Last week’s rumor was half confirmed Sunday as Garmin Transitions announced its new sports science team, a team absent Allen Lim. Now Lim has confirmed his move to Radio Shack, while denying the rumor of a $500,000 salary. Lim cited a desire to scale back his traveling days and the prospect of working with Taylor Phinney again as reasons for the move.
Lim emerged on the international scene as one of Floyd Landis’ coaches, escaping relatively unscathed when Landis was disgraced. Though some accused Lim of being Landis’ prepatore, his protestations of ignorance were more or less accepted as he moved on to work for Garmin Slipstream. There he built up a cult status as the geeky scientist who would leave no stone unturned in searching for a legal advantage.
We had two lengthy interviews with Lim (here and here), where he displayed an almost messianic belief in the power of clean cycling to overcome doping. He also claimed that the doping hasn’t been proven to be performance enhancing, especially in the long run. While he was roundly criticized as delusional in the comments section here and in many forums elsewhere, I took it as a sign of his deep belief in clean sport and his concern for the long term health of his athletes.
All this makes his rumored move to Radio Shack seem deeply cynical. Even if we set aside the checkered history of the Armstrong/Bruyneel alliance, Lim must reconcile his belief that "6.7 watts is not physiological (sic) or humanly possible, unless you’re a hybrid human horse or a greyhound human dog or another species", with Armstrong’s reported 500 watt (6.75 watts/kg at 74 kg) output at Alpe d’Huez in 2004 (thanks to Shane Stokes’ twitter feed).
As for ‘The Shack’, this is the second year running where they’ve pried a prominent figure from Garmin. While Taylor Phinney was certainly a great loss for Garmin, this move seems more personal, a deliberate corruption of one of the champions of Garmin’s mission. It’s akin to Al Capone buying off one of the Untouchables just to prove that money can trump principle. While Lim is certainly valuable to any cycling team, does Armstrong’s vaunted F1 team really need his help? Did Armstrong and Bruyneel hire Lim just to spite Garmin?
Lim followed the Tour in 2005 as Landis’ personal coach. That Tour he heard of doping practices that shocked and appalled him. Maybe those things helped form his philosophy and drove him to Garmin. We can only hope that he hasn’t abandoned those principles in search of the mighty dollar.
though he was about “riding clean”, ya ok.. cha ching
I say working with Taylor Phinney, the next big thing in US cycling (maybe world Cycling) is reason enough to take the gig. Perhaps his contract says he can make $500,000 and if he sees signs of doping he can bolt and keep the $? Maybe he wasn’t receiving the proper compensation over at Garmin? Maybe they kept on promising him they would hook him up after they got a big sponsor or big wins and never did?
He probably wants to see the Hog’s operation for himself and then write a tell-all book that no Americans will ever believe.
An interesting opposing viewpoint:
http://forum.velonews.com/read.php?f=2&i=400365&t=400365
As was said by director Alex Gibney in “Smartest Guys in the Room” who is now filming the Armstrong Hagiography.
Anyone involved with Armstrong not for sale?
Armstrong has also sought the best and the brightest whether they be cyclists or technicians to give him an edge.
Of all the places to go in order to be closer to home, Radio Shack? Just sounds fishy. To willingly go to work for that team after having seen what goes on inside the Lance machine is horrible. Its a statement that he just doesn’t care that much about the fight against doping in cycling. Its too bad.
so the guy that “still believes” Landis could have done that ride, goes on to support the doper’s team.
Wasn’t Lim all about riding clean?
Lim became a doper.
Lim did not enjoy being 2nd or 3rd to JV or the DS….can you blame the guy who many inside the team have said he was the guy who got the last 5-10% out of them at the races?
Just curious: Did Floyd ever bad mouth lance in public? Was wondering since Floyd has not yet found a new team…could he be headed to Radio Shack to re-unite with lance and lim?
JV as Little Lord Fauntleroy…classic!
Years ago everyone who was anyone doped nowadays only dopes dope (those who think they can get away with it).
This Holier than thou attitude the pervades gossip forums from do nothing internet jocks is getting to be rather boring.
Lim is going where his best opportunity is caring little about about innuendo, gossip and hearsay.
Word is JV forcing all backoffice staff to don bespoke perspiration solutions in the POM colourway at all times, but Lim was having none of it.
Lim is for sale, just like everybody is for sale. It’s called getting a promotion. It’s why guys at Scagnetti’s Funhouse of Fudgy Hedge Fund Funds all shine their shoes whenever Goldman Sachs hosts an open bar.
