With Katusha Kristoff showed some decent improvement from year to year which probably is on the highest level at the moment. Can`t think he can improve another time next year. Actually there is not much to improve in terms of sprinting and cobbles.
Only thing pretty suspicious is the big difference between BMC results and Katusha results.
That said, BMC was not really the best team back then to see the potential of their riders and use them to their best.
Katusha surely not the least suspicious team around. So obviously a specific bit of suspicion is obvious in this case even though so far I haven`t seen inhuman things by him.
Paul23 wrote:
Its not important if Kristoff is on some stuff, because they all are, imo.
headdesk.gif
The effects of drugs are not consistent across all human beings. Some will derive more benefit from them than others. Just look at EPO in the late 90s/early 00s. It was impossible to make a career if you haematocrit was naturally above 45% because there was almost no benefit to taking EPO, whereas a guy who was naturally below the 40% mark would be able to overtake you despite the fact that you did the same amount of training and had the same level of talent. If you had a naturally low haematocrit you could derive more benefit and thus cycling was not about who was the best at riding but who had the best physiology for doping.
Paul23 wrote:
The main problem is, that the media cares. Doping > Media reporting way too much about it > sponsors stop sponsoring cycling > cycling dies.
So we should just sit down and shut up while people make a mockery of the sport we love? What you seem to be forgetting is that if riders stop doping then the port doesn't die The media is not the problem THE DOPERS ARE THE PROBLEM. It isn't hard. So how do you stop people doping? You catch them. How do you ensure that new riders won't dope? You make it well known that if they dope, you will catch them. The media who are willing to talk about this stuff are on our side.
Ok, lets go through this...
lets start with something funny...hm...how about: headdesk.gif
yeah, that should do it. Now you can take my post totally not serious
The media is not on our side. They simply want to make good selling stories. A few days ago, i came through a talkshow in german TV, where the statement was: "Doping in Football? Did they take this over from cycling? We should stop cycling. It is boring to watch and everyone dopes!"
The media is only after profit. Not more.
Now to the thing with your Biology lesson. I know that doping won't make you a TdF winner from a loser. But I just think, when so much money is involved, they stretch the rules( https://t2.gstatic...cHfUmdtQzb )and at some point they will sectrely break the rules. And do you really think, that there is just a bit doping, with Vino, Lefefre and more still involved? I know that the triders, riding in the WT are not there, because they dope, but because of their skill. But, tbh, if f.e. 50 riders in the whole WT dope(i think there are much more) and if they would beat you most of the time and your career would depend on beating those guys, wouldn't you take stuff, to improve, too? Because when you are up there, in professional cycling, you can't simply rely on your talent anymore.
btw: Do you really thing, that they still dope with EPO? I think that there are more effective and more secret ways to improve performance. The technology should be way further now.
Also, don't get me wrong. I don't think doping is good and it should be allowed. But I simply think, that it's ignorrant to simply think there are a few dopers and thats it. At least I can watch cycling without having to think: "Hm, he beat Tony Martin in a TT...is he doped?" I can simply enjoy cycling without the negativity. Also I think, that doping should be punished with a live-long ban. Or, like in germany in a few months, should be a crime.
Just going to lob a couple of excerpts from the CIRC report into the discussion:
Today the situation in cycling is likely still changing, and, certainly, it has become more opaque as riders have now been forced to dope “underground”. A common response to the Commission, when asked about teams, was that probably 3 or 4 were clean, 3 or 4 were doping, and the rest were a “don’t know”. A number of top riders, and others in the sport, discussed other rider’s top performances, or changes in appearance due to dramatic weight loss, and were unable to explain how they were achieved. One respected cycling professional felt that even today, 90% of the peloton was doping, although he thought that there was little orchestrated team doping in the manner that teams had previously employed. Another put it at around 20%. Many people simply stated they “didn’t know” who was clean and who was not. A lot of these discrepancies may be caused by the definition of doping being used by individuals
One of the most significant changes in doping programmes is that, at the UCI WorldTour level, they are no longer organised systematically by teams. Programmes today are often individually organised, clandestine programmes. However, the fact that cycling teams are not organising the programmes does not mean that they are always entirely separate or that riders do not have sophisticated “teams” around them, comprising predominantly people outside the cycling team. In these new “teams”, which are often initiated through introductions and facilitated by intermediaries, riders are well-protected and wellfunded. The extent of the knowledge within the team may be highly limited, with managers perhaps adopting a “don’t ask, don’t tell” mantra. The largely non-orchestrated nature of doping today was echoed by a number of knowledgeable and reliable people. They were of the view that there is an elite who are still doping in a sophisticated way today.
The CIRC report may have been rather disappointing but it nevertheless threw up some interesting points. Chief amongst those is the fact that most of the interviewees believed that organised team doping was a thing of the past, or at least limited to a small number of teams (although this fails to explain the continued prevalence of dodgy doctors still hanging around at various teams). Therefore (a comment that is aimed more at future doping discussions than this particular one, although it still applies here) we should perhaps be more careful about bandying around the old 'Team X dopes' phrase, and focus our scrutiny more on individuals, although the ends are perhaps the same as before, it is merely the means that are changing: large numbers of riders on many teams are probably doping through a 'turning the blind eye' scheme rather than organised US Postal stuff.
