Tour de France 2021 - Speculation and Gossip

Racing
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You can modify DNA in adults. It’s called Gene Therapy when it’s used to treat a disease. Since 2017 there have been two FDA approved gene therapies in the market.

Also, there’s the DNA that you have but there’s only a given subset of specific genes that are active at any time. This is called epigenetics and it can have significant effects. What you eat, how you train, your environmental temperature and elevation and stress all cause different genes to turn on and off.
Even those same factors in the mother during fetal development have an effect. What is Epigenetics? | CDC

Anyone using gene therapy when they don’t have a true need would be considered doping in my book, whether it’s covered by the rules or not.

For epigenetics, I wouldn’t consider it cheating as long as your not taking any medication to induce it. Normal training and spending time at elevation are epigenetic influencers. Maybe Pogacar has found some advantage here due to a special diet or training methods.

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I’m not opposed to the existence of this thread. Most of the posters here are just talking about what is humanly possible and whether we should be suspicious without actually making an outright accusation. You included. That’s great and interesting to read.

However, it’s not all like that. I don’t know maybe it’s just me, but it seems every discussion out there about a standout performance in cycling devolves into doping accusations. It truly sucks. So when the topic of doping starts consuming the majority of the bandwidth during the TdF and here of all places, I personally just feel the need to counter the negativity, keep the magic alive. Nothing nefarious. I’m not trying to censor people (as if I could). At most just trying to prevent an echo chamber judgement because it will always be easier to imagine why someone should not be able to accomplish something than it is to imagine how they could accomplish it.

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I like to go back to one of my favorite quotes from
a YouTuber I like to watch (Philion Fit):
”Most who take steroids don’t do so to become Mr. Olympia, they do it to become a big barista.“

(Barista being an example for an ordinary day job).

Even without money, many many people are willing to take sh!t to just be better. Better than the other dude at the gym, better than fast guys on the group ride with the many strava segments, better than who ever is relevant to them. For some it is just someone, for others it’s everyone in the world.

The reason lie detector tests were removed from steroid testing in power lifting and Olympic lifting competitions (sports where I doubt a single world class athlete is clean) is because so many people passed these tests, while being on the juice.
That’s not only because lie detectors don’t work on 100% success rate, but also, because many people started to believe they were natural. They have told themselves the Same lie often enough to believe it.

I am by no means suggesting that any specific person in this discussion is like that. I am however suggesting, that even without money and global fame on the line, there are many many people who would do anything to win (what ever that is).

I just fail to believe that this stops at the very highest ranks.

A very interesting comment that was made earlier is the effect that doping in the teens has on the body long term.
Some athletes in Olympic weightlifting and bodybuilding have been forthcoming enough to admit they used to consume steroids, but are natty now (which is like saying I used to have sex, but now I am a virgin). There are very much long term positive effects on performance of this kind of doping (and long term negative effects on health).
It is nearly impossible to detect this, and this would just as well explain how a new young generation of athletes dominates the sport now (Tadej, Ganna, Bernal, MVDP, Wout, Remco)* as would their early usage of power meters and proper nutrition.

*I have no clue, let alone proof that anyone here on this list does anything shady. Those are just names of young top athletes in cycling.

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There is. As cold as it might seem, you’ll never see me acknowledge it either. I feel for his family and friends but a cheat is a cheat in my books.

You’ve raised some (to my mind) great points. Maybe ‘sports’ needs to cast the Fair Play Net wider? If what you say is true about Philadelphia, that’s a dreadful state of affairs. I accept that my approach ‘could’ unfairly discriminate against an athlete hailing from such an area. That said, my approach is far from refined.

The supplement companies themselves need to product control, better. The athletes themselves should stop appearing on Instagram and other social media channels pushing something that could ruin their career.

As an athlete, you can have a positive impact. No-one uses insert company name here supplements because I use them. If you (world class athlete) don’t use them, then you have no right to be peddling a companies products, especially if you have a solid and substantial reason to believe they are not up to snuff.

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Look at Sha’ Carri Richardson. She tests positive for THC which knocks her from the Olympics, yet in most other sports, athletes are pushing CBD products, where the chance for cross contamination is high. So she’s a “cheater” while plenty of other athletes would be popped for it, but aren’t tested, and aren’t labeled as cheats.

