Doping

I believe they were told to keep schtum on this by UKAD whilst the investigation was in process.

Kind of clear now why they didn't want Paul Kimmage poking around at the tour.

Is it? Kimmage is a one trick pony, raging against the dying of the light. He sees doping everywhere he looks, apart from in rugby, which currently has more athletes banned by UKAD than any other sport.

He is. But he would have found out and it come out sooner.

It's not news anyway. Everyone with some realism knew sky were using anything not illegal that was good.

I think Shane Stokes has interviewed Kimbo but I really can't even

The biggest problem I have with all the self-appointed doping crusaders like Kimmage, Ross Tucker, Vayer and Digger, not to mention the clinic menagerie, is just how fucking nasty and sneering they are all about it, and the fact those sneers are selective. Ross Tucker directed a nasty tweet at Owain Doull and Tao got a load of shit for supporting Brailsford, both neo-pros. Not fucking on.

The trouble is, a lot of them were duped by Armstrong so now they feel they have to be especially sceptical about pro cycling. They've become parodies now though, calling foul at anything remotely suspicious, such as that grainy video of Wout Van Aert's wheel moving in the Italian CX World Cup round, even though it was obvious at a high resolution that his crank caught a tree root and that was what turned the wheel, rather than a hidden motor.

I think a healthy dose of scepticism is essential, but you also have to evaluate all the available evidence to come to some kind of objective view. With Team Sky, it's clear, I think, that they've pushed right up against the line of what is allowed under the current rules, but so far there's no concrete evidence of any rule breaking and it would appear that UKAD have come to the same conclusion. That Team Sky have handled it poorly should also come as no surprise, their PR has been laughably poor pretty much since their inception.

Right on fucking cue;

https://cyclingtips.com/2017/03/interview-paul-kimmage-team-skys-charade-exposed/

So Wiggins should have his Tour win removed because he took a drug that's allowed out of competition out of competition. It's also allowed in competition if you have a TUE for it. Wiggins had three TUEs for it.

If he, and by extension, Team Sky were doping then they seem to have got about it in a very unusual way.

Maybe both should have kept their mounts shut and not fallen on the Sky pitchfork. There are a lot of nobs out there, waiting to jump on you.
If I were pro, I'd probably live under a rock. Not worth the hassle.

Freedom of speech is a bitch, in this modern age when every tom, dick and harry has a platform.

Yeah but we have to move beyond what Armstrong and the rest of the peloton was doing at some point. Comparisons between Sky and US Postal are rife, yet the evidence against Sky is minuscule compared to the mountain that formed against USP. Lets face it, compared to Astana '15 the jiffy bag, TUEs and testosterone is minor and they escaped censure.

And Armstrong doesn't excuse being nasty pricks on Twitter.

I absolutely agree. If you think there is a direct correlation between the USPS case and the current Sky mess, then you clearly didn't pay enough attention back in the noughties.

Nothing excuses being nasty pricks on Twitter, but sadly plenty of people are.

So he was legally cheating then.

Skimming through the interview:

Now David [Walsh] is now trying to say, ‘there were loads of really nice people in Sky, and this is terrible. This is a small little nub of bad eggs.’ Well, I tell you, I haven’t met these really nice people in Sky. I have had bad experiences with practically everybody on that team.

I include Rod Ellingworth in that – I have had bad experiences with all of these guys. I’d love to know who these nice guys are, as they certainly don’t act in a way that would lend you to have any faith in them.

David may talk about these nice guys, but I haven’t had any experience that they have been in any way believable or transparent.

So no bias at all then Paul.

Well, I still find it incredible that the Sky/BC relationship was accepted in the first place, and that Deloitte found no conflict of interest in 2011. Having people in senior positions in government-funded and commercial organisations in the same industry? Aside from Brailsford, Cookson was on the board of Team Sky.

Edit: On re-reading, I think what Deloitte really determined was no risk to Olympic success of BC riders.

Do you know the story behind this? Kimmage was going to be embedded with Sky at the Tour in 2011. Brailsford asked that he attend a training camp first in order to get to know people, understand how the team worked etc. At this camp, Kimmage was interrogating people, burst in on Wiggins whilst he was having a massage, and generally putting noses out of joint. The riders demanded the invite to the Tour was rescinded as they didn't want that kind of stress during a highly stressful race. Kimmage took personal offence, which was compounded when David Walsh was embedded with the team at the Tour in 2013.

Yeah, and that interview is infused with that bitterness. I'm not saying he's wrong but presents opinion as fact, admit the conclusions he draws are based on instinct, bemoans the fact Deignan and Roche haven't turned whistleblowers fancifully and says Wiggins is 'holed below the waterline' and that he should lose his Tour win. There's a shit ton of schedenfraude in that interview, I just really don't like him, and that is an opinion formed over several years and some unpleasant interactions on Twitter.

That goes for Vayer and Tucker too.

Despite Kimmage trying to paint it some other way, there remains no smoking gun as of yet.

I wonder what Tiernan-Locke makes of it all. Of course he has always w#maintained his innocence, and his doping was on another team but the most he has said about Sky is that he was offered tramadol. Let's remind ourselves that this isn't just Team Sky, its British cycling too, so what Kimmage is saying about the road team directly reflects onto the track program and the success there. Wiggins had 3 TUEs in a very, very long career filled with incredible success, was he doping throughout? Kimmage has decided he started in 2009 while he was a Garmin and mentions his attitude after being kicked off the Tour with Confidis in 2007 and then suddenly it changes. Vaughters has always maintained that Wiggins rode clean at Garmin and believed his Sky performances were clean.

Basically its still murky as fuck.

Kimmage also thinks he was binned by Sunday Times because he couldn't get that TDF access or write about Lance.

The Cyclist Podcast fellas talk quite a lot about Sky in their latest podcast.

http://thecyclingpodcast.com/latest-episode

It sounds like they recorded most of it around the weekend, and then added some more following the mass tweeting of support for DB.

In that latter part they mention how Froome didn't tweet, and expand on the potential power play between Froome and DB.

Then there is a very brief comment at the end which refers to the letter Sky published.

It's worth a listen. The Sky stuff starts around 25 minutes in.

As usual INRNG sums it up perfectly. The one thing we know is that we don't know.

Well Kimmage was hoping for a whistleblower, think he might be disappointed by what he reads.

The truth is, in my two years at Team Sky I was never asked to do anything that broke or even bent the anti-doping laws, either legally or ethically.

No matter what I say or do, though, there will always be some people out there who think all cyclists dope, at least anyone who wins a professional race.

But I know that's simply not true.

So Deignan its over to you to make Kimmage's day

Great share. Good for him.

Great podcast with Ross Tucker here

If he is involved I seriously doubt it

This totally passed me by
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-39266777

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That doesn't seem to about doping as such, more that the testing would reveal she was trans.