Rascal said:
Shands my friend i get what you are saying and i have read hundreds of pages of the stuff since you gave me the link.
As an outsider i feel though they need to be vindicated in the beliefs they have rather than support the sport they purport to love.
Im a pragmatist and i doubt any sport is dope free to be honest as people will seek to gain a competitve advnatage where they can but to accuse Froome of becoming majorly better is like us Blues saying Silva improved enormously in his second season with us. In my opinion there are loads of factors in how a sportsman improves and becomes a great, yet on that forum it seems the only way is doping and that i find that very sad. The other gripe is Sky are too like UPS and the Skytrain makes it boring. I think thats the major gripe to be honest. They dont want Sky dominating and want to see attacks from riders who were all doped up. How idiosyncratic is that.
I hope Froome wins the TdF by miles and passes every test on the way. He is the best at the moment and i from what i have watched this season he could destroy the other contenders.
I want to see Tommy Voeckler do well though, he is a star :)
I do know where you're coming from there mate, there are clearly some members with a deep set and irrational distaste for Sky that they refuse to budge from regardless, and then often go on to create their own myths which they perpetuate.
I said in this thread around Paris-Nice time that some of the Sky performances concerned and baffled me a little, but it has to be said that since then there's been a notable fluctuation in the form of guys like Lopez, Cataldo, Henao and Porte, so I hold my hands up and say I jumped the gun in my assumptions, and I'm pleased to be wrong about the dominance of these riders.
I also don't buy into some of the re-writing of history either. I've seen for example some people saying stuff like 'oh look now Geraint Thomas is suddenly a good climber' -well, that shouldn't be a shock, he showed I think it was in 2010 that he had clear talent in that area, so once he gave up on the track he was bound to make another improvement.
Wiggins is another case in point, he didn't suddenly become a climber for last years tour as some on there like to suggest, he was very gritty in the mountains in 09, only being out performed by the exceptional displays of Contador and Schleck, and he then also entered the 2011 tour as one of the favourites to podium, before he crashed out. So yeah Sky do get a lot of unjust stick.
I'm not going to lie, Froome I have my doubts about. It hasn't always been that way; when he emerged from nowhere at the Vuelta 11 I was extremely excited, and even in last years Tour, I defended his intentions on here (wrongly it turned out) when he dropped Brad in the mountains. You're absolutely right he could have improved through pure hard work and natural means, but I dunno, all things taken into consideration it just doesn't sit right with me - hope I'm totally wrong though.
Anyway the tour is nearly upon us so we'll have to do our top 5 predictions soon :)
