Froome training with Levi
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He's on a Recent History of Doping in Cycling world tour isn't he? Meet Motoman in Cagnes-sur-Mer: tick. Ride with Levi Leipheimer: tick.
Forgot one. Time yourself on Col de la Madone: tick.0 -
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The ability of some to make something out of nothing always manages to amaze me, it's a real art.0
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RichN95 wrote:
No he wasn'tBenderRodriguez wrote:After all, Leipheimer was a central player in 'the biggest fraud in the history of sport'
Rode with USP, Discovery, Astana and RadioShack alongside Armstrong, gave testimony to USADA about the organised doping within Armstrong's teams, admitted to being a serial doper himself whilst on the 'program' alongside Armstrong...
If that doesn't make his a central player in the Armstrong conspiracy, I don't know what would!
Bottom line is that I can see no reason why a 'clean' rider would choose to associate with the likes of Leipheimer, especially given the way the USP scandal has made it so much harder for so many people to engage in the 'willing suspension of disbelief' when it comes to pro cycling."an original thinker… the intellectual heir of Galileo and Einstein… suspicious of orthodoxy - any orthodoxy… He relishes all forms of ontological argument": jane90.0 -
sjmclean wrote:
'Professional' cyclists, one and all..."an original thinker… the intellectual heir of Galileo and Einstein… suspicious of orthodoxy - any orthodoxy… He relishes all forms of ontological argument": jane90.0 -
Mechanism wrote:He's on a Recent History of Doping in Cycling world tour isn't he? Meet Motoman in Cagnes-sur-Mer: tick. Ride with Levi Leipheimer: tick.
On the way back he will probably take in Mont Ventoux.
"an original thinker… the intellectual heir of Galileo and Einstein… suspicious of orthodoxy - any orthodoxy… He relishes all forms of ontological argument": jane90.0 -
By 'biggest fraud in the history of sport' i assume you mean Armstrong's seven tour wins. During that seven year period Leipheimer only spent two years at US Postal and never rode a race alongside Armstrong as a teammate. He was a peripheral figure in the story.BenderRodriguez wrote:RichN95 wrote:
No he wasn'tBenderRodriguez wrote:After all, Leipheimer was a central player in 'the biggest fraud in the history of sport'
Rode with USP, Discovery, Astana and RadioShack alongside Armstrong, gave testimony to USADA about the organised doping within Armstrong's teams, admitted to being a serial doper himself whilst on the 'program' alongside Armstrong...
If that doesn't make his a central player in the Armstrong conspiracy, I don't know what would!Twitter: @RichN950 -
I don't think he was a peripheral as you make out, read his affidavit, he was invited on training camps in 2005 to Tenerife where LA introduced him to Dr Ferrari. They'd already discussed drugs when training together back in 2003, but probably a lot earlier. He also late on in his career trained with LA in 2008, 2009 & 2010. Plus he knew full well what Barry and Hincapie were up to at Disco, as he was there mate and even recounts delivering their drugs on one occasion.
He first took EPO at Saturn!! And doesn't seem to have had much concerns about it. All in all Levi is super dirty and if Sky are going to take the approach of getting rid of Rogers, Yates etc due to their pasts, then Froome training with Levi looks terrible. What next for Froome going out for a 'friendly' dinner with Ferrari?0 -
RichN95 wrote:By 'biggest fraud in the history of sport' i assume you mean Armstrong's seven tour wins. During that seven year period Leipheimer only spent two years at US Postal and never rode a race alongside Armstrong as a teammate. He was a peripheral figure in the story.
Whether or not he raced alongside Armstrong during his 'winning' period, Leipheimer was still was in a position to give evidence about how the 'USP conspiracy' operated, not least because Armstrong personally introduced him to Ferrari at a 'training camp' in Tenerife, Landis advised him to get in touch with former USP doctor del Moral in order to organise a blood-doping programme etc. etc. In short they were all part of the same 'circle', and at times teammates.
Leipheimer also rode the 2009 Tour alongside Armstrong. OK, so the story is that they were all racing clean by this point, but who really believes that?
