I think you’re missing the point. Lacking a little more detail I can’t really take this comment seriously at all.
If you wanted to take someone who can generate a lot of absolute power on a track and make them good at going up climbs and sticking with the more explosive climbers, you’re going to need to manipulate hormones directly with drugs and/or indirectly through diet and training to change body type. They also employed some of the same ruthless tactics that USPS did in their day to help keep the race pace high and neutralize climber attacks.
I think it is clear that Sky knew exactly what they were doing. Claiming that they were cleaner than clean was bullshit propaganda. Your views on the ethics surrounding the drugs and the doses they used to those ends will certainly play into your final judgment.
I think we can all agree there are two basic types of TDF winners.
Fragile climbers that win when the course favors them.
Heavier TT Specialists (pursuiters or those who could crush a pursuit but didn’t try) that win when the course favors them.
Drugs may or may not made Wiggo a winner but he already had the pedigree to be a contender. He needed the right course (which he got) and a list of adversaries that lacked a pure explosive climber to possibly neutralize the Sky (USPS) method of racing.
Weather or not Wiggo was on drugs to cut weight, tweak his blood a tad, or whatever the REAL reason that he won is that the only real competition that year was a teammate and a still green Nibali. The rest of the top 10 were all either “guys that ride for the top ten by only getting dropped a little bit each day” and the BMC duo of the overblow upstart (TVG) and fading champion (Evans).
All Sky had to do not get dropped by Cadel (or in reality beat him by a few seconds) on stage 7 and 10 then soundly beat him in the Stage 9 TT. IIRC Cadel cracked on stage 11 allowing a more durable Nibali to leap frog him. By stage 14 everyone had pretty much thrown in the towel and was letting Sky take a victory lap. They let a break go in all the big mountain stages and rode a conservative race against mentally beaten adversaries.
Drugs or no drugs it’s not like we saw Wiggo sprinting up HC climbs like Lance.
I agree with just about everything you’ve said. The primary gripe I have is with their bullshit ‘marginal gains’ PR. Rupert Murdoch gave some ruthless SOBs in the UK a lot of dough and Sky was born. And ultimately it’s another shit show with my favorite sport taking a hit while money’d interests laugh all the way to the bank. Boom and bust. Save as it ever was.
Point is, corticosteroids or even test is just a tool to aid recovery. It’s a PED and all, but no back of the pack rider is going to become a tour winner without the aid of something that increases hematocrit.
I suspect but have no proof that microdosing in combination with deliberate withdrawal and injection of blood to help keep one within the bounds of the ABP was and probably still is going on. Probably still a requirement to be in the top ten GC in a GT.
Pure speculation but my hot take is that the bio passport hasn’t really “cleaned up” racing but it has toned it down a ton and allowed more naturally gifted riders (post dope Valverde, post dope Contador, Nibali, Evans) a chance to actually compete against guys who responded well to le dope and were able to literally go from donkeys to race horses (Landis, Hamilton, Perez, Menchov, Schleckbots, Vino, and every Italian podium placer besides Nibali, Basso, and the little prince).
So… uh… I guess my point is I don’t think Sky was clean but I don’t think they were anything like USPS because in a post bio passport world you just can’t crank your blood values that way with out raising some serious eyebrows.
The real issue with SKY is their ability to buy all the deluxe domestiques the way USPS did. The micro dosing I would be much more willing to ignore if there was a team salary cap of some sort.
Also… Froome… he’s clearly a Lemond/Indurain level engine so of course whatever “marginal gains” he can make is just going to put him over the top of the rest of the guys doing the same stuff.
That’s certainly the most plausible summation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if SKY buxx buys you “marginal gains” we are not gonna hear about for the next few years.
The dirty secret of professional sport is that as competition forces more extreme specialization, the “race horses” are going to cluster together performance-wise. Human variation at the extremes is minimal. In a sport like cycling where there are so many other variables to consider other than physiology, on a level playing field those variables will be more likely to determine the outcome than fitness alone.
The marketing needs of the major corporate sponsors, or those working in state run programs, demand that there are legends. Those who consistently win year after year. A consistent winner whose familiar face can be placed on the box of your crappy cereal.
When you see such dominance suspicion must follow. But the need to back a winner plus the PR machine drowning out all dissonance undermines most fans ability to question. Most of them just want to believe in miracles. They don’t want to know what it takes to pull the rabbit out of the hat.
If you want to get an idea about how little has changed about human physiology, look at the now dead Athlete’s Hour Record. The Merckx bike version. The currently reincarnated version is partly an equipment shootout.
I’ve only gotten actively excited about one rising star in cycling, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneviève_Jeanson, and was really bummed when, duh, it turned out that you don’t lap the field in a grand tour or whatever without some chemical assistance. At this point I watch little chunks of races via youtube, and generally have only a vague idea of who’s doing well in the pro ranks.
EPO from 16 is pretty wild. The Vaughters inteview on the previous page says he and most others only started on dope after racing a full year or more in the pro peloton clean. So… are we sure that the terrible drug-fueled 90s are behind us and things have gotten better? Tho I guess you could say that she got in on the tail end of the doping extravaganza.
I mostly agree. Pushing the limits of the human body naturally comes with addressing what goes into it.
I think I have for the most part made peace with the fact that elite endurance athletes are going to always push the limits of what is ethical and legal. IMO the most reasonable place to draw the line is at what is currently banned.
If artificial EPO is banned and you use it. You’re a dick.
If SKY has found some new hack like the gene therapy/epo and it’s not currently banned, then I guess whatever.
Until WADA/UCI comes out and says any and all forms of blood manipulation administered with any synthesized substance is banned, currently know or yet unknown directly to WADA/UCI then I’ll just shrug my shoulders and enjoy the show.
Hopefully we will never return to the 90s/early 00s free for all.
Bike racing (even the grand tours) is far more unpredictable and interesting than they were in those days, in my opinion anyway, so I’ll just enjoy it for now.
That’s true. What is interesting to me is when do you start to call methods used for fuller recovery/maintaining bodily health cheating? What is the ethical line? When it harms the competitor? Cycling itself does a lot of harm. It gets murky quick.
It’s easy to forget that riding 100% clean on a euro team and having the benefit of a support staff and proper recovery in itself gives riders a HUGE boost over domestic pros.
Ben King’s first season in Europe turned him into a different person. And I’m pretty damn certain there were not banned substances involved. Just that volume of riding and that intensity alone is huge.
Hell… I can tell a big difference when I go from 10hrs with minimal intensity to 13 hours with a weekly crit. And I suck.
I have no idea how this would get sorted out in practice, but I would draw an ethical line between restoration and improvement caused by the substance itself. An anti-inflammatory isn't intrinsically going to make you stronger, whereas EPO turns your blood into hyperoxygenated tar. Of course, pros take lots of different supplements and medications in conjunction with hyperstructured training regimes, so it's nearly impossible to untangle the character of a single variable.
The fact that motor doping is a present day scandal suggests that teams aren’t finding as much utility in doping their riders to Festina levels.
