Tour de France 2007 thread (2 Viewers)

[IFF]

I'm going for Pierrick Fedrigo for today's stage. Total long shot but hes a breakaway specialist and it seems that kind of day to me. Also, a big KOM day. If Dan Martin has designs on that jersey he'll need to get himself up there. Morkov will definitely be there seeing Froomedope will have to look after Wiggins.

my pick today is kiriyenka. he's usually good for break aways.

i just don't trust Froome. it's like his fourth professional win (his three previous being a stage of the tour of japan, a stage of giro del capo and the vuelta stage).

 

[oh shit]

apparently Sky went to the UCI last month with a detailed presentation on their riders' training stats over the past year in order to reassure them that it's all been a natural progression. would be good if they'd publish that data after the tour, it would set an interesting precedent too.

Personally I don't think Froome's done anything particularly freaky myself - he didn't suddenly jump out of the saddle with 3k to go and cruise past the field like pharmstrong, and yesterday there was a 4-man Sky team working evenly up the mountain, same as they've done in training. and he only put the hammer down at the crest of the climb to pop cadel and put wiggins on his wheel. the win seemed like a bonus. bearing in mind he grew up in Kenya at altitude. similar to colombian riders, i think he's just got a natural edge at altitude. and doesn't doping have to be a full-team thing? it's not like kimmage being offered an injection by his room mate, i think takes a bit of work to transfuse your own blood from cold storage.

Anyway, great racing today. Looking forward to the TT.

 

[oh shit]

Wiggins on Team Sky doping accusers:

"I say they're just fucking wankers. I cannot be doing with people like that," said Wiggins. "It justifies their own bone-idleness because they can't ever imagine applying themselves to doing anything in their lives.

"It's easy for them to sit under a pseudonym on Twitter and write that sort of shit rather than get off their arses in their own lives and apply themselves and work hard at something and achieve something. And that's ultimately it. "

Worth noting that Porte and Rogers were nowhere today. Good overall strategy - the climbing domestiques burned themselves for the summit finish yesterday, took it easy today and don't have to push it tomorrow in the TT, then there's a rest day and they'll be back on the front.

 

[oh shit]

Hmm... ok maybe not. Froome taking 23s off Cancellara is a bit too fucking weird.

 

[rettucs]

Hmm... ok maybe not. Froome taking 23s off Cancellara is a bit too fucking weird.

I loved what Sean Kelly was saying there about Sky maybe asking Wiggins to ease off. He had to pause after the 'because....'

those lads are so fucking lit up its not funny. They're making a bollox of this great race after I thought all that was in the past. Fuck them anyway, pack of cheating fucks.

Chris Froome, 2 years ago a nobody, a skinny whippet of a climber with arms and legs like twigs, beats Cancellara, arguably the greatest Time Triallist of all time, on a course make for Cancellara, by a fucking mile.

Get fucked Sky you fucking cheats. I hope you get caught before the end of the race so that whoever comes second doesn't get awarded in the title in 2 years time on a hotel corridor.

 

[rettucs]

I wonder if any of the 'Team Sky Believers' out there are managing to avoid having the merest hint of a doubt.

I was at the first 4 stages of this years tour. The Team Sky stuff is really catching on over there. It will be massive by the end of the tour, which will greatly enhance the sense of disappointment once they get caught.

 

[rettucs]

I put out a couple of 'controversial' comments on twitter just now. Will be interesting to see the reaction. In the last 2 minutes I've been retweeted and told to fuck off.

 

[oh shit]

what's your username?

 

[rettucs]

sent by PM.

also, I just got a warning on boards

 

[oh shit]

thanks! I am far from convinced, even with froomey's weird times. They haven't actually exceeded any physiological barriers at this point, and there are a lot of factors that could credibly make a difference - the climb on the TT, overall strategies (ie Sky aiming to burn the field early, BMC thinking they'll hold off a bit to the mountains), and generally the sky training approach and Brailsford's obsession with maximised efficiencies.

This SoS post is interesting on the power and VO2 outputs -

http://www.sportsscientists.com/201...gn=Feed:+blogspot/cJKs+(The+Science+of+Sport)

Of course if Sky are continually there or thereabouts in the mountains then their recovery techniques will be questioned, but at the moment, and this early in the tour, they haven't actually done anything unexplainable or superhuman. Given the background I'm not going to assume they're cheating until there is something more substantial to go on.

 

[rettucs]

Wiggins I can buy. Froome not so. Lets see what happens in the Alps, but more importantly, the Pyrenees

 

[CinnamonBoy]

Lads, Froome rode the rest of the peloton bar the elite group into oblivion. It was reminiscent of the US Postal boys (classics riders riding up mountains like Claudio Chiapucci) or Gewiss-Ballan in 1994. Ridiculous stuff. How anyone can go to that level of performance from basically winning a couple of stages of nothing races is a mystery to me.

 

[rettucs]

How anyone can go to that level of performance from basically winning a couple of stages of nothing races is a mystery to me.

my guess is drugs! That or blood-doping but I don't think blood-doping would even be enough to boost him that much. How he can put the power down that he does with those twiglet legs of his, its not natural.