Whatever, if Froome was looking to regain some credibility (other than in the eyes of Brits / Sky fans, who seemed to have learned both everything and nothing from Armstrong's old flag-waving disciples) a picture of him kicking Leipheimer in the balls would have done him a lot more good than a picture of them riding amicably together. "an original thinker… the intellectual heir of Galileo and Einstein… suspicious of orthodoxy - any orthodoxy… He relishes all forms of ontological argument": jane90.0 -
BenderRodriguez wrote:
Whatever, if Froome was looking to regain some credibility
I wasn't aware he had lost any0 -
sjmclean wrote:BenderRodriguez wrote:
Whatever, if Froome was looking to regain some credibility
I wasn't aware he had lost any
As I said, I am sure his credibility is not in doubt amongst "Brits / Sky fans, who seemed to have learned both everything and nothing from Armstrong's old flag-waving disciples". However, there are many out there who have doubts about Froome, and not just because he chooses to associate with someone as 'super dirty' as Leipheimer.
One example that stuck in my mind was the under-reported reaction of the press room at the Tour when Froome did his 'comedy motorbike impression' on the Ventoux. This was pretty much a repetition of the reaction, as reported by David Walsh, when Armstrong first left everyone for dead in the mountains in the 1999 Tour, with most everyone there recognising that what they were seeing was a fraud, even if keeping their jobs required them to go away and say what an inspiration it was. Roll on to 2013...There was a collective groan among the press corps Sunday when Chris Froome (Sky) turned the screws with about 7km to go on France’s hardest climb to drop Alberto Contador (Saxo-Tinkoff).
No, the freebie buffet hadn’t run out. Team Sky just dropped a Froome bomb. And it pissed people off.
“That attack is not the smartest PR move,” grumbled one scandal-weary scribe, “not if he doesn’t want to raise eyebrows.”
Froome made Contador look like an espoir. The Sky captain spun his legs as if they were well-lubed pistons, churning out huge power, grinding his way toward the Ventoux summit and victory, only to leave a swath of doubt in his wake.
http://velonews.competitor.com/2013/07/ ... rue_295224
That article also make the following observation:...to take at face value what’s happening in this Tour requires a tremendous leap of oft-tested faith, especially in light of the deceit revealed in the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency report on the Armstrong/U.S. Postal Service doping conspiracy.
One must accept that a sport that was rife with doping, cheating, bribing, cutting corners, criminals, junkies, pushers, thugs, and other nefarious characters suddenly and abruptly righted itself.
One must believe that this happened in a span of three, four, five years max.
One must believe this quantum leap has occurred thanks to the biological passport in 2008. That it arose via change from within. That there truly exists an unwritten “gentlemen’s agreement” among the teams to race clean.
That riders, sport directors, soigneurs, mechanics, bus drivers, and even journalists, who all lapped up tainted milk from the teat of doping, would and could change their colors in a very narrow span of time, without discussion or agreement, barely even acknowledging the errors of their collective past.
That it just — ping! — happened.
Given the history of the sport, only the naive or a flag-waving 'fan boy' would uncritically accept that over 100 years of institutional doping in cycling came to an end almost overnight, coinciding with Brits becoming winners of the Tour. It is not just Froome who has lost credibility, but the whole sport and I have seen nothing in the way of the widespread rebuilding of the sport from the ground up that is probably necessary in order to eradicate the ingrained culture of doping that has been a part of cycle racing since its inception."an original thinker… the intellectual heir of Galileo and Einstein… suspicious of orthodoxy - any orthodoxy… He relishes all forms of ontological argument": jane90.0 -
The clean up is not yet complete, it never will be. It's called evolution and it has been happening. Do you really believe cycling today is culturally the same as pre Festina?. No, it's been changing ever since. 2008 was a step change moment in an ongoing process. Whoever claimed cycling went from dirty to clean in 4-5 years?0
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morstar wrote:The clean up is not yet complete, it never will be. It's called evolution and it has been happening. Do you really believe cycling today is culturally the same as pre Festina?. No, it's been changing ever since. 2008 was a step change moment in an ongoing process. Whoever claimed cycling went from dirty to clean in 4-5 years?
