Wiggins, cheat or not?

[Yevrah]

Well?

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Yep.

He should just come out and hold his hands up.

[SvN]

They're all at it.

[phonics]

He's a cyclist...

[Disco]

Technically no, morally yes. Like basically any sports person you can think of.

[-james-]

Is there any evidence to say that he is, aside from "he's a cyclist lol"?

[Byron]

When everyone cheats, no one cheats.

[Spikey M]

They all are.

[niko_cee]

Neither technically, nor morally. It's professional sport. Taking part is for amateurs.

[Kikó]

All high level sportsman or cheating to some extent. It's better that you don't be so morally twatty about it because when it comes out that the marginal gains are actually drug gains you're going to look a dick.

[Disco]

If he wasn't Paul Weller on a bike he'd have been labelled a cheating Frenchie/Iti/Spaniard long ago.

Obtaining PEDs by overplaying your 'asthma' goes against the spirit of anti-doping rules even if it is technically allowed.

[randomlegend]

The thing I find hard to understand is how asthma medications are actually performance enhancing beyond treating your asthma.

I didn't think bronchodilators did anything unless you had bronchoconstriction (maybe I'm wrong) and I definitely don't see how inhaled steroids are going to be of any benefit whatsoever. They aren't anabolic steroids, they don't big you small bits and big muscles. If anything I'd have thought they'd make you worse.

[Shindig]

As an asthmatic that's used steroid inhalers, they do have a benefit. There's not a lot of steroid to them but they sit on the lungs and, surprise, make them stronger. I used to use them before going to bed to stop me coughing during the night.

[randomlegend]

Shindig

Sorry I didn't explain myself very well.

Obviously inhaled steroids help your breathing if you actually have asthma. But they work by reducing inflammation. If your airways aren't inflamed (i.e. you don't have asthma) then I don't understand by what mechanism they are going to be beneficial. If you do, then they can only take the inflammation away and at best get you back to what you'd be like if you didn't have asthma.

[ItalAussie]

It seems like an abuse of the therapeutic usage exemptions. Dodgy as hell, but probably alright by the letter of the law (depending on the specific way in which abuse of that rule is defined).

If Sky hadn't ridden that high horse so hard, it probably wouldn't be as big a deal. But we spent half a decade watching the "plucky underdog Brits honourably sticking it to the nasty, cheating foreigners" narrative, and they got money from the UK government, so you can understand people taking some umbrage.

[Lewis]

He doesn't really have asthma, so these things help to increase airflow into (around?) his lungs, and, as an anti-inflammatory, have obvious benefits for anyone doing sustained high-intensity exercise.

[randomlegend]

He doesn't really have asthma, so these things help to increase airflow into (around?) his lungs

It doesn't work like that. If you don't have asthma, and so you don't have constricted bronchi (airways), taking a bronchodilator (like salbumatol) does absolutely nothing. It won't make your airways SUPER BIG so you can do SUPER BREATHING.

A bit of evidence to back that up:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21083771

There's some evidence that it's mildly anabolic (muscle building) in massive doses, but realistically you'd need to be taking it orally to get enough systemic absorption to have that effect. Perhaps the swindle is taking it orally and then claiming it's inhaled if you get caught out, but I would have thought the difference in levels would be fairly fucking obvious.


as an anti-inflammatory, have obvious benefits for anyone doing sustained high-intensity exercise.

If you managed to inhale enough corticosteroids to absorb enough systemically to have an effect, I'm pretty sure the negatives would massively outweigh any benefits. Corticosteroids might reduce inflammation but they have about a million other effects which you absolutely would not want as a competitive athlete.

EDIT: There seems to be some (poor quality, anecdotal) evidence that short courses of high dose steroids can be beneficial during training. If there's evidence he's taken oral steroids then yeah, probably cheating. I'd be absolutely stunned if you can get enough systemic absorption from inhaled steroids to have those effects though - I doubt you could do it if you breathed nothing else all day.

[randomlegend]

It seems like an abuse of the therapeutic usage exemptions. Dodgy as hell, but probably alright by the letter of the law (depending on the specific way in which abuse of that rule is defined).

If Sky hadn't ridden that high horse so hard, it probably wouldn't be as big a deal. But we spent half a decade watching the "honourable Brits taking on the nasty, cheating foreigners" narrative, and they got money from the UK government, so you can understand people taking some umbrage.

From what I've read you don't even need a TUE for salbutamol provided you are taking less than the dose limit they set.

[ItalAussie]

Yeah, I imagine Sky were very careful to ensure that they went right up to the line, but not across it.

[randomlegend]

Which would have absolutely no beneficial effect whatsoever, other than returning someone with actual asthma to baseline (at the absolute best).

[Lewis]

I stand corrected. Still, maybe asthmatics should just get lost. Shit out, lads. Unlucky.

[randomlegend]

I'm loving how sure Ital is that British cycling are cheats after he defended this:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KCTlw7CbATg/U9FMyiHT_II/AAAAAAAAANc/oo3eyLSYQas/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-07-17-18h46m19s69.png

from an Aussie.

