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Thread: Cycling NEWS

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    Abomination Johnny D's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cristi View Post
    Fi-le-ar ciclismul al dracu’ sa le fie, in loc sa il dea pe Nadal tre’ sa ne uitam la plictisitorii aia...
    The difference between a good and an awesome diplomat is the ability to reconcile the arrogant assholes with the scardy whiners, it's almost an art really!
    I know because I'M BOTH!

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    Адриан Михай liverpool-kid's Avatar
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    Ai postat si tu cand s-a terminat 😂

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    Pro Memoria miril's Avatar
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    Julian Alaphilippeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!! Campion mondial! Sa vedem ce zice Tony Gallopin.
    "The minority is sometimes right, the majority always wrong." - A Progres...sive Thinker

    "If you support a team that fails to win the league for years, it does feel like a kind of cult'." - Salman Rushdie

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    Pro Memoria miril's Avatar
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    Posibilul adevar despre succesele britanicilor in ciclism in ultimul deceniu.

    Golden years tarnished by stain that won’t go away

    So a second hunt is under way in British life. After a week wondering about a “royal racist”, we must turn to the unnamed doping cyclist from Team Sky in 2011. What ignominy.

    Who was the Testogel for? We should want to unearth this mystery cheat because they are the real villain, not Dr Richard Freeman, even if he was found guilty by a medical tribunal of ordering testosterone “knowing or believing” it was for the purpose of doping.

    Freeman has shown himself to be many things — hopeless at keeping records, sadly fragile in his mental health, a repeated liar — but he is no one’s idea of a doping mastermind. No one believes that Freeman woke up one day and decided, of his own accord, that he would experiment with an anabolic steroid on a random rider.

    Someone wanted those 30 gels to cheat in bike races. Will Freeman keep protecting them, now that his own story has been trashed by the tribunal as a pack of lies? There are more bombshell truths waiting to be told. Perhaps the doctor should sit down with Oprah.

    This has been a wretched week for British institutions in whom many have invested so much faith and trust. You believed, you cheered — perhaps got out the Union Jacks — and are left feeling, well, what exactly? Anger? Sadness? In the case of cycling, perhaps even foolish.

    What do we always tell ourselves when something looks too good to be true? We knew the great British cycling boom could never be perfect but this is one hell of a nasty stain, the type you can never wash out.


    According to the Medical Practitioners’ Tribunal Service (MPTS), Freeman, then the team doctor for British Cycling and Team Sky, ordered testosterone — a doping drug of choice for cyclists — knowing its dark purpose. No grey areas. No quibbles over ethics. Not “cheating within the rules”, as one key figure has always insisted was as far as anyone went, but ordering an androgenic anabolic steroid, in 2011, for someone to dope.

    British sport has known its drugs scandals — bans for Linford Christie and Dwain Chambers in athletics, and the cyclist David Millar are among the most high-profile — but yesterday’s finding equals any in its ramifications. It is a nightmare not only in what it reveals but in the questions it asks. Who was it for? What is the truth, if Freeman’s various versions have been destroyed? Are we expected to believe that no one else at Team Sky knew what he was up to?

    Ciclism MB.png

    According to evidence presented to the tribunal, these gels point to someone who knew what they were doing; perhaps chosen, as an expert witness said, as the best way to avoid detection via micro-dosing, used to “promote muscle growth, reduce muscle catabolism and hence aid recovery”. The gels “may also have a behavioural effect that will increase competitiveness”. Many cyclists have turned to testosterone to cheat this way.

    There is so much still to know — and UK Anti-Doping will continue its investigations — but we should give thanks to superbly persistent journalism by my colleagues Matt Lawton and David Walsh that we have discovered this much. Both forced investigations that have raised massively uncomfortable questions not only for Freeman but for those fêted knights of the realm, Sir Bradley Wiggins and Sir Dave Brailsford, about what was happening within the team during those early years of Team Sky, before the historic first Tour de France victory, for Wiggins, in 2012.

    The “jiffy bag” saga, of a medical package delivered to Freeman in June 2011, a month after the testosterone arrived at the velodrome, remains unresolved. Those triamcinolone injections for Wiggins in 2011, 2012 and 2013, before three grand tours, all approved under the therapeutic use exemption (TUE) process, have raised serious questions about gaming the system. Even Shane Sutton, Wiggins’s coach at the time, called them “unethical”.

