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Sky got some 'spaining to do

8K views 34 replies 11 participants last post by  Alaska Mike 
#1 ·
Stolen Team Sky medical records leave UK officials skeptical | VeloNews.com

Sapstead had hoped to bring clarity to whether a package sent out to Team Sky for eight-time Olympic gold medalist Wiggins, in June 2011 at the climax of the Critérium du Dauphiné, contained the legal decongestant Fluimucil, as Freeman says. It has been alleged, however, that the package contained the banned corticosteroid triamcinolone, and Sapstead said although there was no record of Freeman ordering Fluimucil, there were invoices for Kenalog — a brand name for triamcinolone.
 
#2 ·
Actually they're past that. There's nothing to explain.

When asked, they keep giving the "I don't know" or "I don't remember" or "all the information was stolen."

The coverup is fully fleshed out already, it's far too late to start trying to "explain" anything, it's only about covering your own ass at this point.

At this point they're basically neck deep in it, it's over for them. The amount of drugs they had is not explainable, and their attempt by saying they were handing them out to staff, family and friends instead of riders is beyond laughable.

The entirety of British Cycling is corrupt, there's no escape now for poor Froomey even. I don't care how much of a saint you say you are, if you're a hell's angel, you're a hell's angel.
 
#4 ·
I suggest picking it up again.

Don't put any stock in the winners, don't get attached to a certain team or whatever, but just watch.

These guys are lunatics. And Sagan is correct, safety left a while back, the UCI and the organizers don't give a damn about the athletes. The crashes are insane. The routes and finishes are insane. There's some real crazy stuff going on currently, unfortunately too crazy because athletes are getting killed and mangled by it. But that aside, it's great entertainment, really top level stuff some of the time, edge of the seat sort of craziness.

Worth a watch just for the danger of it.

And no, disc brakes don't add any more danger, they'll just muck up wheel changes ruin the flow of the race.
 
#21 ·
Oh please! All racing has a high element of risk. Pushing the limits is what drives most folks--except "those poor spirits that neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat".

Your presumption that these poor ignorant racers are being used is just another marketing tool of the merchants of victimization.
 
#5 ·
Let me first say that I'm no Sky fan. The individual riders I like to varying degrees, but the team itself? Not so much. Any team that proclaims their cleanliness that loudly is setting themselves up for a fall. Ask Vaughters.

That said, I'm having trouble seeing this as a team-wide conspiracy. I can see this more of a case of bad management being blindsided by the actions of a few. For all of Sky's attention to details, it seems a few slipped through the cracks that are really coming back to bite them. Explain? I think they're finding that the problems don't have an excuse. The reports of pain killers being handed out like candy isn't anything new (in any sport). Riders will seek out the team doctor(s) that will hand them out most freely, because of the high expectations put on them in the team structure. The lack of resource management that would uncover this is what's most damning- did they just turn a blind eye or were they really that incompetent?

I'm not sorry to see them taken down a notch or two. I hope it will result in a few of those promising riders that make Sky' dominance possible moving on, balancing the Grand Tour landscape a bit.
 
#6 ·
That said, I'm having trouble seeing this as a team-wide conspiracy. I can see this more of a case of bad management being blindsided by the actions of a few. For all of Sky's attention to details, it seems a few slipped through the cracks that are really coming back to bite them. Explain? I think they're finding that the problems don't have an excuse. The reports of pain killers being handed out like candy isn't anything new (in any sport). Riders will seek out the team doctor(s) that will hand them out most freely, because of the high expectations put on them in the team structure. The lack of resource management that would uncover this is what's most damning- did they just turn a blind eye or were they really that incompetent?
Conspiracies rarely if ever are organization wide. Just need most doing their job and a few key members on the team.

The network was 9 doctors, I think it was, for the team. They had an account, online, that all doctors were, by policy, told to put all of the patient (rider) information. One doctor repeatedly refused to put the information online and kept it all in his laptop. That laptop vanished... big surprise.

It wasn't painkillers. I think Tramadol or whatever it is is still legal for them to take. This was an illegal drug, one that's banned outright that you either need a TUE for or you can't take. The steroid or whatever it is that Wiggins was taking "just in case" a reaction to pollen were to kick in while riding in the future.

