Doping brits

BikingBernie

emerywd wrote:

BikingBernie wrote:

CyclingBantam wrote:

I can't comment on the Millar comments. I didn't realise he had said Floyd should shut up. Have you a link?

Here's one:

Garmin-Transitions' David Millar, who came back in 2006 from a two-year doping ban after admitting his guilt, is furious at Landis.

"He's reached the end of the road and I just find it disgusting," said Millar from his home training base in Girona, Spain. "He's a liar and a cheat and he has nothing left in cycling so he just wants to burn the house down.

http://www.denverpost.com/sports/ci_15175682?

You're a self righteous idiot, taking quotes out of context and extrapolating opinion to suit your arguments. Facts man. Not opinion, mud slinging and guilt by association.

So, in your interpretation, Millar was actually delighted by Landis' revelations?

RichN95.

jerry3571 wrote:

The thing with the idea that Wiggins doped at the 2009 Tour is that while there was an obvious improvement in his climbing, there was no change in his TT ability. As far as I know there's nothing which specifically makes climbing better.

Testosterone can aid a rider's position in the GC over 3 weeks. A rider who gradually fades in a Tour is a sign of a rider who is not on Steriods. The problem is that Wiggins did well in the TTs and Mountains and everything. It's ok to rest up and not push yourself in the Mountains and save yourself for a good TT but doing it all does suggest a little help from chemical assistance.

And what about the prologue where he was the same level as he'd always been?

rdt

jerry3571 wrote:

As I may have mentioned before, the whole Pro cycling scene is about keeping your job. Under 23s want to get to be a Neo pro, a Neo Pro wants to get on to a smaller or feeder Team and then get on to the 1st Team. A guy in the 1st Team wants to keep his/her place and doping is a way to do that. All the riders have a job to do and if a younger guy seems to be stronger than the older guy then doping can improve the older guys performance so he can protect his job. It's dog eat dog. If you refuse to dope and keep getting dropped then you get the sack and a pay cut. If you want the addictive adulation and big money then it's all out there if they want it.

Except for a very, very select few, right at the top of the pyramid, the rewards (in terms of adulation and financial) are p1ss poor. But still, a ton of people are willing to chuck their self-regard out of the window by lying and cheating, not least to their families and others closest to them. I find it all pretty pathetic.

finchy

BikingBernie wrote:

johnfinch wrote:

BikingBernie wrote:

Wiggin's explanation for his transformation into a 'TDF contender' also had an Armstrong-like flavour to it, claiming it was due to him losing weight. However like Armstrong's version what he said was riddled with inconsistencies. First he claimed he had been under the guidance of a doctor who ensured that he lost only fat and not muscle, then people did the maths and pointed out that according to his figures he was previously racing with over 12% body fat. Then he changed his story and claimed he had lost a lot of muscle mass as well...

We went over this subject about 18 months ago. As I recall, he said that he burned off fat, and tried to minimise muscle loss.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/20 ... -de-france

I've always had the physical ability to climb, but the big improvement this year is simply from losing weight. One kilogram of body weight over a 30-minute climb is one minute in time. That adds up to about 10 minutes over a three-week race, and if you start to add up the fact that you are shifting less weight every time you go up those little rolling hills we had on Thursday, every time you sprint out of a corner, it accumulates to a heck of a lot of time and energy.

I was climbing fairly well in the 2007 Tour, but I've lost seven kilos since then: 78 to 71. It's taken nine months, in little increments, without any sort of crash diet. I've had regular check‑ups with Nigel Mitchell, the nutritionist at the Olympic team, to make sure I'm only burning fat, not any muscle. The last one was the day before the national championship, 28 June. He said I didn't have an ounce of fat left on my body. I was at 4% body fat, which is just at the point where you begin to burn muscle because there's nothing else left. It's not a very healthy level to be at, but it's only for these four weeks. It's been perfectly timed. As soon as the Tour is finished, my wife Cath is going to tie me up and force‑feed me cake.

http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/lat ... ation.html

Bradley Wiggins: The transformation
Monday, 28 December 2009

British Cycling's Matt Parker has coached Wiggins for several years, and it was him who did the calculations. "We've always known there's a road rider in there," he says. "Brad is a supreme athlete. He's an Olympic champion and world record holder, the power he produces, we knew he could climb well, maybe not in the first group every day, but definitely in the second, and that would give him a chance of being in the top 10 of the Tour."

