thom
____
- Location
- The Borough
Not about doping this - Sky recruit another quality Aussie trainer.
Team Sky, Brailsford and doping
- Thread starter Noodley
- Start date
Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.
Andrew_P
In between here and there
See Kimmage is having a pop @ Sky..
BICYCLING: You’ve been critical of Team Sky and Bradley Wiggins. Why?
Kimmage: The key things that I worry about with Sky are how dominant they were in the Tour—how dominant the whole team were. So it’s not one rider riding exceptionally well but a whole team riding exceptionally well—no bad days—and just incredibly thin and incredibly powerful at the same time. They’ve lost the weight but not the power. For me, that’s the question mark. It was interesting that [BMC’s] Cadel Evans—during the Olympics—sent out a tweet saying, Oh, I see the skinny guys are still winning time trials. How are these skinny guys winning time trials? Cadel’s a meaty fella—he’s got muscles. And he looks at these guys, these twigs, and how can they time trial so well? It defies logic for me.
BICYCLING: You’ve been critical of Team Sky and Bradley Wiggins. Why?
Kimmage: The key things that I worry about with Sky are how dominant they were in the Tour—how dominant the whole team were. So it’s not one rider riding exceptionally well but a whole team riding exceptionally well—no bad days—and just incredibly thin and incredibly powerful at the same time. They’ve lost the weight but not the power. For me, that’s the question mark. It was interesting that [BMC’s] Cadel Evans—during the Olympics—sent out a tweet saying, Oh, I see the skinny guys are still winning time trials. How are these skinny guys winning time trials? Cadel’s a meaty fella—he’s got muscles. And he looks at these guys, these twigs, and how can they time trial so well? It defies logic for me.
thom
____
- Location
- The Borough
I think its reasonable and healthy to ask questions like this. Scepticism is entirely appropriate. It wasn't just the Olympics that Sky had their dominant form.
It started in March with Paris-Nice, going through to the Olympics in August and I think you have to go back a very long time to see similar team performances.
At the same time, Cadel perhaps had an off year, Contador wasn't at the races until the Vuelta and the Schlecks weren't anywhere. Cancellara didn't have a great year either and Tony Martin had various injuries/accidents. So Sky were probably lucky as to their opposition in terms of the team leaders.
However, the data of their performances, in terms of VAM, watts etc. I believe does not point towards untoward preparation. It appears they have developed ways to achieve and maintain peak form in athletes through hard work and deep physiological understanding and at times challenging much of the orthodoxy of the peloton.
I imagine there are/were quite a few areas of low hanging fruit in terms of legitimate training methods to adopt and exploit relative to the competition, partly because so many people were used to relying on doping that the requirement to innovate more subtly would be rendered inconsequential given blood doping and EPO were making around a 10% difference to your VAM (I think) over current performance levels.
Within this forum you can find people complaining about Wiggo not taking the Tour of Britain seriously. By the time of the World Championships, Froome and Wiggo knew better than to try to get to the start line because they were spent. What Wiggo did last year was extraordinary obviously, earned through commitment, accepting luck in some part but he earned everything he won and clearly had an additional motivation to progress his Olympic palmares at a home venue.
There is movement of riders and staff between Sky and other teams. If something dodgy is going on at a team level, there are opportunities for rumour to spread faster than ever but we're yet to see anything unexplainable (I hunk/hope...).
Hont
Guru
- Location
- Bromsgrove
Agree with that. And that is pretty much what Kimmage's role appears to be. Even if you don't agree with what he's saying, the sport needs someone coming from that viewpoint.
Indeed. Remember the hilarity everyone expressed when Wiggins warmed down after stages in Paris Nice.
More from that interview...
What would make me happy is to watch a Tour de France and watch the Tour de France where the yellow jersey has some really bad days and it changes hands. What would make me happy is a Tour de France with guys like Dan Martin. The Tour de France with 190 Dan Martins and David Millars, who come out and win a stage, then lose 40 minutes the next day. That would make me happy. But these robots who ride for three weeks and go faster in the third week, that doesn’t make me happy
I can't help but feel that Kimmage is lost a little bit in the 80s by expressing a belief that being clean must mean you are going to have bad days in Grand Tours . Sport science has moved on since then.
Flying_Monkey
Recyclist
- Location
- Odawa
I like Kimmage - and we need people like him around to say the unsayable - but I think you are right about his leanings. Riders today, in fact professional sportspeople in general, train in both in quanities and in methods that those active in the late 80s years ago would find hard to recognise. And tactically, the way that teams are ordered and operate is also vastly different. I think Kimmage is too much of a romantic and an idealist - he dislikes the cold, scientific professionalism of the top teams as much as he dislikes cheating.
Flying_Monkey
Recyclist
- Location
- Odawa
And... Michael Rogers has left Sky to join one of the most cynical of potential World Tour squads, Saxo Bank-Tinkoff. I guess he had to admit he wasn't as clean as he had previously pretended... and now he's found the perfect home.
thom
____
- Location
- The Borough
His contract ended this year right ?
http://www.roadcycling.com/news-results/team-saxo-tinkoff-signs-michael-rogers#.UMH_4qWFXq0
Flying_Monkey
Recyclist
- Location
- Odawa
Yes, it did. But I am pretty sure he would not have been able to meet Sky's newly stated standards.
thom
____
- Location
- The Borough
I'm not trying to argue, we know the rumours of Rogers being involved with Ferrari, at least as far as "training plans" are concerned at a time when Ferrari was not banned.
Are you sure this breaches Sky standards, or in other words, do you know the specifics of Sky's standards ?
Are there other issues that I am ignorant of ? I'm just interested to know if there is more on him or if maybe Sky might have thought that it's not that he's breached something but that it doesn't appear good, so we won't extend his contract.
Not good news - somebody who knows the insides of team sky heading straight to the biggest rival. Must be due to the doping declaration, it is unlikely that pay and conditions at saxo bank are on par with sky.
thom
____
- Location
- The Borough
I imagine he'll do well in terms of pay - he must have a good few points to help Saxo-Tinkoff and indeed he is valuable to Contador as the road captain of the previous TdF winner. It doesn't look good but we'll probably never really know the full story.
Flying_Monkey
Recyclist
- Location
- Odawa
I'm not sure about that: Tinkoff Credit Systems is worth over 1 Billion. Oleg Tinkoff is one of those highly dubious Russian oligarchs with strong connections to Putin and the ruling elite.
