Haggis Fax wrote:
I'm sorry but Chris Horners performance is just not credible. He has never (ever) shown this kind of ability before. How can this 41 year old who has never shown this kind of ability plus coming back from a knee injury be putting that kind of performance in and taking time out of Nibali etc?
Sadly,it's inevitable (and also entirely correct) that his performance will come under scrutiny; for all the reasons you mention and also for the fact that his age means he rode through so many of cycling's EPO years. His results (particularly in the Grand Tours) have actually improved as the sport's moved towards a (hopefully) cleaner era. Is this because he's always been clean & he isn't having to ride against a predominantly charged-up peloton any more, or is he a systematic doper who's somehow never been caught?
Of course he could crack in the next few days & slide back into a 12th/13th place finish which wouldn't be a completely unexpected result pre-race & the questions might disappear. Alternatively, he could end up winning the GC & the questions will just get louder & louder as they did for Froome in France. As the saying goes; if you live by the sword, you die by the sword & cycling must understand that because of it's recent history there can no longer be any "fairy-tale" performances or sudden improvements in form that aren't going to be flagged up by a large number of observers as suspicious.
Call me naive but I feel that I have to push these doubts to the back of my mind because otherwise, I'll fall back out of love with the sport (as I did for many years of the last decade). In 10-20 years I may well be kicking myself for being stupid enough to believe in this current peloton but who knows?
