He looked agitated to me. I'm not sure it's a sign of guilt but he constantly moved and looked away from the camera. Armstrong proved to be very good at this, so I think its very hard to say he's lying.
He looked agitated to me. I'm not sure it's a sign of guilt but he constantly moved and looked away from the camera. Armstrong proved to be very good at this, so I think its very hard to say he's lying.
This is a good point which needs proper consideration before everybody comes down like a ton of bricks on the man. My first question is - has he got asthma or not? I don't know - but if the answer is yes, I would have thought it was reasonable to take strong asthma medication before a very demanding part of the tour! I can even see that within this sport and all the suspicion, how you might not want to make a song and dance of doing so.
I never used to have it, yet a few months after I started running I came down with it because of the mixture between my lungs having to work harder and the cold air
This is a good point which needs proper consideration before everybody comes down like a ton of bricks on the man. My first question is - has he got asthma or not? I don't know - but if the answer is yes, I would have thought it was reasonable to take strong asthma medication before a very demanding part of the tour! I can even see that within this sport and all the suspicion, how you might not want to make a song and dance of doing so.
If you read up all the info surrounding Team Sky and their use of TUEs then you would certainly doubt Wiggins and Sky. This is not some innocent little oversight where nobody knew what they were doing.
I'd love to think Wiggins and Team Sky were clean but the more I see and read it seems very unlikely. Cycling has been riddled with doping since the year dot.
It's fifty-one years since Tommie Simpson died from doping on the Tour - a tragic waste of life. Wiggins unveiled a memorial to him last year.
My dad used to tell me about Simpson when I was a kid. I am not saying they were clean or not, but I think it needs to be proven either way. At this minute they are being accused of being within the rules, but bending them are they not? They were either acting within the rules or not in terms of people's right to hang draw and quarter Wiggins. And I have never had a great affinity for the bloke when I say that.
Knew he was a wrongun by his irreverent attitude to the national anthem when he received his medals.
And his haircut.
Those are just the sort of qualities I want to see in a sportsman. I liked the Wiggo 'persona'. But that's all it is a persona. Rarely do we really know what our sporting heroes are really like. Last week Aizlewood, this week Wiggins, next week someone else. It doesn't pay to be a fan of a sports Personality ', does it?
It's pointless even arguing about it. Comparing TUEs with the days of EPO, Roids, Testosterone, HGH, Motoman and Fuentes is ridiculous - but people don't understand (or want to understand) the difference between them. Sky have fucked up completely in trying to portray a whiter than white image whilst doing exactly the same thing as every other cycling team is doing behind the scenes - going right up to the line without crossing it.
If anybody is naive enough to think that this isn't going on in every top level sport then more fool them. If anything, cycling is likely to be CLEANER than other sports - simply because the Armstrong bullshit was a watershed moment. If anyone doubts this, look at the testing regime for cyclists compared to footballers (for instance). The average Premier league footballer can be expected to be tested three times over four years (far less further down the tree). The average pro cyclist will be tested FIFTEEN times PER YEAR.
There is nothing new in the DCMS report. At all. Its exactly the same hearsay, innuendo and half facts as were printed months ago. It's just another opportunity to drag it up again, for the amusement of the chattering classes. But that shouldn't be surprising - the whole thing has been orchestrated by the Daily Mail from start to finish.
Best thing about this is that Sky will now pull out, and cycling can go back to being what it always was - a niche sport enjoyed by people who understand it, rather than a nouveau-pop one wittered on about by people who will quickly move on to something else (snowboarding or something)
And - before anybody accuses me of being a fanboi - I despise Sky and everything they do to strangle the life out of the sport.
I often here this from cyclists looking to defend their sport (or at least compare the inherent in cycling issues with football).
My argument would be that possibly of all major sports, football is mainly about decision making. There are drugs you can take that will make you run faster, or for longer, but there isn't much that will improve your decision making - Dennis Rhomedhal would have been Pele if there was!
Yes, but in football drugs can make you recover from injuries faster. If these drugs represent a risk, you have to have zero tolerance or the long term health of players would be compromised!
The problem you got is that for years and years Lance Armstrong lied about his drug taking so there aren't too many people who are willing to accept the word of a top cyclist.
That said, it appears that a large part of the DMCS select committee's findings are based on an anonymous source. It would appear that at this time, no real evidence has been produced and they have admitted themselves that in regard to the 'package' they have no idea what was in it, yet go on to say that Team Sky's explanation is implausible and they have no evidence to back it up. Seems a touch hypocritical to me.
If the DCMS select committee have enough evidence to prove that there has been a calculated program within Team Sky to deliberately take advantage of the grey areas around the drug regulations, they should publish it all, and their anonymous source needs to man up and point the finger personally. Otherwise this is just another game of he said she said.
It's worse than that.