Festina effectively changed nothing, except perhaps amongst the French teams, with all of Armstrong's 'wins' coming in the post-Festina era.
That article was written in 2013. Just 8 years earlier, in 2005, Armstrong took his 7th Epo and blood-doping fuelled 'win', 7 years earlier, in 2006, an Epo, blood doping and testosterone fuelled Landis 'won' the Tour. Just 3 years earlier, in 2010, Contador 'won' the Tour only to have that win stripped from him after he tested positive for clenbuterol, quite possibly due to traces of the drug remaining in a transfusion. That was only 4 years ago! Wiggins won in 2012, so that brings this supposed revolutionary 'window of change' down to less than 2 years!
I don't doubt that there have been some changes, in that the doping programmes in use today are likely to be much more sophisticated and hard to detect than anything that has gone before. They might even have less of an effect than those of a few years ago but you can bet that they will still have significant effect.
Of course, if you really want to believe that perhaps the first ever truly clean winner of the Tour just happened to be a Brit, your are free to do so, just as you are free to believe in father Christmas and the 'Tooth fairy'. "an original thinker… the intellectual heir of Galileo and Einstein… suspicious of orthodoxy - any orthodoxy… He relishes all forms of ontological argument": jane90.0 -
morstar wrote:The clean up is not yet complete, it never will be.
If you accept that doping is still going on, and considering the effectiveness of modern doping methods, it follows that those who are winning are, in all probability, also those who are doping, same as it ever was."an original thinker… the intellectual heir of Galileo and Einstein… suspicious of orthodoxy - any orthodoxy… He relishes all forms of ontological argument": jane90.0 -
Aah, a healthy dose of patronising first thing in the morning. Thank you kindly.
Glad to see you are able to read so much between the lines of what I wrote. It's such a complex subject where in the past I've gone to great lengths to explain my perspective. But you can just summarize me witha flag waving stick. Well done.
Question for you. Do you believe cycling in 2007 was the same as pre Festina? I don't. I know it was still dirty ( good job you pointed that out though, or I might have forgotten) but it was already undergoing a slow change process.
Cycling pre Festina was a unique moment in time. It will never be the same again as the circumstances will not repeat themselves. I'm not explaining that now. Does that mean people won't dope? Don't believe I'm arguing that point.0 -
Do people commit crimes to get rich?BenderRodriguez wrote:morstar wrote:The clean up is not yet complete, it never will be.
If you accept that doping is still going on, and considering the effectiveness of modern doping methods, it follows that those who are winning are, in all probability, also those who are doping, same as it ever was.
Are all rich people criminals?
Need I expand?0 -
morstar wrote:Do you believe cycling in 2007 was the same as pre Festina? I don't. I know it was still dirty ( good job you pointed that out though, or I might have forgotten) but it was already undergoing a slow change
I wasn't trying to be patronising, but I don't know what you have said on this topic earlier, and as you refuse to elaborate further, I probably never will!
Of course there is always 'change' going on. However, the key point here is that I see no evidence that the 'slow change' you allude to in the traditional doping culture was anywhere near sufficient to allow us to unquestionably accept that, in the time from Armstrong, Landis and Contador being busted for doping to Wiggins winning the Tour, doping stopped becoming a primary factor in the outcome of events such as the Tour.
As I said, doping works, and works to such an extent that it can completely override any differences in 'natural' talent, even if riders can no longer get away with getting another 5 or even 10% by means of boosting their haemocrit to 58% or more. Given the tiny differences between being a winner and an also-ran at the top end of the sport even a 2% advantage is a huge one, and one that is apparent not just in the final km's of a climb, but also from the way being able to ride at 99, rather than 101% of one's threshold cumulatively reduces the stress and fatigue level over time."an original thinker… the intellectual heir of Galileo and Einstein… suspicious of orthodoxy - any orthodoxy… He relishes all forms of ontological argument": jane90.0 -
morstar wrote:Do people commit crimes to get rich?
