Cycling thread
- Thread starter Bruce Wayne
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davek
Player Valuation: £150m
lollollol
I do love it when people with absolutely zero interest in the sport come out of the woodwork to wallow in the drama of it. Anti-Russian melodrama? 
I've heard it all.
I've heard it all.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
That Wiggins interview last night, what an actor the boy is. "I've been through hell"....yeah, I'm not surprised given the amount of gear you've had down you and in you.
Contradicted himself time after time and even resorted to saying that the asthma drug he took before three major races was down to the exact type of pollen occurring just at that time on each occasion.
Wiggins and Brailsford. No credibility, no chance of extricating themselves from the mess they placed themselves in.
Contradicted himself time after time and even resorted to saying that the asthma drug he took before three major races was down to the exact type of pollen occurring just at that time on each occasion.
Wiggins and Brailsford. No credibility, no chance of extricating themselves from the mess they placed themselves in.
To be totally fair cycling courted public and media attention not least by its huge success , those involved in positively thrived in it being ‘Britain’s sport’ so it’s difficult to be surprised that an apparent fall from grace brings equivalent ire.
I think, unlike many other sports, British Cycling wanted to capitalise on the success to massively increase participation, and in that sense it has been incredible. Even in the relatively short time I've been riding (10 years or so) there has been a huge rise in the people out on their bike, either commuting, competing or for leisure. That's a wonderful thing and puts other sports to shame.
There has also been a big thing made of the marginal gains approach but I'm far from sure whether that was started by BC or by the wider interest in the method behind the success from the management industry, press and so on. I don't doubt that Brailsford has enjoyed that and his ego is quite something from all accounts, but that doesn't make him a cheater.
It seems quite obvious to me as you have a number of sources that have no interest in the sport of cycling, but a great interest in its 'celebrity'. You'll never see Dan Roan commenting on races, yet he's Jonny on the spot with any doping story (providing it's a British cyclist, otherwise he couldn't care less). The Daily Mail have also had a longstanding thing against cycling and regularly run drivers vs cyclist type stories purely because it whips up anger and generates page views for them. This is no different at all.
If Collins didn't enjoy parliamentary privilege and therefore protection from any litigation, there's no way this report would have been aired as there's no legal substance to it at all. Sometimes that can be warranted, but this is not one of those times imo.
Wiggins is a Kopite
It's the name. I doubt there's an Evertonian alive called Bradley or Wiggins.
Armel
Player Valuation: £15m
I'm pretty certain at this point that Sky will go down. The rumours were 2020 as an ending point but I think it could possibly be sooner. The assault will be relentless now and it's growing. On top of that Sky do a good job of making it worse for themselves as their whole handling of the whole thing has been atrocious. Also don't forget every Dailymail/Guardian/etc... story gets reprinted in some form or another in papers like l'équipe etc... Doesn't exactly contribute to a pleasant working environment.
Strange situation for Wiggins. E.g. : He obviously doesn't like Sky. Yet he gets a lot of the fallout of their incompetence, faux-transparence and marginal gains. Sort of feel for him; like him a whole lot more than Froome.
It's a shame imo. The Guardian have annoyed me. For instance, they repeat regularly the comment by Wiggins about Sky ruining young riders. Yes, he said those exact words, but if you watch the video of him saying that, he's clearly messing about, yet people who know full well that's the case spread misinformation to sell their story. It's poor.
Sky probably will go when their contract is up, and I can't help but feel that the sport in Britain will be worse for that. The sport has been transformed from being one that was an extreme minority sport for most of the last century to one where participation has gone through the roof, we have millions turning out to watch the Tour or the one day races in Yorkshire. It really has been remarkable. It's perhaps harder to appreciate that in a cycling heartland, especially one such as Belgium where it is the national sport, but the transformation has been profound.
The media don't care about any of that.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
"Who owns or has access to a bicycle?"
Bicycle ownership and access remained constant at around 42% of the population between 2008/10 and 2013/15, with children and young people aged 5-16 the age group most likely to own or have access to a bicycle. However, bicycle ownership and access for different age groups changed during this period. The proportion of children and young people aged 5-16 who owned or had access to a bicycle declined steadily by 4% between 2008/10 and 2013/15, while among older people aged 50-59 bicycle ownership or access increased by the same proportion.
http://www.sqw.co.uk/files/6914/940...cle_industry_and_cycling_March_2017_FINAL.pdf
That time period demonstrates that - allowing for slight demographic change - cycling participation remained constant prior to Sky being founded (or certainly before them having any impact on public awareness) and the British track cycling success and after it happened and in the core years of Sky/TeamBG success.
Armel
Player Valuation: £15m
I also saw that Wiggins team presentation, tbh I don't think he meant that entirely in jest. The whole thing was riddled with a negative undertone towards Sky. You're right about the Guardian though; a bit leftist Daily Mail from time to time nowadays. Still one of my favourite British newspapers though.
Yesterday I saw an interesting report about TUE's in cycling nowadays. The UCI released the used statistics today:
Amount of TUE's in cycling (I'm using a tweet since copying from the UCI homepage is annoying because of the formatting):
The sharp decline from 2009 to 2010 is because they changed the rules; they made them a bit more lenient since you needed one for just about everything. Oh and off course you are allowed corticosteroids etc until a certain amount without one (should be changed). Present rules:
Is the same in every sport btw. If you would take away all the exemptions (also the ones without an attestation) it was estimated that approx. half of the footballers on the coming WC would be unable to play.
