Riding in circles?
Yesterday, I watched highlights of Chris Froome’s latest spectacular Tour de France mountain ascent, where he burst clear from the pack with over 6km left, gaining huge chunks of time right until the end and echoing his mountaintop stage wins in the 2013 Tour. This morning, I sifted through the online postmortem discussions, where the overriding consensus was clear: this guy must be doping. Not only that, but Froome’s Team Sky colleagues Richie Porte and Geraint Thomas also produced stunning rides, beating established team leaders in the process who didn’t have anybody else to work for. Accepted wisdom in cycling says that whole teams can’t be this dominant over the rest of the field without chemical assistance. My favourite is this race from the dawn of the EPO era when three Gewiss riders casually destroy the field at a frightening speed. Yesterday’s other big story was that somebody appeared to have hacked into Sky’s data logs and had uploaded footage of...