The DCMS have said in essence "we have no proof but cos you can't categorically prove a negative we've made up our minds anyway and we can spout whatever ill-informed crap we like from a position of total impunity" Whatever your opinion of Brailsford as an individual the sight of him being hectored by the know nothing MP at the 'enquiry' shamelessly playing to the camera like some low-rent Jeremy Kyle (!) was nauseating and farcical. As for the anonymous source: step up or you're just another stinking coward sniping from the shadows, this ain't putin's russia you're not going to get a polonium sandwich for telling the truth. Shane Sutton's opinion is worthless too, he's a proven bully and a gobshite with an axe to grind, since he quite rightly was hung out to dry for being a prick. There seems little doubt that Sky/British Cycling were careless with procedures and record keeping but where is the smoking gun? In stark contrast to their position on Armstrong; we know for damn sure UCI didn't want a British rider and team winning Le Tour, if they had the evidence to bring down Brailsford et al they'd have done it. This whole farago was initially stirred up by sinister hackers and their claims as to the "source" of their exposé.
The problem you got is that for years and years Lance Armstrong lied about his drug taking so there aren't too many people who are willing to accept the word of a top cyclist.
That said, it appears that a large part of the DMCS select committee's findings are based on an anonymous source. It would appear that at this time, no real evidence has been produced and they have admitted themselves that in regard to the 'package' they have no idea what was in it, yet go on to say that Team Sky's explanation is implausible and they have no evidence to back it up. Seems a touch hypocritical to me.
If the DCMS select committee have enough evidence to prove that there has been a calculated program within Team Sky to deliberately take advantage of the grey areas around the drug regulations, they should publish it all, and their anonymous source needs to man up and point the finger personally. Otherwise this is just another game of he said she said.
It's worse than that.
The DCMS have said in essence "we have no proof but cos you can't categorically prove a negative we've made up our minds anyway and we can spout whatever ill-informed crap we like from a position of total impunity" Whatever your opinion of Brailsford as an individual the sight of him being hectored by the know nothing MP at the 'enquiry' shamelessly playing to the camera like some low-rent Jeremy Kyle (!) was nauseating and farcical. As for the anonymous source: step up or you're just another stinking coward sniping from the shadows, this ain't putin's russia you're not going to get a polonium sandwich for telling the truth. Shane Sutton's opinion is worthless too, he's a proven bully and a gobshite with an axe to grind, since he quite rightly was hung out to dry for being a prick. There seems little doubt that Sky/British Cycling were careless with procedures and record keeping but where is the smoking gun. This whole farago was initially stirred up by sinister hackers.
British athletes don't cheat - we're above all that.
Most sporting authorities don't regulate their sport properly because they don't want the bad PR.
Will we ever get the full story - who knows? We need a proper legal process. . SKY and Wiggins are not coming across as being particularly credible - I think their previous attempts to take the moral high ground has won them few friends.
Doctors that don’t keep records when the rules explicitly state that they should be kept. Hmmm.
Whatever was in that Jiffy bag it wasn’t fucking pedals. You don’t fly someone at expense to do that. If it was the drug as suggested by Team Sky why the hell didn’t they source it locally and why was there not a record of it being prescribed.
Sorry but it smells to high heaven. Perhaps all Team Sky are guilty of is being stupid but as the old adage says. If it walks like a duck etc etc.
Don't know enough to make a case either way but it does appear that Sky and Bradley Wiggins stretched what was permissible to the very limit, but this will never go away I am afraid for either party. What has never been explained is why a courier was sent by plane with Medication that supposedly could be bought at any local pharmacy, that is odd and even odder Bradley Wiggins claims he had no idea what it was.
Like a lot of sports, abuse of performance enhancing drugs is rife in cycling, they are not alone and it makes me think if I am honest that the whole thing is a waste of time.
I'd be very careful about assessing someone's guilt or otherwise based on body language.
Find the whole saga just very sad.
Read up about the whole use of the TUE in this case - hard not to draw conclusions.
Would anyone on here feel confident backing Bradley as clean?
I wouldn't be confident that any of the top cyclists are clean.
But innocent until proven guilty - unless and until WADA or any other body have proof rather than supposition or hearsay there is little choice other than to accept his word.
He may be technically and officially innocent, but morally?
Morality? Beg your pardon vicar?
It's professional sport. It's completely made up for the sake of doing it. What have your or my morals got to do with it at all? The morals of the sport are the rules within which those competitions are configured. If the rules aren't broken there's no case to answer. If they hadn't written a rule cos they hadn't considered a factor, there's still no case to answer. Sitting now in judgement on those rules and tutt-tutting is effete vanity.
Until relatively recently professional boxing was only concerned with stimulants and diuretics, muscle building chemicals like anabolic steroids weren't prohibited. This may appear to have been out of step with many other sports but it is for each regime to regulate as it deems appropriate. To this day pro-boxing's attitude to steroids is equivocal.
