Is it a general belief around the traps that Sky are cheating in some way?
Hells yeah.
Yeah. When all of Sky’s results from the last few years get expunged from the records I won’t really be shocked at all.
That said, I reckon it’s similar to the Lance era where “everyone* was doing it”, just that Sky is doing it better than most.
*not “everyone” obvs, but that’s what the Lance apologists all say.
FWIW, I don’t really care. Sport is just entertainment to sell papers/ad space/web clicks. This is all part of it.
Very interesting… then what about the British olympic cycling team?
They have more issues with sexism than drugs.
My expectation with Sky is they’ll have a similar problem to Essendon AFL club. I.e. peptides. Something that’s on the verge of being “illegal” at the time, but later on is determined to actually be illegal.
Probably dirty. As Geoff said below, all this marginal gains stuff is just tinkering around the edges of what’s legal. Throw in the whole Olympic thing and I would be shocked if everyone on every national team (cycling or otherwise) was clean.
pro cycling is like a bruce willis action movie. one must learn to suspend their disbelief in order to fully enjoy it.
and everyone loves die hard.
Totes.
All I know is, that it would be fucking hard to ride the way they do in any of the races out there. Doped or not.
I’ve long not cared if they are doping these days.
SKY have a cult following that know nothing about cycling, who think the team invented skin suits. Similar to the cult of Lance, though perhaps less strong.
I am sure they are sailing close to the wind with a lot of semi-legal stuff, TUE exemptions, but the fact remains Froome was only weeks from being kicked out of sky in 2011 (watch him get out climbed by Sagan in 2011 tour of cali), then suddenly a few weeks later he kicks ass in the Vuelta, next year he is Wiggins right hand man, etc, etc. The Alpe D’Huez stage in 2013 is a pretty damning/interesting moment in pro cycling if you have concerns re. motors.
The problem with anything that comes out of Vaughters mouth is that he is a shit heel in the extreme.
Whether its turning gems into spuds or competing a trump secretary level of language gymnastics. I’ve also heard a few pretty solid stories about how painful it is to be a sponsor of his team.
The do have a really good PR/media game though and that seems to be why they stay alive… cause its not results.