[Yevrah]

I don't know the answer to the asthma thing either, but it sounds similar to a gluten free diet not turning you into superman if you're not a coeliac.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

It's well documented that Mark Henry was sucking inhalers dry in his WWE days.

Without them he was only above average strength.

[Shindig]

Maria Sharapova got her inhalers from a long-time family doctor.

[Mike]

They’d all be welcomed to my drugs friendly Olympic alternative.

[Giggles]

He's an upstanding British. Drugs must ave got planted by a dirty facking forrin innit. Oi oi oi oi waaaaar.

[Magic]

Hands up who went to medical college!

[Lewis]

This (https://www.independent.ie/sport/other-sports/athletics/ewan-mackenna-mo-farah-has-more-questions-to-answer-than-gold-medals-and-the-facts-are-stacking-up-against-him-36712511.html) Mick puts all of Mo Farah's shite in one place, and it sounds a bit iffy.

[Kikó]

He's guilty just like Radcliffe was.

[John]

If Farah gets biffed it'll piss on so many people's chips he'll have to go into hiding.

[Yevrah]

I'm halfway through that and it's an interesting read.

If he gets done it'll either lead to an end of "our plucky boys and girls would never cheat" (which would be nice), or more likely a revisionist approach to his nationality with him being labelled as the "Somalian born athlete" from that point onward.

[Lewis]

'Mohamed - formerly "Mo" - Farah has today been stripped of his...'

[Lewis]

Yes. His council house.

[Ian]

Chris Froome awarded 2011 Vuelta a Espana as Juan Jose Cobo stripped of title (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/49026538)

"It retrospectively makes him Britain's first Grand Tour winner - Sir Bradley Wiggins had held the honour after his 2012 Tour de France victory."

Cycling. :drool:

[Spikey M]

Can't wait until they all get stripped of everything and I win all the awards retrospectively for breaking my own personal best back when I used to cycle to work. Drug free. :cool:

[Ian]

Or they just go "fuck it" and let them all take what they want and make it a proper freakshow.

You never know, that might even make it worth watching.

[Yevrah]

Why is cycling, seemingly more than any other sport, absolutely full of drug cheats? Is the testing 8 years behind the dodgy doctor curve? Do they just not care?

Or is it the other way around and drugs are just as rife everywhere else, but cycling are doing much much more to root it out?

[niko_cee]

It's both.

Cycling, historically, as a sport lends itself to chemical assistance (first booze, then amphetamines, then more modern PEDs). It is ridiculously physically demanding, so any 'marginal gains' are amplified by the intensity and duration of the events - both in terms of benefits from training and one off on the day hits (Landis, the greatest single ride of all time). It's heartland has, historically, been in nations where cheating is pretty much par for the course in everything, no offence Beneluxers. I do think they now do a lot more than most sports to try and get on top of it, but the range of things to try and cover is probably insurmountable - and the range of what is and what isn't allowed is far from simple. Spikey would probably be stripped of his titles for having taken some sudafed before riding to work one day. The biological passport is quite a good idea, I think. I don't believe Sky, as they were, were systematically cheating in the way teams did in the 1990/2000s, but they were systematically gaining advantages through legally abusive practices (TUEs etc).

[Ian]

Spikey being outed as a cheat and a disgrace before he's even been awarded his titles.

Fuck's sake.

[Spikey M]

Atleast I'm up there with the best of them.

[randomlegend]

Why is cycling, seemingly more than any other sport, absolutely full of drug cheats? Is the testing 8 years behind the dodgy doctor curve? Do they just not care?

Or is it the other way around and drugs are just as rife everywhere else, but cycling are doing much much more to root it out?



I would guess it's that cycling is almost purely a test of physical endurance/strength/speed etc. so you stand to gain a lot more from drugs than you can in sports which rely equally (or more) on tactics or technique.

You could give Marouanne Fellaini steroids til his nuts were the size of raisins but still won't be Cristiano Ronaldo.

[randomlegend]

Oh and the idea of cheating with asthma inhalers is still nonsense.

[Ian]

You could give Marouanne Fellaini steroids til his nuts were the size of raisins but still won't be Cristiano Ronaldo.

Why would he want to lessen his ability anyway? :confused:

[randomlegend]

Ah sorry, got the names the wrong way round.

:rave:

[Pepe]

Why is cycling, seemingly more than any other sport, absolutely full of drug cheats? Is the testing 8 years behind the dodgy doctor curve? Do they just not care?

Or is it the other way around and drugs are just as rife everywhere else, but cycling are doing much much more to root it out?

I'd say that it is the latter.

Endurance athletes will benefit more from it, so cycling is a prime candidate, but there is no way that people running the marathon, for example, are not as likely to cheat. As for 'technique' sports like football, it might be less beneficial, but knowing the state of affairs, does anyone really think that half of those players/teams/owners/associations are not looking for any advantage they can get?

