šŸš“ā˜  The Death of a Dream? The Team Sky Drugs stories

Look Iā€™ve bantered about Cycling and Golf for about 15 years. An ex mentor at my old company not only worshipped Lance Armstrong but even looked not unlike him. Tiger v Lance - weā€™d go at it late into the expense accounts (it was that long ago)

Anyway while admiring British Cycling from afar, I have always been sceptical.

Today has seen a surge in stories about Cycling, Lord Coe, Sports, and the like based on the Parliamentary Hearing.

Perhaps we avoided the Froome debate, think this now needs a platform on here.

Smoke and Fire or Smoke and Mirrors?

How will this impact the love you have for the sport?

Perhaps a good topic for tomorrow seeing as tomorrow is TUES :lou_eyes_to_sky:

https://twitter.com/mjshrimper/status/970645872848580610

Death of a Dream - BBC Web Site

Sir Bradley Wiggins and Team Sky ā€œcrossed an ethical lineā€ by using drugs allowed under anti-doping rules to enhance performance instead of just for medical need, a report by MPs says.

In this latest report there is an anonymous disclosure of confidential information stating that they took the substances for performance gain.

If they are going to publically attck the organsations and riders then surely there should be full disclosure which enables Wiggins and Sky to defend thmselves. Otherwise it is tantamount to guilty without trial.

The other daft thing about this report is they state that no rule was broken but they are still cheating

There are clearly questions to answer but I would rather it was done by WADA etc rather than a bunch of self serving publicity whores who know fuck all about what they are writing

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Wiggins tweeted along those lines this morning and to be fair some like Matt Slater are retweeting comments smilar.

Hence I alluded to stroies in the thread title and murkiness.

But then you lot love to find ways to attack people at the top of the tree :lou_eyes_to_sky:

In his autobiography Bradley Wiggins made much of the fact that he was lucky with his health, never had any illness etc etc. Then, strangely enough he started to develop asthma, which, unluckily, always came on just before an important race, thus requiring him receive medication, including it would appear, triamcinolone which is performance enhancing and is banned in competition. Hmm. Sebastion Coe would appear to have questions to answer too about misleading parliament, ie, lying his arse off.

Anyway, surely this must be fake news, everybody knows that only Russia are drug cheats in sport.

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My biggest issue is that these politicos make statements hiding behind parliamentary priviledge. I would like to see Damien Colliins come out and state that Sky and Wiggins cheated without this shield in place. Surely the evidence he has and his anonymous source is strong enought to do so.

Somehow I doubt it.

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ā€œā€¦If they are going to publically attck the organsations and riders then surely there should be full disclosure which enables Wiggins and Sky to defend thmselves. Otherwise it is tantamount to guilty without trialā€¦ā€

Well, @cb-saint that seems to be the case for most things these days so why should cycling be treated any differently? Weinstein? Alleged kiddy fiddlers? Where do you draw the line?

I had the privelege of working within professional cycling for a couple of years. One of my colleagues was a French professional of some reputation who had himself in the past been ā€˜doneā€™ for doping.

He was adamant at the time (this was at the height of Wiggins winning the Tour etc.) that the Brits were doping and had just found new ways round the laws, to quote him fully ā€˜Of course they are doping, everyone is doping, ask yourself how a man dominates a sport where eveyrone is doping without doping himself?ā€™

This gentleman in question has since been ā€˜doneā€™ again, but this time for mechanically doping.

In summary, cycling is a poisoned sport, and as cynical as it makes me I donā€™t doubt for a second Wiggins (or at least Team Sky) have been up to no good.

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A full transcript of the BBC interview with Wiggins below. If you have 10-15 minutes, it is a very good read. Certainly adds perspective as far I am concerned.

Best extract? On our favourite media outlet:

"Iā€™ve not been able to get my head round some things. I was asked certain questions by a certain journalist for a certain newspaper and back in the end of 2016 I was asked whether Iā€™d missed a test or not. And I freely volunteered the information and said Iā€™d never missed a test in all the yearsā€¦

"I had a filing failure. I didnā€™t even have a strike, I had a filing failure - for not putting the right details in on a long-haul flight from California back in 2016. And that was just lack of information, I was on a long-haul flight. I didnā€™t have a test, miss a test or anything like that.