The standards are uneven.

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Here’s some speculation for what, other than cheating, might explain Pogacar’s results.

  1. Genetically gifted. All pro cyclists are genetically gifted to some extent, maybe Pog is especially lucky here. Pog’s coach has said that his most unique trait is his ability to recover crazy well. This means he can handle the demands of a grand tour especially well. He destroyed everybody after a week of very hard racing.
  2. Great training from a young age that has gotten him to his true genetic potential. His superior ability to recover would have significant additional effects here.
  3. The other stage racing this year has been really hard. Many of the key competitors skipped that racing while Pog did not. Maybe Pog has done better peaking his form for the first week of TDF.
  4. Being smart enough to have the tactics and skills to use his fitness effectively despite his youth.
  5. Others being off their form due to disruptions from COVID: restricted training, abnormal race schedules, life stress, lingering effects of infection, etc.
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Without doubt. You’ve already highlighted to me factors that I was blissfully unaware of.

That said, I do stand by my post. Yes, my proposal needs significant refinement but, if you remove the financial incentives, I honestly believe you will see a drastic drop in drug-based cheating.

I know that this is off topic slightly but medical professionals who are found to have been acting unprofessionally are struck from the Medical Council Records and refused licence to practice. Yes, they could open some back street practice but more fool you if you walk through those doors. Their ability to reap financial gain from that sector has effectively been cut.

In essense, what I’m driving at is why do people want to listen to Lance? Why do you want to listen to a man who lied to the worlds face? I get the fact that he fought cancer. So did I. So did several other Forum members. I’m glad that he beat the illness. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. What I don’t get is why people and companies want to attribute something to him? Was he a great cyclist? Probably. Without all the fuss and nonsense? Unfortunately we’ll never know. Was he the cyclist he sold to the world? Nah, not even close.

Back to my initial post and first comment. I still believe. Until someone is shown to be a cheat, I’ll believe what I’m seeing. With all my heart I hope that every rider in professional racing has a clear card. I also know and accept that I’m a fool.

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I listen to Lance’s podcast, but it’s really to listen to George Hincapie and Johan Bruyneel. Both were dopers / enabled it, but at the end of the day, the tactics and the act of riding a bike and weaponizing it in competition is the same, and I’ve learned a lot from both. Lance doesn’t really add that much to the podcast other than name.

For me, they were all doping, going back a century + and would rule almost every pro out going back that far. Just because they weren’t caught (lack of testing / testing sophistication) , not documented, etc. doesn’t mean they are any less guilty.

So for me, it’s not about who was doping and wasn’t, it comes down to who is a perceived nice guy and I enjoy listening to. I don’t like Lance because he’s a d***head, not because he doped.

It doesn’t mean I think it should be allowed, just that I am willing to factor in other metrics.

If doping was my metric, I wouldn’t follow any sports and look up to any former “great” in any sport for their accomplishments. It’s no better elsewhere though with doping in academia being as bad or worst. I can’t think of how many times I heard a peer in college looking to buy Adderall or Modafinil to help with a test. My friends who went to law and medical school have lots of stories to tell about that. Hell, some of the scientists that work in these doping labs or are doing research on it, may have academically doped themselves…

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What about “modern” food full of steroids? Maybe that has something with new generations?

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That’s been happening for 50+ years. We’ve all “benefited” from that.

It’s actually easier now to avoid that than it ever has been, with locally sourced, organic foods, being in vogue.

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In Simpson’s defence, the first anti-doping laws were only introduced in 1965, testing started in 1966, he died in 1967. It was a very different time, for the majority of his career what we think of now as cheating was simply part of the sport, and even after the rules changed it would have taken quite a few years for attitudes in the peloton to change. From what I understand (well before my time!) anti-doping back then was more about rider safety than about rider performance.

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Could be, but on that front I worry more about the wider health implications. Kids going through puberty early, etc…

As @hoffman900 notes, that’s definitely improving though.

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That’s certainly fair enough. To me though the magic of cycling exploits exists independently of the doping discussion, so I don’t really combine the two.

