Yeah, I’d largely agree. Which is why I don’t put it in the highly suspicious camp. Run and swim wise, there’s not much difference at all compared to the times from those eras. And the bike split can be explained by serious developments in aero understanding and tech
1 Like
Why have they not gone down then? If you’re saying they were doped up, and that’s why their bike was fast despite the equipment limitations, then the dope was there helping their runs too?
The run times were before the nike cheating shoes.
They were also before GPS and an army of Internet stalkers checking the distance was correct 
1 Like
Are you misunderstanding me? I’m saying I agreed with H that my gut instinct is tri performances are largely clean.
What you’ve said above was exactly my argument. Swim and run have stayed static, with bike improvements explained by better equipment/understanding of aero. And if the improvement on the bike was artificial in other ways, then there would have been a jump in performance across all sports.
That, and the UK racing scene is broken and close to falling apart completely… some (much less than there used to be) good grass roots stuff, a few decent elite events (and even then, staples of the calendar like Lincoln GP and Cicle are wobbling at best), and virtually no path between the two. Promising youngsters pretty much have to leave the UK to race nowadays.
Strong on a track is OK, but they still need to learn race craft.
Yes, a couple of our members relocated to Aix-en-Provence and Belgium to get race experience.
But you look at a lot of the average-Joe CatB races - they’re mainly boringAF circuit races now.
It’s really, really hard to find a nice 30-45km loop race that features a hill, that you do two to three times.
You’re spoilt for choice if you want to do 50 laps of a 900m circuit.
Ah, but I see swim and run as the same as known doping performances, so I thought your argument about why the bike performances were similar to those doping performances was bike improvements making up for the absense of doping.
They always did, the difference between now and 10,20,30 years ago, is that there are lots of promising youngsters, so there could actually be a large enough field to put on a race, but there’s never been those races. Yes UK road racing is dying, but it was never a path to elite racing, it was always just amateur playing, the serious folk needed to leave the UK.
I’d also only say it’s only really dying because the lack of any roads to do it on, although insurance does make it expensive too.
2 Likes
with the exception of the track programme every junior from VCL thats riding seriously has gone to dev or conti teams in Spain and Belgium. Only Ethan Haytor, Fred Wright have done different (ineos and bahrain) and both via Manchester. Leo, Ethans brother, went to Sunweb
I imagine all of them were off racing in Belgium at 13/14 in the BC South East teams they take over too? The lack of competitive UK racing has always been there.
1 Like
Yep and Assen every year with the club as an introduction. Its either that or track league
S Yates re-signs for Mitchelton-Scott, A Yates apparently linked with Ineos. Can’t imagine that would be as anything other than a super-domestique?
That’s not gonna help them
2 Likes
There is no such thing as altruism, so we might as well accuse everyone of virtue signalling all the time!
Adam Yates signs for Ineos! Brilliant signing
3 Likes
Odd signing, this.
Dave Brailsford isn’t one for sentimentality, so I don’t buy into his statement saying he’s ‘finally coming home’.
With the wealth of talent in the ranks, not entirely sure where he fits in…
… Unless Sir Dave has a plan up his sleeve.
Was it Adam or Simon Yates that was on the BC academy? I seem to recall that only one of the brothers made the cut, which was why they both ended up going to Orica and not Sky.
Simon was the trackie, Adam went to France as an amateur.
1 Like
That’s what I thought, so he’s not really “coming home” in the sense that a former academy rider might feel that he is joining Ineos.
1 Like
The story is Sky tried to sign them but they turned it down to go Australia as they didn’t think they get the opportunities to lead the team with Brad et al there
3 Likes