Cycle of Lies (book)

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  • andyp
    andyp Posts: 10,450
    curium wrote:
    Did Axel Merckx dope also?

    He had a long term coaching relationship with Michele Ferrari. Draw your own conclusions.
  • Crampeur
    Crampeur Posts: 1,065
    andyp wrote:
    curium wrote:
    Did Axel Merckx dope also?

    He had a long term coaching relationship with Michele Ferrari. Draw your own conclusions.
    I think there was some rumour that Eddy actually sent his son to Ferrari?
  • artstan
    artstan Posts: 27
    " In 2004, Ferrari said that he had been introduced to Armstrong by Merckx himself in late 1995 "

    Would not be surprised if he did.
  • Richmond Racer
    Richmond Racer Posts: 8,561
    For this reason the choice of the hashtag for the US dev team owned by Axel M* (#Proveit) always raises a :?


    *also known for his fine 80's track for Beverly Hills Cop 1
  • RichN95.
    RichN95. Posts: 27,241
    Richmond Racer wrote:
    For this reason the choice of the hashtag for the US dev team owned by Axel M* (#Proveit) always raises a :?
    *also known for his fine 80's track for Beverly Hills Cop 1
    Axel F was the name of the track (Eddie Murphy's character was called Axel Foley). Harold Faltermeyer was the musician.
    Twitter: @RichN95
  • Richmond Racer
    Richmond Racer Posts: 8,561
    RichN95 wrote:
    Richmond Racer wrote:
    For this reason the choice of the hashtag for the US dev team owned by Axel M* (#Proveit) always raises a :?
    *also known for his fine 80's track for Beverly Hills Cop 1
    Axel F was the name of the track (Eddie Murphy's character was called Axel Foley). Harold Faltermeyer was the musician.


    I knew I shouldn't have tried to wing it!
  • jswba
    jswba Posts: 491
    I'm glad there's some criticism of the book in this thread. I'm about 2/3rds of the way through, and I'm not impressed at all. Most of the decent material seemed to be included in the excerpts posted online just before the book's publication. My real problem with the book is Macur's credulity. There's hardly any cross-referencing of facts and details (most notably, the way she takes Allen Lim at face value is, frankly, laughable) and very little in the way of engagement with the previous works on the subject. Similarly, the material on Wonderboy's hospital confession seems to come from just Betsy Andreu. Fair enough, but Macur should have made more of the Oakley representative's lies (under oath) that LA didn't admit to drug use in front of Betsy. As somebody else said (on here I think), the event where Bruyneel poured Landis's blood down the toilet has also been disputed but Macur presents it as fact. A bit more skepticism of her sources would have made the book a far better read. Personally, I much preferred Wheelmen.
  • Richmond Racer
    Richmond Racer Posts: 8,561
    It reads as a 460-page hatchet job on Evil and Ungodly Lance - whereas things were rather more nuanced than that

    Agree - Wheelmen is a much better tome, and better journalism
  • disgruntledgoat
    disgruntledgoat Posts: 8,957
    She refers to David Walsh as British too.
    "In many ways, my story was that of a raging, Christ-like figure who hauled himself off the cross, looked up at the Romans with blood in his eyes and said 'My turn, sock cookers'"

    @gietvangent
  • curium
    curium Posts: 815
    jswba wrote:
    As somebody else said (on here I think), the event where Bruyneel poured Landis's blood down the toilet has also been disputed but Macur presents it as fact.
    Didn't Tyler Hamilton corroborate this event in his testimony to Tygart/USADA?

    Just noticed from a photo over on Inrng.com that Boonen was a neo-pro on Postal. I wonder if he saw any doping...
  • rick_chasey
    rick_chasey Posts: 75,661
    curium wrote:
    jswba wrote:
    As somebody else said (on here I think), the event where Bruyneel poured Landis's blood down the toilet has also been disputed but Macur presents it as fact.
    Didn't Tyler Hamilton corroborate this event in his testimony to Tygart/USADA?

    Just noticed from a photo over on Inrng.com that Boonen was a neo-pro on Postal. I wonder if he saw any doping...

