Anyone know what the PED testing regime has been like these last 6 months of COVID? Have we just seen 6 months of limited testing and monitoring?
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Love all this healthy discussion of Arkea-Samsic! Let’s do get to the bottom of it.
Wait, what? Who? Police? What does that have to do with anything? It’s not like they won. You gotta focus on the winners who DIDN’T get raided by French police. I mean, great TT performances are so much more suspicious than ACTUAL F*CKING PPL ACTUALLY MAKING AN ARREST.
Hahhaha…you guys are hilarious.
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I don’t understand how power and HR readings would tell you someone is clean or not? If he averaged 470 vs 420, it’s still speculation.
My belief is that everyone in every sport is doped. It’s all entertainment to me.
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I refer you to the thread title in which you may find a clue. May I infer that you wish to discuss the police raid and Quintana’s “vitamins”? So start a new thread topic? I am pleased we amuse you 
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My point isn’t to actually discuss it. I know there’s another thread. The point is I’m sarcastically and hopefully humorously agreeing with the question: “why does simply winning draw suspicion?” That’s definitely on-topic.
I haven’t seen much actual discussion related to the title of the thread. So far I’m reading a discussion of doping 
And some hand-waving about genetics.
I would love a discussion on Pog aerobic engine and recovery abilities. Could be legit reasons for it that we could all learn from (or at least be entertained)
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Yeah the only broadcasting of data (other than gps I think) that is allowed during a race is to the race affiliated data company. But teams aren’t allowed to see that data during the race.
I’ve seen them put up power and HR data live during the race before. So someone is receiving that data in real-time.
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Uh, if the riders who lost badly were doping it sorta seems like the folks who thrashed them might not be entirely clean.
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Train something you’re weak in. Find a way to get rid of you before a climb. Be in the right position when it matters. Find a race somewhere other than the one you’re in.
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Anytime you have the sudden rise of a nation to the top end of the sport, my suspicions start getting raised.
90’s - Italy
00’s - US
10’s - GB
20’s - Slovenia (?)
And let’s not forget Operation Aderlass.
No. (IMO, of course)
Seriously, that is a quite a feat of mental gymnastics Phillipa pulled off there. The numbers are clear…they were setting records up climbs, breaking those set by the likes of -7 and others.
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@Juicetin Wow, can’t argue with that. I’ve totally changed my mind and now everyone is doping. Which begs the question, why do they even race? As Floyd Landis once said: “I get so much flack for doping and winning, what about all the ppl who doped and lost?”…Oh, Floyd. I kinda still like ya. Definitely more so than that other guy.
Anyway, have fun throwing shade without any evidence:
https://www.velonews.com/events/tour-de-france/french-lead-chorus-of-doubt-in-wake-of-tour-de-france/
Of course it’s the French, since it wasn’t Pinot who crushed it.
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This.
Bigger things to worry about than a bunch of cloistered well-paid people pretending to care about something they just want to ignore in order to continue to get paid.
Reality is rubber hitting the road.
Unless it’s winter, then it’s sweat hitting the floor.
Best new nickname yet! 
If Pogacar is doping, he’s a better liar than Lance 
“I was 10 in 2008 and it’s strange to be talking about it because it goes against everything I believe in. I know that doping puts the health of athletes in danger, I’ve always been aware of that. We have nothing to hide today and I think that cycling, despite the climate of suspicion, has done a lot to fight doping. In truth it saddens me that people doubt my performances. My only defense is that I am happy with my conscience.”
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I’ve listened to an interview or two that mentioned this as a reason. In the height of the doping era, many teams would only let a rider into the doping program once they had proven themselves to some degree. So you had to already be a pro for a couple years before you were allowed to dope like the big boys. Whether this is a big reason or not I can’t say.