This one's a bit of a stretch but for the purposes of an example closer to home: When an opposition defender is wrongly adjudged to have tripped Tarique Fosu in the box, in Charlton's final league fixture, the resulting penalty is scored, earning Charlton the point(s) required to finish 6th rather than 7th; will you denounce Charlton's participation in the playoffs as immoral?
Have you maintained a campaign of opprobrium on Michael Owen for his moral turpitude in bouncing off Pochettino in 2002 to "earn" that penalty?
But if they stretched the rules to the very limit - some could argue they were being professional. They have to stretch them beyond the limit surely before we can really go after them.
Don't know enough to make a case either way but it does appear that Sky and Bradley Wiggins stretched what was permissible to the very limit, but this will never go away I am afraid for either party. What has never been explained is why a courier was sent by plane with Medication that supposedly could be bought at any local pharmacy, that is odd and even odder Bradley Wiggins claims he had no idea what it was.
Like a lot of sports, abuse of performance enhancing drugs is rife in cycling, they are not alone and it makes me think if I am honest that the whole thing is a waste of time.
There is an argument to give up on the testing and just see who can use drugs most effectively. The Russians are ahead of the game and don't pretend re the testing....
I'd be very careful about assessing someone's guilt or otherwise based on body language.
Find the whole saga just very sad.
Read up about the whole use of the TUE in this case - hard not to draw conclusions.
Would anyone on here feel confident backing Bradley as clean?
I wouldn't be confident that any of the top cyclists are clean.
But innocent until proven guilty - unless and until WADA or any other body have proof rather than supposition or hearsay there is little choice other than to accept his word.
He may be technically and officially innocent, but morally?
Morality? Beg your pardon vicar?
It's professional sport. It's completely made up for the sake of doing it. What have your or my morals got to do with it at all? The morals of the sport are the rules within which those competitions are configured. If the rules aren't broken there's no case to answer. If they hadn't written a rule cos they hadn't considered a factor, there's still no case to answer. Sitting now in judgement on those rules and tutt-tutting is effete vanity.
Until relatively recently professional boxing was only concerned with stimulants and diuretics, muscle building chemicals like anabolic steroids weren't prohibited. This may appear to have been out of step with many other sports but it is for each regime to regulate as it deems appropriate. To this day pro-boxing's attitude to steroids is equivocal.
This one's a bit of a stretch but for the purposes of an example closer to home: When an opposition defender is wrongly adjudged to have tripped Tarique Fosu in the box, in Charlton's final league fixture, the resulting penalty is scored, earning Charlton the point(s) required to finish 6th rather than 7th; will you denounce Charlton's participation in the playoffs as immoral?
Have you maintained a campaign of opprobrium on Michael Owen for his moral turpitude in bouncing off Pochettino in 2002 to "earn" that penalty?
Spot on. Let them all just fucking take whatever substance they want and cut out the crap about morals. It’s only dressed up blokes on a bike after all.
Doctors that don’t keep records when the rules explicitly state that they should be kept. Hmmm.
Whatever was in that Jiffy bag it wasn’t fucking pedals. You don’t fly someone at expense to do that. If it was the drug as suggested by Team Sky why the hell didn’t they source it locally and why was there not a record of it being prescribed.
Sorry but it smells to high heaven. Perhaps all Team Sky are guilty of is being stupid but as the old adage says. If it walks like a duck etc etc.
I do believe records were kept by a doctor but apparently they were held on a computer, which surprisingly got stolen in Greece or Turkey.
Doctors that don’t keep records when the rules explicitly state that they should be kept. Hmmm.
Whatever was in that Jiffy bag it wasn’t fucking pedals. You don’t fly someone at expense to do that. If it was the drug as suggested by Team Sky why the hell didn’t they source it locally and why was there not a record of it being prescribed.
Sorry but it smells to high heaven. Perhaps all Team Sky are guilty of is being stupid but as the old adage says. If it walks like a duck etc etc.
I do believe records were kept by a doctor but apparently they were held on a computer, which surprisingly got stolen in Greece or Turkey.
As me old mate @LenGlover would say: Posted without reading - They're all at it! Cyclists, athletes, rowers, swimmers etc. Any sport where endurance rather than skill gets you through is totally and utterly ridden with illegal (to their sport) substances.
Much like @Leroy Ambrose I’m amazed at all the handwringing over TUEs for a drug that has no performance enhancing effect unless you have asthma or allergies.
Millar says it was used for weight loss, but I can’t see any evidence that this is an effect or side effect of the drug. I do se an expert who says Millars weight loss would be down to the other drugs he was taking.
