Cycling 2024

Rams said:
This is just one perspective though. I’ve been caught with my pants down over the years defending cycling so I’m certainly not going put my hand in the fire for the innocence of any cyclist, but the counter argument is that the testing is light years ahead of what it used to be, they can now pick up the slightest dosis of synthetic drugs with things like carbon isotope tests, and the biological passport will also accurately pick things up. So it’s very unlikely that even if they dope, they’re doping like they did 20 years ago.
On the other hand, cycling has made very significant improvements in the nutrition & recovery of the athletes, that will for a large part explain the increases in performance. Each athlete now has the exact amount of food intake and rest to best suit each particular athlete. We know it works and now other sports are copying these nes sciences. Cycling has become to sports science what F1 is to the automotive industry.
So even though there are athletes doping or at least bending the rules, and there are also still weaknesses in the out of competition testing, general consensus is that it’s become far more difficult to dope in cycling without getting caught.
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If that's the case, why keep on the tainted dope doctors whose sole job was to run doping rings?

Like, Ibarguren's entire career has been dedicated to beating doping tests. Why would you keep him if that wasn't the intention :lol:
 
That article’s from 2015 and focuses on just a small part of the testing. And those doctors didn’t just have one job in running a doping ring, like it or not they’re qualified sport scientists. It’s impossible for the sport to get rid of everybody who was involved with the doping, whether ex riders or staff, because they’re be no one left to do the jobs. That’s not saying there’s no doping in the peleton, but it’s certainly far more difficult to get away with it for sure.
 
Rams said:
That article’s from 2015 and focuses on just a small part of the testing. And those doctors didn’t just have one job in running a doping ring, like it or not they’re qualified sport scientists. It’s impossible for the sport to get rid of everybody who was involved with the doping, whether ex riders or staff, because they’re be no one left to do the jobs. That’s not saying there’s no doping in the peleton, but it’s certainly far more difficult to get away with it for sure.
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Would you have concerns right now if a team hired Ferrari?
 
RobinLFC said:
No, Armstrong's transformation is like Vingegaard sudenly becoming Vingegaard. You act as if riders can't improve on things - Wiggins won his Tour at 32, Froome his first at 28. Armstrong got his cancer at 25, and won his first Tour when he was 27 years old.

Of course he was doping, I'm just disagreeing that it's a certainty he wouldn't have won the Tour in a clean era. He inherently had the talent imo (and, more importantly, the perseverence compared to the likes of Ullrich).
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He had no outstanding talent for the high mountains. and this is where EPO turns donkeys into race horses, because mountain riding favours those with high hematocrit values. And EPO doesn't care how low your natural hematocrit production is. You take it and keep taking it and ziiip, you are right up there at the legal limit. Furthermore, someone with a naturally lower hematocrit production metabolises it more efficiently than those with naturally higher production.

This is why EPO disfavors natural talent. it's not an equal boost across the board.

And this in turn is why Armstrong benefited so massively from it, having shown no previous aptitude for the mountains, what won sprinter Jalabert the mountain shirt on Riis' programme, and why even a Lemond on EPO wouldn't have been able to beat Indurain on EPO. The effects Indurain got from it were exponentially greater than what a huge natural talent like Lemond would have been able to extract from it. It made Indurain cope in the mountains, but couldn't have made Lemond match him in the TT.

And it's also the reason why people who acquire climbing ability late in their careers is typically seen as a red flag for doping.
 
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AfonsoAlves said:
Would you have concerns right now if a team hired Ferrari?
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You’re getting silly now, and yes I am concerned by some of the names still involved with cycling. But you can’t just get rid of everybody who was involved in doping from cycling for practical reasons. Even most of the pundits commentating on the races were involved. But things had definitely changed around 2013 2014 ish after Armstrong’s confessions and the withdrawal of a lot of cycling’s sponsorship as result of the bad press. The culture in the peleton has changed and the technology in testing in cycling has made great strides the past decade and particularly the past 5 years. I would say cycling still isn’t clean, but it’s probably cleaned it’s act up to such an extent that there are now plenty of sports with a bigger doping problem than cycling where as in the past cycling was the no1 offender. I think that’s probably the most realistic scenario to where we’re currently at.
 
And went and dug up the source, just to prove it is not unfounded claims

Why not let athletes do what they want? At least then we’d have the clarity of knowing it’s a level playing field.

Vaughters visibly bristles when I ask this. Then he lays out what he has for countless journalists and fans (he’s been known to give out his mobile-phone number on Twitter so that he can talk to people about what he sees as misperceptions).

“There are a few arguments on that. I’ll start with physiological and we’ll go to psychological,” he begins.

Take two riders of the same age, height, and weight, says Vaughters. They have identical VO2max at threshold—a measure of oxygen uptake at the limit of sustainable aerobic power. But one of them has a natural hematocrit of 36 and one of 47. Those riders have physiologies that don’t respond equally to doping.