Are all rich people criminals?
Need I expand?
I would say yes! For example, by qualifying just how people might have become rich. For example, asking, how to people become rich who have not inherited wealth, won the lottery, become highly-paid celebrities and so forth, just as the police look at the source of the wealth of suspected drug dealers, confiscating that which cannot be accounted for legitimately.
Same with winning a grand Tour; we need to look at whether or not there are grounds for believing that win was legitimate or not, with a failure to find sufficient grounds for believing this naturally suggesting that there are 'other reasons' for the noted success.
There are also natural physical limitations that need to be taken into account, so if someone is riding faster than other known dopers at the top of the sport have managed, then we need to ask how they managed to do this.
Also, in my view the old 'As long as it theoretically possible for a human to go so fast, then it must be accepted as being legitimate' argument is a very weak one. What we need to ask is whether this particular rider has the natural ability that puts them in the <0.00001% of people who are able to perform at this theoretical limit. Such prodigious talent is usually very apparent almost as soon as a rider throws a leg over a bike, not after years of 'losing an hour a day' in events such as the Tour or going so slowly up climbs as to almost fall off!"an original thinker… the intellectual heir of Galileo and Einstein… suspicious of orthodoxy - any orthodoxy… He relishes all forms of ontological argument": jane90.0 -
Bit selective on the quoting for which I apologise. Have you read the chapter in Freakonomics about why drug dealers live with their mum's. It's very interesting stuff, about criminality and reward.BenderRodriguez wrote:
I would say yes!morstar wrote:Do people commit crimes to get rich?
Are all rich people criminals?
Need I expand?0 -
and so forth? are these the only legitimate ways to make money you could think of?BenderRodriguez wrote:morstar wrote:Do people commit crimes to get rich?
Are all rich people criminals?
Need I expand?
I would say yes! For example, by qualifying just how people might have become rich. For example, asking, how to people become rich who have not inherited wealth, won the lottery, become highly-paid celebrities and so forth
I don't think police suspicion is enough for your assets to be confiscated, even in France.BenderRodriguez wrote:just as the police look at the source of the wealth of suspected drug dealers, confiscating that which cannot be accounted for legitimately.0 -
I really don't understand some of you people going on about loss of "credibility". What do you think is going on here, exactly? There would seem to be only a few options:
- Froome is getting doping advice from Levi and simply doesn't care if being seen together makes them look bad.
- Froome is cunningly using the fuss generated from his being seen with Levi to distract people from his real doping arrangements!
- Froome is doing some normal training with Levi while he's in the US.
I'm not "uncritically" accepting anything, I'd just prefer to see some actual evidence of doping (ie something more than Froome dropping a much below-par Contador on Ventoux :roll: ) before organising the angry mob with torches and pitchforks.BenderRodriguez wrote:Given the history of the sport, only the naive or a flag-waving 'fan boy' would uncritically accept that over 100 years of institutional doping in cycling came to an end almost overnight, coinciding with Brits becoming winners of the Tour.0 -
You could argue that Froome needs to be proactive in separating himself from cycling's shady past for his own reputation but also because the sport itself will benefit from drawing those lines. Easier said than done given that so many figures from that past remain in the sport as riders, DSs, etc. But he doesnt have to be seen fraternising with a figure explicitly associated with the shadiest figure of them all. Someone said earlier that there is a hierarchy of dopers and it is OK to be seen with some and not with others - that may be ridiculous but it is also true and Levi falls comfortably into the latter category.
Of course it may be that Leipheimer and Froome are good friends of longstanding - to be in the area and not go for a ride together may have seemed ridiculous to them both and it is easy to lose sight of how personal relationships might override more politically astute decisions.0 -
adr82 wrote:I really don't understand some of you people going on about loss of "credibility". What do you think is going on here, exactly? There would seem to be only a few options:
- Froome is getting doping advice from Levi and simply doesn't care if being seen together makes them look bad.