And Fwiw my focus isn’t even on Pog mainly. Something in the peloton has changed drastically in the past year plus, and it’s really apparent. Not the old training, equipment and nutrition has evolved thing, but an absolute light switch has been thrown overnight. And that’s what really piques my curiosity more than any individual.

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I actually don’t think the tactics are the same. When you can get some EPO or a fresh batch of blood after a hard stage then you can burn matches a lot more recklessly with less consideration for what impact that’s going to have in the days and weeks to come. I haven’t listened to that podcast in a few years, but I do remember Lance in particular seemed pretty ignorant of how racing has changed and riders are having to measure their efforts more. E.g. in the 2018 Giro he was saying by the end of the first week that Yates was unbeatable, where more informed commentators were already wondering whether it was wise to be burning so many matches for relatively modest time gains. To be fair Hincapie seemed to be much more informed on current cycling tactics and riders. Was already getting fed up of Lance and I can’t bear Bruyneel, so when he started featuring more heavily I stopped listening, but assume he would also at least be more knowledgeable.

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Another thing to counter the suspicions about Pog: don’t you think Wout Van Aert and MVDP are similarly phenomenal racers that are way above the rest?

They just so happen to be better at different types of races, not climbers and therefore not GC contenders in TDF.

If WVA and MVDP had focused their whole careers on TDF GC instead of CX and the classics, maybe they would beat Pog.

And those are just other pro cyclists. How many non-pros or non-cyclists out there could beat Pog if they had the desire, dedication and training that he has? We’ll never know.

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:100:

Couldn’t agree more. It’s not any one rider, it’s the change in the field. It’s an incredibly exciting time to be a cycling fan, the racing is incredible…but I go in eyes wide open. I’ve heard all these excuses before.

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I find the worst culprits are friends who only really loosely follow cycling during the Tour, maybe occasionally dip into other Grand Tours or the Olympics. They often started following it in the Lance era, never understood why I was so insistent at the time that Lance must be doping, and since Lance was caught have now flipped to the complete opposite direction and just assume that anybody who wins in cycling must be doping. So having spent most of a decade trying to educate them on how pervasive doping was in cycling and how positive I was that Lance was a cheat, I now find myself in the other corner. For example last week a friend was telling everybody that Pogacar must be doping because he’d done EXACTLY what Landis did in 2006, and I was trying to explain that losing time on a flattish stage to riders who aren’t a GC threat is completely different to losing time on a mountain stage to all your top GC rivals. Which is not the same as saying Pogacar is clean or cycling is clean of course.

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But they both drank Jack Daniels, right? :grin:

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I actually think it’s the opposite. I kind of debated commenting on it in the other TdF thread but thought better of it, but now that it’s out here, the TR forum in general has a more casual level of fan, for want of a better word. I will go to pains to stress this isn’t an attack or or put down in any way, shape of form. Truly. It’s just less engaged than some other places. The thread about Nate not knowing Pippo Ganna is pretty illustrative, myriad people chimed in they did not know who he was either, and Ganna is one of the biggest and brightest storylines in cycling over the past couple years. And there is a strong correlation to those who didn’t know him and those who lean to the cycling is clean side of the fence. This doesn’t mean they aren’t as passionate/good/engaged about cycling as anyone else, just they don’t follow pro racing as closely, and that’s the issue here.

Just my personal WAG, I’d say an average engaged cycling fan watches 120+ days of racing a year, not counting CX season. I don’t think most people here watch more than a couple classics and GTs. And that’s not dipping into longevity, which may have an even more outside impact on perspective. I came into cycling watching LeMond (I’m an OG Lance hater btw), and I watched the EPO era hit in real time. I see striking similarities now and it is worrying.

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Possibly, but there’s also allowable thresholds for things like trenbolone that tend to turn up in food sources, and when ingested unknowingly they are in smaller concentrations and with a far shorter half life, so I don’t think that’s on the same level in terms of performance.

If anything it sort of opens the door for doping protocols that involve microdosing such that the athlete is just under the limit without getting busted, which interestingly might have benefitted from a period of reduced/suspended testing given the short half-lives of many modern PEDs.

I don’t think there’s a reliable test for blood doping yet either (?)