The performance enhancers Lim used legally included ice vests, inflatable socks and food right after a race. Who wouldn’t want to get paid a lot to cook omelettes on a bus in the summer?
The interesting question is this: What now happens to the Carmichael Training Systems brand?
Say what you will, but it is highly unlikely that he will come along to Radio Shack, and even less likely that he will go forward as somebody else’s “coach”, when all rumors seem to suggest that his only training regimen was to keep his mouth shut and cash the checks.
Lim will be “The Shack” physiologist, whatever the f that means. Charmichel will remain “Lance’s coach”.
Call it a promotion, if you want — everyone has a price. Maybe. That sounds a lot like a doper’s excuses. “everyone is doing it” “did it for the money” “i wasn’t getting the results/attention i deserved”
Lim became a doper.
remember when “they” said it would just be an arms race of who has the best “Dr” or “Coach”…that time is here and now in full effect with banter concerning Lim. Now he generates more speculation than the riders or DS themselves…
I rememeber a while ago when the question was posed, who would make you cry the most if they were busted for doping.
Big George and a bunch of other names where thrown around.
This is worse.
When he came to town Lim sounded so smart, so sane, so very much in love with clean racing. I got a chance to talk with him after. As a new racer I admired him and he inspired the shit out me.
I don’t admire him anymore.
Until there is proof to the contrary, isn’t Lim still “so smart, so sane, so very much in love with clean racing?” Why is it a foregone conclusion that Radio Shack is not clean?
If you were so in love with Lim, your racing muse, don’t you owe him the benefit of the doubt? Or does the jilted lover in you have no room for such nonsense?
Buck up little camper!
when lim said that doping doesn’t work, i don’t know how you could read those words coming from a sports scientist and not immediately conclude that all the ice vests and compression suits and gluten-free burritos and whatever else were just a big PR smoke-screen distracting people from, oh i don’t know, exogenous testosterone nut-patches, maybe.
this is good. put as many of ’em as you can on one team and make it easy for me to decide who to cheer for (or at least, against).
from Lim’s point of view going to squeeky clean garmin from landis improved Lim’s image.
from shack’s point of view, getting Lim from garmin improves shack’s image.
Lim will say what I said, that the estimate that originally lead to 6.7 had so many variables in it that it could be way way off.
But I also have this question for Lim: How can he be so sure that X is normal for a top rider, but X+12% is absolutely inconceivable? What real physiological limit is he looking at to reach that conclusion? It seems arbitrary to me.
tom
Is it true that Paul Kimmage is going to be press officer for the Shack?
is if Lance hired Lim away from Garmin just to prove he could and then let him go, leaving him unemployed and with nothing to show for it just to prove his superiority. Like flying in the estranged wife of a former teammate for a weekend or “romance” and never calling again. Just hypothetically speaking, of course.
“Why is it a foregone conclusion that Radio Shack is not clean? ”
Because Lance Armstrong and Johan Bruyneel are doping central.
They made their careers out of cheating.
Something evil’s watching over you
Comin’ from the sky above
there’s nothing you can do
Prepare to strike
There’ll be no place to run
When your caught within the grip
Of the evil Lance-a-tron
Transformers
More than meets the eye
Transformers
Robots in Disguise
Lim, if he should go to LA-Shack is clearly no different than Carmichael. He would be in fact “Camichael 2.0”. I can see the book deals and endorsements flying his way already. Lims days of making rice balls in the RV kitchen are over.
Your disillusionment with Lim is similar to a situation I found myself in about 10 years ago. Carmichael came to NYC shortly after LA won his first Tour. I sat through his B.S. “triangle” approach to reaching the “performance pinnacle”. I remember thinking to myself that it was all crap and nothing more than an infomercial for his biz. Shortly after this I was at the Walden School of cycling in Florida and one of the instructors knew Carmichael from his days at USA cycling and said all the guy cared about was getting as much funding for the top three riders. He had no interest in setting up a legitimate development program for a generation of riders. He wanted to find a golden goose and boy did he ever. FYI are we EVER going to find out what Ferrari got paid and what services did he supply?
GOD DAMMIT! I hate these guys! I’m totally buying JV an appletini on Thursday. He really needs us right now.
htfu
i feel the sudden urge to chug braggs liquid amino.
Lemond to be bike sponsor for Team Radio Shack!
Will Lim give up on Powertap? Really important!
My new dart board cover…
http://www.twitpic.com/smh0r
“…checkered history of the Armstrong/Bruyneel alliance” ??? If by checkered you mean a string of outstanding teams and Tour de France wins without a single positive Armstrong drug test, then I guess it is checkered like a finishing flag.