Wiggins rode the Olympic Games last summer weighing 82kg. In the past he has ridden the Tour and Giro d'Italia at about 77kg or 78kg. The aim was to start the Tour this year at 72kg. It stands to reason that if you can produce 450 watts for 10 minutes weighing 72kg instead of 78, the gain in performance is going to be considerable. Enough, Parker says, to put him in the front group on the climbs.

"You develop a lot of muscle mass, particularly on the upper body, while training for the track over the winter," says Parker. "We wanted him to lose that, but to do it slowly, so that it didn't affect his power.

---

Do the maths: 71 kg = 4% body fat = 3 kg of fat, add the 7kg he supposedly lost (78kg total) = 10 kg of body fat. For a body weight of 78 kg this give 12.8% body fat. If he really raced at 82 kg and lost only fat this gives 14 kg of body fat or a whopping 17%.

Clearly his original claim that he took care to lose only body fat and lost 7k ( or is that 11 kg) of fat was a nonsense, and his later claim that much of this weight was actually upper body muscle is also highly suspect. Just look at what 8 kg, or even 4 kg of steak looks like.

So he explained himself a bit badly in a blog which was probably knocked off fairly quickly anyway - that does not mean that he doped. Cyclists lose upper body mass for Grand Tours, including muscle - there is nothing abnormal about Wiggins doing this.

stokepa31

I agree with you there. track athletes will build a lot of muscle up top and losing that for a GT would be expected. I recall Nap D posting a picture of wiggo after one of last years big mountain stages and he looked like he'd just been released from auchwitz he was so lean.

here is a link

http://www.veloresults.co.uk/2009/12/14 ... lack-list/

greasedscotsman

This thread needs a graph!

P_Tucker

rdt wrote:

jerry3571 wrote:

As I may have mentioned before, the whole Pro cycling scene is about keeping your job. Under 23s want to get to be a Neo pro, a Neo Pro wants to get on to a smaller or feeder Team and then get on to the 1st Team. A guy in the 1st Team wants to keep his/her place and doping is a way to do that. All the riders have a job to do and if a younger guy seems to be stronger than the older guy then doping can improve the older guys performance so he can protect his job. It's dog eat dog. If you refuse to dope and keep getting dropped then you get the sack and a pay cut. If you want the addictive adulation and big money then it's all out there if they want it.

Except for a very, very select few, right at the top of the pyramid, the rewards (in terms of adulation and financial) are p1ss poor. But still, a ton of people are willing to chuck their self-regard out of the window by lying and cheating, not least to their families and others closest to them. I find it all pretty pathetic.

Indeed, but for many borderline pros they have little else - all they know how to do is ride a bike. And I doubt many pro cyclist WAGS don't know what their SOs do. The only people they lie to is the general public via the media, who IMHO unreasonably expect top-flight sportsmen to be whiter than white role models.

BikingBernie

stokepa31 wrote:

I agree with you there. track athletes will build a lot of muscle up top and losing that for a GT would be expected. I recall Nap D posting a picture of wiggo after one of last years big mountain stages and he looked like he'd just been released from auchwitz he was so lean.

That picture was taken after Paris-Roubaix and so was taken when he supposedly had yet to slim down to his final Tour weight. I think that it is the dirt and camera angle that help to create the 'skeletal' effect.

Here is another picture of Wiggins from the 2009 Paris-Roubaix.



Here is a picture of the 'lean', '71 kg' version of Wiggins at the 2009 Tour.



This is is from 2008 when he was supposedly an '82 kg' fat / muscle bound trackie...

BikingBernie

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/20 ... -de-france

I've always had the physical ability to climb, but the big improvement this year is simply from losing weight. One kilogram of body weight over a 30-minute climb is one minute in time.

This is also nonsense. More like 15 seconds on a 7% average grade, everything else being equal.

Obviously, non of this shows that Wiggins dopes. However, there have been some other well known cases where a dramatic improvement in Tour ability has been falsely put down to weight loss.

markwb79

what would you lot talk about if we had a clean sport!

ms_tree

Cleat Eastwood wrote:

Cheating is a black and white issue -- there is a massive failure of will on all of our parts to stop it.



