I was trying to make it a point to not comment on doping so much this year. And I’ve done just okay with that. But when Bradley Wiggins speaks, he usually says something that, one, I disagree with/completely wrong, and two, is usually pretty crude.
I’ve bypassed Bradley talking about how it isn’t important to win the Tour more than once. And all the times he talks about how hard it is going to be to just make the Sky Tour team. Here is a guy that won the Tour in 2012 and he is speaking some code about how he would like to go to the Tour to work for his “buddy” Chris Froome, but might not make the team.
Bradley obviously isn’t my favorite guy. I’ve posted more than once about him here. Like I said above, I pretty can pretty much disagree with anything he says.
But, he did an interview, which in the future, I highly recommend against, and in it, he says that he is finally proud that he won the Tour in 2012. For some reason, he seemed to think that since he won the Tour, he was in the “same category” as Lance. So, I guess that made him not proud.
My question is, if you know you rode the Tour clean, why would you put yourself in the same category as Lance Armstrong when you know you raced the race fair and dope free? I can understand other people putting him in the same category, which is sort of normal, not fair, but normal, but why would he do that?
It makes no sense. Bradley isn’t just new to the sport. He has been racing bicycles for a very long time. He won the Olympics a few times on the track, then switched to the road and won the Tour and the Olympics, again. So, the history of the sport isn’t something foreign to the dude. Bradley was fully aware of the history of the sport, doping etc. way before he won the Tour. He wouldn’t have gone all-in and lost 35 lbs, train like a monk on Tenerife, so he could be the first rider to win the individual pursuit on the track and Tour de France, which he once stated was one of his goals. Then get all depressed because he somehow puts himself in the same class of rider as Lance Armstrong?
But talking stupid doesn’t make one a douche always.
What makes him a douche is when he answers a question later on in the interview about people asking him about doping, specifically his role in it.
Here, I’ll let Bradley speak for himself-
“I am proud to be a winner of the Tour de France, with no history and no skeletons in the closet. So I’ll challenge people: the real hypocrites of the sport who are asking those questions. Even Paul Kimmage, to an extent. Someone summed it up for me: ‘Paul Kimmage: he took drugs, and he was still shit.’ And he has the cheek to challenge us on a daily basis. So it’s a funny old thing.”
A previous, “clean” Tour winner, classifying people that people that ask questions about doping in the sport as hypocrites? Huh? Most of them never even raced bicycles. But he did single out one journalist that did, Paul Kimmage. And Paul quit, wrote a book exposing doping in the sport, nearly two decades ago, and has been one of the most outspoken persons on planet condemning it. Seems to me that Bradley owes Kimmage a debt.
And Bradley somehow thinks because Paul tried drugs and rode poorly, it doesn’t give him the right, or maybe the credentials, to ask him questions about his participation in doping? He thinks it makes Paul an hypocrite? Wow. I don’t see it at all.
Maybe since George Hincapie is now writing his autobiography, and took drugs to race, but rode exceptionally well, George would pass (Bradley’s) muster and might be worthy to question Bradley on the doping in the sport? It must be, using Bradley’s logic.
But, like I said above, Bradley is not capable of real logic. He says so many things that he thinks are revelations, but really only seem to be self incriminating observations.
From the few posts I’ve read on the site I think Steve Tilford is a douche.
Paul Kimmage will be remembered in 100 years as one of the many people who saved the sport, and Wiggo apparently will be remembered as one who tried to destroy is, just like Pantani, Armstrong, Hincappie, Rominger, and the rest of the deniers… eventually it will come down to the riders who are and were “defensive”of their involvement in “cheating”, and the ones who understand what “cheating” is… if you cheat.. you are a cheater… and therefore no longer credible…. if you compete. at the extreme elete level of any sport then the parameters of cheating become very narrow, and any form of elicit advantage becomes very pronounced. Kimmage was a domistique, his book is the story of a domestique in the pro peleton… and how… cheating.. enabled him to improve his domestique duties so his team captian could be more competitive… something Mr. Hincappie has in common with him… Wiggo’s comments are an elitist comment…. that all “domestiques” should take notice of… thats what the team capitan is saying about you…. thats why he hates the idea of being a “water boy” for Mr. Froom… the attitude is just a reflection of the elitist attitude of all Rupert Murdocc’s organizations… egocentric… and elitist… young riders like Edvald Boasen Hagen would do well to seperate themselves from that… sugar tit… they might loose a few dollars in their contract now.. but in two or three years…if they stay in that organization, they will be just one more “elitist”… rider with a asterict beside their name in races they are competitive in… if they leave now.. then they can move forward in a clean and exciting sport.. with the rest of the world..
If Wiggo won clean, then he should be *thanking* Kimmage for helping to clean up the sport. After all, he would never had won against a super-charged field as a clean rider.