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Can we use the 'fund' to get Pepe on the gear?

Tour de France winner 2020.

[SvN]

About £440 in the kitty at the moment. What will that get us?

[Spikey M]

A decent course of roids and some Lemsip.

[Pepe]

I'm in.

[Pepe]

The US cycling federation does a little bit of testing in amateur races and 'Masters' racers are the biggest cheats by a wide margin. :harold:

[Kikó]

Cycling is just tested more than other sports. Tennis, Football, Rugby are all doping in one way or another but we don't care as much.

Or actually Federer, Nadal and Djokovic are suddenly much better at recovery now they are 38,33,32 than they were years ago.

[Lewis]

You can dope a reasonable amount and remain within the allowed limits. I suspect rugby players do that. Cycling, like Olympic weightlifting which is also absolutely laughable for people being stripped of awards, is just mentally demanding, so I think people have to take the piss or just drop out.

[Queenslander]

AFL players would still be our biggest dopers.

[niko_cee]

Will be lol beyond belief if Alaphillipe turns out to be on the juice.

[Pepe]

Sagan being caught would kill the sport, for a few years at least.

[Shindig]

20 years from now Andy Murray will be collecting his retrospective grand slams and Mahow will still be furious.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

He's Scottish...

[Pepe]

This Tour is turning out to be quite tasty. :drool:

[Lewis]

You can dope a reasonable amount and remain within the allowed limits. I suspect rugby players do that. Cycling, like Olympic weightlifting which is also absolutely laughable for people being stripped of awards, is just mentally demanding, so I think people have to take the piss or just drop out.

lol at that 94 kg field getting wiped out (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weightlifting_at_the_2012_Summer_Olympics#Notes). 2008 had similar revisions, and I imagine 2016 will at some point. Ilya Ilyin being papped was arguably the biggest sport story nobody cares about, since he was the absolute don of the sport. He's on the comeback trail now and progressing suspiciously quickly for 2020.

[Disco]

I want some of whatever Mark Cavendish must be on.

(This is now the de facto cycling thread btw, you can blame the terrible search function)

[Shindig]

Top Gear ruined his wife for me. "Peta, 23 from Essex."

[niko_cee]

Looking at Cav today, he does seem very, what's the term, hench?

I guess his legs have probably always been insane but they looked Greipel-esque.

[niko_cee]

No, not Greipel, that German track cyclist/sprinter who's name I've probably never actually known.

Google tells me Robert Forstermann.

[Boydy]

1412799126857785354

:cab:

[Shindig]

Tesco Value Tyson Fury.

[Baz]

Biggest drug cheat going is Djokovic

[Lewis]

Is it possible that this American sprinter actually failed an in-house test and they're using weed an as excuse for a shorter ban? Dead parent or not, who smokes weed a month before the Olympics?

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Add in the fact that they're not taking her to Tokyo despite the ban ending before it actually starts too.

[Pepe]

I'm surprised to see Cavendish winning races. I thought that he was done. Then again, Quickstep hired him for a reason. Also, this year's roster is weak as fuck.

[Disco]

Several sprinters went out to crashes on the first week too, or like Sagan are still in it but not able to challenge for stages.

[Don]

Is it possible that this American sprinter actually failed an in-house test and they're using weed an as excuse for a shorter ban? Dead parent or not, who smokes weed a month before the Olympics?

She looks and sounds like she was raised on pure 'erbs tbf.

[niko_cee]

I'm surprised to see Cavendish winning races. I thought that he was done. Then again, Quickstep hired him for a reason. Also, this year's roster is weak as fuck.

Yeah, he's definitely benefiting from taking over Bennett's lead-out/role and the fact that the sprint field is both a bit weak and has been decimated thus far. Still, he still has to win the races and it's impressive. Wonder if he'll call it a day if he wins in Paris?

[randomlegend]

Is it possible that this American sprinter actually failed an in-house test and they're using weed an as excuse for a shorter ban? Dead parent or not, who smokes weed a month before the Olympics?

Weren't Phelps and Lochte always at it?

[niko_cee]

Cav's picked a bad year (to the extent that's possible) to register probably one of the greatest sporting achievements ever by a Briton - what with Sir Waistcoat and Co and then all the Olympic Horse Ticklers bound to overshadow him in the wider public consciousness.

[Shindig]

Even if he won the tour, people wouldn't bat an eyelid.

You know what gets me? They never retroactively awarded Armstrong's wins to someone else.

2005: Ivan Basso
2004: Andreas Kloden
2003: Jan Ullrich
2002: Joseba Beloki
2001: Jan Ullrich
2000: Jan Ullrich
1999: Alex Zulle

Would've given Jan Ullrich four tour wins in total.


However, the race organisers ASO decided not to reallocate the titles won in those years, in recognition of the historic doping problem in the sport at that time - Ullrich himself having been banned for a doping violation. Ullrich, therefore, has a single Tour victory to his name.

Oh. :D

[Jimmy Floyd]

Cycling is a remainer sport, no chance of cutting through in the post Brexit era.

