Potential Hack of Sky Rider Data

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KneesUp

Guru
This is a peculiar story (copied from The Guardian - original story here)

Sir Dave Brailsford fears Chris Froome critics have hacked Team Sky
Sir Dave Brailsford believes Team Sky’s computers have been hacked by critics who are sifting through Chris Froome’s performance data for signs he could be using performance-enhancing drugs.

Brailsford is so concerned that he has consulted lawyers over the breach. Froome was repeatedly questioned during the 2013 Tour, which he won, about his performances and attitude to doping.
The 30-year-old Team Sky leader has always insisted he competes clean and before this year’s race described “clowns” interpreting power data as “unhelpful”. Froome led this year’s race by 12 seconds before Tuesday’s 10th stage and Brailsford, the Team Sky principal, was asked if he was ready for a repeat of the doping questions.

“It’s part of the game, isn’t it? If he does well [on Tuesday], the rest of the Tour it’s ‘How do you know he’s not doping?’

“The question of how to prove a negative is always going to be a difficult one. We think someone has hacked into our training data and got Chris’s files, so we’ve got some legal guys on the case there.

“I would never mention a name [but] ethically and morally, if you are going to accuse someone of doping, then don’t cheat.”

Brailsford said: “I used to worry about it a lot more but I don’t any more. It’s part of the game. Just try to be honest, tell the truth, be open.” Team Sky tightly controls access to riders’ data, which can be skewed and does not account for all variables.

The team was under surveillance on Sunday night by photographers hoping to catch Froome going to sleep in Brailsford’s motorhome in Pau.

The former British Cycling performance director has brought his personal motorhome to the Tour, giving him a base to work and allowing him to sleep in the same environment every night.

Brailsford had hoped Froome would benefit from using a campervan in the same way at the Tour but the UCI amended its rules after Team Sky used one for Richie Porte at the Giro d’Italia.

The regulations were subsequently amended to dictate that riders must stay in the assigned hotels, which range in standard.

Organisers ensure teams are given fair hotel allocation across the three-week race, with teams in five-star accommodation one night and budget hotels the next.

Brailsford argues a good night’s sleep is essential for any athlete and minimum standards of accommodation should be in place.

The quote "I would never mention a name [but] ethically and morally, if you are going to accuse someone of doping, then don’t cheat." seems a particularly odd thing to say - obviously if someone has 'hacked' their computers that is illegal and this could be described as "cheating" but I am slightly in the 'if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear' camp here. Thoughts, anyone?
 

w00hoo_kent

One of the 64K
The quote "I would never mention a name [but] ethically and morally, if you are going to accuse someone of doping, then don’t cheat." seems a particularly odd thing to say - obviously if someone has 'hacked' their computers that is illegal and this could be described as "cheating" but I am slightly in the 'if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear' camp here. Thoughts, anyone?
I think his point is that the data isn't going to give any definitive answers and can be twisted to suggest other things. As Froome pointed out in the Clowns interview, power data in and of itself doesn't take in to account wind speed, what effort has previously been put in, and, I guess, what condition the rest of the team are in with regards to giving you support. It's easy to jump to conclusions and then demand answers based on spurious evidence and when you are being asked to prove something hasn't happened there is an extra layer of complexity. How would you prove you didn't drink a can of Coke yesterday?
 

Dogtrousers

Kilometre nibbler
A slightly odd change from Sky line (grovellingly followed by David Walsh) that "performance analysis is all pseudoscience".

Anyway, I don't understand the science, but I do like a good internet storm. So really, just
:popcorn:

We won't learn much, if anything.
 
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KneesUp

KneesUp

Guru
I think his point is that the data isn't going to give any definitive answers and can be twisted to suggest other things. As Froome pointed out in the Clowns interview, power data in and of itself doesn't take in to account wind speed, what effort has previously been put in, and, I guess, what condition the rest of the team are in with regards to giving you support. It's easy to jump to conclusions and then demand answers based on spurious evidence and when you are being asked to prove something hasn't happened there is an extra layer of complexity. How would you prove you didn't drink a can of Coke yesterday?
Proving you didn't consume something yesterday is relatively easy - proving you didn't micro dose on something 3 months ago is somewhat more difficult I guess.
 
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KneesUp

KneesUp

Guru
Jut thinking about the line being put out that the data won't be useful as they don't take into account various variables - given the lengths Sky famously go to to make sure everything is perfect - I find it hard to imagine that their rider training data relies on someone remembering how windy it was on a certain date and so on - surely all the relevant data are stored together to make it possible for Sky themselves effectively to analyse them?
 