The road to 'cheating' is as ian suggests far from black and white. Here's a snippet of an interview Millar gave; he's been there, done that, wore the tainted T-shirt, doesn't sound like the choices presented to him to dope or not were anything other than morally complex.

If you had to take a course of action to save the livelihoods of your 'family' and friends where would you honestly draw the line.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/scotland/8785907.stm

Thanks for that link - very interesting. Never been a fan of Millar but that just corroborates what I've always thought that good guys just get worn down in the end. Doesn't make then bad or evil just trying to make a living.
Blimey I must be mellowing if I'm agreeing with Millar - just wish he would wear his cap the right way round!

ms_tree

iainf72 wrote:

I think as I rider you need to do the best you can and not assume whoever is beating you is cheating.

Some people seem to think doping = bad or unpleasant person, but that's not true. You can be a blood transfusing EPO hound and still be a pleasant likeable guy.

Have to agree with you there iainf72. (Crikey definitely mellowing!) There are people on these forums who think Pantani was the devil incarnate (but then I would say that wouldn't I!)

fastandfurry

Still don't believe he's lighter now than when he was a trackie??

http://www.teamsky.com/gallery/0,27401, ... ml#photo=4[/img]

frenchfighter

The Roubaix 09 pic. Camera angle likely accentuates. Maybe he was also dehydrated and so after a couple of bottles of water he would look plumper.


09 Tour on Ventoux.


A UK TT I think

BarryBonds

Neil Buckley wrote:

BarryBonds wrote:

Which of our current crop of riders do you think (if any) will be the first to get caught using?

and will the bust be from a large well funded organised team (like Sky) or one of the continental teams or another pro tour team?

we could have a book

What a stupid ******* thread by a fuckng stupid bloke...Ai Landis a **** so is Di Luca, Ricco.....

Darling, what a pleasant response. You full metal retard.

oldwelshman

What was you expeting for starting such a thread a nobel prize? What is the point of the thread?
Why not start these?
1) How many clean prem footballers are there?
2) How many clean spannish number one world tennis players are there?
3) How many clean spannish footballers are there?
4) Who will be the first bike radar poster to be caught?

jerry3571

And what about the prologue where he was the same level as he'd always been?

It's the consistancy which Wiggins rode to his 4th place. We all have seen what a bit too much testosterone does to recovery as Landis previously demonstrated. One day 8 mintes down; the next day 8 minutes up.
Wiggins weight loss was a big factor as with LA but I think Wiggins getting 4th was more down to Garmin and I think it was his turn in the Team to get the full treatment.
Anyhow, who's to say that Wiggins' previous TTs had previously been squeaky clean before his 4th at the Tour?
I think what I am saying is that it's all for the asking; only they know what games they get up.
Garmin always seem to get one guy in the top 10 or even top 5 at the Tour with 3 different riders so try to join the dots. Who will it be this year??

Except for a very, very select few, right at the top of the pyramid, the rewards (in terms of adulation and financial) are p1ss poor. But still, a ton of people are willing to chuck their self-regard out of the window by lying and cheating, not least to their families and others closest to them. I find it all pretty pathetic.

A Guy i know spent 2 years in France as a neo pro and said the lifestyle was cr@p. He said at one race, the sponsor was at the race so one rider on the team had to get in the Break. My mate got in the main break but the break was caught about 10-20k's to go. My mate got dropped from the main bunch and was yelled at by the Manager for being dropped by the Bunch. The Manager said it looked bad for the Team to have a rider trailing in. Paul Kimmage, Robert Millar and other mention in thier books about the hard life it is. I have no idea why they bother with it. :?
It does seem odd that Ullrich, LA and many other top guys risk health and reputation after having a long career after they have made thier money. The top riders seem get a hell of an ego boost and adulation from the crowds which must be highly addictive. You get a million people shouting at you on a single mountain and the buzz must be massive. Some things money can't buy.

-Jerry

BikingBernie

Interesting how many of the pictures showing Wiggins at his thinnest, as with that Roubaix photo, were taken months before the Tour, especially given that he has argued that getting down to his Tour weight was a major struggle and was unsustainable. ("I was at 4% body fat, which is just at the point where you begin to burn muscle because there's nothing else left. It's not a very healthy level to be at, but it's only for these four weeks"). To me his he looks no different at the Tour to the way he does most of the rest of the Time, in fact he looks thinner in many of his early season photos from 2009 (and his more recent photos) than he did at the 2009 Tour when he came in fourth.