Also he's not British.

[niko_cee]

Only to the extent that it has siphoned off all the golf wankers from their Big Bertha drivers to their carbon forks and aero bars.

I suppose a certain level of europhilia is required being as everything has to be done in French (like with cheffing).

[Disco]

We're the wrong side of an Olympics for cycling to be in vogue again, and probably 5 years too late for the public to care. Did anyone care that Geraint Thomas won it or even Frome all those times?

[niko_cee]

I think Thomas registered but no one ever really liked the Kenyan, which was harsh on him, but probably down to his wife.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Only to the extent that it has siphoned off all the golf wankers from their Big Bertha drivers to their carbon forks and aero bars.

Golf is a lot more leavey, I'm not sure there's a huge amount of crossover there, even if the 'spend a living wage on equipment and you will still be shit' theme is the same.

Tennis is the real chin-stroker. If I could get into the local tennis club without being shot dead I'd love to do an anthropological study of the inhabitants.

[Lewis]

Day-to-day tennis is remain, and then the better off leavers come out of the woodwork for Wimbledon because they can frame it with reference to things they understand (like how the remain bores are doing with England now).

[Disco]

My dad is exactly like that, loves following any of the (suitably white) Brits at Wimbledon every year.

[Lofty]

Was Henman the last genuine English hope at Wimbledon? Not counting the imports, feels a bit like 'Irish' footballers.

[Shindig]

I'm going to say yes. He had a run of four semi finals in five years. Lost to Sampras twice, Ivanisevic and Hewitt. All eventual winners. Two French Open semi finals on top of that. Nobody's come close.

[niko_cee]

Golf is a lot more leavey

Aye, but only as a factor of the age of the demographic, cycling having harvested the last 10 years worth of 30-40 year olds who golf might have otherwise trapped.

[Yevrah]

Was Henman the last genuine English hope at Wimbledon? Not counting the imports, feels a bit like 'Irish' footballers.

Yeah, he would have beaten Ivanisevic too if the rain hadn't come.

[Pepe]

Cycling definitely wanker sport over here, but I am surprised to know that it is also like that in the UK. In France, it seems to be as working class as it comes.

[Spikey M]

Our roads are far more twisting, turning and narrow than yours. Cyclists are the enemy of every driver in the country.

[Disco]

Anyone else watching today? Curious to see if Pogachar has enough chamber time to claw back a couple of minutes.

[niko_cee]

I'm hoping Thomas can cling on to make the final tt interesting, but I doubt he will.

[Pepe]

Probably not today based on the route. Tomorrow more likely.

[Disco]

I'm hoping Thomas can cling on to make the final tt interesting, but I doubt he will.

He was already too far back I think and lost a bit more today. Hautacam tomorrow, it would be nice to see another 96 or 00 to make the final TT interesting but I suspect Vingegaard will have enough to shadow Pogachar until the end.

[Pepe]

Vingergaard looking like he won't falter. Summit finish tomorrow though, so that is Pogacar's last chance. My guess is that Thomas loses more time tomorrow.

[niko_cee]

Yeah, it was never likely for Thomas. Still, what looks like a solid podium finish is pretty good for him. What is Vingegard like as a time triallist? I heard some commentary the other day suggesting he was better than Pogacar, but don't know if that was accurate.

UAE/Pogacar need to pull the sort of stage Sky and Froome managed in the Giro a few years ago tomorrow.

[Disco]

If they manage that sort of preparation then at least George Bennet isn't likely to be as scathing as he was then.

[niko_cee]

Impressive ride by Vinegar'd and Jumbo Visma generally. When was the last time a team took both green and yellow jerseys?

[Disco]

I think it might go back to the very clean Telekom in 96/97. Hushovd and Evans must have been close for BMC but I think they were a year or so apart, the Lance years were all won by the various Aussies and then Sagan dominated the Sky era.

[Disco]

Fastest average speed in tour history this year apparently (previous fastest was 2005), could of course be down to the changing profile of the race but it's still pretty lol considering how they dawdled through Denmark at the start.

[niko_cee]

In lieu of a Tour thread, lol at Cav-stana being under threat from the broom wagon instantly.

That'd be a bit of a shit end.

[Pepe]

Just tuned in. 10 minutes behind with still several climbs to go. They are fucked, aren't they?

[Pepe]

Nah, I think they'll be fine.

[niko_cee]

This is going to end up with heartbreak for DSM/Bardet.

Not sure I agree with 'leadle' as the pronunciation of Lidl.

[Pepe]

Yeah, no chance they make it.

[niko_cee]

Hell of a first day on the tour for this geezer though. Getting close.

Ah no, scratch that, time gap was a bit dodgy.

[niko_cee]

Jesus, what a ride.

[Pepe]

Nevermind lol. Great win.

[Pepe]

Just caught up with yesterday's stage. Two French winners in two days is nice. Losing Roglic already isn't.

I don't see Cavendish having a shot tbh.