ā€œThe story that came out from that information was ā€˜Wiggins in missed test blunder just three months beforeā€¦ā€™ What equates to a missed test doping blunder? I mean, just that, that choice of language. How do you get a story like that from that?ā€

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Good article that

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Out of interest, how many weekend cyclists also take performance enhancing substances?

Not trying to be provocative but genuinely interested as I live on the Olympic cycle route in Surrey and the roads are packed each weekend with cyclists following that route.

I guess itā€™s not something people would want to admit to but I do wonderā€¦

A lot of cyclists taking Viagra in large quantities.

Allows them to ride all over the place.

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Most of us know that shifting 20 pounds would give more gains performance wise than any amount of doping would. Bet there is some the decent club racing level.

True about the weight.

Looking at some of the competitive"behaviour" Iā€™ve seen for want of a better word Iā€™d suspect it goes far wider than club racing level. But as Iā€™m not in it who am I to say.

I have no knowledge of what Sky did or did not do, but it highlights a difficult question. We all use medicines to get better or relieve symptoms.

If you train and race hard you will suffer more injury and with sports such as cycling 'performance induced asthma is quite common and an accepted medical diagnosis. The question is when does drugs taken to speed up recovery or reduce pain- things we would do normally, become cheating ? cortico steroids are prescribed for a variety of conditions - I was given Prednisone For a bad alllergic reaction to a facial wasp sting- which rapidly reduced the swelling and elevated me from 485th to 8th on a 8mile Strava segment I try to do several times a week!

So should athletes just not be allowed to take anything if injured? Heal naturally, or instead of a TUE be given a mandatory 3 months off competition for certain Therapeutic uses ?

there is loads of sad fuckers doping in amateur racing though - because they have small cocks - real arseholes but possibly driven to it by much of the macho bullshit culture that many cycling club members suffer from - for many they are obsessed about performance , pain, all that shit as opppsed to just enjoying riding the bike.

Lots of cunts in cycling clubs and why I left the one I was in- too much ego and not enough social

My banter mate commented on FB that doping is rife amongst Mamilā€™s

I had to Google that.

But what is not performance enhancing?

Drinking isotopic on a hot day in a village cricket match may give you an advantage over someone getting dehydrated.

Luckily my bits have always been too big for cycling so it isnā€™t a world I know about

Still people from Sky emerge to question Wiggins full and open interview and challenge his facts.

What a mess

This is the Shane Sutton who quit after allegations of discrimination, sexism and derogatory remarks about disabled athletes.

Wiggins rightly asks why he did not raise this when he spoke to Parliament, only later. To his credit, Wiggins has not otherwise said a word about SSā€™s motivations.

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This is a bit more of the transcript -

ā€œI cannot say I know a lot about Bradā€™s use of it in or out of competition,ā€ said Sutton, who was also a former technical director for British Cycling.

"I am told by the doctor he needs a TUE for this event etcetera etcetera. Outside of the event, you have to sit down and ask them.

"I call for the doctor and Brad to come forward and answer these questions, they are not for me.

"I am calling for him and the doctor to come forward and tell the truth.

"He is a sufferer, I have seen him suffer and gasping for breath after effort, I saw what he was going though, I cannot answer how often he used it. Only the doctor and him can tell us.

ā€œThey need to explain it all to everybody and everyone knows the word cheat needs to be taken out of the equation. The report says he did not cheat, so come forward and tell everyone what you administered, when, and let us put it to bed.ā€

Sutton, who gave evidence to the committee last year, was also asked about a treatment administered to Wiggins on the team bus after winning the 2011 Criterium du Dauphine. Freeman and Wiggins say the cyclist was treated some hours later at a training camp - a point Freeman reiterated to Sky Sports following Suttonā€™s interview.

However, Sutton said: ā€œI understand he was treated on the bus, I thought it was public knowledge. This goes back to 12 months ago, when I was interviewed, that is the statement I made, that is what the doctor told me.ā€

Sutton did, though, question the evidence of an anonymous ā€œwell-placedā€ source who told the committee that Team Sky used triamcinolone to prepare Wiggins and a smaller group of riders for the 2012 Tour.

ā€œI totally refute that,ā€ Sutton said. "What you have to remember is that Brad and I worked in isolation, when the source says this happened. I would like to know when. I have no recollection of training with that group, when they were all together.

ā€œI know what training camps I was on and for me that is a total lie from someone that has very much an axe to grind with Team Sky.ā€

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