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news
Dave Brailsford faces the press, Paris, October 2012 (copyright Simon MacMichael)UCI should embed anti-doping experts within teams, says Brailsford
Sir Dave Brailsford says the UCI should pay for independent anti-doping experts to be embedded within leading teams to help prove that riders aren’t cheating.
The Team Sky principal’s comments, reported by BBC Sport, follow a weekend in which Tour de France race leader Chris Froome had urine thrown at him by a spectator who shouted out, “doper!”
Froome has had to field questions about whether he is riding clean throughout this year’s race, just as he did two years ago when he claimed the overall victory.
Speaking on the France Télévisions show Stade 2, Brailsford, who last week claimed Froome’s training data had been hacked by people trying prove he is doping, said: "It is not possible to prove a negative. I can't. But I can work with the UCI, independent experts."
He continued: "I understand people asking 'do we believe in Chris Froome?'
"How can we find a test where we say 'we are clean'? We have responsibility to be transparent.
"I would like the UCI to invest in individuals and put them into each team 24/7. That would prove we do nothing. I'm ready to do it.
"It is not fair what has been said. Chris is special. He has a special physiology. But he doesn't cheat."
Whether Brailsford’s suggestion is workable is open to question.
With 17 UCI WorldTour teams alone, it would certainly be expensive, perhaps prohibitively so for the UCI – if there were enough suitably qualified people to staff such an operation in the first place.
Moreover, with teams sometimes participating in three races concurrently and other riders elsewhere, for example on training camps, it would be impossible to keep tabs on everyone all the time.
Froome himself has pointed the finger at French ex-pros turned TV pundits Cedric Vasseur and Lauren Jalabert as helping fuel suspicions about him.
The latter’s insinuations were summarised by ITV 4 yesterday – although Jalabert wasn’t too keen to elaborate on them when pressed by Matt Rendell, as shown in this video posted to YouTube by a user named Michelle F.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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62 comments
The speculation and assumption from the fans and critics doesn't help. We are not investigative journalists with a good reputation (not the type recently highlighted - their comments and opinions carry zero weight) so we should not assume without any evidence or even questionable activity. Ask questions but keep the assumptions out of it.
There is zero evidence on Froome, there is nothing even to suggest there is anything suspicious or questionable going on.
A fellow poster stated that Froome looked anorexic which i see as someone raising doubts. Froome is 6 foot 1 and between 69 - 71kgs. He is a lean and spindly tdf rider. Wiggo once dropped to 69kgs. How Froome can be described as having an anorexic appearance is beyond my comprehension. Have you seen the shape of his thighs when he's on the podium?
This is just more negative vibes without grounds which isn't helpful and does the sport no good in my humble opinion.
It could be, definitely, but if you look at the state of many of the riders on the tour they do look anorexic, do you remember the photos of Wiggins in the hotel room looking very emaciated towards the end of his winning tour?
I'd wager that quite a few of the riders are probably closer to death than they are to being in peak physical condition by the time they hit Paris such are the ravages of the tour. It's only the sprinters that have been rolling in with the laughing gang are carrying any sort of timber by the time they reach the Champs. That's why I don't get why people are so in a tizzy about Brailsford knowing Froome's exact weight on the tour at any given moment.
I'm not so sure about that. I re-read Daniel Coyle's Lance book when all the USADA stuff as going on, and reading between the lines you can tell he was suspicous/uncomfortable about various things, especially Dr Ferrari.
I guess he couldn't just come out with it for fear of never working in cycling again.
Look at DB in that photo, his shiny head at a funny angle, his shifty eyes darting from side to side. He looks like a Bond villain. And Froome is so skinny he has those folds either side his mouth just like Armstrong/Voldemort. They must be up to something... how can he beat the dopers without doping, how can he dare to win? This is clear evidence, I am the arbiter, I AM THE INTERNET. Kill them with a thousand tweets and douce them in piss!
Froome, with unquestionably the strongest team in the race, has one comprehensive stage win and he's a villain. It's ludicrous.