[niko_cee]

It's hard to make a case for him but hopefully he can at least make it to, checks notes, Nice, to give himself the maximum chance.

Big fan of those first two stages. Sod the prologues or the sprinters' stages.

Tomorrow looks pretty tasty as well.

[niko_cee]

Felt like a stage he could have pinched there with the crash stuffing things up but guess he was caught up in the crash to some extent.

[Pepe]

Yeah I think that both him and Philipsen must have been involved in the crash(es).

Tomorrow's stage should be a good one. I bet Pogacar tries to test Vingegaard.

[niko_cee]

Well, that's a marker laid down.

Hopefully Vinegar Guard isn't just in happy to be here mode.

[Pepe]

The difference in the climb wasn't that large. I am surprised that he lost that much descending. Unless Pogacar has some sort of meltdown in a later stage (which wouldn't be the first time,) this is not looking very promising.

[niko_cee]

Get in there Cav.

:cool:

[niko_cee]

That was insanely good. Skill to pick the wheels and the power to blow everyone away, and a good shoulder barge on the way as well.

[Pepe]

I have to admit that I did not think that it was going to happen. It was tactically perfect; while everyone else seemed to not know what to do, he was always close to the front but not in the front, until the right moment.

[niko_cee]

Great as it was, in the aftermath it does feel like most of the interesting stories to be told in this have been done by Day 5. Shame it doesn't end in Paris as it would have been good to build towards maybe Cavendish winning there one last time. Renshaw could do the lead out in the team car.

[Pepe]

I hope it is not all over today.

[Pepe]

Excellent stage today. Non-stop action from the get go.

The French doing well this year. That is three wins, right?

[niko_cee]

Yeah, it was a good stage. Tapping the gravelista market.

In other off road news I may have to embrace the switch to tubeless as I keep getting thorns embedded in my tyres and the punctures are slowly driving me crazy.

[niko_cee]

Many more tours like that one and Cavendish is going to start looking over his shoulder in terms of overall stage wins. How many is that for Pogacar now, 17? Nearly halfway there. Only one year out of the white jersey as well. :cab:

[Jimmy Floyd]

https://sportingintelligence832.substack.com/p/skyfall-my-new-investigation-into

lol

[Pepe]

Sounds like he has fuck all.

I fell behind watching the TdF and I wanted to catch up as opposed to skipping some stages so ended up not watching anything after the first rest day I think.

[Kikó]

(from Substack)

Skyfall #1: 'Living a lie' - exposing the dark underbelly of British cycling's golden age
In the summer of 2012, Team Sky reiterated that they were the cleanest cycling team in the world, with no employees who had any doping history. That was far from true.
NICK HARRIS
JUL 23
∙
PAID

