In his latest column for Cyclismas, Blazin’ Saddles drops the wise-cracking facade and has a go at actually writing something vaguely serious…
Saddleblaze has a confession to make: he didn’t actually watch the 9.6km deciding time trial up the Col d’Eze in Paris-Nice. He was busy moving house and doing chores – but it came as no surprise when he saw that the rubber-faced Tasmanian Richie Porte had picked up both the stage win and the overall victory.
Later, once the dust had settled – or snow, if you’re a UK resident – Saddles had a trawl through his feed on Twitter to gauge the public reaction following Team Sky’s latest stage race victory. One tweet in particular stood out, and sparked a huge ding-dong debate.
With reference to Porte’s victorious ride over Andrew Talansky in the ITT, SuzeCY aka @festinagirl wrote:
23″ that’s a HUGE winning margin
— SuzeCY (@festinagirl) March 10, 2013
Respected cycling scribe and bouffant extraordinaire Daniel Friebe (@friebos) replied with a typically measured and insightful tweet:
@festinagirl Huge? Fairly standard. Poulidor beats Merckx by ’22 in 69, Michel Laurent by ’30 in 76, Roche by ’32 (from Indurain) in 89 etc
— Daniel Friebe (@friebos) March 10, 2013
And so sparked a war of words and opinions that rose up and down more ferociously than the raging seas in the terrible George Clooney film, The Perfect Storm (spoiler: they all die).
“Imagine what he’ll be like when he loses some weight,” quipped @festinagirl with reference to the portly Australian’s slightly tubby build.
@daveno7 wow, how fast will he go when he’s dropped a few pounds?
— SuzeCY (@festinagirl) March 10, 2013
She then dug up some stats from last year’s identical time trial up the Col d’Eze:
@friebos Wiggins, an acknowledged TTer, could only beat Westra by 2″ – Porte smashed the rest of the field without trying
— SuzeCY (@festinagirl) March 10, 2013
Having since watched the highlights of the final stage, Saddles can pretty much vouch that Porte’s efforts were not exactly in line with someone “not trying.” But for the sake of being an omniscient narrator here, Saddles will keep out of the argument. Besides, as @paddyjim threw into the ring, Wiggins did pick up a puncture during his winning ride last year, so those two seconds are kind of misleading.
“True but winning margin to 10th last year was just over 1min, winning margin to 3rd today was 1min 20+ secs – huge gaps,” returned @festinagirl, perhaps confusing the overall GC time gaps with those on the day (third place Nairo Quintana was 23 seconds down and the 10th place rider was 1:06 in arrears – that’s to say, “just over 1min”).
“You really think 23′ in a 20 minute race is a huge margin? In that case 1min is necessarily suspicious in a 55km TT. Come on,” replied an exasperated @friebos.
At this stage, a third party – ACF aka @Acycling_fan – entered the ring with a typically opinionated statement:
@friebos @festinagirl lets cut to the chase. Skys performances hav been US POSTAL style. guys who couldnt climb 1 yr are awesome the next yr
— ACF (@ACycling_fan) March 10, 2013
“Like? Some, not all, have certainly improved. They’ve also gone from leading teams to riding as domestiques,” replied @friebos, matter-of-factly.
“Where was Porte a team leader?” asked @festinagirl, forgetting Porte’s breakthrough seventh place in the 2010 Giro while at Saxo Bank. “Sure, Sky super doms have potential to lead elsewhere but that’s not unique to Sky.”
“Enough. We know what you think,” said @friebos, clearly eager to call time on a futile session of Sunday evening verbal fencing (after all, the final episode of gripping ITV drama, Mr Selfridge, was about to begin).
But the author of Mountain High and Eddy Merckx: The Cannibal couldn’t resist one final jab of the epée. “You have 7000 followers. Free to say what you like, but that’s a big audience to tell that someone is a fraud.”
This clearly got up the nose of the Prosecution’s tag-teamer @Acycling_fan, who jumped in with a seemingly personal jibe:
@friebos @festinagirl dan, you can keep the public stupid, just like the cycling press did for so Many years with Lance
— ACF (@ACycling_fan) March 10, 2013
“Simply not true. 95% of those who read cycling press had drawn correct conclusion about LA,” said the Defence, standing his ground.
