aka Dus

Have always liked Thomas' persona and am pleased Froome didn't win. And as usual in cycling, we all suspend our disbelief because that's what cycling fans always have done. But has everybody forgotten the past year? Or the past three years? Or even just the DCMS report? Thomas is getting the benefit of the doubt and the front pages probably cos he is a nice guy and probably because nationalism, but any rider being sent out by Brailsford deserves the closest scrutiny and the highest level of scepticism. Don't @ me if your answer is whataboutery or if you know Thomas is dodgy because he is a Sky rider but you're all in anyway - I am not going to disagree with any of that but it's quite remarkable how the media and everyday armchair fans jump on the bandwagon if they saw the Team Sky s***show in the houses of Parliament last Autumn.

Even for cycling, this is grotesque. There is no more anti doping, you just have to have enough money and brass neck to challenge whatever part of the WADA code is being inconvenient. How is WADA going to credibly continue after this?

Gethin you sound like you have a problem with him focusing on team Sky, and Chris Froome/Brad Wiggins.

He is defo a controversy/doping journalist rather than a sports journalist. He does restrict his interest in injustice to sports, however.

I don't agree with your assessment of Kimmage. What he hates is hypocrisy and a rider coming from nowhere to be world class outside the typical model/curve for that to happen. I don't think he is very interested in the competitive side of cycling anymore, and good (who he thinks are) clean riders dont interest him much, but I'd go as far as to say that he knows a doper when he sees one. I think he is actually attending the TdF this year for the first time in many years. I can now effortlessly suspend my disbelief when I turn on a race. I contort myself into all kinds of juxtaposed ethical schizophrenia as I love watching it too much to let the fact half of them are cheats to ruin it for me. I have probably grown to accept it as an intrinsic part of the soap opera - cos that's what it is now as much as a sport - and as some kind of exemplar of the vagaries of the human condition. The fact that so many sports have yet to confront their own widespread doping, as Gethin rightly says, just makes that untenable ethical position all the more actually possible.

Yeah you can get it from the Registrar in the district they were born, or easier again, you canapply to the General Register Office in Roscommon. Seems like your kids might not be entitled, if you or their grandparents weren't Irish when they were born.

You've made it clear you don't rate him because he wasn't a GC rider in his day (which is all kinds of weird) but in what way isn't he objective? He's a dog with a bone for sure, and not always with a style I can empathize with, but he was key to uncovering the greatest cheat cycling has known, and I suspect he will have a part in the tale when team Sky get taken down too. What do you even mean by objective? There is doping in cycling and the sport has almost certainly been a testing ground for how doping happens now - microdosing, abuse of medicines in TUEs, blood doping. That football and other mainstream sports haven't had to confront the widespread doping that's going on doesn't mean cycling doesn't deserve the scrutiny it gets.

Your Mum's parents? Yeah that's a gimme. Can she eventually get it? Lessens the point for you to get the Irish one of you and your daughter woukd have to go through the non EU queue when you travel together.

Ah right. But that's about 40% of tweets.

I don't follow you.

Are you sure about the grandparent/parent thing? Have you asked them? I suspect you may have misread the small print a bit, pretty sure kids have the right to it from a parent. Asked the dept of foreign affairs / embassy staff I meant.

Kimmage is not exactly diplomatic but to think a person would follow cycling and think Kimmage is the enemy is a howl.

Classic Kenny. Did he want the honour? Maybe. But he accepted it in his own way. https://twitter.com/celticfc/status/1006102939113590786

It's far from only Irish but it's noteworthy how that's commented upon increasingly regularly.

This is a ballsy piece of writing, washed by many legal eyeballs no doubt, but a rare piece of analysis in a mainstream paper. https://m.independent.ie/sport/other-sports/cycling/ewan-mackenna-so-how-is-it-then-that-you-explain-a-freak-like-chris-froome-36968940.html