    Rumoured that that was why he left.
    _
  • jswba
    jswba Posts: 491
    curium wrote:
    Didn't Tyler Hamilton corroborate this event in his testimony to Tygart/USADA?

    Landis himself disputes it in his long 2011 interview with Kimmage:
    'In the incident on the bus, which was the last time I did a blood transfusion on that team, we were riding so well, and we were making everyone else look foolish, that the doctor gave me a half of a unit of blood and just threw the rest out. It wasn’t a malicious thing, he just said ‘Look, we need to keep this under control and the less we give you, the easier it is to manipulate.’ And I said ‘Come on, just give me the whole thing.’ And he said ‘No, we’re good enough.’ So it was nothing at all and I think that probably when I told that story to Allen Lim or to Vaughters…I wouldn’t have told that to Vaughters, that had to be hearsay, but I probably got confused with the contentious things that happened on Alpe D’Heuz a day later and it got turned into something it wasn’t.'
    http://nyvelocity.com/content/interview ... diskimmage

    Seems to me that Chinese Whispers were involved in this issue.
  • le_patron
    le_patron Posts: 494
    This book fills in a few blanks, but there’s one area I’d like a lot more detail and I'm not interested in names.

    Pro-sports at elite level is basically cutting edge sports science, some techniques legal, some not.
    Despite being described as ‘very sophisticated’ etc, it always strikes me that on the whole the actual doping in cycling is pretty unsophisticated, relying on incomplete science, some judgment, some guess-work and luck to achieve results.

    So, in the pre-power meter/Team Skyesque days, how was it figured out what effort could be sustained by all the members of the team given they all had different thresholds and responded differently to different PEDs ?

    Throw in stage race measured efforts, the importance of recovery, training loads, stress, some blood down the toilet and race tactics etc, it’s a tricky task for the DS to know how bright your matches will burn and when to burn them.
    Ferrari clearly had all this down to a fine art (6.7 watts/kg etc and the supposed radio patch-through to him via Bruyneel mid stage as examples) but you generally don’t hear about the specifics of the training doping sports-science, just mainly the lurid stories of bags of blood hanging in hotel rooms.

    I want to see the equivalent of the Victor Conte letter to Dwain Chambers, the ‘Michele Ferrari letter to Lance Armstrong’
  • ddraver
    ddraver Posts: 26,661
    I'm sure there were similar examples, Ferrari used to use a timed ascent of the Col de La Madone as a regulat test for the USPS/Disco riders. Hence why Trek named their bike after it (!!!)

    Essentially that time was their FTP
    We're in danger of confusing passion with incompetence
    - @ddraver
  • andy_wrx
    andy_wrx Posts: 3,396
    le patron wrote:
    I want to see the equivalent of the Victor Conte letter to Dwain Chambers, the ‘Michele Ferrari letter to Lance Armstrong’
    There's a difference in that the Conte letter to Chambers explained what he was on and what it was to do to him - Dwayne couldn't help UK anti-doping because he is [...appears to be...] too thick to understand any of the science and just swallowed the pills as he was told, didn't understand what they were and what effects they would have on his body :roll:

    Armstrong however, I'm sure had a pretty good handle on the pharmacology of it all.
    He may not have left school academically qualified, but he's very bright about subjects that interest him, and winning and making money certainly does...
  • RichN95.
    RichN95. Posts: 27,241
    I always thought that the reason that Ferrari was 'better' than all the other doping doctors was not because he was he was better at the doping side but that he was better at the coaching side.
    Twitter: @RichN95
  • rick_chasey
    rick_chasey Posts: 75,661
    RichN95 wrote:
    I always thought that the reason that Ferrari was 'better' than all the other doping doctors was not because he was he was better at the doping side but that he was better at the coaching side.

    That and he had much better sources from within the anti-doping authorities.
    _
  • ddraver
    ddraver Posts: 26,661
    The Bike show podcast has an interview with Juliet Macur today if you re interested. She doesnt hold back much...
    We're in danger of confusing passion with incompetence
    - @ddraver
  • curium
    curium Posts: 815
    link?

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