by Phil H » Thu Jul 12, 2012 11:26 am
[quote="Elliot M"]I tend to agree with Phil and Grahame here, and "People can't accept that it's possible with hard work alone/what else can we do to prove it" doesn't seem a fair thing to say given (a) how many times 'hard work alone' has turned out to be a lie (b) it is certainly possible for Sky to be more transparent and have a more selective hiring process for their team doctors.
People are saying that the climbing numbers indicate that Sky would be also-rans in the peleton of 10 years ago. Admittedly I'm not in a position right now to go crawling the internet in search of hard data to back that up. I do recall that Rolland's climb of Alpe d'Huez last year was > 10% slower than Pantani. That suggests that the modern peleton is at least clean
er.
That said, why they had to hire Leinders is a mystery to me. Terrible decision.
I'd be annoyed too if I'd trained really hard* but was then accused of cheating.
Benefit of the doubt for now and good luck to them.
*I'd be very surprised if I trained really hard