gerd
Retired Footballer
Froome - successor of Lance Armstrong ?!?! wtf was that yesterday ?!?!
Absolutely ridiculous and quite obvious what was going on. This reminds me of Rasmussen and Contador back in 2007...
Man, tis sport is so messed up...
I'm gonna do something that in time might turn against me. I'm gonna defend Froom.
First of all, there is no doubt whatsoever that every big performance by a cyclist is tainted, so it is good that one stays cynical regarding cyclism.
On the other hand, all the signs are there that the sport is clean(er?) now. I don't know what the exact time of Froom was on the Ventoux. But nevertheless i had a chrono and tried to time it approximately. When you take a time on the Ventoux, your timing begins after you leave Bedoin, there is a fuel station and right aftet that there is an hedege. That is the starting point. The peloton wasn't on the television when theys passed that point, but they were on television about 1 km after that. That is were i started my timing. Froom rode 58' 42" second from that point to the summit of the Ventoux.
That is almost 4 minutes less than Iban Mayo's record and 3 minutes more than Armstrong.
This follows the pattern of the last years: in the mountains the cyclist develop a far inferior VAM (Mean Ascent Velocity) than at the time of Armstrong, Ullrich, Contador and Rasmussen.
The philosophy of Team Sky is also that they want to have results in a clean way. No i know that cyclism in the Armstrong-Contador-Rasmussen was extremely cynical and i wouldn't be totally baffled if a team that takes a firm anti-doping stance would indeed let his riders take illegal drugs. In thios case however, i tend to believe Sky.
Why ?
Because all the indications are that the best riders of this generation perform considerably less strong than in the Armstrong-Contador era. With the Mean Ascent Velocity Froom produced at both Ax 3 Domaines and Ventoux (both stages he won), he would not have ended in the top 10 in the Armstrong era. The best example is perhaps Alberto Contador himself: he can't follow a rider who would not have a had a chance against him 3 years ago. What happened in the mean time ? The blood passport. UCI and WADA take blood and urine samples from the riders and with the analyses they do on those samples they can see which riders haves suspect blood and urinal "values", i.e. riders who have taken EPO or blood doping. Nowadays those riders immediately are controlled and scientists can effectively prove that they have taken illegal drugs (this is precisely what happened in the Giro with Di Luca and Santambrogio who were both found out).
Am i sure that Froom is clean ? No. Do i think that he is clean ? Yes. Why ? Because there is enough circumstantial evidence to suppose that he is clean.
I'm a cycling freak and i have friend who works for big teams. So i have inside information. When Armstrong won the Tour de France i immediately suspected something was wrong and afterwards knew for sure that he doped (my informer worked for US Postal. ) Why did i have suspicions ? Because Armstrong team was too strong. A heavily build rider like George Hincapie was very good in the mountains and a climber like Rubiera started to be in the top 10 in time trials. In other words riders started to do things that were unnatural. Look at the Sky teams. Are they that strong ? No they aren't. In the second mountain stage Froom was totally isolated and his climbing lieutenant Porte lost more than 10 minutes. In the "echelon" stage towards Saint-Amand Montrond his team was totally defeated by Quick Step (and that is a team that does unnatural things at the moment). I think Team SKY shows all the signs that they are not super ahtletes...and so i give them a strong benefit of the doubt.
If i'm not mistaken you are German. Since a coule of years "Germans" (and i'm sorry for the use of this word, because THE Germans don't exist, but i can't explain myself better than this) is reacting hysterical towards drugs in cycling. I can understand that because of all that happened around Telekom, Ullrich, Zabel, Gerolsteiner and other German riders/teams, but people/media in Germany are overreacting.
Just my two cents, but believe me, i know what i'm talking about. I'm passionate about cycling, i've climbed all these mountains myself when i was much younger, i was fed-up with the sports a couple of years ago, but now i see encouraging signs. I sincerely hope i'm not wrong.
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