Did you read the article balbec? It seemed honest enough and it looks like he (Walsh) has been given complete access, He can pretty much knock on anyoneâs door at any time of the day or night and the team doctor has been very open with him.
I can see where Kimmage is coming from and the fact that Brailsford, alledgedly, aimed to win a completely clean tour by 2014 suggests that they were at a different stage of their development when the offer was withdrawn from him. What I got from his, rather cryptic, tweets, was that they may well be clean now but it says nothing for what went on in the previous 3/4 years.
Iâm in the middle of Tyler Hamiltonâs book at the minute and thereâs a bit with an Italian doctor (I think) who feels that most cyclists doped a lot more than they had to and he empathised being as skinny as possible, training as much as possible and getting hemotacrit levels as high as possible. If a way of naturally and legally boosting hematocrit levels was perfected then it could lead to the improvements seen at Team Sky. Iâm not fan of Brailsford but given the money that theyâre ploughing in to the team itâs not inconceivable that they now has a better balance on this whereas less than three years ago they were still up to questionable behaviour.
The problem with EPO is that it made everyone think he was a champion. Cunts that couldnât get over a railway bridge winning mountain stages. The likes of Sky will give the journos a bit of access and feed their egos. They wonât get close to seeing what really goes on. Canât see how Sky are cleaner now. They won all around them last year, you would probably argue the opposite re cleanliness. And maybe their scientific approach includes some science that is dodgy and a couple of years ahead of the rest.
Everyone interested in this should read âSpeed Testâ by Charlie Francis, Ben Johnsons coach. Shows how far back sport has been corrupt and how accepted amongst the top athletes it really is.
If you just want to read a great sports book, " The Rider" by Tim krabbe is outstanding. The ultimate polymath, the author is a chess grandmaster, has written several famous Hollywood screenplays, took up cycling in his mid twenties and reached semi pro level at the age of 29 , which is absolutely remarkable. The book is simply a fictional and I presume semi- autobiographical account of a first person experience of a one day race. It was originally I think written I dutch but has been translated into lots of languages. As an analysis of pain it is hard to beat. I think it is probably the best sports book I have read along maybe with " Feet in the Clouds" .
Kimmage is putting some quotes from a big interview he did with Lemond up on twitter. Some interesting stuff in it for HBV. Looks like he believes the honest to god country lad Kelly was cleaner than the Dubliner. Kimmage himself says [FONT=Arial]How could anyone respect Roche? Denies there was any doping in the sport for years, blasts anyone who criticised Armstrong, hitches his [/FONT][FONT=Arial]son to Riis and Contador and (yesterday) jumps into bed with Pat McQuaid! Where? At Titanic, BelfastâŚgoing down![/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]Greg LeMond on Armstrong: âIf everybody was clean, he wouldnât crack the top 200 racers in history.â [/FONT][FONT=Arial]I would challenge him right now for a VO2 Max test, no problem. Iâm 10 years older and I know Iâd smoke him."[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]LeMondâs top 5 rivals in order: Hinault, Kelly, Fignon, Hampsten, Bauer.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]Q: What about Indurain? A: I like him as a person but no.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]Q: What about Delgado and Roche? A: âNoâŚThereâs a lot of people I donât respect in the sport.â[/FONT]
Recommended book related to this the other day. Great read. Drugs is taken by the large majority of American sports stars going back 40 years. It also shows that alot of American success just comes down to pure numbers and raw untrained talent. In athletics in particular it is said their coa hinge was crap and the athletes were illdisciplined, but there was so many of them theyâd get enough thru to win medals. And they were all on steroids.
I believe many in the NFL are still on drugs. A big number of the work out in the off season with Westside Powerlifting and the likes where drug taking is completely accepted and openly used. Their massive off season gives them a hreat opportunity to cheat.
Decries personal element in acrimony
Not since the halcyon era of the 1980s did Irish cycling enjoy a day comparable to Thursday. Shortly after the official confirmation that [U]Belfast would host the start of the 2014 Giro dâItalia,[/U] Martyn Irvine claimed Irelandâs first gold medal at the track world championships in 117 years by winning the scratch race in Minsk, scarcely an hour after he had taken silver in the individual pursuit.
