Official pro cycling "WTF are they on?" thread

One More Solo

One More Solo

One More Solo

Soldato
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In the interests of keeping the pro cycling thread "clean" ( :p ) I thought it might be best to keep any doping relating discussion in here.

I've struggled to warm to Froome because his performances are just ridiculous. Can anyone tell me what happened to the last guy that competed over both short, power climbs and long Alpine climbs whilst pedalling a ridiculous cadence? I think he recovered from a serious illness too that was used to explain away some of his performances...

I'm also really interested to see Nibali and Quintana in week 2 and 3. I'm wondering if they'll come back fighting when the rest of the peloton begins to tire.

People will dismiss this as conspiracy theorist nonsense, but we're watching an era of cycling where record times are being set up nearly every climb going, beating times from riders who we know were doping. Some of that can be ascribed to improvements in aero kit etc, but bike weights haven't changed and powermeters aren't a new invention. There just simply isn't enough tech to explain it (in my opinion).

On top of that, the rumours floating around that Sky are going to sign Landa (after Brailsford called for action to be taken against Astana just a few weeks ago) are an utter joke.

Discuss...
 
touch said:
...no we're not?
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That was an exaggeration, but the Giro saw fastest ever ascents on the Finestre and Sestriere. I guess the saving grace is that the Mortirolo ascents were slower than 1999.

Valverde set a record up the Mur de Huy last year which Froome and Rodriguez both came close to beating this year.

The Giro overall had the second fastest average speed ever.

I don't think riders will ever challenge the ridiculous times set up the Alpe and Hautacam in the 90s, but to me there is a trend that times are getting progressively faster over the last few years without any real explanation for it.

It doesn't make me enjoy watching cycling any less but I think it's healthy to maintain a questioning attitude!
 
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Moses said:
Shirley Froome almost certainly couldn't dope without Team Sky knowing about it? If that's the case, I think I trust Brailsford and thus trust Froome's clean.
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Is this Brailsford that hired Geert Leinders and Sean Yates onto a team with a zero tolerance doping policy without doing any apparent due diligence on them?

touch said:
Yep, you can really see the difference when a 6man team sky TTT doesnt even get close to some historical ITT times.
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Froome rode at least the last 7km with no teammates so that doesn't tell the whole story.

The point Jonny69 makes is a good one. The bio passport means riders can microdose within the set parameters. If you can't increase your power any further to reach the magic ~6w/kg, then you have to reduce your weight. The recent CIRC report highlighted that some teams are using corticoids to assist with weight loss and we know Froome along with plenty of other riders have had TUEs for those recently.

Now, don't get me wrong, people with naturally skinny builds exist. You look at someone like Tejvan Pettinger who has dominated the hill climb scene in the UK and has a very ectomorphic build. He's competitive in TTs too but he's never going to challenge the very top guys over a flat course. It's not natural that guys like Froome can compete with the likes of Tony Martin AND be competitive in the mountains. I don't believe there is a natural way to drop that much weight without losing muscle mass and therefore hinder TT performance.

I always thought GTs were meant to be a trade off between limiting your losses in the mountains or the TTs, depending on your build. It gets a bit silly when the same riders are challenging for the wins in both.

_63428153_armstrong.jpg
 
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Most of the others rode the entire climb alone but they did so without 220km of racing in their legs. It's obviously hard to put an estimate on how much time that might save, but it would certainly be significant.

On top of that, an evenly paced TT effort will always be faster than a stage race over the same climb as Froome simply wouldn't have gone full gas bottom to top.

FWIW, Froome climbed Ventoux nearly a minute and a half quicker than Armstrong (2002) and Contador (2009) did in stage races.
 
Apologies, that was based on the times recorded over the final 15km of the climb. Source: http://www.53x12.com/do/show?page=indepth.view&id=139

The TTT approach relies on Sky riding a high enough tempo to prevent other riders attacking early on the climb. I'd say that would require a lower intensity level at the end of a hard stage than during an ITT. It's misleading to suggest Sky were rolling turns all the way up the mountain anyway.

Plus, Sky hardly invented the mountain train. Armstrong would have been protected until as far up the climb as possible too.
 
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So **** hit the fan last night when a load of Froome's data got leaked and someone put together a video displaying his live HR/power data alongside his climb of Ventoux in 2013. Sky have claimed the data has been hacked which I guess makes it legit.

https://m.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1033149476696091&id=213103522034028

Ross Tucker is taking a lot of flak for it on Twitter, he's behind the Science of Sport website which analyses performance in cycling and raised some question marks over Nibali's performance last year among others. The data proves his estimates have been within about 5-10W of Froome's actual power. As he points out, no-one raised an eyebrow when he posted about Nibali last year, but in 2013 and this year he's been taking a lot of criticism for it. Critics have called his approach pseudoscience, but it's the most accurate pseudoscience I've seen.

Unsurprisingly the power numbers are somewhat questionable for that stage of a GT...