Brailsford wants embeds but wouldn't let Paul Kimmage embed nor speak to Michael Barry. He talks a good game. A bit like 'marginal gains' but not knowing half the UCI rule book nor apparently measuring Froome's weight or Vo2 max.
As for Jalabert, Lemond has just said similar, however I don't expect ITV to doorstep him too quickly as it does't fit the whole 'Jealous French' agenda that's being used as a diversion, that plus Lemond is too big a target.
Still, who cares? Froome isn't the only one climbing faster than known dopers of the past. Let's just watch the racing.
The first bit is not quite true, is it ? ... or at least not according to Kimmage.
Which rules ?
Team Sky know Froomes weight anytime they want and if you want to understand why they don't fixate over VO2max you might do worse than have a read of the FAQ from this years Tour.
http://www.teamsky.com/teamsky/features/article/7897#hpTky8ClVL8ubbRB.97
Really ? What ?
From whom is this agenda stemming ? I've heard plenty of it, although not from ITV, and plenty the other way. Prudhomme has been the voice of reason again over the last few days, and his views seem to have been echoed by many outside of the rabid media in a number of countries.
Clearly you care.
Brailsford recently stated he doesn't know Froome's weight. They then didn't know the standing rules on receiving assistance from other teams nor that they had to use the hotel rooms provided by race organisers during Grand Tours. All in the UCI rule book. You'd think with their attention to detail they'd know all that.
"If Froome really has such a natural motor, he's the most remarkable cyclist of all time" Greg LeMond, in today's Le Monde"
That's no worse an 'insinuation' than what Jalabert said.
Indeed, he didn't know Froomes weight at the time he was asked by the press, that's different from the team not measuring or knowing it.
It was the riders that were initially ignorant of the assistance rule - and not the only ones in that team or others - and the accommodation rules were unclear, hence the extremely recent amendment to article 2.2.010 of the UCI Regulations.
No indeed, interesting... and at odds with what he's been saying all tour long on Eurosport (edit : and elsewhere it seems). I'll have a read, thanks for the heads-up.
but Froome is not the first and not the last to be questioned.
From 2009 Vayer and Lemond on Contador
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/contadors-climbing-credibility-questioned/
"LeMond, in response, called on Contador to prove that he is physically capable of achieving these numbers without the use of performance-enhancing products, "assuming the validity of the calculations"."
So this is anyone who looks like they are performing much better than the rest. This just confirms my call for all rider data to be released, like for example Thibault Pinot has done so a power profile can be built up.
Weight to released at the start of the tour, VO2 Max to be released. This does not give a competitive advantage if all are known to everyone. I would not want stats issues during a tour and then released at the end for the major climbs.
The UCI then to employ a top scientist who is independent to analyse the data and provide a report on it.
I don't know why people have fixated on this.
I was recently asked to give my exact weight recently and I didn't have a clue, I had to nip to Boots and jump on the scales there and I'm not smashing through thousands and thousands of calories and sweating out litres of fluids every day.
I'd imagine that there is lot fluctuation in riders weights throughout the tour and it's probably not the most important thing for Brailsford to know what the exact weight of 9 other men right this minute in the grand (tour) scheme of things.
If Brailsford had taken a swing and a miss at getting Froome's weight exactly right to last gram the inter-nutters like Digger Forum and Vayer would have been all over it screaming that he was lying, why was he lying, what else is he lying about etc
US Postal had journalists embedded within the team on several occasions, none of whom saw anything suspicious. One of them was Daniel Coyle who later worked with Tyler Hamilton in writing The Secret Race and even he didn't suspect anything so all I can see happening would be accusations that the UCI were in on it, they'd been bought off, misled...
It wouldn't work, even if they could afford it.
Bit of a catch 22. If you don't catch any dopers is that because:
the sport is clean
the testing procedures are so slack that they can be beaten
Even if it's (a), you're always going to have people who simply refuse to believe in anything but (b) simp!y because of the toxic past of the sport.
Video doesn't seem to be there - taken down?
For Laurant Jalabert and Frederic Vasseur on Chris Frome read Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney on a non-existent Soviet threat to US submarines -
"They're saying, 'we can't find evidence that they're doing it the way that everyone thinks they're doing it, so they must be doing it a different way. We don't know what that different way is, but they must be doing it.' Even though there was no evidence? Even though there was no evidence."