Of course, some of Irish cyclingâs most notable figures have already claimed their share of column inches in the international press in recent months, albeit for quite different reasons. Pat McQuaidâs position as UCI president has been called into question in the wake of the Lance Armstrong affair and no small amount of the pressure has been applied by two of his fellow countrymen, Paul Kimmage and David Walsh.
The positions of McQuaid and Kimmage are particularly entrenched. Where McQuaid defiantly defends his record as UCI president, Kimmage forms a vocal part of a lobby demanding his removal. Where [U]McQuaid launched libel proceedings[/U][/URL] â since suspended â against Kimmage for his journalistic output, [URL=âhttp://www.cyclingnews.com/news/kimmage-counter-attacks-verbruggen-mcquaidâ][U]Kimmage has lodged a criminal complaint against the UCI[/U] in a Swiss court.
Stephen Roche has known both men since the 1970s â the Roche, McQuaid and Kimmage families are steeped in Dublin cycling tradition â and the former Giro and Tour de France winner believes that there is a personal element to the acrimony between McQuaid and Kimmage.
âUnfortunately, I think itâs a bit personal and itâs unfortunate that itâs been aired in the press, the laundryâs been aired in public,â Roche told Cyclingnews in Belfast. âAfter a while, you have to say, âletâs get on with things, letâs find someone else to throw stones at.â Maybe Paul feels Pat has hurt him, while Pat feels Paul and David have hurt him.â
Darach McQuaid â the younger brother of Pat â was instrumental in bringing the Giro start to Ireland, and he asked Roche to help the bid in an ambassadorial capacity. Roche acknowledged his own long-standing relationship with the McQuaid family, but he was adamant in his support of Pat McQuaid as UCI president.
âFirst of all, I would say: find someone better than Pat,â Roche said. âI donât think you can find someone out there who has more passion than Pat. Maybe there were some mistakes made. The UCI is a federation but itâs also a business and what businessman hasnât made mistakes to help the company work better?
âNow Iâm not saying that Pat has made mistakes, but maybe some of the decisions could be debated today. But at the same time, letâs not forget the good Pat has done for cycling in the past number of years since heâs been in power. You canât throw away all the good things heâs done, like the biological passport, and just look at the bad things.â Rough Ride
While Roche maintains cordial ties with the McQuaids, his friendship with Kimmage was ruptured following the publication of Rough Ride in 1990. Kimmageâs seminal autobiography outlined the doping culture in cycling in the 1980s and Roche admits now that it was a message ought to have been heeded far sooner.
âLooking back, you could say Paul and David have done a lot of âharmâ to cycling but they harmed it to make it better, if you know what I mean,â Roche said. âInitially, they were voicing a lot of negative stories about cycling, but maybe if people had looked to what they were saying years ago â myself included â then maybe this whole thing could have been a five year saga rather than a fifteen year saga.â
When Rough Ride first hit the shelves 23 years ago, however, Roche poured scorn on the bookâs claims regarding doping in a column in the Irish Times, to the chagrin of Kimmage. Asked if he now regretted that reaction, Roche said: âIâve said it on numerous occasions and Iâve said it in public: yes, my reaction to Rough Ride was as a young kid hot off the block and I didnât really know what was going on.â
âIf what has come out in the last few months hadnât come out, Iâd still have thought Paul had exaggerated a bit in his book,â Roche continued. âBut now I see with whatâs come out that I definitely had my head in the sand. And I regret that we didnât give Paul more space at the time, that we didnât listen to him and react. But I took it that this was a little guy with a chip on his shoulder who didnât make it and was kind of relieving himself of all this crap.
âThe only thing I wonât take back is that these guys got a lot out of cycling: it wasnât all negative. I cannot comprehend someone who got so much from cycling going out and being so harsh with something thatâs given him everything he has. That was my main issue with it then, and it is today even now.â
There is some divergence, too, in Roche and Kimmageâs views on cyclingâs next steps in the wake of the Armstrong affair. While Kimmage is among the faction in favour of the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Roche is more circumspect on the prospect.
âThe in thing today is coming out. Many guys just feel they have to go and tell the world they took stuff during their career. I think itâs a bit unfortunate. Is this system the solution? Getting everything out there and moving on? I donât know. I donât know what the solution is.â