    Ciclism MB1.jpg

    Team Sky — now Team Ineos — insist that no doping took place and Brailsford and Wiggins consistently deny even questionable ethics. Wiggins has previously told the BBC that he “100 per cent didn’t cheat” and said, in response to that comment from

    Sutton, “that really hurts me that someone like Shane would say that”. But, as men so close to Freeman, what do Brailsford and Wiggins now make of this man in whom they placed so much trust?

    It feels important to restate that these issues all relate to a certain period, and to resist the rush to the conclusion — too late for some — that “they were all at it”. Cycling, eh? Told you all along.

    Both Matt and David would agree, I believe, that the sadness in this saga is that many innocent people within the British cycling world will feel very unfairly tarred by the verdict on Freeman, and the cloud of doubt. There is not evidence, whatever internet warriors may insist, that doping was endemic in the manner of another US Postal. It is feasible that Freeman went “rogue” for one specific rider.

    Some honesty would help, but the 44-page report from the MPTS destroys Freeman’s credibility: “Bearing in mind the breadth of Dr Freeman’s dishonesty . . . an elaborate falsehood . . . it stretched credulity . . . Dr Freeman has been dishonest in its regard ever since.” And so on.

    The tribunal came to its key conclusion on the balance of probabilities rather than cast-iron proof, but what else were they to conclude when Freeman lied from the moment that the testosterone arrived

    at the velodrome in Manchester? As the tribunal said, the “breadth of Dr Freeman’s dishonesty” did make his conduct “incapable of innocent explanation”.

    So we are left with their reasonable conclusion that a doctor funded by UK Sport lottery money may have used public cash to buy a steroid, knowing it was for the purpose of cheating. But also with a couple of killer questions: who may he be protecting, and why?

    Team Sky’s other doping controversies

    Wiggins’ use of triamcinolone

    In 2016, Russian hackers published documents that showed Bradley Wiggins had been given permission on medical grounds to have injections of the powerful corticosteroid triamcinolone before three road races, including the 2011 and 2012 Tours de France, the latter of which he won. Wiggins denied wrongdoing, saying the therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) had been granted to curb his pollen allergies.

    The injections were administered by Dr Richard Freeman, who reflected in 2018 that “with hindsight, there is a hell of a reputational damage from taking triamcinolone” because it had been used illegally by other cyclists. Shane Sutton, Wiggins’ coach when he had the injections, said in 2017: “What Brad was doing was unethical but not against the rules.” A report by MPs into the affair said “an ethical line had been crossed”.

    ‘Jiffy bag’ affair

    It emerged that a medical package had been sent from the headquarters of Team Sky/British Cycling to Wiggins at the end of a Tour de France warm-up race in the southeast of France in June 2011. It was delivered by Simon Cope, a coach at British Cycling, and sparked a UK Anti-Doping (Ukad) investigation in 2016. Sir Dave Brailsford, at the time in charge of both Team Sky and British Cycling, said the package contained Fluimucil, a nasal decongestant. Team Sky said there was no proof of the contents because they claimed Freeman’s records had been lost when his laptop was stolen while on holiday in Greece in 2014. Ukad closed the investigation after being “hampered” by Team Sky/British Cycling’s failure to keep full records.

    Froome’s asthma inhaler

    Chris Froome, the most successful British road cyclist of all time, recorded what anti-doping officials term an “adverse analytical finding” in a urine test taken during the 2017 La Vuelta. The test showed that he had more than the legal limit of the asthma drug Salbutamol in his system. Salbutamol is allowed in cycling only if taken via an inhaler. Froome denied wrongdoing and, days before the 2018 Tour, was cleared.

    Leinders’ life ban

    Dutch doctor Geert Leinders, who worked freelance for Sky in 2011 and 2012, was banned for life in 2015 after being accused, while working for another team, of trafficking and administering banned substances including EPO, testosterone, and corticosteroids, and of carrying out blood transfusions for riders.

    Coaches who quit

    After Lance Armstrong’s life ban from cycling in 2012, Team Sky said they were intensifying their “zero tolerance” approach by questioning all staff over links to doping. Two senior coaching figures — Bobby Julich and Steven de Jongh — subsequently said that they were leaving Team Sky because they had doped during their careers as riders.

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/w...ider-lv8slbnh5
    "The minority is sometimes right, the majority always wrong." - A Progres...sive Thinker

    "If you support a team that fails to win the league for years, it does feel like a kind of cult'." - Salman Rushdie

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