It would help if all unrepentant dopers were prevented from any involvement in the sport in any capacity ...
Good to see TV commentator cyclists from the 90s, who refuse to talk about doping, confronted.
So the video was posted by 'Michelle F'?
I really didn't realise she took his name when they married.
Rather than the UCI, the french media should pay for it. They are the ones doing all the stirring
30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years, 30 years
Vous mangez trop de citrons
Call me old fashioned
They have won one stage. Mr Greipel has won three. Does that make him three times more suspicious?
Always seems a strange attitude - watch a race then complain when someone dares to win it. Or rather complain when the rider you don't like wins it.
Haha! Just saw the video of Rendell with Jalabert. What a disingenuous, mealy mouthed specimen.
Reminds me of one of those videos you see on Youtube with a 4 year old child, face covered in chocolate. "Have you been eating chocolate?"....shakes head...."no".
My tuppence is that we simply don't know.
And given the high degrees of doubt over the accusations, we should remember 'Innocent until proven guilty' .
At the moment we don't have any creditable and compelling reason for singling out Sky or Froome for the treatment they have been receiving.
Maybe in 10 year time we might look back on 2015, and think to ourselves 'how were we duped again?' - BUT here is my point - I am prepared to be wrong.
I would rather be fair to due process (and give Sky/Froome the benefit of doubt over their accusers) and be proved wrong, than to single out Sky/Froome for abuse and then be proved right.
*IF* all this ends up in an enormous scandal, I have no interest in silly 'I told you so' willy waving. I'm just trying to enjoy the racing and think riders and teams should be treated fairly.
Is the fact that they're winning not enough for you?
No, not really - 2nd place in the Tour is the second best rider in the world at this instant, 3rd place is the 3rd best rider in the world at this instant. I can't see why such lofty heights should be any more questionable than best rider in the world at this instant. So no, winning isn't a reason to single someone out. After all, in the past, there was only one person who won any particular doped TdF, yet we know there were likely 100+ riders in the race who were also doped - why focus only on one?
And there's the rub. Why do those who believe whoever is winning must be doping bother to engage with the sport at all? How far down the finish-list do they have to go to be satisfied that someone is clean? Froome had a great day at La Pierre-St-Martin. But, hang on, Quintana still had a minute or more over most of the other GC favourites. So he must be doping too, right? With this logic, the tour is reduced to a celebration of the red-lantern alone. But, oh dear - that was (almost, bar one place) Alex Dowsett a few days back, and he held the hour record a month or so ago...
Someone has to win - assuming that the winner must be doping is madness.
No we have to stop the winning. Stop all the winning. It's done enough to tarnish this beautiful sport of ours.
Much of the reason they're winning is that their rivals lost time at key moments. Team tactics play as much a part as much as the execution at the end. Besides his stage win, much of Froome's advantage comes as a result of a well-played first week, where other GC teams rode too conservatively. Besides, they're not winning the team classification.
All those who are not actually interested in cycling could usefully step away from this debate.
Discussing doping as if there is a good and evil divide gives license to idiots attacking innocent cyclists during the tour.
I think it could be a good move - but presumably the teams would have to come up with the cash to pay for this service themselves.
Also, I don't think this will change a great deal with those how have already tried and convicted Sky/Froome in their own minds. Any UCI official which does not concur with their world view will simply be useless/blind/rubbish/bribed etc.
Matt Rendel made a great point on the TdF podcast about having to buy into David Brailsford being bent if you are convinced that Froome is doping.
My tuppence worth is that Froome is a clean rider being unfairly tarnished by cyclings' history.
I feel very uncomfortable with his anorexic appearance and the TUE for his asthma inhaler. But that is not evidence of doping.
As Dave B has said though how do you prove a negative? The embedded official sounds good but is unworkable. And look, Sky embedded David Walsh, one of Lance's greatest critics and what happened. The cynics just said he'd been bought off. A very sad state of affairs.
I like the idea but as stated it isn't going to be cheap. However how much is a clean sport worth ?
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