There are lots of side effects listed for any drugs. If Wiggins has Asthma and he was embarking on a difficult stage, surely there is a medical argument for taking the drug. The problem is the secrecy behind it all, but when you are being attacked you might not want to give your attackers anything to beat you with. I'm waiting for the evidence a line was crossed, then I will join the Wiggins beaters. If the line is not in the right place, it is the fault of the authorities! Not those who don't cross it, no matter how close they get to it!
Doctors that don’t keep records when the rules explicitly state that they should be kept. Hmmm.
Whatever was in that Jiffy bag it wasn’t fucking pedals. You don’t fly someone at expense to do that. If it was the drug as suggested by Team Sky why the hell didn’t they source it locally and why was there not a record of it being prescribed.
Sorry but it smells to high heaven. Perhaps all Team Sky are guilty of is being stupid but as the old adage says. If it walks like a duck etc etc.
I do believe records were kept by a doctor but apparently they were held on a computer, which surprisingly got stolen in Greece or Turkey.
Comments
Armstrong proved to be very good at this, so I think its very hard to say he's lying.
"The Chase" wouldn't be the same without him.
I never used to have it, yet a few months after I started running I came down with it because of the mixture between my lungs having to work harder and the cold air
I'd love to think Wiggins and Team Sky were clean but the more I see and read it seems very unlikely. Cycling has been riddled with doping since the year dot.
It's fifty-one years since Tommie Simpson died from doping on the Tour - a tragic waste of life. Wiggins unveiled a memorial to him last year.
My argument would be that possibly of all major sports, football is mainly about decision making. There are drugs you can take that will make you run faster, or for longer, but there isn't much that will improve your decision making - Dennis Rhomedhal would have been Pele if there was!
asthma remedies"The DCMS have said in essence "we have no proof but cos you can't categorically prove a negative we've made up our minds anyway and we can spout whatever ill-informed crap we like from a position of total impunity"
Whatever your opinion of Brailsford as an individual the sight of him being hectored by the know nothing MP at the 'enquiry' shamelessly playing to the camera like some low-rent Jeremy Kyle (!) was nauseating and farcical.
As for the anonymous source: step up or you're just another stinking coward sniping from the shadows, this ain't putin's russia you're not going to get a polonium sandwich for telling the truth.
Shane Sutton's opinion is worthless too, he's a proven bully and a gobshite with an axe to grind, since he quite rightly was hung out to dry for being a prick.
There seems little doubt that Sky/British Cycling were careless with procedures and record keeping but where is the smoking gun?
In stark contrast to their position on Armstrong; we know for damn sure UCI didn't want a British rider and team winning Le Tour, if they had the evidence to bring down Brailsford et al they'd have done it.
This whole farago was initially stirred up by sinister hackers and their claims as to the "source" of their exposé.
Most sporting authorities don't regulate their sport properly because they don't want the bad PR.
Will we ever get the full story - who knows? We need a proper legal process.
.
SKY and Wiggins are not coming across as being particularly credible - I think their previous attempts to take the moral high ground has won them few friends.
Whatever was in that Jiffy bag it wasn’t fucking pedals. You don’t fly someone at expense to do that. If it was the drug as suggested by Team Sky why the hell didn’t they source it locally and why was there not a record of it being prescribed.
Sorry but it smells to high heaven. Perhaps all Team Sky are guilty of is being stupid but as the old adage says. If it walks like a duck etc etc.
Like a lot of sports, abuse of performance enhancing drugs is rife in cycling, they are not alone and it makes me think if I am honest that the whole thing is a waste of time.
It's professional sport. It's completely made up for the sake of doing it. What have your or my morals got to do with it at all?
The morals of the sport are the rules within which those competitions are configured. If the rules aren't broken there's no case to answer. If they hadn't written a rule cos they hadn't considered a factor, there's still no case to answer. Sitting now in judgement on those rules and tutt-tutting is effete vanity.
Until relatively recently professional boxing was only concerned with stimulants and diuretics, muscle building chemicals like anabolic steroids weren't prohibited. This may appear to have been out of step with many other sports but it is for each regime to regulate as it deems appropriate. To this day pro-boxing's attitude to steroids is equivocal.
This one's a bit of a stretch but for the purposes of an example closer to home: When an opposition defender is wrongly adjudged to have tripped Tarique Fosu in the box, in Charlton's final league fixture, the resulting penalty is scored, earning Charlton the point(s) required to finish 6th rather than 7th; will you denounce Charlton's participation in the playoffs as immoral?
Have you maintained a campaign of opprobrium on Michael Owen for his moral turpitude in bouncing off Pochettino in 2002 to "earn" that penalty?
Millar says it was used for weight loss, but I can’t see any evidence that this is an effect or side effect of the drug. I do se an expert who says Millars weight loss would be down to the other drugs he was taking.
There's no way of stopping it, so you end up in situations like this where the doping drug is 'allowed'.