The longer periods spend without racing might also have lead to the riders being able to focus more on training and less on a taper-race-recover-repeat Regiment.
However, a longer time without racing might also mean that cyclists (and other athletes) were able to do other stuff uninterrupted for longer than usual…
Haters gonna hate. Tadej forever yellow!!
With certain substances shown to cause liver failure, I really hope you are not correct in your statement.
… sorry but I just had to 
Agree there is absolutely still doping going on. Aderlass is probably the biggest bust in a while, but it’s still nowhere near the big busts we had through the mid 90s to late 00s. Biggest name rider implicated was Petacchi I think? I’d have to google the rest of the names, nobody particularly well known. Scroll through the GC top 10s in the EPO era and practically every rider there was caught up in some kind of doping bust.
Of course that could just mean that we’re in an era where the dopers are well ahead of the testers and the teams/riders who have the resources to do things properly are doping and getting away with it, while the lower end and older riders without those resources are getting caught up in stuff like Aderlass. Or maybe as posted above the new thing isn’t blood doping but stuff that riders do in their teens before they’re on the testers radar and has a lasting effect. Which might explain the almost unprecedented number of young riders seemingly going straight from junior racing to winning on the WorldTour.
This was my first impression last spring, when everyone busted out of the gate, but we are over a year on now. These guys have been in a typical training and racing cycle for almost 18 months and there is no sign of slowing, so I don’t think that this theory holds as much water as it did.
Let’s keep it humble and open to other possibilities. You’ve strung together a hypothesis but you have NOT proved what is naturally possible. A team of sports physiologists given years would struggle to perform experiments and theorize a model that would allow them to state upper limits with the amount of certainty that you are doing after…I don’t know…a few days of googling?
It’s interesting stuff for sure but not good enough to incriminate.
Yup, I doubt any of us have anything like the expertise needed to make our own informed judgement on what is or isn’t naturally possible. So we’re dependent on what the experts tell us, and experts are using models which inevitably are based on some assumptions and will have a margin of error. I’m sure they’re pretty close, but I don’t believe it’s a precise enough science that they can definitively say “anybody above X W/kg is doping”.
I’ve always thought that treatment plant off I95 smelled kinda funny 
neither did Lance
Sorry for the cynicism but if something seems to good to be true then it usually is.
This is a good read: Van der Poel's coach explains what makes him different from the rest of us - CyclingTips
I like this bit:
De Kegel preferred not to divulge too many raw numbers, but he said that Van der Poel set his all-time record for five-minute power en route to victory at Mûr-de-Bretagne on stage 2, holding 551 watts (7.35 W/kg) over five minutes on the punchy climb – after 180 km of racing and having put in a prior attack too.
Don’t know if the methodology is still the same but when vetooo, Ross Tucker and doc veloclinic started to popularise these calculations some ten years ago, rider weight was normalised to 70kg. This is going by my memory, so everyone please correct me if this is wrong.
More generally, Pogi is just out of this world ridiculous and taking the piss, but others have done really well too. Colbrelli almost takes the cake.
Aderlass showed that pretty low tech blood doping regime can still function well without tripping the blood passport and that domestiques resort to those methdos as well. Add to that the fact that governing bodies are fairly gingerish to pursue passport cases, which is kinda understandable given legal fees when running against big corporations or states, and there is quite some room to play with.
In the Aderlass news there were also mentions of possible artificial oxygen carriers (such as perfluorocarbons) use. As many will know, a certain Mauro Giannetti of UAE has first hand experience of using those.
Also worth scrutiny?
Which is about the equivalent of 6.2 W/kg in terms of physiological human performance, according to Coggan:
And the figures in the Coggan chart are meant to be determined fresh legged.
Tadej is clearly not the only specimen of unbelievable human performance in the pro Peleton. With Wout, Ganna, MvdP probably being on a similar level in their respective category.
It is very likely that their state of doping is pretty similar. Either they all do it, or they all don’t do it.
I know I’m going to get a lot of hate for this, but I don’t really care if he’s clean or not. Just like I didn’t really care if Lance or any of his competitors were clean/dirty. I just want to watch exciting racing. I’m not saying you have to be cheating to make the race exciting or whether racing clean or dirty is better than the other. I’m saying simply that I like exciting, attacking racing. And I’m not too bothered if it comes out that somebody was doping. Same reason I’m not going to speculate on current riders. I just like watching racing.
What’s that based on?
If you go back 40 years, no one would thought swimmers, runners, and just about everyone would be as strong and as fast as they are.
I’m sorry, but I’m not buying Coggan is the absolute authority on this. Rules of thumbs are just that, rules of thumbs.
< has done plenty of scientific and engineering modeling in other disciplines. I know full well the shortcomings of models and data collection. Consider how different power meters can vary 5% from one brand to another, and that alone can swing numbers greatly.
5% +/- at a real 350 watts could show up as 332w or 367w. That’s a big swing and hugely effects those w/kg charts. This is also why I take anyone’s self reported FTP or w/kg with a grain of salt.
That Coggan chart is absolutely not meant to be used for the purpose you’re using it for. It’s one (admittedly well informed) man’s opinion of typical W/kg at different race categories, it’s not supposed to be an indicator of the upper limit of what’s naturally possible. Or the lower limit for that matter - you might just as well use this chart to tell somebody that tested at <1.86W/kg that that’s the lowest possible natural level and they’re clearly not trying hard enough…
Exactly.
I’d almost put it on the psuedoscience side of things considering it wouldn’t withstand the rigors of being peer reviewed.
There is still a lot of psuedoscience in cycling and the opinions of just a small few have an out weighted impact on the community… biases and all.
Also, at the end of the day, you still have to ride the bike.
In motorsports, in spec classes (so equal equipment) certain drivers are always at the front. They just know how to operate and weaponize their car / bike. I’ve seen what would be considered pro fields, where people still get lapped.
Looking at the engine is only one facet.
Reasons why I am against cheating, which secretly consuming PEDs essentially is:
- it us unfair: it creates unfair competition and robbs others, who may play fair of a chance of winning. Which really may be the greatest achievement in their life. Roglic losing the Tour or Küng losing his first ever stage win was pretty heart breaking. If that all was fair, then that’s just how life is, you can’t always win. But if it wasn’t fair, then they would have been unfairly denied the biggest success of their lives, which WOULD (not saying this happened) really suck!
- Superstars of sports are role models. If they want or not. If I were an adolescent who is competing in the junior ranks of the 100m dash, I would at least know that becoming one of the greatest ever is not going to happen, if I am not on PEDs (or not Usain Bolt of course😒)
- Drugs in general suck. I can’t think of any way in which being a better version of myself because of a drug addiction would be a positive thing….