Anyone following Paul Kimages' TdF video diary? **Mod Warning OP**

Kelly's 'cheating' is a world away or in a different universe from the shiit that Armstrong (et al) were doing in '99 (IMHO).

Getting back to Froome, Q&A with Brailsford on why Froome's data isn't being released. If I remember correctly, back in 2011 in the Vuelta and just before he 'exploded' onto the scene, his data was available on traingpeaks or somewhere!

Sky's collapse and in particular Porte's collapse yesterday was as astonishing as their dominance the day before !

Lumen wrote: »

Clearly this is a well-managed PR exercise, and Porte was doing the "fake bonk".

is that a joke Lumen, or do you believe it could be true? It's like The Matrix lol! I must confess the thought did pass my mind. Like they were told tone it down a bit, but there is tone it down a bit and then there is fall to pieces.
But then Froome is still sitting pretty.

Looking forward to hearing Kimmages take on Sky's bad day yesterday. His interview with Frankie Andreau after Froome took yellow was maddening. He would hardly let Andreau get his point across (that Froome's speed was believable because Porte was making the pace all the way up the climb - i.e. normally it is stop/start so average speed may not be as high as you'd expect). He has spoken a lot of truth over the years but definitely has an axe to grind.

kfod wrote: »

is that a joke Lumen, or do you believe it could be true? It's like The Matrix lol! I must confess the thought did pass my mind. Like they were told tone it down a bit, but there is tone it down a bit and then there is fall to pieces. But then Froome is still sitting pretty.

Morrisseeee wrote: »

Which smilie are you missing there Lumen ? or :rolleyes: :pac:

Exactly. Once you start down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, there's no end to it.

If Sky/British Cycling have a systematic doping programme, it would require an awful lot of people to keep their mouths shut over a very long period of time. I just don't have enough faith in people to believe it. And if they don't, what's all the moaning about? Boring racing? Murdoch? The universal repulsiveness of Rapha-clad British ex-colonial diaspora winning?

Sky managed to pull off an easy-looking win last year, but all endeavours eventually end in failure. The wheels will come off sooner or later.

In the meantime I'm enjoying the soap opera.

Hermy wrote: »

This.

With a bit of luck Andy Schleck will regain his form and entertain us with his breathtaking attacks.

Yesterday was entertaining enough for me!

ROK ON wrote: »

Like USPS until the house of cards came crashing down you mean?

Who plays Lance is this little theatre production in your head? Brailsford? Froome? Yates?

USPS was held together by Lance's force of will, a personality cult.

No one in Sky even has a personality.

I found it interesting listening to Yates on ES. He was upfront and frank about what happened last year. I dunno if there's much written about the relationship with Wiggins-Yates, but I'd imagine Yates was a bit of a father figure or hero to Wiggins but since he left Wiggins has struggled this year (note I could be wrong).

Back to Brailsford and their stance on not releasing data, I just don't understand their excuse, it doesn't add up, especially when you see Laurens ten Dam & Dan Martin uploading their data, and being totally honest about their performance, and in ten Dam's case you can see the training he does aswell:
/from the article I linked to earlier

We want to be open and transparent.
...
If people could truly understand and interpret power, what it is and what it isn’t, and it isn’t what a lot of people think it is.
At some point in time, people have to accept that performances are going to move forward.
...
They do not have to be doping, because the whole human race moves forward. At some point in time, clean performances will surpass the doped performances in the past. You cannot use that as a rule to say that means that they are doping.

So, you want to be open & transparent, you want to show the world that you can win clean, your no. 1 guy wants to prove he can win clean, you want us to buy into the fact that your no. 1 guy is something special, the first superman cyclist, but.........we're not showing you the data, so piss off, leave us alone & just believe :(

Interesting here from this Brailsford interview, Peter Kennaugh lost 5kg :eek: from when he lined up at the Tour de Romandie in late April, actually Kimmage asked that Q

From the heading, 'lessons have been learned', I wonder what the reaction & tactics will be ?! especially as Sky are a depleted team now, a few wagons have been de-rail-ured !!

Caveat: I'm not a Sky basher, if they are clean and want me to buy into their system then it's up to them to prove it to me, I should not have to take a leap of faith that they are above board.
Take Dan Martin & ten Dam, they're doing their best to prove to me that all is above board, ie. an honest effort.

ROK ON wrote: »

Like USPS until the house of cards came crashing down you mean?

In fairness, there was a hell of a lot of evidence around USPS before the house of cards came crashing down. While the history of the sport demands that we ask questions and remain sceptical, nothing around SKY has been anywhere close to the backdated prescription, or the syringes in the trash, or Emma O'Reilly, or Bassons, or Simeoni etc..

Lumen wrote: »

Yates appearing on Eurosport wearing a Lance band is hilarious though. He clearly doesn't give a damn.

He's by no means alone - Brian Holm recently had Lance as number 5 in his Coolest Riders of all time.

And would we be saying Yates is a hypocrit if he stopped showing support for Lance? Probably

Lumen wrote: »

Froome suffers a little from the Greg Ruzedski issue.

Yes and he knows it too, and he used them (British) to get into the game.
To further illustrate that point, this snippet (from here) is interesting:

"Chris could have ridden away from Brad," says Blem, who again looked after Wiggins's bikes during his illness-stricken Giro d'Italia in May. "But I have so much respect for Sean Yates [then Sky's directeur sportif] because he stuck to the plan. We were there to win the Tour and it was vital that Brad, a pure Brit, won."

Lumen wrote:

Yates appearing on Eurosport wearing a Lance band is hilarious
though. He clearly doesn't give a damn

I would swap the 'hilarious' with 'mind boggling', but then he did admit he saw no wrong doing while with Armstrong during those years!!

mcgratheoin wrote:

but there's no power data uploaded from either ten Dam or DM for the tour so far.

Yes, but even their GPS trace and HR and training data is their token gesture of saying 'look guys, we're sharing our data with you, believe in us'.
Sky are giving us the 2 fingers & are trying to convince us that their team is super strong and their main guy is a superman !

I think in ten Dam's case it's his own decision as he uses a Garmin 200 to give us his data but I think it's probably up to Garmin whether we see Dan's data or not, (again I could be wrong with that assumption).
Another guy who's on Strava is Thomas de Gendt but his uploads are sporadic, whether that's down to laziness or a team decision, I don't know.

Team Sky have been posting SRM data from David Lopez here
http://www.teamsky.com/article/0,27290,29129_8813338,00.html

If I remember rightly, the have posted data from 1 rider at the Tour every year so far. Are there any teams releasing GC contender data during this year's race? Difficult thing to do - too many different interpretations I guess.

Morrisseeee wrote: »

Yes, but even their GPS trace and HR and training data is their token gesture of saying 'look guys, we're sharing our data with you, believe in us'.
Sky are giving us the 2 fingers & are trying to convince us that their team is super strong and their main guy is a superman !

On the one hand i can sympathise with SKY - they're getting blasted for doing what every other team does - keeping the power data private.

On the other hand, they set themselves up for this by telling us that they were going to be different and open and transparent etc.. so they only have themselves to blame. In addition, teams at the head of the peleton will always be under more scrutiny.

Personally I'd like to see them release the data - I can't see any positive in them withholding it. Maybe it's time that sponsors coming into the sport started telling the teams to be more open with their data?