At this point in proceedings, SBS young buck Al Hinds, who has followed the career of Porte intently since his time as cub reporter at Cyclingnews, pinged one off in support of the curly-haired Friebe:
@friebos @acycling_fan @festinagirl save yourself the pain mate. Not worth it.
— Alexander Hinds (@al_hinds) March 10, 2013
Clearly irate, the embittered @Acycling_fan came back with another fierce jab below the belt: “Well done Alex, keep the Omertà strong.”
Re-entering the room after perhaps warming up some dinner in the microwave (Findus Crispy Lasagne, allegedly), @festinagirl took @friebos to account with his comment about her misleading her lavish hoard of followers on Twitter.
“Not sure what your point is? All views are my own as are yours, presumably?” came the reply, prompting Britain’s leading young cycling journalist into a staunch defence of his own journalistic integrity: “I don’t and can’t print libellous supposition. We’re bound by same rules (no, laws) on here, or should be.”
There followed a long silence from the Prosecution. Once the case was taken back up, there seemed to be a marked shift from insinuations of doping to accusations of boredom-inducement and suffocation of the mystique.
As if it wasn’t enough for Porte to become the first Australian to win Paris-Nice while taking the queen’s stage mountain-top finish as well as the final uphill time trial, the Tasmanian was being chastised for doing it in a robotic and dour fashion.
Richie Porte ‘not trying’ up the Col d’Eze (Photo: AFP)
Anyway, time for Saddles to join the fray. Your humble cycling blogger finds the whole verbal spat rather irksome – and entirely symptomatic of the climate brought on by years of lies and shattered dreams.
But here’s the thing.
All cycling fans are allowed to be suspicious, for sure, but it’s getting out of hand when any admirable performance is greeted with a mass of jeers – a general wave of discontent that has the power to spread much faster in an era where Twitter reigns supreme, where everyone is a journalist and yet doesn’t feel they still have to adhere to the same moral framework the profession requires.
Given what happened before with Armstrong, brushes, and carpets, it’s become highly fashionable now for people – whether big or small – to throw the book at any performance that outdoes the other lesser performances on the day. There seems to be a consensus amongst a growing majority that no riders can improve without drugs; that riding “intelligently” is just another way of being “better prepared”; that Team Sky’s dominance is clearly a case of Groundhog Day.
It seems to Saddles that there are too many nihilistic iconoclasts out there bent on becoming the next Paul Kimmage. (You could say, even, that Paul Kimmage is bent on becoming the next Paul Kimmage – or at least a v2.0 Paul Kimmage – but that’s an entirely different tangent.)
Some cycling fans are distrusting of everything not through any measured thought, but on principle (but without principle). They’re doing it by default just so they can say – should something emerge at a later date – that they told you so. It’s a no-lose situation for them. Team Sky don’t get caught out – the suspicion still lingers; they do – hey, I told you so.
Granted, it’s probably not enough for many fans to take things on trust anymore. But by the same token, it’s not right for default suspicions to precede any form of appreciation of training methods, hard work, dedication and professionalism.
Yes, there’s a chance that Sky are US Postal mark two – but there’s also a much more likely chance that they are Sky mark one and are precisely what has emerged from the ashes of the American team.
With the top end of cycling relying pretty much on covert doping operations for nigh-on two decades, there was certainly a window of opportunity for a team coming in with advanced training methods centred around squad cohesion, teamwork, and marginal gains.
Yes, it’s not to everyone’s liking (the 2012 Tour de France was a dire spectacle, to be sure) but it’s damned effective.
“There’s no secret,” said Chris Froome after taking the Tirreno-Adriatico leader’s blue jersey over the border on Sunday. “It’s just continuing to work the way we worked in the last few years: training, measuring the training, and going back and doing it again. There’s not too much to it. It’s about getting the basics right.”
Vincenzo Nibali would agree – the Italian telling reporters on Sunday that he “paid a price for the infernal rhythm of Froome’s team in the finale.”
As for Porte, his time at Sky is “totally different” from his stint at Saxo Bank. “There is no other team training as hard as we do,” he confirmed. “The proof is in the pudding.”
(Photo: Getty Images)
Sky, it seems, have it sorted out. They have a roll call of GC riders – Wiggins, Froome, Porte – all ably supported by an interchangeable array of super-domestiques. The likes of Lopez, Uran, Henao, Cataldo, Zandio, Siutsou, and Kiryienka can all do a job if called upon – and that’s not even mentioning the classics riders and all-rounders like Thomas and Boasson-Hagen.
