Which pro cycling team was he a domestique for?
Which pro cycling team was he a domestique for?
1 2 3 green wrote:
If i were in his situation right now I would tell my crew to drive to the nearest town and buy me a garmin with a hrm that measures as many parameters as possible, and start uploading all that data. CoachKev, that easy solution would go a LONG way to dampen the fire brewing, you might suggest that to Rob. Continuing to say "sorry our word and current evidence isn't good enough, too bad though," will only make things worse.
This is the only solution.
No Facebook posts, no fanboys to defend him on social media. Just get the watch and post your runs and the story ends. The longer he waits, the more he proves he is lying.
The fact that he didn't have a tracking device to begin with, says a lot.
God I hate cheaters.
+ 1
If it was me, I might be pissed at all this but you can bet I'd be picking up a garmin and gopro right now to prove everyone wrong. Something tells me we're going to be learning of a really lame excuse soon enough or this guy is about to get really defensive.
Rob - there are really 3 options going forward:
a) If you really are capable of what you claim, I beg you, pick up the watch and gopro so we can all STFU.
b) If you are a sham, then I hope you've carboloaded and trained hard to try to finish the run on pace; or
c) You'll go on like this until NYC and you can bet your story and performances will be picked apart like upper east side trash
curiously interested wrote:
CoachKev, you will have to identify yourself to have any credibility. You sure sound like Rob's BFF if you've been there for all the things you claim. Give us data of your running ability to hang with Rob. Pics of you and Rob together would be great. If Rob was fabricating crap on wikipedia, Rob can easily fabricate crap on an anonymous forum like letsrun.
Does anyone else think we have seen the last of Coach Kev?
What really gets me in these situations is not the cheater trying to deflect scrutiny or attacking their accusers. That's to be expected. It's the fans who brush off seemingly obvious inconsistencies with thoughts of "they're just jealous."
He is probably busy driving the RV at 7mph while trying to come up with a new angle to convince everyone that his word is better than GPS/HRM/pedometer data.
1 2 3 green wrote:
What really gets me in these situations is not the cheater trying to deflect scrutiny or attacking their accusers. That's to be expected. It's the fans who brush off seemingly obvious inconsistencies with thoughts of "they're just jealous."
We saw it with the Iron Cowboy when all his facebook fans said "he is doing it for kids" while welfare was supporting HIS kids.
Robert Young is not the first to employ this strategy. We have seen runners using bikes, bikers using cars, drivers using planes, pilots using spaceships, etc. etc. Robert simply skipped a step and went from running to driving.
Sick and tired of runners biking on my Strava segments to get on the leaderboards!
http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?board=1&thread=7197140&id=7197140
Brilliant story, thanks for the OP for picking this up. If I was running across America I'd have a GPS on each limb for data redundancy, and it'd be going up on Strava regularly as I went along. Imagine all that Kudos!
CoachKev wrote:
Since that day I have run a few more times with Rob and can verify his speed and endurance. His team will take times and wins to suit their needs. If he ran 27 miles and won each stage in the Race Across America then no matter what you think it is still an ultra distance and still a win.
That's fine, but don't expect people to be impressed by it. If I won a marathon against like 20 people by running 4 hours, I would only claim that I'd won with qualification. To most people, a "win" implies something more than this. In particular, I'd think it would in general imply some level of legit competition, which I don't think can be said of Rob's "wins".
CoachKev wrote:
Rob truly is one of the nicest and most genuine people you could ever meet and I truly encourage each and every one of you to take time to run with him and see what a bloody nice bloke he is. If you haven't run with him and haven't taken the time to do so I don't think you can comment negatively. If you have integrity then go and track him down and run a few miles.
Please don't be negative towards him and just run and see what he really is all about. You will be very surprised at what a lovely guy he is and how genuine he is. Think how negativity affects you in a race and how if you had lots of people on the side of the road calling you a fraud and a charlatan, don't tell me you wouldn't be upset by it.
I'm sure he's a delightful guy. But that doesn't preclude the possibility that not everything is on the up-and-up with this attempt. Your argument that if I haven't run with him, I can't criticize him is ridiculous. If I claim that I've run across the US in a couple of days, and all of my friends say I'm a great guy, and my proof is pictures of me on the road, you're not allowed to criticize me?
