Tour de France

Also people seem to pick and choose who to suspect and who not to suspect which seems to be based on which team they ride for which just goes to show their suspicions are misguided.

That's the one thing I think goes in Froome's favour,. At the end of the day Team Sky is a massive side-project for BSkyB and one effectively to boost their profile.

Sky have relatively little to gain from doping and the risks to their actual business from a huge doping scandal basically destroy every single reason they had to get into the sport in the first place.

I guess, though, the same is true for almost every team that's been involved in cycling in one way or another and that the implicit assumption is that the coaches and cyclists who do stand to gain from doping (though better money/enchanced rep bcause of GC times or stage wins) are doing so without the knowledge and certainly without the blessing of the owners.

Yeah you could say that about any team really and most sponsors will just make out they had no idea something was going on and pull out of the sport, much like Rabobank did this year.

The other side of things though is the guys behind the scenes at Team Sky are the same guys behind our track success, so if doping's happening at Sky then its odd to me that no one questions our performances on the track which are alot more impressive when compared to on the road success, you just don't hear the people who suspect Sky suspecting that the likes of Hoy, Trott, Pendleton, Hindes, Clancy etc of doping.

There's certainly some doping going on in the NFL. The players have issues with HUman Growth Hormone testing methods amd appeals systems that the league wants to introduce and the players agreed to principle in the last collective bargaining agreement. They currently test for other performance enhancing drugs though.

However, part of the reason there's big quick players on every team is it's more or less a sealed system all the way through. The NFL is easily the pinnacle of Gridiron football, whereas with other sports there are competing systems in many countries, e.g. football. It's also worth noting the players that get to the NFL are something like the top 1% of players that play at a college level.

Is suppose one explanation for people doping now if others can win clean is that they don't have as much natural athletic ability as the best and are trying to make up for it

Oh yes don't get me wrong I undertstand that. You're just going to struggle to see that kind of mass and athleticism in players as the norm rather than the exception without that edge given to them by doping even if you're picking players for that reason. Especially players who get shit on every weekend and then are able to train again by the next day.

I think the problem that sports have is that if they 'get tough' with drugs cheats then you basically shoot yourself in the foot. Cycling is probably one of the most heavily tested sports out there but it has such a bad rep because of all the dopers it found, specifically because they tested them properly.

Athletics has the same problem Bolt is, for my money, a doper. I can't see how he can post times that virtually every single ahtlete that has doped has strugled to achieve whilst being 'natural' but if athletics go after him and catch him then it will destroy the rep of the sport.

Same as football, it looks likely that the Spanish national team, Barcelona and Real Madrid were or are dopeing but if Fifa makes an effort to go after them it will kill footballs reputation .

It seems far better to have very lax, easily beatable drugs tests that provide governing bodies the oppurtunity to say that they do test and don't find anything than to go hard at athletes and destroy your own sport.

In 2012, tennis conducted 2,185 tests—only 63 of which were OC blood tests. That’s a small number, though more than the 21 done in 2011. (For comparison, cycling conducted 13,745 tests in 2011, 3,314 of which OC blood tests.) This year, tennis also adopted the biological passport, proven to be effective in cycling. These digital documents track a player’s blood profile, meaning they can detect changes in biological markers over time. The drug might be washed out of your system, but science says something fishy’s going on. Unfortunately, the passports need a few years of player data to really be effective.

This is pretty much spot on, Cycling gets this bad reputation for having a lot of dopers but when you look at the tests that are done compared to other sports its no surprise so many people are caught out. Read an article somewhere a few months back that had a comparison between testing in tennis and cycling, was pretty shocking tbh.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/08/tennis-has-a-doping-problem.html

You can understand why doping is so rigorously enforced in cycling, because it revolves almost exclusively around fitness, which is what doping can only influence. Yes there is some technique and strategy involved in cycling, but nowhere near enough compared to other sports. One only has to look at the bad days of cycling in the 90s to see it has improved.

As for the suspicions over Froome, I can understand why people make them, but I think also you have to accept that the likelihood is slim. It's a team founded on a zero tolerance strategy, that meant certain people who had a past relationship with the dark side weren't even allowed on board. David Millar is the kind of cat Dave Brailsford would love to have on board, but can't because of his history .They did a recall some time ago and got people to admit whether they had a past and kicked out a few because of it. If anyone in their camp is seriously doping then they either must be complete idiots of think that everyone else is a complete idiot.

For a man who said yesterday he was still looking for a podium finish that seems an odd decision.

From Monday:

http://www.foxsports.com.au/other-sports/tour-de-france/cadel-evans-struggles-again-but-determined-to-make-impression-in-final-week-of-tour-de-france/story-e6frf5hu-1226679390925#.UebuMY2kp1c

Froome has a bad day and still takes time on GC, is he still doping om4ever?

You answered your own question I think

BIEN JOUÉ RIBLON

Is Quintana doping then? hes looked strong all Tour and if he hadn't been working for Valverde at the start could have challenged Froome for the win

No, because he's not British and/ or part of Team Sky.