- Froome is cunningly using the fuss generated from his being seen with Levi to distract people from his real doping arrangements!
- Froome is doing some normal training with Levi while he's in the US.
You missed out
* Despite all the PR hype about him and Sky racing clean, and making a break with the past, Froome actually is quite happy to associate with big, bad 'old-school' dopers like Leipheimer, and so presumably feels some sort of affinity with them.adr82 wrote:I'm not "uncritically" accepting anything, I'd just prefer to see some actual evidence of doping (ie something more than Froome dropping a much below-par Contador on Ventoux ) before organising the angry mob with torches and pitchforks.
Froome blew the whole race away, not just Contador. Whatever, I don't think that anyone is advocating an 'angry mob with torches and pitchforks'. Rather, simply maintaining a healthy degree of scepticism with regards the performances of Sky, Froome and co, just as should be maintained with regards the sport in general.
Perhaps in ten years time we will be in a more informed position and so able to judge Sky's performances with greater certainty, one way or the other. Who knows, perhaps we won't have to wait that long.
Given the outspoken views that Wiggins used to have about doping before he stopped 'losing an hour a day', along with his obvious 'issues' with Froome and Brailsford, the way he has been shat on and his 'fragility', who knows, if there is a story to tell (IF...) he might just implode on seeing Froome ride to another tour victory and 'drop a bombshell'. Then again, the lure of Murdoch's millions might be enough in itself to keep him loyal, which is what Brailsford just might (MIGHT...) be banking on. "an original thinker… the intellectual heir of Galileo and Einstein… suspicious of orthodoxy - any orthodoxy… He relishes all forms of ontological argument": jane90.0 -
Paulie W wrote:Of course it may be that Leipheimer and Froome are good friends of longstanding - to be in the area and not go for a ride together may have seemed ridiculous to them both and it is easy to lose sight of how personal relationships might override more politically astute decisions.
It was actually Andrew Talansky that he was meeting up with. Source: http://velonews.competitor.com/2014/07/ ... lta_338813
Talansky has been friends and a training partner with Leipheimer for several years.Twitter: @RichN950 -
Tom Dean wrote:and so forth? are these the only legitimate ways to make money you could think of?
Of course not, but adding to the list would hardly add to point being made. :roll:Tom Dean wrote:I don't think police suspicion is enough for your assets to be confiscated, even in France.
Actually, under the 2002 Proceeds of Crime Act the police in the UK can seize any assets that they 'suspect' may be derived from crime. The investigation as to whether those assets are derived from crime comes later, a sort of 'guilty until proven innocent' arrangement."an original thinker… the intellectual heir of Galileo and Einstein… suspicious of orthodoxy - any orthodoxy… He relishes all forms of ontological argument": jane90.0 -
An observation: scepticism is fine but probably seeks to be healthy when the majority of your contributions to Pro Race are digs at Froome and Sky.0
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RichN95 wrote:Paulie W wrote:Of course it may be that Leipheimer and Froome are good friends of longstanding - to be in the area and not go for a ride together may have seemed ridiculous to them both and it is easy to lose sight of how personal relationships might override more politically astute decisions.
It was actually Andrew Talansky that he was meeting up with. Source: http://velonews.competitor.com/2014/07/ ... lta_338813
Talansky has been friends and a training partner with Leipheimer for several years.
Right, so we need to be suspicious of Talansky too then, for being friends with a doper. As well as being in a team managed by a doper and containing other dopers.
Is that right? Or does the Garmin shield neutralise these suspicions?0 -
sjmclean wrote:BenderRodriguez wrote:
Whatever, if Froome was looking to regain some credibility
I wasn't aware he had lost any
He's as credible as the next man in the peloton. i appreciate that says pretty much nothing.0 -
Paulie W wrote:You could argue that Froome needs to be proactive in separating himself from cycling's shady past for his own reputation but also because the sport itself will benefit from drawing those lines.
Awesome post. That's exactly how I saw it.0
