I should have added more context to this. I allowed myself get too invested in the whole anti-doper thing about 5-6 years back. It definitely wasn't good for my mental health and ended up souring me off cycling.Cheers for your insight on all that rettucs.
I only know Kilian Kelly as statistician. if you read my own posts they are full of facts but very lacking on inside knowledge or real understanding of bike racing - so I am more likely to be impressed by statistics than I should be.
on the whole cycling is in a big mess :
The worst team sponsors money dirty can buy, totally ineffective anti doping, apathetic fans (e.g. me!)
almost nobody gets caught doping - who was the last big name who was caught ? I can't remember anyone. Froome should have been banned but the Sky lawyers dragged the case out so long the UCI didn't have a enough money to contest it and get him banned - a truly horrendous moment for all sport that that could happen.
Cherrie Prudhomme who is the DS for Israel CP is commentating today - she has only good things to say about Froome - one step forward, one step back.
on moral grounds really we should not be watching this at all but it's not going away and in certain places - like Ireland - cycling has never been more popular. in the 2000's i would have been shocked at the level of apathy I have about cycling now. I took it very seriously and was very anti doping and only really liked the likes of Moncoutie or Pinotti now I only watch it for the crack and don't follow it closely.
the one ray of light is a rapid rise in women's cycling and David Lappartient is the first half decent UCI president.
the Giro is now on a really beautiful climb they used in Trentino in 2014 that I remember well with 50 km to go. it's narrow, VERY steep and beautiful forest the whole way up.
I can't even rationalise how I felt about it. Like, I was clearly happy to turn a blind eye for some, but was knives out for others, depending on whether they were a prick or not.
The Sky story has been all sorts of ridiculous. Like the most obvious case of doping-in-plain-sight I've ever seen. Obviously US Postal were up there too, but we didn't know the half of what we know now about what goes on during pre-race training camps, or in the evenings after stages where blood bags are hooked onto hotel room lights as riders get their infusion.
You're so right though. There is zero appetite to catch dopers. ZERO. And I have to lay the blame for this squarely at the door of the british. We pretty much know now that London 2012 was a massive state-sponsored doping effort designed to lift the national mood, and show the rest of the world how big their dick is. This is evident nowhere more than in British cycling, and stories coming out about how USADA delegated testing of British 'athletes' to 'UKADA' (akin to the Tory party conducting inquiries into themselves). Basically, if the British are so plainly and evidently protecting their top 'athletes', then why the fuck wouldn't other countries do the same.
When is the last time we heard stories or whispers about what particular teams might be up to? When is the last time we had a whistleblower case? Even a disgruntled ex-rider pissing all over their former team(s) because they were fucked over ?
The last semi high-profile case I can recall is Stefan Denifl, and his name wouldn't even register as being well-known, even among cycling fans.
Maybe there are still people fighting the good fight. I get the sense that there's weariness there, and the stark demise of Froome, with no obvious successor to go after, has sated the appetite.
The big GC riders of today - Roglic, Pogachar, Bernal, etc, etc - its hard to have any dislike for them on a personal level, so people are not going to get a bee in their bonnet over whether they might be doping or not (and we already know there was a serious smoking gun around Roglic when he was still barely known).
That may change during the Tour de France, especially if Sky do well. But while I expect Geraint Thomas will do top 5, I don't think he'll trouble the Slovenians too much.
And I didn't mean my stats comment to be as condescending as it came out. That was specifically in the context of Kelly, an absolute mouthpiece and, in my opinion, a fucking wanker. But that opinion is very much in the context of what I said before - I let myself get far too deep into the anti-doping thing before and it fucked me up a bit.