I wonder do they still test for bike doping?

 

[oh shit]

Lads, Froome rode the rest of the peloton bar the elite group into oblivion. It was reminiscent of the US Postal boys (classics riders riding up mountains like Claudio Chiapucci) or Gewiss-Ballan in 1994. Ridiculous stuff. How anyone can go to that level of performance from basically winning a couple of stages of nothing races is a mystery to me.

but in fact it's a fallacy to suggest that this is like USPS. Sky are faster, relatively, than the competition this year, but they have not even approached the superhuman power outputs recorded by certain teams in the last 2 decades. the race as a whole is slower and they are fastest, but well within credible human capabilities. had wiggins and froome done these rides 10 years ago they'd have been nowhere near USPS.

as for Froome, well he TT'd very well in 2010 UK championships, he also did it in the Vuelta last year, and he's been training for the Olympic TT as well as the tour. so he hasn't exactly done this overnight. Sky are like Man City, they've got huge resources and they've bought a super-domestique who would be a GC team leader if he went almost anywhere else.

as for power and leg size, well we all know there are big gears and then there is high cadence.

no harm in asking questions but in a clean race, at some point, a clean team are going to win big. this might be it. I'm prepared to change my mind of course, maybe after seeing what happens round the mountains.

 

[rettucs]

but in fact it's a fallacy to suggest that this is like USPS. Sky are faster, relatively, than the competition this year, but they have not even approached the superhuman power outputs recorded by certain teams in the last 2 decades. the race as a whole is slower and they are fastest, but well within credible human capabilities. had wiggins and froome done these rides 10 years ago they'd have been nowhere near USPS.

Its not necessarily the speed though. Take saturday. The tactics were very USPS-like. Ride on the front, control the pace prevent attacks. Rogers does X km then peels off, then Porte likewise, leaving Froome to ride Bradley to within the last km. To sustain the control Sky want these riders need to ride slightly over their threshold. When they peel off they ease up considerably, lowering their HR, then make it home in their own time. Even in the USPS days when you saw riders having finished their stint they were completely spent, as you'd expect. I couldn't really believe what I was seeing when Froome, not only responded to and tracked Evans attack, but went by him like he wasn't there, and looked like he hardly broke a sweat when he was finished. Froome should have been well able to win a stage like that, but not after pacemaking for Bradley.

as for Froome, well he TT'd very well in 2010 UK championships, he also did it in the Vuelta last year, and he's been training for the Olympic TT as well as the tour. so he hasn't exactly done this overnight.

It was overnight up to the Vuelta. I was over there for that race and no one saw it coming. Even people within the Sky setup couldn't have foreseen it. Nothing Froome is doing in this tour is surprising me. But getting from nowhere pre-Vuelta to where he is now, thats just a bit too much of a stretch for me.

 

[rettucs]

oh, and on the tactics, Liquigas tried the same thing for Basso in the Giro, and they showed how hard it was because they were absolutely hopeless at it.

 

[rettucs]

this is what my tweet referred to by the way (I presume you knew that though)

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[rettucs]

actually no its not. That was Cobo. I'll try and find the Ricco stage

 

[CinnamonBoy]

Even in the USPS days when you saw riders having finished their stint they were completely spent, as you'd expect. I couldn't really believe what I was seeing when Froome, not only responded to and tracked Evans attack, but went by him like he wasn't there, and looked like he hardly broke a sweat when he was finished. Froome should have been well able to win a stage like that, but not after pacemaking for Bradley.


.

This. I've been watching cycling for 20 years, and this kind of dominance and ease of winning is just too suspicious to be ignored.

 

[IFF]

This. I've been watching cycling for 20 years, and this kind of dominance and ease of winning is just too suspicious to be ignored.

but in fact it's a fallacy to suggest that this is like USPS. Sky are faster, relatively, than the competition this year, but they have not even approached the superhuman power outputs recorded by certain teams in the last 2 decades. the race as a whole is slower and they are fastest, but well within credible human capabilities. had wiggins and froome done these rides 10 years ago they'd have been nowhere near USPS.

as for Froome, well he TT'd very well in 2010 UK championships, he also did it in the Vuelta last year, and he's been training for the Olympic TT as well as the tour. so he hasn't exactly done this overnight. Sky are like Man City, they've got huge resources and they've bought a super-domestique who would be a GC team leader if he went almost anywhere else.

as for power and leg size, well we all know there are big gears and then there is high cadence.

no harm in asking questions but in a clean race, at some point, a clean team are going to win big. this might be it. I'm prepared to change my mind of course, maybe after seeing what happens round the mountains.

but then again look at other markers, he lost 2 minutes the week before the 2010 british championships to tony martin in 17km in the tour of benelux after 7 days of racing. he lost 46 seconds in the prologue over 7 km.

he lost 4'35 to cancellara in the worlds itt in 2009.
in the 2009 giro, he beat philip deignan by 5 seconds over 60 kilometers

as thomas voeckleur said referring to his own performances

everyone is free to make up his or her own mind. with everything cycling has been through, it's not surprising people have doubts