READ IN APP
The 2024 Tour de France ended on Sunday with a third win in five years for Tadej Pogačar of UAE Team Emirates, and cycling will be prominent again when the Olympic Games begin on Friday in Paris.
The story I’m going to tell you over the next week is rooted in the summer when the Olympics were last staged in Europe - at London 2012 - and a summer when the Tour de France was won by a British rider for the first time - Bradley Wiggins of Team Sky.
Bradley Wiggins became the first Briton to win the Tour de France, in 2012
It’s an extraordinary story that has taken 12 years to come to fruition but isn’t solely about the past.
It took five years of investigation between 2012 and 2017 for me to accumulate sufficient evidence to convince my newspaper’s lawyers to let us publish. But then, despite that evidence, the story was ‘spiked’ (killed, prevented from being published) because of internal politics.
I’m no longer constrained by that and I’ll get into the details around it in the coming days. But to give you a general idea of where this story is heading: Great Britain went from absolutely nowhere to No1 in the world in both Grand Tour cycling (via Team Sky) and in Olympic cycling (via Team GB) between the turn of the Millennium and 2012.
The most obvious way you could explain this transformation was money: Lottery funding poured into numerous sports, not least track cycling, and transformed them. And in professional cycling, Team Sky were funded by the broadcaster Sky from 2010 to 2018. They pumped huge amounts of money into Team Sky in an attempt to become beloved by their consumers.
In the end, Sky walked away from cycling, not believing it was worth the continued investment. Team Sky had also become toxic, in terms of reputation, due to a string of controversies.
If money was a big factor that led to British cycling success, including Team Sky (and it was, via paying the biggest salaries to the best riders, and having the best equipment and sports science), then another way you might attribute that transformation was … drugs. As in, banned, performance-enhancing drugs, or at least a depth of knowledge and history of drug use within staff ranks.
By 2012 and Team Sky’s first Tour de France win, Team Sky was proclaiming itself to be the ‘cleanest’ team in the history of Grand Tour cycling but in reality a culture of doping was ingrained in many of its riders, coaches and support staff; just as the majority of pro teams were staffed by people steeped in a culture of doping.
The big difference with Team Sky is that they weren’t being honest about it.
David Brailsford, (later Sir Dave, and now Sir Dave of Manchester United), almost certainly under the instruction of senior Sky executives, had a big idea after the 2012 TdF victory: he should reassert that Team Sky was the cleanest team in cycling.
He insisted that every member of staff - riders, coaches, mechanics, everyone - should be interviewed, and asked to state they had zero experience or knowledge of doping in their careers.
Anyone who declared any “doping past” would be helped to move on with their careers, or sacked, in other words, albeit with great references and whatever assistance could be provided to get another job.
Anyone who signed a piece of paper saying they had zero “doping past” would be free to continue with Team Sky. Some employees with doping pasts - riders, coaches, support staff - declared their doping pasts and left; and more employees with doping pasts simply lied and said they had always been clean, and carried on in their jobs.
But let’s start with the apparently glorious summer of sport in 2012 for Great Britain, and Team GB, with Team Sky’s Bradley Wiggins winning the TDF and then ringing the bell at the London Games opening ceremony. He went on to win gold for Team GB in the London 2012 time trial, in a home Games in which Team GB won 65 medals, comprised of 29 golds, 18 silvers and 18 bronzes.
It would later transpire that London 2012 was perhaps the dirtiest Olympics ever (notwithstanding various Olympics when East Germany cleaned up due to state-sponsored doping), and that Team GB had done whatever they could to win, pushing ethical boundaries in the process.
It was in the wake of London 2012, and as we awaited the findings of a United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) investigation into Lance Armstrong, that I conducted an interview with Tyler Hamilton. He was a former team-mate of Armstrong at US Postal, and had just written a book (which became a multi award-winning book), ‘The Secret Race’, detailing the industrial level of doping within professional tour cycling.
I did the interview with Hamilton on Thursday 4 October 2012 and it was published on Sunday 7 October.
One intriguing part of the interview with Hamilton was not used in the article because it had possible legal implications and needed further checking.
Hamilton had won an Olympic gold medal in Athens in 2004 in the men’s time trial, at a time when he was using drugs, and he talked to me about handing back his gold medal years later.
He told me he had been surprised that the cyclists who originally finished in second, third and fourth place had willingly accepted upgrades to gold, silver and bronze respectively. They were, like Hamilton and most cyclists of that era, also drug users, and Hamilton knew this from first-hand experience.
He had known these three riders well: Viatcheslav Ekimov of Russia (who moved from silver to gold when Hamilton admitted to doping), Bobby Julich of the USA (bronze to silver) and Michael Rogers of Australia (fourth to bronze).
Having ridden with and against these cyclists for years, and in the case of Ekimov having been a team-mate at US Postal (with Lance Armstrong), Hamilton might reasonably be expected to know about any drug use by them. In fact he implicated Ekimov.
During police raids on team buses during the so-called “Festina affair” at the 1998 Tour de France, Hamilton said in his book that “teams were frantically flushing thousands of dollars worth of pharmaceuticals down the toilets of buses, RVs, and hotels.
“I remember Ekimov joking that that he was thinking about diving into the Postal team’s RV toilet and pulling it out.”
In his interview with me, Hamilton indicated all three had drug pasts. Of the trio’s decision to accept the Olympic upgrades in summer 2012, he said: “Ekimov obviously hasn’t looked in the mirror recently. Same with Bobby Julich. Same with Michael Rogers. Now they can live the lie - not me.”
Hamilton said their backgrounds were worth looking into. None of them had ever failed drugs tests or had public drug pasts. Ekimov was a triple Olympic gold medalist and is now a former manager of a Russian cycling team, Katusha.