I hope the “checkered” streak continues. Team RadioShack and its management have nothing to feel bad about in assembling the very best team they can with whatever resources they have at their disposal. Their fans, and their sponsors, expect just one thing: for them to do their very best to win.
“If by checkered you mean a string of outstanding teams and Tour de France wins”
No, by checkered we mean doping and cheating.
to see ‘innocent til proven guilty alive and well’
I bet you’re a yankee fan too.
moral indignation is jealousy with a halo
Assuming the Radio Shack team is composed of dopers, Lim may have been hired to give them credibility. Generally speaking, the most convincing people in life are not lying. If they pay him to work all of his miracle solutions (that are totally legal) and keep him in the dark, he becomes a great asset to the team, providing them with some measure of performance improvement while simultaneously providing increased believability when things go wrong.
In that sense, Lim is no more of a doper than the mechanics who work on the team’s bikes.
lim will soon have the entire shack team recuperating in a compression unitard whilst enjoying a shiatsu massage from the comfort of their own barcalounger.
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3584934
The mechanics who work on the team’s bikes are dopers too. They probably know what is going on better than anyone in the peloton.
But unlike Lim, mechanics don’t usually make a career full of statements against dopers; And and then go and join Lance, the biggest doper.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/paul_kimmage/article4322625.ece
http://velocitynation.com/content/interviews/2009/allen-lim-clean-perspective
I have to concede that I do not want to be the designer for the new Shack kit. They have so very few sponsors with such well established brands and brand recognition that you can’t really do much with the kit without going away from the already established and recognisable brands. But this first attempt is just plain ugly. Can’t see many 9W’ers doning this kit on their Sunday morning rides.
rock racing is the the fugliest kit, with the argyle a close second
see comments on bottom:
http://www.teamradioshack.us/new-team-radioshack-kit-revealed/
Team Radio Shack used a “semi swear word” in an official team announcement. Gasp!
Do you guys actually read about what Dr. Lim’s situation at Garmin was? JV told him that they weren’t sure they could pay him next year unless they got another title sponsor. Wouldn’t you look for a new job if your boss told you that? Also, why wouldn’t a world renowned physiologist want to get out of the RV and stop making rice balls? That might be fun for a while, but it isn’t the best use of his talents.
Dr. Lim is one of the good guys. He has fought for clean cycling his whole career, yet he gets hammered switching teams.
Lim has ancient Chinese secret for clean cycling.
Lance is getting older but is mentally sharp as a fox. The psychological TDF started with stealing Lim away
Lim was hired to break the spirit and moral of garmin…athletes will be less confident thus less effective without their space leg pumping, ice vest toting guru.
Radioshack is a dead brand…they have the sex appeal of buick or oldsmobile…the kit is old looking and boring, but what did we really expect from the oldsmobile of pro cycling.
moving on, the R kit is clean and no one is riding them yet…it is just a tittie twister, next month you will see the combined creativity of the LS brand meets R-Shack…
Some black, yellow and red…a circle here and there…Nike Swoosh, Trek, UCI, anyone else??? I think he should put a solo fuzzy die somewhere hanging from his saddle would be nice…at least be the antithesis of “shout at the devil” you-kno-who…that about does it, lets ride…time to “Shack” the podium, since we couldn’t l’Astima before…(a miss I kno, but work with me…)
as much as “clean” cycling ever was to exist…Lim is/was one of us, and has just gone to the absolute worst case scenario…what’s next?
The Carmichael/Ferrari/Lim symposium???
Please DO NOT invite him back to CRCA meetings…
He could have just went back to coaching the Buffs or the Spartans…but now he is the new evil, the new Judas…just pass my the sloopy seconds syringe babe!!!
All good reasons to change jobs.
None good reasons to support doping. Lim made a deal with the devil.
So Lim sold out, should we be surprised by that. The second coming wants?? the second coming gets. He also gets the two fingered bonus to JV
http://www.flickr.com/photos/theroaddiaries/4174639898/
http://www.mudandcowbells.com/blog/2009/12/9/cute-strapless-number-what-is-radioshack-thinking.html
That thing is a mess – no doubt.
Yea, this is out of date…but I am simply blown away at the hating you all throw at Allen Lim. He was your hero when it served – and now he’s an outcast. Yet none of you – NONE – know Allen, nor his history, nor the science behind what he does. You presume he sold out, that he’s somehow compromising his ehtics – wow….so much for a mans integrity and personal history, eh…
if you all rode half as well as you denigrate and talk shit you’d be champions! Instead you’re just hangers on….
posers….