It is any surprise that Sky are so strong with such strength in depth and advanced training?
Yes, many of us share @festinagirl’s views when she says she’d much prefer watching riders like Voigt and Voeckler than a group of black-and-blue clad warriors dialing in the required wattage into their powermeters and riding to a programme.
But riders like Voeckler and Voigt are a dying breed. Besides, most of the ones we came to love over the past couple of decades had precisely the kind of preparatory help that many are so quick to accuse Sky of employing.
Fans need to be more realistic. By all means, be cynical – but do so for a reason and not merely in protest. Omertà is one thing, but a persistent finger-pointing and unmeasured hounding is just as bad.
15 Comments
I’d say what Sky are doing is simply “the modern British approach”. Maclaren did it to Formula One last decade – a dedicated, end-to-end commitment to the goal – and it seems much of UK sport is adopting the same relentless approach. Pick the target, find the best people to deliver on that target, make sure they have every support structure they need and drive them to the win millimetre by millimetre.
thecrankset Maclaren was obviously on drugs. Actually humor aside, I think you are spot on. I think they are clean and employing a new style of training that will revolutionize how rider approach their preparation. Could they be using PED’s ? Anything is possible, but the question I would ask if I was competing against SKY is not “if they are doping” but “what if they are not”. Welcome to the future.
Brilliant article Saddles, I completely agree. Whilst it is natural to be suspicious of great performances these days, this constant finger-pointing is getting quite tiresome, especially when there is no evidence of doping other than the fact that the rider in question (nearly always a Team Sky rider) has been in a great performance. All these rides are within physiological limits, unlike many of the great rides of the past generation. So I prefer to take a more a ‘sceptical optimist’ approach. Sure, we always need to remain vigilant. But to enjoy the sport we clearly all love (or love to hate in some people’s cases?), then I think a healthy dose of hope should be used to balance out some of knee-jerk suspiciousness that accompanies any outstanding performance.
Brilliant article Saddles, I completely agree. Whilst it is natural to be suspicious of great performances these days, this constant finger-pointing is getting quite tiresome, especially when there is no evidence of doping other than the fact that the rider in question (nearly always a Team Sky rider) has been in a great performance. All these rides are within physiological limits, unlike many of the great rides of the past generation. So I prefer to take a more a ‘sceptical optimist’ approach. Sure, we always need to remain vigilant. But to enjoy the sport we clearly all love (or love to hate in some people’s cases?), then I think a healthy dose of hope should be used to balance out some of knee-jerk suspiciousness that accompanies any outstanding performance.
“It seems to Saddles that there are too many nihilistic iconoclasts out there bent on becoming the next Paul Kimmage”
It seems to me saddles is bent on becoming the next Phil Ligget. There were some good arguments in here but the author clearly could not hold his fanboyism in check for the second half with the comments that Sky turned domestiques into gc leaders because they have all the right training techiniques, and that sky are almost certainly clean.
Funny that this was not explored. What training techniques do sky have that no one else does? the authors ego has gotten to the point that he thinks any comment he makes maintains itself.
Of course no explanations for what team Froome was leading before he joined Sky. Or how he became the best rider in the world. Cant be training techniques either since Froome admits hes never been in a wind tunnel.
Froome is clean because I like him and i say so. You nihilistic Kimmage wannabes.
“It seems to Saddles that there are too many nihilistic iconoclasts out there bent on becoming the next Paul Kimmage”
It seems to me saddles is bent on becoming the next Phil Ligget. There were some good arguments in here but the author clearly could not hold his fanboyism in check for the second half with the comments that Sky are almost certainly clean and the tripe about superior training techniques.
Funny that this was not explored. What training techniques do sky have that no one else does? the authors ego has gotten to the point that he thinks any comment he makes maintains itself.
Of course no explanations for what team Froome was leading before he joined Sky. Or how he became the best rider in the world. Cant be training techniques either since Froome admits hes never been in a wind tunnel.
Froome is clean because I like him and i say so. You nihilistic Kimmage wannabes.