If they're genuine fans they'll still follow the sport (like you and Black Belt Jones). Otherwise they are plastics and are just following the sport because the Brits happen to be going through a good generation of talent. Being a supporter as a demonstration of nationalism. Bask in the glory of the Union Jack. I don't like that sort of thing. Before Boonen just after Museeuw and Van Petegem we had just about the worst generation of Belgian cyclists that I had ever laid my eyes upon. Not one semi-decent cyclist; all horrible. Interest in cycling remained the same and you just adopt a foreign cyclist (hence all the fan clubs for foreign riders). It's about the sport, the performances. The Germans had something similar going on during the the time of Telekom. Turned out they weren't clean; lost all their interest in cycling. For years no more broadcasting of cycling races on television. Absolute joke that. Same for the Americans to a certain degree tbh, post Armstrong. The issue being that there isn't one decent (as in can win the Tour or something else; no not Van Garderen) American who can win things; ergo the sport is suddenly less interesting... The Dutch suddenly are super interested again because they have a good generation, mainly Dumoulin. Orange and plastics everywhere. I mean do you enjoy/identify with supporters like the one I saw in Vive le vélo this summer. Guy from Stoke, follows the Tour with his camper. Is dressed like a knight with Saint-George's crosses. Carries loads of Sky and English flags. Parks his camper away from the other people because he doesn't like them Only knows Froome... My point being the actual fans will remain. There will still be good British riders. You had them before Sky, and will still have them afterwards. It's just talent cycles.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/43306210
This article from the BBC typifies things for me. It starts by highlighting how headlines like that in the S*n blow things out of proportion and make a grey issue black and white, but then spends the next 1,000 words doing nothing to explore the grey issue in any kind of depth, preferring instead to tell us what his mate or his elderly neighbour thought about it. I mean ffs, is it too much to expect journalists to be a bit critical of what they're being fed? The evidence against Wiggins seems to be from an unnamed source and a man that was previously thrown under the bus by the same media for calling athletes wobblies. Indeed, this is what Sutton said yesterday:
And yet that was sufficient testimony to publish the report? Cmon. He then goes on to say about the testimony from the anonymous source:
They didn't even ask for Sky's point of view, much less publish it, and apparently didn't ask for Sutton's point of view on the anonymous testimony to try and corroborate it. It smacks of cherry picking.
Froome came out and said yesterday it's complete rubbish, so you've got a distinct lack of anything except two sides of the situation. There's no actual evidence at all. The fact that people like Froome, Richie Porte et al weren't asked to provide their input into the report does suggest that they had their conclusion already and fitted the evidence around that.
Some folk should, but never will of course, read Matt Rendell's book on Pantani or the Tyler Hamilton book to see what doping used to be about. Now we're getting knickers in a knot over a TUE that was issued by at least two doctors, and a non-performance enhancing asthma treatment. @Armel says about the Germans dumping the Tour after Ullrich and Sinkewitz, but we have to remember that they were both caught up in Puerto, which is surely a whole different ball game to this discussion about a legally taken medicine?
This article from the BBC typifies things for me. It starts by highlighting how headlines like that in the S*n blow things out of proportion and make a grey issue black and white, but then spends the next 1,000 words doing nothing to explore the grey issue in any kind of depth, preferring instead to tell us what his mate or his elderly neighbour thought about it. I mean ffs, is it too much to expect journalists to be a bit critical of what they're being fed? The evidence against Wiggins seems to be from an unnamed source and a man that was previously thrown under the bus by the same media for calling athletes wobblies. Indeed, this is what Sutton said yesterday:
And yet that was sufficient testimony to publish the report? Cmon. He then goes on to say about the testimony from the anonymous source:
They didn't even ask for Sky's point of view, much less publish it, and apparently didn't ask for Sutton's point of view on the anonymous testimony to try and corroborate it. It smacks of cherry picking.
Froome came out and said yesterday it's complete rubbish, so you've got a distinct lack of anything except two sides of the situation. There's no actual evidence at all. The fact that people like Froome, Richie Porte et al weren't asked to provide their input into the report does suggest that they had their conclusion already and fitted the evidence around that.
Some folk should, but never will of course, read Matt Rendell's book on Pantani or the Tyler Hamilton book to see what doping used to be about. Now we're getting knickers in a knot over a TUE that was issued by at least two doctors, and a non-performance enhancing asthma treatment. @Armel says about the Germans dumping the Tour after Ullrich and Sinkewitz, but we have to remember that they were both caught up in Puerto, which is surely a whole different ball game to this discussion about a legally taken medicine?
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Yet the number of people using their bikes is at an all time high (according to British cycling figures), and indeed government figures suggest it is considerably higher than ten years ago, albeit from a pretty low base as so many people in Britain do no exercise at all (https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/walking-and-cycling-statistics). It's not just Olympic/Tour success of course. The cycle to work scheme was introduced in 1999 and has been a success, as have the introduction of Boris Bikes and schemes like them around the country (world). Even before Sky was created, the numbers attending the Depart in 2007 was amazing. I was on Parliament Hill for the prologue and there were huge numbers there. Granted, I was also at the stage to Portsmouth in (I think) 1994 and that was busy, but the numbers on the roadside do appear to have gone up considerably. Granted, it could very well be argued that MAMILs make up the bulk of that rise, and indeed there are a new breed of rider that you could argue don't really get it (as @Armel says) but that's kinda inevitable whenever a sport becomes more popular.
As an aside, some pertinent comments on a CW story this week - http://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/l...y-wiggins-responds-doping-sport-report-371672