I don't doubt that he has lost some weight and it would be quite reasonable for him to have gone down from 7 or 8% body fat to 4% or so. However, such a change is not enough to turn a Tour no-hoper into a 'contender'. Generally, the benefits of losing a few kg are greatly over stated. For example, for a fit recreational rider who can sustain 300 watts at threshold but who weighs a porky 88kg, slimming down to 74 kg whilst keeping the same power would only allow the rider to go around 8 minutes quicker on a climb of Alpe d'Huez.

Much of what Wiggins has said about his weight loss accounting for his fourth place in the 2009 Tour doesn't really add up, as with his claim that a 1 kg loss equates to a minute saved on a 30 minute climb, and I doubt that he really lost 11kg between the 2008 Olympics and the 2009 Tour. Of course, it could be that he was at a loss to explain his 4th place in 2009 and miss-attributed this to the few kg he had lost. The real reason need have nothing to do with doping. Perhaps the race in 2009 was, for the most part, controlled more than is usual in order to let a certain old man look competitive and this worked to his advantage.

inkyfingers

I don't want to get to deeply into this conversation but think the following are relevant:

1. As others have mentioned, the course in 2009 was about the best course Wiggins could have wished for: relatively easy mountain stages, a long "prologue" a long TT and a TTT. Plus the racing was pretty one paced, dominated by AC and controlled by Astana.
2. It was the first season in his career where he had genuinely focussed on the road, the type of training he did may well have made the big difference to his performance.
3. It was the first time that he'd had the opportunity and support to ride as a team leader on the road (i guess as Vandevelde was still recovering from his crash at the Giro).

I've no idea how much weight he's lost or how much difference that would make, but personally I didn't see anything overly suspicious in Wiggins 2009 performance, he just TT'd well and hung on for dear life on the climbs. If he'd been powering away from people in the mountains that would have been different.

takethehighroad

Losing weight as a reason for coming 4th sounds a lot better than "It was a p*ss poor route with hardly any climbs"

finchy

Other possible factors at play -

Wiggins knocked off the alcohol, took road cycling more seriously.
Wiggins was team leader, not a domestique.
The biological passport meant reduced doping in the peloton (I hope this is true).
A course suited to a decent TTer.
Lack of form/injuries to pre-race favourites (Evans Sastre, etc.).

Of course, there is also the possibility that Wiggins doped, but I really hope not, and unless some serious evidence shows otherwise, I'll continue to regard him as I do the Voecklers/Gilberts of this world.

EDIT: I wrote this before inkyfingers submitted his post. It isn't just plagiarism, honestly.

inkyfingers

You'll be hearing from my solicitor....

No_Ta_Doctor

So he lost some weight, trained well, got good support from his team and managed a 4th place on a route well suited to him where some key rivals had poor form/injuries.

Burn the witch.

jerry3571

So he lost some weight, trained well, got good support from his team and managed a 4th place on a route well suited to him where some key rivals had poor form/injuries.

Burn the witch.

Nothing like an optimist.

-jerry

P_Tucker

I think we can all agree that if Wiggins didn't speak English, had a mediterranean complexion and a constant 5 o'clock shadow we'd know for sure he was a doper.

shinyhelmut

P_Tucker wrote:

I think we can all agree that if Wiggins didn't speak English, had a mediterranean complexion and a constant 5 o'clock shadow we'd know for sure he was a doper.

Si

smithy21

So in summary, any improvement in anyone's cycling ability at pro level from one season to the next is as a result of doping. :roll:

No_Ta_Doctor

smithy21 wrote:

So in summary, any improvement in anyone's cycling ability at pro level from one season to the next is as a result of doping. :roll:

Only if they're swarthy Southern European types, or speak with some kind of non UK accent.

BarryBonds

oldwelshman wrote:

What was you expeting for starting such a thread a nobel prize? What is the point of the thread?
Why not start these?
1) How many clean prem footballers are there?
2) How many clean spannish number one world tennis players are there?
3) How many clean spannish footballers are there?
4) Who will be the first bike radar poster to be caught?

another blinding response. Whats thepoint of any thread?
U unlike youre regurgitations mine was on cycling in a cycling forum

dougzz

I think it's pretty much the case that if you don't like a thread ignore it. Ultimately what is the point of any thread other than discussion.