Milkfloat

An Peanut
Location
Midlands
I read it as 'Brailsford thinks he knows who was behind the hack and suspects they are a cheat themselves'. It would be interesting to know how he defines 'hacking', did someone happen to leave a laptop or power meter floating around which someone glanced at?
 
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KneesUp

KneesUp

Guru
I read it as 'Brailsford thinks he knows who was behind the hack and suspects they are a cheat themselves'. It would be interesting to know how he defines 'hacking', did someone happen to leave a laptop or power meter floating around which someone glanced at?
Or is their data storage lax?
 

Hont

Guru
Location
Bromsgrove
I can understand that Sky are miffed. If someone had hacked their computers and found hard evidence of doping, that would be one thing. To hack (and it was a hack as someone posted the file online) to obtain data which is never going to prove anything is never justifiable.
 
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KneesUp

KneesUp

Guru
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KneesUp

KneesUp

Guru
I
Rather than SKY prove he isn't on the sauce, it's about time the accusers prove that he is (and I don't think they will)
I don't know what to think - no-one could prove LA was 'on the sauce' when he was demonstrably better than everyone else. But then no-one could prove Greg LeMond was either, although in his case I believe that is simply because he was just better.

You read how micro dosing can improve performance by a measurable amount and yet remain undetected, and then you get Sky on the defensive about data similar to the data they themselves released two years ago being 'hacked' with a defence that sounds implausible (that the data Sky collects doesn't tell the whole story)and you get suspicious. More so than if Sky has said nothing, to be honest.

And then you remember the story about US Postal blood doping on the team bus (having pretended it had broken down iirc) and then you see Sky taking their own motor homes on tour and, oh, I dunno. I want Froome to be clean, but I wanted LA to be clean too. If I wanted really badly to win a bike race, and found a way that I could improve performance by a few percent that was illegal but undetectable, I think I might do it. If I wanted to win badly enough - which I don't. But then I'm not a professional cyclist. History shows us that some racers do it whenever they can. When the difference over 3000 miles can be 8 seconds, of course there would be temptation. When once the new thing that they couldn't detect was EPO, now it's micro-dosing. All that guff before the tour about checking for motors and stuff was a red-herring, a distraction - you'd be a bloody idiot to have an electric motor with switches and batteries and all sorts on your bike when you could get enough of a benefit to win by micro dosing weeks beforehand, with almost no chance of being caught.

And if data were leaked that might show suspicious results, I'd also probably find myself saying that the data can't show that sort of thing, even if two years previously I'd released similar data in order to show that there was nothing suspicious. And I'd probably do so preemptively, if I knew it was going to come out. Because what else can you do?

Suspicion is the legacy of the Armstrong era, although it pre-dates him by a long way.

I'm not saying Froome isn't clean. I'm saying that the history of cycling makes one suspicious.And the way Sky are responding isn't helping.

It's tragic.
 

Hont

Guru
Location
Bromsgrove
Sky thought it would help prove he was clean when it released data itself in 2013 iirc.
I think that's why they're reluctant to do it now. They did it once and people concluded they were doping. Brad Wiggins did it in 2009, when he was with Garmin, and people concluded he was doping. If a rider is clean (and I believe in just about anyone on the Garmin team) and you release data which gets shot down, you may not want to do it again.

And just because you release data previously does not mean it's OK for someone to take it two years down the line.

I'm not defending Sky's behaviour here - I'd far rather they were completely transparent and they deserve a lot of the criticism they get - but I do understand why they might be angry at being hacked.
 

HF2300

Insanity Prawn Boy
... power data in and of itself doesn't take in to account wind speed, what effort has previously been put in, and, I guess, what condition the rest of the team are in with regards to giving you support.?

I don't quite follow the argument on this. As I understand it, the argument against calculating power data from climb rate and weight (Ferrari formula) is that you can't know external effects like tail or head wind, team support, temperature, air density etc. etc. so your calculations aren't accurate.

Yet if the data comes direct from a power meter, surely the data is the actual output (give or take inaccuracies in calibration and measurement) - if the power meter says you were doing X watts, then you were doing X watts (+/- measuring error)? (Although calculating W/Kg is then still dependent on a published weight figure which may or may not be correct)

What I can see is that the science as regards a given power output equating to doping or not doping is a very long way from established or exact, and so calling people out on the basis of a given power output starts to look like a witch hunt.


... when you are being asked to prove something hasn't happened there is an extra layer of complexity. How would you prove you didn't drink a can of Coke yesterday?

Proving you didn't consume something yesterday is relatively easy - proving you didn't micro dose on something 3 months ago is somewhat more difficult I guess.

Rather than SKY prove he isn't on the sauce, it's about time the accusers prove that he is (and I don't think they will)

The ONLY way is to prove he's on something. How can Sky prove Froome isn't doping? They can't. You can't prove a negative.
 
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