pure speculation. Everytime there is a new drug talked about the immediate reaction is 'I wonder if that is what Sky are doing?'. Acair and GW987917971, gene doping, mystical weight loss drugs that preserve power. The more extreme conspiracists think they are up to some BALCO type shit, on something no-one else has got.

Generally speaking EPO and blood doping have had their day, anecdotally at least. Ferrari said in 2010 you'd be mad to be taking EPO, and supposedly the passport has curbed the use of bags.

Basically the case against Sky comes to their 'dominance' (because lets face it, they're hardly winning everything going. Got spanked in the classics), the 'transformations' (Wiggins, Porte, Froome) and ZTP full of holes that saw the likes of Julich, Yates and most damningly Leinders slip through.

Leinders is the big one. Plenty think he is Sky's Ferrrari or Fuentes, pulling the strings behind the scenes. Generally it's believed there is an 'inner-core', a select few being doped heavily. Also that doping is prevalent in the track team also.

Unlike Armstrong and US Postal, where there was huge amounts of anecdotal then eye-witness evidence coupled with ridiculous performances, here we really have just ridiculous performances and just a few wisps of innuendo connecting Sky to doping. Those performances are enough for some.

That and the fact they're a corporate, cash-rich team, British and have stifling tactics, so they're more unpopular, which means many fans give them a harder time while others get more of a free ride.

Well, that's fair enough. I don't think it's credible, others do. The Leinders thing never convinced me - either Brailsford is lying or he is naive to have thought a Rabobank team doctor had not been involved in doping. But that doesn't mean he was hired to dope the team. I'm not convinced that organising doping is beyond the skill of any doctor, I don't think there are special medical skills required. Willingness was the key. Willingness either because they are corrupt, or they genuinely think they can keep the riders safe from the risks of doping that will happen with or without them or just because they wanted to keep their jobs.
In a clean team I don't see any reason why the same doctors wouldn't be happy not to have to deal with doping any more.

How does Sky's budget compare to the other pro-tour teams? I thought they were ranked about #5 but now can't find any numbers.

Quick question that my gf was asking me yesterday, what are the dangers of EPO other than "being caught using it"? I'm assuming there is some sort of danger to your health?

In the early days young riders were dying in their sleep with blood like treacle. That's the short term, sure they are long term effects too. Didn't a French ex-doper just collapse and die?

In the early days of its use there were several young riders who died of heart attacks, their blood being so thick that during the night, when blood pressure is lowest, it just stopped circulating.
This led to riders setting their alarms for the middle of the night so they could get up and get the blood flowing again or even hanging upside down for a while.
Avoiding these fatal complication was one of the reasons many team doctors and directeur sportifs gave for organising it team-wide, being able to monitor the riders and keep the dosage 'safe'.

It's all about the early days, apparently.

In the early days young riders were dying in their sleep with blood like treacle. That's the short term, sure they are long term effects too. Didn't a French ex-doper just collapse and die?

Phillipe Gaumont. There is a decent article about him in one of the monthlies. LIke Frank Vandebroucke he just did everything to excess.

Yeah that's the fella. I'd imagine EPO abuse has a long term detrimental effect on the circulatory system, perhaps aging it prematurely (like cocaine) and leaving you susceptible to heart attacks like the one Gaumont suffered.

I think we won't know until DFP gives his opinion.