I think the biggest reason for the rise of new talent is the widespread availability of power meters and the willingness of DS’s and managers to trust this data without huge race experience. Instead of having to work your way slowly up the levels with only race performances to market yourself like in the 90s/early 00s you can now just send your power data to someone and say “hey I can do 6W/kg for 30min” and the team can say “wow thats great, you can drag our GC rider up the mountains in the tour”. Whereas before you would have to prove yourself in smaller races before they would bring to a race like the tour.
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What really makes me question his performancd is the fact that Roglic looked to be the stronger rider just 2 days earlier on the uphill gravel section dropping Pogacar off his wheel without even trying.
If history has told me anything is that bouncing back from a downwards curve in a gt should raise some questions.
Pogacar was not the strongest rider in the alps at all and just 2-3 days later he smashes the entire field like there is no tomorrow. Too good to be true?
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Happy to give Pog the benefit of the doubt unless or until there’s at least some circumstantial evidence of wrongdoing around him or the UAE camp.
I think it’s been a pretty weird year with lockdown throwing everybody’s training off. Who knows how affected some riders have been in terms of their personal situation, mental health, motivation, etc. And they really didn’t know whether the Tour was going to happen or when until quite late in the day. Ineos are normally the best team in the peloton at peaking their riders at the right time and appear to have got it totally wrong. So the disruption of this year is bound to throw up some surprising results.
In terms of the TT itself I also don’t think it’s that surprising he won by that margin. It was clear he was one of the best 2 climbers throughout the race so he was a favourite for the stage win on a climbing TT anyway. But unlike Roglic he had no pre-race expectations and no yellow jersey so had less pressure and much less media duties throughout the 3 weeks. Roglic looked like a guy who was struggling with the pressure that day, particularly once the time gaps started coming in. And unlike Dumoulin and Van Aert, Pog spent the whole 3 weeks following wheels while those guys were repeatedly emptying the tank with some huge pulls on the front. Pog was relatively fresh, unencumbered by expectations or pressure, and had nothing to lose. Those are great ingredients for a performance that hits it out of the park.
Speaking of Van Aert, his performance throughout the 3 weeks was arguably even more astonishing than Pogacar’s! Picking up 2 stage wins and 6th in the green jersey while also being a super domestique capable of dropping former GT winners on the mountains. And then finishes up with 4th on the final TT as well. Makes you wonder if he could be a GC contender himself if he lost a few pounds and there was a route that suited him. It’s not even like he was sitting in the grupetto having easy days when he didn’t have domestique duties, he finished 20th overall.
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I do think this point has a lot of merit, it’s also odd how a young pro who has been hugely successful since his youth days gets more suspicion thrown at him than a 35 year old who comes in only a minute behind him.
We’ve seen the emergence of a lot of young talent over the last few years, personally I can’t wait to see what Tom Pidcock achieves with Ineos
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Agreed…but he also took ~30" out of Rog on the flats. IIRC, he was only ~20’ down when they hit the climb.
Could have been a question of pace (Rog lookng to hold something back, etc) but it was still a surprising result.
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What does that show though? HR is so individual and so subject to external factors (caffeine, temperature, altitude, etc) as to be almost meaningless. I ride and race with a guy with almost exactly the same age, weight and FTP as me, and typically have average HR about 30bpm lower than him on any given ride. And we already know that if rider A is going up a mountain faster than rider B then he’s putting out more W/kg.
HR and power is useful for knowing whether somebody actually earned a Strava KOM or did it in their car, not sure it’s much use for detecting doping though. Likely to just lead to various internet experts coming up with guesstimated theoretical “limits of human performance” to decide what is and isn’t possible for a clean rider.
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The combination of hr and power isn’t used to compare to others, but to compare to the individual’s own performances. I mean you basically contradicted yourself and answered that question in your last paragraph. I did mention creating a “data passport” where you could compare a riders data against their OWN history.
And my bigger point is not that it’s used to just detect doping. But it would also be hugely useful in clearing people by showing that others that got dropped just had a bad day.