It’s not even a simple math equation that, with the old 50 percent hematocrit limit, one rider could gain 14 percent and another only three. Even if you raise the limit to the edge of physical sustainability, 60 percent or more, to allow both athletes significant gains, it’s not an equal effect, Vaughters says.

He goes on to explain that the largest gains in oxygen transport occur in the lower hematocrit ranges—a 50 percent increase in RBC count is not a linear 50 percent increase in oxygen transport capability. The rider with the lower hematocrit is actually extremely efficient at scavenging oxygen from what little hemoglobin that he has, comparatively. So when you boost his red-cell count, he goes a lot faster. The rider at 47 is less efficient, so a boost has less effect.

“You have guys who train the same and are very disciplined athletes, and are even physiologically the same, but one has a quirk that’s very adaptable to the drug du jour,” Vaughters says. “Then all of a sudden your race winner is determined not by some kind of Darwinian selection of who is the strongest and fittest, but whose physiology happened to be most compatible with the drug, or to having 50 different things in him.”
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Rams said:
You’re getting silly now, and yes I am concerned by some of the names still involved with cycling. But you can’t just get rid of everybody who was involved in doping from cycling for practical reasons. Even most of the pundits commentating on the races were involved. But things had definitely changed around 2013 2014 ish after Armstrong’s confessions and the withdrawal of a lot of cycling’s sponsorship as result of the bad press. The culture in the peleton has changed and the technology in testing in cycling has made great strides the past decade and particularly the past 5 years. I would say cycling still isn’t clean, but it’s probably cleaned it’s act up to such an extent that there are now plenty of sports with a bigger doping problem than cycling where as in the past cycling was the no1 offender. I think that’s probably the most realistic scenario to where we’re currently at.
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I'm not being silly at all.

Ibarguren and Vanmol are two of the most egregious doping doctors out there, involved in Mapei, Festina, Lotto, BMC, with multiple testimonies. They are just as bad as Ferrari.

Ferrari was banned rightfully, but he got notoriety because he bragged about his work in the 90's and was associated with Armstrong. Why is it silly to suggest that by accepting some of the names above you're going to accept Ferrari? Ibarguren is just as bad if not worse.

I'm not asking for everyone to be banned, I'm asking for the fecking ringleaders and the guys who made it all happen in the 90's and 00's to be banned.

I'm not asking for Vaughters to never be allowed to be DS because he once took PED's, I'm not asking San Millan, who had two doped riders over 10 years, to be banned.

I'm asking why the top of the pyramid who facilitated all this, the Ibargurens, Gianetti's, Matxin's, Vanmols of the world to still operate without any scrutiny.

Why is that asking too much?

You're acting like by suggesting the ringleaders of the worst of the bunch is somehow akin to asking everyone to be removed?
 
AfonsoAlves said:
I'm not being silly at all.

Ibarguren and Vanmol are two of the most egregious doping doctors out there, involved in Mapei, Festina, Lotto, BMC, with multiple testimonies. They are just as bad as Ferrari.

Ferrari was banned rightfully, but he got notoriety because he bragged about his work in the 90's and was associated with Armstrong. Why is it silly to suggest that by accepting some of the names above you're going to accept Ferrari? Ibarguren is just as bad if not worse.

I'm not asking for everyone to be banned, I'm asking for the fecking ringleaders and the guys who made it all happen in the 90's and 00's to be banned.

I'm not asking for Vaughters to never be allowed to be DS because he once took PED's, I'm not asking San Millan, who had two doped riders over 10 years, to be banned.

I'm asking why the top of the pyramid who facilitated all this, the Ibargurens, Gianetti's, Matxin's, Vanmols of the world to still operate without any scrutiny.

Why is that asking too much?

You're acting like by suggesting the ringleaders of the worst of the bunch is somehow akin to asking everyone to be removed?
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I think you’re misconstruing my previous post slightly, I clearly wrote that I was concerned by some of the names still involved with cycling, nor am I saying there isn’t still a problem with doping in cycling. But cycling has definitely changed and there is a more anti doping culture amongst the athletes themselves in cycling which was never there before. Certainly whilst in the past you had to dope just to make it as a professional cyclist and that was already the case long before I was born in ‘73, there is more than enough evidence to suggest that thankfully doping isn’t as widespread as it was was, not that there still isn’t a problem with doping in cycling. You have to take the progress being made in cycling in context to where it’s coming from. Basically a 100 years of systematic doping in the sport. There’s plenty of well researched journalism to be googled which explains what I’m trying to say in more detail.
 
B20 said:
And went and dug up the source, just to prove it is not unfounded claims
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This does not prove whatsoever that Armstrong would never have won the Tour if he wasn't doping. Which was the only issue I had with your initial post, that you stated it as matter-of-factly as you did. So yeah, it's still an unfounded claim even if I don't dispute your source.
 