The world governing body of cycling, the UCI, denied Katusha entry to 2013 World Tour due to multiple “ethical violations” related to doping, including the appointment of Ekimov.
At the time I interviewed Hamilton, Julich was a coach with Team Sky, and Michael Rogers was a Team Sky rider.
While the suggestion of these doping pasts could not be used in the article on 7 October 2012, it was worth exploring further. Team Sky was of particular interest given they had just won their first Tour de France.
The issue of drugs in cycling then exploded in spectacular fashion on Wednesday 10 October 2012 when USADA published the findings of a long investigation into US Postal and Lance Armstrong.
You can still access the hundreds of documents and videos that together offered definitive proof of a long-standing and industrial scale doping programme at US Postal. That cache of materials is here. It really is worth your time to go and look at it if you’ve not seen it before.
USADA’s CEO Travis Tygart said: “The evidence shows beyond any doubt that the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team ran the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen.
“The evidence of the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team-run scheme is overwhelming and is in excess of 1,000 pages, and includes sworn testimony from 26 people, including 15 riders with knowledge of the US Postal Service Team and its participants’ doping activities.
“The evidence also includes direct documentary evidence including financial payments, emails, scientific data and laboratory test results that further prove the use, possession and distribution of performance enhancing drugs by Lance Armstrong and confirm the disappointing truth about the deceptive activities of the USPS Team, a team that received tens of millions of American taxpayer dollars in funding.”
One of the British angles amid the mass of evidence was the revelation that Michael Barry, a Canadian rider who had just left Team Sky, had admitted to a previously unknown drugs past.
As I started digging into the histories of various Team Sky employees, it became clear that a number of past or contemporary staff in Autumn 2012 had doping pasts, and an in-depth knowledge of doping that they theoretically might still be using at Team Sky.
I was told that Geert Leinders, a Belgian doctor who worked with Team Sky in 2011 and 2012, had a past steeped in performance-enhancing drugs and had previously run a doping programme at the Dutch Rabobank team. Much later this all turned out to be true and Leinders ending up being banned for life in 2015.
I was curious about how Team Sky would react to the news that Michael Barry had been a doper, and armed with Hamilton’s tip, I wanted to know what they knew about the possible doping pasts of Bobby Julich and Michael Rogers, still employed by them.
Rogers was mentioned in the USADA files as having worked at various Tenerife camps with the notorious doping doctor Dr Michele Ferrari. All the other riders named in the USADA files who had been on those camps had subsequently been implicated in and/or banned for drug use, including Yaroslav Popovych, Andry Kashechkin, Alexandre Vinokourov, Paolo Savoldelli and Eddy Mazzoleni.
In the run-up to the weekend of 13-14 October 2012, I asked Team Sky various questions about Barry, Leinders, Julich and Rogers.
The supposedly cleanest team in global cycling was starting to look suspiciously dirty. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: “To have one member of staff with a doping history, Mr Brailsford, may be regarded as a misfortune. To have four or more looks like carelessness.”
On Friday 12 October, Team Sky claimed in a statement to me: “We have had no doubts about Michael being clean during his time at Team Sky. We are a clean team and we have shown that you can win clean.”
The guy had just admitted to being a doper and here was Team Sky, oblivious to this fact before USADA told them, stating unequivocally he was clean during his time with them.
They added: “Dr. Leinders worked with Team Sky on a freelance basis and his contract has now ended … We had no doubts about his work with us or his approach.
“Before employing him we also made checks, gathered references and he was interviewed by [psychiatrist] Dr. Steve Peters.”
Errrrm. Peters worked extensively with British Cycling and Team Sky, and as it transpired, he wasn’t effective at rooting out dopers, as Leinders’ life ban and various other incidents would show. We’ll come back to one other notorious episode involving Peters later in the series.
I also asked Team Sky about Julich and Rogers. Specifically I asked the following questions.
Could Michael Rogers and / or Team Sky please answer the following:
1: Has Michael Rogers ever taken performance-enhancing drugs?
2: Did Team Sky specifically ask him this question before hiring him?
3: Is Michael Rogers happy with the re-allocation of the 2004 Olympic medals?
And could Bobby Julich and / or Team Sky please answer the following:
1: Has Bobby Julich ever taken performance-enhancing drugs?
2: Did Team Sky specifically ask him this question before hiring him?
3: Is Bobby Julich happy with the re-allocation of the 2004 Olympic medals?
I did not receive replies to these questions.
I wrote a story for the MoS that ran on Sunday 14 October, a story now informed by multiple sources telling me about numerous people inside Team Sky lying about their doping pasts. I mentioned Michael Barry’s shock inclusion in the USADA files, and Michael Rogers being mentioned in those files, and I wrote about suspicions over Geert Leinders.
I also wrote: "A prominent insider with intimate knowledge of the doping era has also told The Mail on Sunday that a fourth person from Team Sky - a current senior employee - has opted to 'live a lie' in regards to his doping past.”
I did not mention his name, because I was still waiting to see if he would respond to my questions, but this was a reference to Bobby Julich.
Bobby Julich would subsequently, on Thursday 25 October, admit to a doping past and leave Team Sky. Subsequent to that, in late October 2012, two other senior Team Sky staff also departed. That was Sean Yates and Steven de Jongh, albeit without explicit reasons of previous drug use being cited. That meant five Team Sky employees were either implicated in USADA’s report or left Team Sky in the wake of it: Barry, Leinders, Julich, Yates and De Jongh.
Yet it was the reaction to the “living a lie” story that put rocket boosters under my wider investigation into cheats at Team Sky.
No fewer than three people, independent of each other but all long-standing insiders in pro cycling, contacted me to tell me they believed they knew the person I had referenced as “living a lie.”
I had meant Julich, but these three sources all came up with another name, the same name, who was another extremely senior figure in cycling and at Team Sky.