The doctor was asked and told repeatedly to put the data online by his fellow doctors but refused to comply. The records showed that he ordered far more of that banned drug than all of the TUEs combined and they had it at their headquarters. They claim it was for the staff or whomever, but not the riders.

Basically they've been caught. There was a package... it had drugs in it says Brailsford, but he said they were legal ones. They needed some drugs from the stash for the race man. They sent "the most overqualified carrier in history" to get the package and deliver it. The contents are still a mystery, they say it was legal drugs, most think it was more of this illegal drug they had on hand. They're really, really close to outright busted.
 
#7 ·
Sky's Brailsford reveals triamcinolone treatment | VeloNews.com

Brailsford is doubling down.

He knows his job and livelihood are on the line and he's made a very risky move.

Again, this is about a steroid, which they had LARGE quantities of on hand that is a banned drug. Far more than all of the TUE's and prescriptions and everything combined for all of the riders.

They've been busted with a large cache of steroids.

Brailsford said that all of the extra steroids were not for riders, no, not at all. They're there, in fact, for HIM. Yup, that's right, for him. The claim of the extra drugs just being for "family, friends and staff" apparently wasn't enough, so now he's putting himself dead center.

“Whilst this is normally managed with oral non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, on one occasion a clinical decision was made to treat the symptoms within the joint with an intra-articular corticosteroid injection,” Brailsford said in comments published in Saturday’s Daily Telegraph
Wait... on one occasion? Um...

He's getting other staff members to put their necks on the log too:

Great Britain academy coach Keith Lambert has also revealed he was treated with the drug.

So to break it down simply, Team Sky has been caught with a large cache of illegal steroids. The same kind Wiggins is under fire for for the TUEs that had no medical backing. Their official claim is that the drugs aren't for the riders, but for the staff. That the staff needs injections of steroids regularly for... reasons.

There's proof of a package being sent from the corrupt doctor straight to Wiggins. From the drug cache warehouse directly to the team bus at the Dauphine. They claim the package had drugs in it, but just some over the counter stuff.
 
#8 ·
You have hay fever, Sir Bradley. Here, take these steroids.

Sounds ridiculous when you drop pretense like that
 
#10 ·
Almost this very same thing happened with Team US Post Office or whatever Lance's team was. He got busted with this very same drug at the tour, tested positive for it. And for a different drug the team got busted with quantities of, their excuse was that the drugs were for staff, family and friends, not the riders.

Wasn't it just six months or so ago that Brailsford was claiming that he didn't even know what the drug was or that it could be a doping drug?
 
#13 ·
I've no doubt other information and accusations will come to light over the next few weeks. Some of it will be valid, some will be from people with scores to settle e.g. those fired by Sky and some from journalists who feel they were mugged by the Sky PR machine i.e. they didn't do their jobs as journalists properly.

As for the 4 year cycle, it's no secret that BC select and train for this; their funding is almost all dependent on Olympic success. As a team, unlike most of their competitors, they don't place much emphasis on the Worlds - these are seen more as nice to haves.
 
#30 ·
#29 ·
I don't think the rider is lying. The Sky/BC model seems to be very pressure and results-oriented, kinda like the old Soviet system of throwing a bunch of eggs against the wall and keeping the ones that didn't break. That he would break any and every rule he thought he could get away with and then rationalize it to himself sounds like every rider from the 1998 TDF.

What I can't believe is that, when the discovery was made and the confession was offered, that nobody tried to sweep it under the rug. I'm sure the rider tried to initially use the "I only intended to dope" excuse, but I think he eventually told someone and they tried to keep it quiet. How far up that went, we'll probably never know. I'm sure they rationalized it just like he did, then maybe had some concern for the rider's mental well-being that drove him to this point.

What I don't get is why he went outside of the Sky structure to get Tramadol, which other riders have claimed was handed out like candy by some team doctors. If you need more than the doctor is willing to dole out, you go outside the organization, but initially?

Inconsistencies like this lead me to believe that it's isolated pockets within the structure and not an organization-wide conspiracy. Dave B and the rest of the Ski/BC bigwigs are just doing a poor job cleaning up after the mess their poor management left behind.

Still a lot of smoke but no real flame here. Maybe in a decade the truth will come out.
 
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