It's been said here before, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary (or even just some base level) of proof. Like...GPS watches are a thing. Heart rate monitors are a thing. GoPros are a thing. All of these would be relatively cheap, easy ways to provide proof that everything is legit. The fact that all of these are so easily available but none are being used (or if they are, the data is not being made public) is one of the biggest red flags to me here. If I were attempting a record of this magnitude, I would make damn sure that it was documented well. I sure as hell would not expect people to be satisfied by some pictures on Facebook, a tracker on an RV, and the word of my BFFs.
CoachKev wrote:
It's too easy to write bad stuff and hide behind a keyboard. Get out there and run some miles, record them and try to actually get behind something in a positive way rather than taking the easy negative route.
Why is it negative to ask for proof? Certainly some things could have been said in a less negative way, but I think a lot of it is a response to immediately being called a troll and a loser by Rob's supporters for asking for proof. It's not trolling to ask for proof of wild claims. It's common sense.
Letsrun is a fearsome place when the scent of blood is in the water. I'm proud of the all-points research activity (said the professor). But I'm even prouder of those who have taken Coach Kev at his word and replied with a fair and balanced critique, explaining why we are, and should be, suspicious, and how those suspicions might be addressed.
Keep those cards and letters coming, LRs.
1 2 3 green wrote:
Robert Young is not the first to employ this strategy. We have seen runners using bikes, bikers using cars, drivers using planes, pilots using spaceships, etc. etc. Robert simply skipped a step and went from running to driving.
Sick and tired of runners biking on my Strava segments to get on the leaderboards!
http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?board=1&thread=7197140&id=7197140
Ever heard of Mile Rossi?
CoachKev, where are you? Several questions have yet to be answered.
Interesting find on the deleted wikipedia history and the previous newspaper stories about his alleged triathlon performance - it does seem there was a Robert Young who did some slow triathlons at that time (search here for "young, robert"
http://www.tri247.com/advanced_search.html?search_type=results
) but nothing which looks anything like GB team standard or even good amateur.
Will be interesting to see what additional evidence is produced to support his current claims but when there are such major inconsistencies coming out as soon as people start looking just below the surface very hard to have confidence in anything.
If it is the case that he's not done what he says he has it's quite depressing how easily people who don't have any knowledge of endurance sport get duped by both giving media coverage and even sponsorship. Suppose it becomes a positive feedback loop and once there's enough media reports out there saying what you've done that's all anyone finds and assume that because it's in the news it's true....
"All have had no interest other than to create articles about Robert Young, a triathlete who fails notability levels, by exagerrated and sometimes blatantly untrue claims. All have relied on the same references, from a local newspaper in Hertfordshire, and have shown the same orthographic tendency to misuse capital letters and mis-use citation templates Kevin McE (talk) 11:39, 1 December 2012 (UTC)"
Born in the 856 wrote:
CoachKev, where are you? Several questions have yet to be answered.
Cyberspace
I think , LRC should buy him the all tech gear and offer him 100k if he starts over and is on record pace for 1/4 of the way across the country! We could network to run every step with him!
Rob's gift is the ability to run very long distances day in and day out. I can't see why there is so much focus on 10k times or 5k times. How on earth does this really matter when you can run crazy distances again and again. I realise that according to the books and calculators that if you can run a 10k in a certain time that this should correlate to a predicted marathon time. But how on earth does that have any relevance when you are running across a country and trying to beat an established record.
His 5k and 10k times were actually when he was younger and a competitive GB triathlete. he represented GB for the 20-24 age category in Olympic and long course for his age category
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One name Mark Vaz
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who was proved to be a fake and there was a similar situation with times. Maybe an extreme case but if you have to ask why his pb's matter then you don't sound like a runner
I'm undecided at the moment but you mentioned times when he was younger. Well he was 20 in 2002. All his times would be on power of 10. You make out like he is 50.
Date and name of race and I can do my best to locate it even if not on the internet.
The long course tri bronze surely would be on the internet - if the race even existed.
Further questions arise why no record of formal ultra runs on po10? I've seen menton of him doing 5 min miles on his FB page during his ultra run. But somehow he can't crack 6 min miles on parkrun.
Thank you for those two links the are perfect