Joachim2 Hi Joachim (Rodriguez?). Thanks for your thoughts. Saddles can confirm to the contrary that he’s no Team Sky fan boy – not in the slightest. I admire their work ethic and what they are doing, but I’d be one of the first to highlight how dour they can make bike racing – reducing it to powermeters and minor gains. But it’s damn effective.
Anyway, the point of the article was not to write a staunch defence of Sky – merely to highlight the erroneous ways of a scattergun approach to accusations merely because such a thing is de rigueur. I never said that Sky are “almost certainly clean” but highlighted the possibility that perhaps it’s not so hard to comprehend how such a dominant team has emerged from the sorry mess of the past 20 years. It’s certainly a line worth considering – and one much more brave than they whole ‘they must be doping it’s US postal mark two groundhog day’ argument, which is getting rather tired.
By all means, do your research like Kimmage and Walsh and uncover something nefarious. And if you do, Saddles will be the first to applaud you. But that’s not what the majority of people are doing – they’re just throwing around accusations and insinuations on Twitter. Daniel Friebe’s point wasn’t that Sky are beyond reproach but that we’re all still bound to some sort of journalistic code – just because Armstrong flaunted this in the past doesn’t mean we can simple let our guard down and become slanderous and libelous and bitter with every 140-character bundle of bile.
Training is everything, recent comments by English rugby coaches on the difference between the English performances and the French allude to the different training regimes i.e. The French teams don’t train hard enough. Cycling is all about conditioning. The point being that in rugby The two top teams in Europe have totally different approaches.
Seems to be a typical British response to me, still coming from their imperial past and their island mentality. They always feel morally superior to th rest of the world. The British wouldn’t dope because they aren’t like the rest of the world they are gentlemen.
potatopotato in what way is this a “typical British” response? As a nation we don’t have the road racing history of other countries because of old traffic laws which discouraged it. Time has moved on we got into Road cycling cause the authorities noticed we were f good at track racing. BC and SKY applied hard and fast training techniques and built a different (clean) team culture and won.
As to Joachim2 asking what is so different to the SKY techniques, ref Andy Schleck and his stated reluctance to train to the numbers and doing it on “feel” = his (bridesmaid) results haul. SKY train to a set crieteria find that it works and hey presto start winning.
Fans need to be more realistic, you say? Given cyclings history I don’t think it’s inappropriate to question a team which has the best riders & results, some vague doping links (i.e. Leinders, some staff were former dopers) and some transparency issues (firing everyone who confesses to doping, not allowing kimmage on the teambus IIRC).
Of course it’s not proof at all. But I don’t even think it’s cynical to question the best riders of the best team when only a few years ago organized doping was still widespread (i.e. fuentes & ferrari clients). Time and time again we learn that doping detection is embarrassingly easy to circumvent.
Sure, it could be better preparation, training and teamwork. But it might as well be doping.
(N.B. it’s pretty strange that mostly sky seems to be targeted, though, I guess you could ask similar questions about teams such as OPQS)
Wow, well said SaddleBlaze. Couldn’t agree more with all that. The whole doping subject that seems to be all some people can tweet about 24-7 is getting extremely boring. Indeed, I’ve come to the conclusion that these Kimmage v2.0’s you talk of are desperate for Sky to be the next US Postal, desperate for another Lance, and desperate for the scandal to continue. The ones with so many followers should be doing more to promote their sport — one that has had its problems, sure, but one that is doing more than any other sport to tackle the issue.
Cheats will always exist but when it comes to drug cheats cycling is doing its best and can only do so much. With what’s in place now there’s a pretty strong deterrent to most riders and if that doesn’t stop them then there’s a good chance they’ll get caught. These same people will praise other sports without ever questioning them while gladly throwing cycling into the fire.
I doubt there’s organised doping in Sky, it seems hard to believe. Does that mean one or two riders aren’t doing their own thing personally? No, but that’s why we have testing. Porte’s victory in Paris-Nice was fantastic and good for Friebe for pointing out a few facts about why it was far from inhuman. I can’t half see why it’s getting tiresome for him arguing these points against some random Twitter warriors hell bent on finding the next Lance.
Best article published on this site. And fair play for publishing it when Overlord is one of the main pot-stirrers.
Is it possible that they are better because the rest were doping and now they are mediocre.
First the SKY haters said Wiggins was too skinny to time-trial, and now Porte is too fat. Sad, really sad.