Of course the CIRC report could be completely wrong and all WT teams are running a full-on singing and dancing mass EPO-injecting bonanza with all the trappings, but it seems fairly trustworthy information, if a little on the conservative side.
Paul23 wrote:
The main problem is, that the media cares. Doping > Media reporting way too much about it > sponsors stop sponsoring cycling > cycling dies.
No; the main problem with the media is that they make a huge fuss whenever a doping story breaks, but the majority completely fail to understand that doping is not limited to those caught, and is a widespread problem: the positives are just the tip of the iceberg. For every Kimmage there are 100 [post-Armstrong] Walshes who are happy to jump on the 'tra-la-la everything's fine','new era of clean riders' etc bandwagons, failing to realise the extent of the problem.
Keeperodd wrote:
I guess Norwegians are to positive when it comes to sport then. I always say people are innocent until they are taken. (Even though i had strong suspicions towards Lance but that was a different time than now.) Also i dont really get this thing you got against us in skiing. I thought it was only us who knew about it If you look into the money we put in it and the training we do its not that surprising. + as i said, its our national sport. (Feel its wrong to use we and training in the same sentence. )
I don't have anything against skiing, I rather enjoy watching the sport and since I have Norwegian relations I feel rather obliged to support Norway, but when presented with results like this year where for example the Norwegian ladies 1-2-3'd ALL 7 stages of the Tour de Ski (a sort of TdF equivalent, for those that don't follow) one has to raise an eyebrow as to whether this is a clear indication that the Norwegian anti-doping rules are 'hard', as proposed by a previous poster.
The media is not on our side. They simply want to make good selling stories. A few days ago, i came through a talkshow in german TV, where the statement was: "Doping in Football? Did they take this over from cycling? We should stop cycling. It is boring to watch and everyone dopes!"
The media is only after profit. Not more.
Sure but I am specifically referring to the cycling media which is really what reports on all but the biggest doping cases anyway.
And do you really think, that there is just a bit doping, with Vino, Lefefre and more still involved? I know that the triders, riding in the WT are not there, because they dope, but because of their skill. But, tbh, if f.e. 50 riders in the whole WT dope(i think there are much more) and if they would beat you most of the time and your career would depend on beating those guys, wouldn't you take stuff, to improve, too? Because when you are up there, in professional cycling, you can't simply rely on your talent anymore.
I think easily a majority of riders are doping so keep that in mind before you think I'm naive or anything. By the same token it is clear that you can in fact make a more than good career being clean these days. Marco Pinotti is a perfect example of that and there are numerous others who could be shown (Fedrigo is often given as another example). So there isn't the same pressure to dope as there was in the late 90s up until the turn of this decade. Personally if the choice was put to me to dope to put myself in the top 1% of sportspeople or to not dope but have a mediocre career I don't think I would dope. That isn't the sort of person I am. That is probably also why I'm not even in a position to be making that choice though.
Either way it doesn't make it the ethical choice.
btw: Do you really thing, that they still dope with EPO? I think that there are more effective and more secret ways to improve performance. The technology should be way further now.
It was just an example, but there are rumours of a next-generation EPO going around.
Also, don't get me wrong. I don't think doping is good and it should be allowed. But I simply think, that it's ignorrant to simply think there are a few dopers and thats it. At least I can watch cycling without having to think: "Hm, he beat Tony Martin in a TT...is he doped?" I can simply enjoy cycling without the negativity. Also I think, that doping should be punished with a live-long ban. Or, like in germany in a few months, should be a crime.
It is a crime in a lot of countries now. I know you aren't saying that it should be allowed or encouraged, but my point is that the attitude of "don't talk about this because it will destroy the sport" is the same attitude that we had for decades and which have put the sport in the position it is where it is hard to convince sponsors to get on board. We should be talking about these things and making a real effort to get rid of dopers so that in the long run it will be less drug abuse in the sport. Not only that but it will make it increasingly possible to have a career in which riders don't have to make the tough choice of whether to dope or not.
Stromeon wrote:
quote]Paul23 wrote:
The main problem is, that the media cares. Doping > Media reporting way too much about it > sponsors stop sponsoring cycling > cycling dies.
No; the main problem with the media is that they make a huge fuss whenever a doping story breaks, but the majority completely fail to understand that doping is not limited to those caught, and is a widespread problem: the positives are just the tip of the iceberg. For every Kimmage there are 100 [post-Armstrong] Walshes who are happy to jump on the 'tra-la-la everything's fine','new era of clean riders' etc bandwagons, failing to realise the extent of the problem.[/quote]
You apparently haven't encountered German journalists yet.
![imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg](https://imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg)