RobinLFC said:
This does not prove whatsoever that Armstrong would never have won the Tour if he wasn't doping. Which was the only issue I had with your initial post, that you stated it as matter-of-factly as you did. So yeah, it's still an unfounded claim even if I don't dispute your source.
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But those things are absolutely impossible to prove.

I can say that if Ganna lost 12kg and retained all his power Wiggins style, he will win the tour by minutes as his FTP of 520w at 70kg gives him almost a 7.5w/kg FTP.

I can ask you to prove that this is impossible and you cannot, because I can always cite, "well Wiggins", and unfortunately since it never happened and never will happen, there's no way to prove it either way.
 
On the topic of cycling related monster experiments:

That crazy fantasy about Ganna will come true with Tarling - mark my words.

Ineos will convert him to a GC rider - He's just turned 20 and is crushing every TT'er on all kinds of TTing parcours who isn't named Evenepoel or Ganna.

His current race weight on Strava is 78kg and he's not all skin and bones. If he can get his weight down to sub 70, he could be in with a shout.
 
RobinLFC said:
This does not prove whatsoever that Armstrong would never have won the Tour if he wasn't doping. Which was the only issue I had with your initial post, that you stated it as matter-of-factly as you did. So yeah, it's still an unfounded claim even if I don't dispute your source.
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nothing can prove it, it's never going to happen. jeez.
 
AfonsoAlves said:
On the topic of cycling related monster experiments:

That crazy fantasy about Ganna will come true with Tarling - mark my words.

Ineos will convert him to a GC rider - He's just turned 20 and is crushing every TT'er on all kinds of TTing parcours who isn't named Evenepoel or Ganna.

His current race weight on Strava is 78kg and he's not all skin and bones. If he can get his weight down to sub 70, he could be in with a shout.
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Sub 70 kg at 1.94 cm seems like a stretch. And he would severely limit what he can do on the track.

But ok, it’s not massively dissimilar to the transformation Wiggins went through. He just put the weight back on for the track in the Rio Olympics.
 
https://www.cyclingnews.com/feature...ar-what-difference-did-modern-bike-tech-make/

Interesting little read after the drugs chat.

Only looks at clothing and bike tech improvements, still more aerodynamic riding positions to factor in as well, then you’ve got things like recovery, nutrition, training advancements. Don’t know about Pantani but Pog was drafting for quite a bit too, so that factors in at least somewhat.
 
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Tomorrow's stage is the last chance saloon for Jonas - I hope he goes for it and we have a beautiful battle between them two (three?). I think Remco easily win the TT stage, so curious to see if he can claw back some time vs #1 and #2.
 
Podium looks set in stone to me. Most likely change would be Vingegaard having an off day and dropping behind Remco, but I think it will probably stay unchanged for the remainder of the race.
 
Mike Smalling said:
Podium looks set in stone to me. Most likely change would be Vingegaard having an off day and dropping behind Remco, but I think it will probably stay unchanged for the remainder of the race.
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Most likely but the other day offers a bit of hope the Vingegaard is running out of legs. Remco probably needs to gain another minute or so before the time trial to have a chance at second. Keeps it interesting.
 
Mike Smalling said:
Podium looks set in stone to me. Most likely change would be Vingegaard having an off day and dropping behind Remco, but I think it will probably stay unchanged for the remainder of the race.
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I think Remco will overtake Vingegaard. The way Jonas exploded the other day, and him reportedly being too tired to give an interview after yesterday’s stage, I think the signs are there that his tank is empty. Could see him losing a lot of time these next three days.
 
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Jev said:
I think Remco will overtake Vingegaard. The way Jonas exploded the other day, and him reportedly being too tired to give an interview after yesterday’s stage, I think the signs are there that his tank his empty. Could see him losing a lot of time these next three days.
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I wouldn’t put too much into the lack of an interview, but he has clearly gone very deep on a few stages. And he’s made it clear that he’d rather give it a shot than ride for 2nd, so wouldn’t be a shock if we see the consequences.
 
80 kg Nils Politt with a 10-11 km pull up an HC climb. Probably 7% gradient on avg. on that segment. What a monster.
 
I see a Vingegaard crack happening here. He doesn't look great, and seems likely he has communicated it to the team, which is why Jorgensson goes for the stage.
 
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Shame Jorgensson couldn't make it to the line. Will take a fair jump in the GC standings though.
 
Tadej goes up with a motor. Different sport from everyone else
 
giorno said:
Tadej goes up with a motor. Different sport from everyone else
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It's like he's in a different category to everyone else.

When is the last time we have seen this level of domination in the Tour in terms of GC superiority and stage wins?
 
Mike Smalling said:
It's like he's in a different category to everyone else.

When is the last time we have seen this level of domination in the Tour in terms of GC superiority and stage wins?
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At Giro and Tour and in the same year? One comes to mind. Just the one
 
Is he better than Merx? That's the only question really.
 
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