Continuing on, if teams have nothing to hide there is no reason not to publish their power data. All the pro teams know what power is required to win a GT. I like Ross Tucker's analogy of it's the same as Justin Gatlin hiding his time in the 100m to stop his rivals knowing how fast he's going. Knowing that you need x number of watts to win the Tour is as helpful as knowing you need to run 9.70s to win the 100m.

What bothers me about this all isn't so much the alleged cheating, it's the hypocrisy of people like Sky and Brian Cookson coming in to cycling claiming they would do things differently, then once they're in finding pathetic excuses not to be as transparent as they should be.
 
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a1ex2001 said:
The simple solution with the power numbers is for the sport to make them all public for every rider in every race we shouldn't be asking or expecting an individual team to reveal data that they believe to be sensitive if nobody else is doing it. If the sport wants to be seen as clean then it is probably something that should be done along with the banning of almost all TUE's if someone has saddle sores that need cortisone they shouldn't be on a bike.

I'm not stupid enough to believe that any top level sport is clean especially one like cycling where drugs bring such obvious benefits but I do believe it is nothing like as rampant as in the dark days when you had guys who were built like tanks like Risse flying up the hills. I really want to believe Froome is clean and I hope history vinidicates him as he seems like a good guy and cycling needs a clean star or two..
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Fact is, Sky bang on more than any other team about winning clean and then getting upset when people question their performances and try and cover it up with spurious technological explanations. If you listen to Sky, it's like they invented the derailleur, but the reality is powermeters have existed since the 1980s and the tech arms race has been going on for decades.

As I've said, they should have nothing to hide. Why does it matter if everyone knows Froome does x watts per kg up a climb? Will it make them train harder? If Froome is exceptionally physiologically gifted then no-one will be able to touch him in an out and out drag race anyway.
 
:p

My point being, his "pseudoscience" has actually turned out to be very close to the real numbers i.e. it's not pseudoscience.

And touch, I disagree on that point. I imagine most of the teams have a very good idea as it is of what their rivals strengths, weaknesses and power numbers are. Even if you have all those numbers confirmed exactly, races are won and lost on someone having a good day and someone having a bad day. I expect Contador was by far the strongest rider at the Giro on paper, but he still lost time on stages at the Giro.
 
touch said:
Haha, WTF.
Just watching the first few seconds whilst it downloads so i can watch the rest later. A large woman in a pink shirt walks across the road and the commentator says "My goodness, a pink bus just crossed in front!"
Was that allowed in 2013? :p
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Haha, totally missed that. :D Carlton Kirby has his moments but I did prefer him as the third man with Harmon and Kelly as the main commentators.
 
From yesterday's stage, we know Gesink managed 5.8w/kg from his published power data with Froome predicted at either 6.1 or 6.2w/kg. Given the time he put into Gesink that seems more than reasonable.

http://sportsscientists.com/2015/07/day-1-in-the-mountains-one-more-pixel-context-mistrust/

He's either the most naturally gifted cyclist ever or a fraud. If it's the former then why are Sky so reluctant to provide any proper evidence?

If the rest of the Tour is like yesterday it's going to be dull dull dull, if you're a fan of competitive sport anyway. Hopefully Contador has had his steak overnight. :p

Saytan said:
Indurain is a particularly interesting rider to observe

his dominance came at the height of the EPO era. He was a big rider, hell he was known as "Big Mig".

a 6ft2in 80kg man danced up the climbs like he was Marco Pantani.
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I don't think anyone can deny that he doped. Any top rider from that era did. I'm sure I read he'd refused to answer any questions on doping during an interview which ended up being interpreted by most as a tacit admission.
 
Saytan said:
Hutch was talking about VO2 max the other day - in 2005 he was tested at 90, and he's never been anything above a good national level rider, so it isn't the be all and end all.
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Although he did finish 14 (?) places above Chris Froome at the 2006 Commonwealth Games which I believe is when Dave Brailsford claims to have spotted Froome. :p

I think Hutch was being very modest, I think the top amateur time triallists would be a match for a lot of pros, although mainly because they focus on their aero positions a good deal more than all but the TT specialists.
 
Making this out to be a nationality thing wilfully misses the point... There's plenty of smoke around Farah (moreso than Froome), it's irrelevant that he's British.

The French anti doping laws make it harder for their riders to cheat, which is why Pinot etc will probably never win the Tour despite being hugely talented.

As for Sagan, his performances are pretty incredible but his career has followed a natural arc and he's still yet to win anything significant. He lost a chunk of time on the climb yday and more riders probably would have got away if they weren't content to sit on his wheel.
 
Pinning the numbers on power meter accuracy doesn't seem stack up for me. It's also weird that Kerrison and Froome seem to be confused over how much the latter weighs.

The lack of professional scepticism in the press for Froome's data vs the Ventoux video is a bit of an eye opener. It seems only Paul Kimmage is willing to put his head above the parapet.
 
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