Tour de France 2013

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.