I totally understand where Wiggins is coming from, and his ire for Kimmage. Let’s assume, since we have zero evidence to the contrary, that Wiggins has raced clean his whole career. So here’s a man who has worked harder than any one of us can possibly conceive, waited almost a decade for a sport to clean itself up enough to enable him to compete in the biggest race in the world, had the perfect tour, won easily – and all the way along you have people like Kimmage, and the many infamous tweeters, accusing him of doping his way around France. Kimmage continues to mutter about Sky to this day, despite the fact that another journalist, David Walsh, the man who exposed Armstrong, spent a season with the team and found no indication of doping, let alone evidence – and this is a man who was nearly ruined over Armstrong. He’s not about to give up his scruples to write puff pieces for a monied team.
So Wiggo wins the Tour, and despite the many plaudits he received would have registered the criticism and shit slung at him above all else. That’s the way criticism works with many people, and quite frankly who the hell are we to tell him to respond in a different way?
Wiggins’ interviews are always given autopsies by every creepy blogger, cross referenced against interviews 5, 10 years ago to see if he said something different then, and if he did – let’s ring the doping klaxon!
For sure, his manner of speaking is often blunt to the point of insult, but he’s not even responding in kind. Kimmage has outright accused him of cheating on a number of occasions, why can’t Wiggins tell him to get stuffed? I would, and a lot worse besides.
Kimmage is a broken record. I can’t blame him, his career and dream was taken from him by dopers. But every word he writes is weighed down with 20 years of baggage. There are dopers a-plenty in the peloton – Contador and Valverde are both leaders of their teams and riding at the front, so why is the ire targeted at an athlete who has no evidence against him?
Congrats , no only does no comment get up , BUT , I lose 56MB !
Considering I use 30MB / day , guess I get 2 days OFF !
Where else can get annoyed ?
You have not followed Wiggins for very long, what since july 2012.
Where is the Wigigns from 2007 who said anyone who had a 1% chance of working with a dopiing doctor should be thrown out of the sport for life. Then he goes and works with Geert Leinders.
Bradley ‘douchebag’ Wiggins is doing a Lance Armstrong by attacking the messengers.
We all know how that ended. Wiggins will be caught eventually, they always are.
Kimmage has been proven right time and time again so the stuck record is not Kimmage’s fault, it is those like Wiggins, Froome, Piti, Nibali, and those who enable the doping. But blame Kimmage for the sports troubles if it makes it easier to support Wiggins the guy who went from grupetto to TdF podium. Only possible with dope.
Just remember this. When Landis came clean, Wiggins publicly tarred him as a drunk who could not be trusted even though Wiggins was told by the ex-Postal teammates on his previous team that Armstrong was a doper (as if any pro cyclist in Europe did not know already).
I agree entirely with Bash. Kimmage is entitled to his skepticism of Sky but as he has admitted himself on record, he basis his views on riders he thinks are dopers on nothing more than a ‘gut feeling’.
His gut was 100% right on Armstrong – helped by a huge pile of facts uncovered by others I might add – but so far it looks like his gut is leading him astray on Sky somewhat. Perhaps it’s time he engaged his brain rather than just his emotions. The same could also be said of Wiggins for that matter
Hello Ann
I respect your anger, but I don’t think Steve is a feminine hygiene product. If a douche has the ability to race bicycles and blog, then what could a Maxi-Pad do? Maybe UFC or MMA and a Pulitzer?
Wiggins in July 2010, AFTER Armstrong was put under criminal investigation:
“I love him,” Wiggins said. “I think he’s great. He’s transformed the sport in so many ways. Every person in cycling has benefitted from Lance Armstrong, perhaps not financially but in some sense. Even his strongest critics have benefitted from him. I don’t think this sport will ever realise what he’s brought it or how big he’s made it.”
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2010/jul/25/tour-de-france-2010-lance-armstrong
Wiggins in his 2009 autobiography, In Pursuit of Glory, speaking about the 2006 Tour.
“I felt physically sick when I heard the news. My first reaction was purely selfish and related only to me. “You b****** Landis,” I thought. “You have completely ruined my own small achievement of getting around the Tour de France and being a small part of cycling history. You and guys like you are p***ing on my sport and my dreams. Why do guys like you keep cheating? How many of you are out there, taking the p*** and getting away with it? Sod you all. You are a bunch of cheating b******* and I hope one day they catch the lot of you and ban you all for life. You can keep doing it your way and I will keep doing it mine. You won’t ever change me, you sods. B******s to all of you. At least I can look myself in the mirror”.’
Hardly seems like the same guy.
Can anyone remember a time in the past when a rider won the tour and then never tried to do it again? All the winners since the 80s tried again. It is really strange that Wiggo won’t go for it again. Not normal.
Kimmage doped, if Wiggins has not and there is no reason to suggest he has, then he has every right to call out the hypocracy of known dopers making insinuations, and Tilford has become party to this hypocracy