Thats what ive though, weve gone from having no decent British cyclists to 3 world class ones in the same team in a couple of years. I said to someone last night Im very sceptical of what they have achieved which is sad if they did it clean. But someone going from nowhere to the best in the world at age 30+ is almost unheard off.
Correct, Schleck won two years ago after Contador was disqualified, but they are both very strong in the right team, it's a shame the teams actually can dictate the races but that's the way it is. I still think Wiggins win is slightly devalued by Froome being held back...
And this Tour is made to measure for Wiggins with 100kms plus of Chronos and climbs situated away from the finish more than usual. Bit like how Francesco Moser won the 1984 Giro d'Italia with even the TV helicopters used to create a headwind for his opponents. Personal opinion is that most are doped to fùck and Sky more than others. Forget Wiggins but Froome is ridiculous! Where the hell did he come from last year?
Froome would have won if he was allowed, he was pissing about on the climbs but had to slow to stay with Wiggins. Im of the opinion that the race is so hard that you cant win it without cheating.
Froome had last year's Vuelta in the bag until SKY held him back for Wiggins. He can't say nothing as he has all to lose. L'omertà del ciclismo....
Last guaranteed clean top cyclist was Charly Mottet afaik. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charly_Mottet
They have hardly come from nowhere. Wiggins won gold at the 2004 Olympics and two more in the 2008 Olympics and Cavendish has been winning Tour-De-France stages since 2008.
tour de france riders dont seem to reach their peak until they are 30+ years of age Wiggins is 32 and Evans who won it last year is 35 somebody under 25 years old is considered a young rider I think Not sure if Froome would of beat Wiggins or not as I expect Wiggins to beat Froome in todays stage
Cavendish fair enough, he's a great sprinter. But Wiggins came from the track. The track cyclists who have been great on the road have been sprinters and one day classic winners like Patrick Sercù or Roger De Vlaeminck, not winners of the three big Tours.
Wiggins finished 4th in the Tour in 2009 but was injured in last year's race. He's been long-talked up as our great hope so that's probably why he was given the nod over Froome as team leader. He's put it on record that he'd ride the Tour in future to help Froome win so it'll be interesting to see if he does next year...
Clearly you know more about this than me, but, if Wikipedia is correct, he has been road racing since 2003, and would appear to have been getting steadily better. Would that be fair?
Going from track to TDF is like a 100m sprinter going on to win a marathon. Froome messing about on climbs is more than enough proof for me as was Cavendish leading a group up a climb this year whereas he always struggled before.
Riders usually peak in their late 20s, generally they need to ride three or four tours just to learn what the race is all about before they can challenge for a Top 10 finish if they're good enough. Wiggins has earned his spurs...
Mottet: one clean cyclist In 1989 Voet joined the RMO team. A year later the French rider Charly Mottet, who twice finished fourth in the Tour de France, joined the team. The arrival of Charly Mottet helped to clean up the team. He was the team leader, he had more influence than anyone on the way his teammates thought and he never wanted to know about drugs. When he arrived at RMO, we knew hardly anything about him. We knew he had the ability to win the Tour de France, but we didn't know what means we had to put at his disposal to help him get there. It was only as the races went by and we ate with him and spent time with him that we worked out what kind of a fellow we were dealing with. This was one clean cyclist. An iron supplement or an injection of an anti-oxidant (Iposotal) and that was as far as he went. You could honestly say that Mottet was a victim of drug-taking right through his career - of other riders' drug-taking. If he had used some stuff to help him recover, perhaps only now and then, the list of races which he won - already a long one - would have been considerably longer. Who knows if he might not have won the Tour? As it was, he was a rider who was said to fall apart in the final week. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/osm/story/0,,481510,00.html
Yes, just read that all the backroom team have previous connections to doping too. How many TDF winners in the last 20 years were not cheats? I bet at least 75% of them were confirmed cheats and the rest just didnt get caught. If you want to know how dirty the sport is, look at the post above where a single rider stood out and had a reputation for not cheating.
Surely these guys get tested on a very regular basis and presumably not just during the tour itself, so would you say that the testers incompetent, the team “doctors” too clever, the drugs untraceable or do the authorities not really want to find them?
Very good question. I suspect a combination of all three although the weight certain teams can bring to bear on the UCI and the organisers of the Tour is without doubt greater than others. SKY are very powerful due to their financial and media clout and this year's Tour is made to measure. Generally anti doping lags behind doping by a good few years. It would in that regard be a good thing to keep samples archived for 20 years to expose piss takers like Lance Armstrong. The effect of doping is clearly demonstrated when it ceases. Ivan Basso is the example that best demonstrates this in this year's Tour.
Just read about Wiggins' Dad in the paper. A decent racer himself, he was known as the Doc in the 70s for his ability to supply speed to other riders. Died a few years ago an alcoholic, from injuries sustained in a fight (probably). He was an Aussie, so Wiggins is not 100% British..... If mountaineering is classified as a sport (probably not) some of the achievements there would rank highest for me. I have huge respect for downhill skiers as well, but not many British examples. John Surtees who won both the F1 and motorcycle world championships? At a time when life expectancy for competitors in these sports was spectacularly short. Great champions seem to have one thingincommon - a monomania helping them focus totally on achieving their goals to the exclusion of all else, which often makes them socially a bit weird. Exception would be James Hunt who seemed to be on the pull and pissed most of the time he wasn't in a car.
