Team Blue Sky Thinking

[Tri'ing Swimmer]

Yes Froome and Thomas are being left alone by the press, but doesn't mean people aren't questioning it. I've struggled to believe in Sky for the last few years, beyond just BW.

[SGreg]

[Jorgan]

[hammerer]

[BigFoz]

[PhilleusPhogg]

Very interesting, tbh I am reserved to speculate, since if there is a wide-scale doping programme (over and above the line-pushing we have seen so far) given enough time, someone key to the whole thing will spill the beans, so the meme earlier about getting a beer and waiting is quite correct ... watch and enjoy, but keep an open mind and don't invest too much emotionally in your cycling heroes ....

BUT I can't resist speculating a little Froome's interesting, in so much as his sudden emergence in 2011 has been a major bone of contention with many, and rightly so because it's fine to question things. What's interesting is that if he was juiced then, presumably he must be still on it now, given he's been pretty dominant over a sustained period of time now. So either he's doing 'it' on his own and still doing it, Sky are still doing 'it', or there is no 'it' and he fixed his health issues and is just the best and clean.

If 'it' turns out to be something more than line-pushing (e.g. mechanical, blood or some other doping) they're doing a bang-up job of keeping ahead of the testing curve (assuming no covered up failures of course!) and ahead of the competition.

So as time goes on, and if Froome wins a few more Grand Tours, then the evidence points to either he's pretty much clean, or there's a larger continuing form of cheating that will surely come out in the future.

Pseudo-science aside, certainly the trend in the climbing times of recent tours shows they're not slowing down since 2011-12, maybe getting slightly faster again (W/Kg -wise). so it's presumably not the case that Froome was cheating before, and is clean now. I think I can safely draw that conclusion.

[PhilleusPhogg]

[Buzz_]

To me it seems Sky have decided to push the boundaries and exploit any loopholes, and if that is the case and they haven't broken any rules then fair enough. But when you operate on the line, it is going to be very easy to step over, either because people working in that team culture now assume because taking xyz is OK, and abc is the same so no harm. Or I took xyz and it was OK because I had a TUE, so I took it again, but forgot to get the TUE. I can see a rider being told, it's all OK, we've got permission, and the team failing to get permission (Yates) or I can see a team thinking well we got permission before, won't bother asking this time, or "everyone's doing it", we have to do this to compete.

When you make the decision to operate on the line, the chances of stepping over and getting burned are high. And that is where I think they are right now. They can't stick their hand up and say "honest mistake, sorry, won't happen again", so they are trying to say "nothing to see here".

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[explorerJC]

[TransitionTed]

until any rider gets popped, good luck with the speculation
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Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion

[explorerJC]

[Roscoemck]

Whatever's going on, it's working!

Never a force in the classics, Strade Bianche and Milan San Remo both now in the bag.

Impressive.

[Jorgan]

How do times/speeds & performances compare for the Sky years versus the US Postal/Telekom years? Sports science and supplements basically haven't changed over that time.

That's your bellwether.
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25 Years since it all began....

[TransitionTed]

[explorerJC]