What follows is what these three people told me about the person in question, whose own career is detailed below.
They all told me I should look into the past of Shane Sutton, OBE, who was not only the head coach of Team Sky (and frequently cited as Bradley Wiggins’ mentor), but also the head coach of British cycling, and thus the overseer of the 2008 and 2012 British Olympic cycling success.
Team GB, and some of the country’s most famous sportsmen and sportswomen, won eight gold medals in cycling at the 2008 Olympics, plus four silvers and two bronzes. At London 2012, British cyclists won another eight golds, two silvers and two bronzes. And the man overseeing this, as well as Team Sky, apparently had a career steeped in drugs.
Sutton is a straight-talking, no-nonsense Australian. Now 67, he had a long career as a track and road cyclist between 1982 and 1993. He competed in the 1987 Tour de France and in the late 1980s and early 1990s his teams included PMS-Dawes, PMS-Falcon and Banana-Falcon. He started coaching at Welsh Cycling, taking that team to the Commonwealth Games in 2002 before moving to British Cycling (under a cloud) and later simultaneously working for Team Sky.
He is held in high regard by many cyclists who he helped to make into winners; and reviled by lots of others who have been bruised by their encounters with him across many years. He would eventually resign from British Cycling in 2016, after allegations of discrimination were made against him.
Back to drugs, I wondered whether Team Sky knew about allegations involving Sutton. Did they know but not care? What about British Cycling, or indeed the British Olympic Association? I asked the questions, of course. And got nothing back.
This was clearly a story worth pursuing.
One email in the days after the “living a lie” story was from a Welsh former cyclist who had known Sutton competitively. He suggested I speak to another former team-mate of Sutton’s, Darryl Webster, from when Sutton was a rider in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
This contact told me that Webster would talk about his first-hand experience of Shane Sutton using performance-enhancing drugs. A colleague went to Webster’s house in Wales and Webster described specific occasions when he alleged Sutton took drugs.
I also had a message via my office to call a former soigneur, who had left his number and said he wanted to talk to me to share information about a Team Sky employee.
When I spoke to him, he also said he had first-hand experience of Shane Sutton using performance-enhancing drugs, in 1989 and 1990. He said he had also heard suggestions Sutton had encouraged drug use later on, in the early part of his coaching career.
A third former colleague of Sutton, also from another separate and earlier part of his riding career, a mechanic at the time when Sutton was a Tour de France rider in 1987 with ANC-Halfords, alleged that Sutton had withdrawn from the 1987 Tour after “a bad injection”.
From a ‘living a lie’ story that had nothing at all to do with Shane Sutton, there were now multiple suggestions from apparently independent people, implicating Sutton in drug use as a rider in the 1980s and early 1990s. And also implicating other British Cycling employees in 2012, who had also been team-mates of Sutton in the past.
I started to contact as many people as possible who had worked with Sutton as team-mates or staff when he was a rider, specifically when he was a rider from 1987 to 1990, the years that three separate allegations of drug-taking had been made.
During this series, I will detail what I found, and how Shane Sutton, tipped off by a former colleague, rang me to ask what I wanted to know.
When I showed my editor a transcript of that first conversation with Sutton, he said: “What a fucking car crash.”
In that first conversation with Sutton, he compared himself to Jimmy Savile, who had died in October 2011 and was, in 2012, the subject of mounting speculation that he had been a predatory sex offender.
Sutton suggested that, if he had ever been involved with drugs, it would surely already have come out. “It’s a bit like the Jimmy Savile thing,” he told me. “Why when Jimmy Savile was alive - why didn’t these people [his accusers] come out?”
That’s far from all that Sutton said, as you’ll discover later this week.
Tomorrow I will provide you, in great detail, with the initial allegations against Sutton, and Sutton’s somewhat unconvincing response to them.
But this series is not just about Sutton; it’s about a cabal of riders who knew each other and rode together in the 1980s and 1990s, with quite a few of them taking drugs together, and then ascending together to effectively run British Cycling and Team Sky through the Noughties and beyond.
It’s about cycling institutions and teams that were told about this and did nothing, opting for medals and glory and not scrutiny of how it was achieved.
It’s about politicians turning a blind eye because it suited them to try to take down sexier targets than a coach with a dodgy past. And about British Cycling’s leading executives who met with me over several years and wanted to know what I’d found, and then either did nothing or, albeit slowly, started to root out some of those implicated. Not that they ever acknowledged that was what they were doing.
It’s also about suspicious drug test results in cliques of riders who became global stars, and about how UKAD (the UK’s doping watchdog, supposedly) effectively gave British Cycling and Team Sky a free pass back in 2012, and before 2012, and for a while afterwards.
I’ve written parts of the things above before, but not with all the context you’ll get this time.
And you’ll also discover, with documentary and audio evidence, facts from Dr Richard Freeman’s medical tribunal that you’ve never heard about before, because they were kept secret from the public at the time. But that’s a later part of this story.
This series will be comprehensive, and detailed, with lots of supporting evidence. It will, I hope, be the kind of journalism that underpinned the founding of Sporting Intelligence in the first place, back in 2010.
Original thinking. Informed comment. No froth. No spin.
I believe that it’s the right of the reader to say ‘Prove it’. So I’ll endeavour to do that.
And thanks for supporting that work.

From sportingintelligence832@substack.com
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[niko_cee]

Bit of a tease.

I don't really doubt that, to some extent, everyone is 'at it' but at the same time, I tend to think the success of the Sky period, and the British Cycling period, was probably down to personnel on the track/road, rather than personnel off the track/road, to a large extent. Hence why it's all gone to shit in recent years.