Vingegaard has gone full lance/Rasmussen this year.

I have no doubt that Big Mig was as doped as everyone else at that time but also that his physiology was such that he would have won the tour on a level playing field too

He's going to the Vuelta apparently, did not see that coming! Going to be a sick show and I just saw the Angliru is on the menu

Not sure if I would call that "careful" or just lucky. The power numbers he and Pantani put out at the1995 TdF haven't been seen since then. Well, hadn't been seen, Vingegaard got pretty close this year.

If you look at the top10 of the 1995 TdF, except for Indurain there isn't a single person who didn't get caught. And outside that top 10 you have names like Pantani (white jersey) and stage winners like Bruyneel, Armstrong, Cippolini and Abduschaparow.

I love Pogacar.

In Vingegaard's defence 3rd and 4th were the ****ing Yates brothers so it's not completely inconceivable to be clean(ish) and be 7mins clear of the field

Gap between riders obviously doesn't mean much. The only thing that really matters are power numbers (or for people who don't like to deal with those, times for specific segments under specific conditions).

The w/kg numbers for Vingegaard (and also Pogacar) would be off the charts if the mid 90s didn't exist. For example, they're in a different universe than Chris Froome who we know wasn't clean.

The big gap means that people look a little closer this year though. Pogacar did Cote de la Croix Neuve in 9:05 last year, that's only 6 seconds off Pantanti and 5 seconds off Indurain in 1995 at watt numbers that suggest FTP of >7 w/kg.

I never understood the obsession of comparing climbing times in a vacuum

Jonas climbed this in X mins while Armstrong did it in X + 3 minutes, doped!

Like, do race circumstances not matter? Do we not believe that athletes get better naturally over time due to science & technology evolution?

If 100 years from now, a bloke smashes Justin Gatlin's 100M personal best, are we going to scream that he's doped because of that?

Climb times in combination with things like temperature, air pressure and potential draft adjustments are the easiest way to approximate power output and from there w/kg using bike weight (6.8kg) and body weight assumptions. The people who do those numbers claim they're more accurate than the notoriously incorrect Shimano power meters that teams use due to contractual obligations but I have no idea if that's true.

That's the whole point. The times of known cheaters when they couldn't test for EPO stood for almost 30 years. Even the next generation of riders (Armstrong, Ulrich) who had to be a little careful didn't get close to that.

Everyone hopes Pogacar and Vingegaard are clean. Same as everyone hoped Armstrong, Contador or Froome were clean. Good chance we'll never find out and like a East German coach famously said in the early 90s "you didn't cheat if they don't catch you". So all good in the hood.

Agreed x1000, he makes cycling a lot more fun.


Chapeau Jonas VingeGOAT, already the greatest Danish Cyclist of all time in my estimation, and could cement himself as one of cycling's greats if he continues.

This being cycling and Vingegaard being as dominant as he has been obviously leads to questions about doping which is in a sense natural considering the sports history.

I have swallowed the blue pill and I cannot get myself believe that Vingegaard is someone who would cheat.

The keyword here, though, is cheat. Because there's no doubt that virtually all cycling teams use drugs/prescription medication that have some beneficial effects for performance but which are not banned.

This is also reflected in the phrasing of Jumbo when discussing these issues. Vingegaard says he "doesn't take anything he wouldn't give his daughter" and that he uses "nothing illegal", while Grischa Niemann has basically said that they use nothing that improves performance which is illegal, making it pretty obvious they use everything they can which isn't banned by WADA.

I read an interesting article a few days ago about how some teams have used sclerosis medication because it might aid recovery, others have used opiods in combination with caffeine before nasty climbs to suppress pain (while counteracting the drowsiness), and Jumbo have been said to use baking powder. It's effectively an arms race and presumably each team have different knowledge and their own ideas about what is best (and considering how riders always seem to improve on Jumbo, they're probably good at it).

And yeah, natural development of the sport, equipment, knowledge about preparation, about diets and physiology also plays a big role obviously, when comparing across eras, although they are still not beating the mega dopers of the 90's, even with much better technology, training, diet etc.

Considering the rider's historical development is also important. In 2018, before joining Jumbo, Vingegaard had tests done by sports physiologists of the Danish state sporting organization, where his results were "extraordinary", performing 15% better in terms of heart and "pump" than the average professional Danish cyclists, leaving him in "a class of his own", an outlier among outliers.

There's also the fact that their competition is not the greatest. Whilst Vingo/Pogi would probably beat Froome he'd obviously be a lot closer to them than the current field of GC riders, which isn't very impressive.
Adam Yates, who was often sacrificing himself as a helper for Pogacar and who has never podiumed in any GT previously in 11 tries, Simon Yates who has done better historically but is not really an elite GC rider either imo. Rodriguez, only his 2nd GT ever and a Tour debutant, below him is Bilbao, never better than fifth in a GT, below him are Hindley, Gall, Gaudu, and Martin, and Hindley, the one who has impressed as a GC rider previously, was hurt after his crash.

The field below Pogacar and Vingegaard does not look very good. The best guys are getting too old (Roglic, Geraint Thomas) or are possibly super talented but possibly not there yet (Ayuso, Evenepoel), and Bernal, who's younger than Vingegaard, has never been the same after his crash. Evenepoel is the best bet but is still an unknown, because while he won the Vuelta comfortably, he also was dropped by guys like Mas in the third week, and if you lose 20 seconds to Mas, you lose minutes on the same climb to Vingo/Pogi. But he has improved a lot and I hope he'll be at the Tour next year.

Considering all circumstances, I don't think what they're doing is physiologically impossible if they're "clean* (especially if including the use of "legal" PEDs). But I'm no expert, so my guess is as good as anyone's, and I think it's good that their performances are scrutinized critically. But I also think that, while understandable considering cycling's past, it's the main talking point every time anyone does something extraordinary.

I hope that means he doesn't use gels containing caffeine (most riders do, teams usually have a specific schedule for them during stages) and not that he would give those to his daughter.

That absolutely sucks and makes me sad. Especially since I'm someone who has cycled since he was a kid and has spent >300 hours/year on a bike for the last I don't know how many years. But if you have a sport where for over 30 years almost every winner of the biggest race is a known doper..

Bolt has the record obvs but yes, we probably will. And we're almost certainly going to be correct

Cycling is also apparently one of the 'sports science' sports, along with swimming, rowing and sailing. Now obviously science can help all sports in various ways but apparently (as per the long article I read at least half a decade ago), these were/are ones that have/had the most potential improvements from science.

The article was written with particular reference to Olympic sports and the British Olympic team. When lottery funding began to move in huge quantities towards the British Olympic Committee 20 ish years ago, disproportionate amount went to those 4 sports because of the likelihood that it could be used to buy success. And it's been extremely successful for them with GBR winning a huge proportion of their medals in those sports. (the same as Australia who were ahead of the game in terms of sports science through the AIS in the 80s and 90s)

I also love Pog. Just love how fearless and aggressive he is. Maybe it costs him sometimes but it's so refreshing to watch and experience

But Bolt never got caught. Gatlin tested positive several times.

Florence Griffith-Joyner still has the 100m/200m world records 35 years later. Never tested positive but was semi retired for a while before coming back after a body transformation that would make Barry Bonds proud. Then she crushed for a short period of time before she retired again. Coincidentally when they started out of competition tests.

Lots of science and the introduction of power meters and smart trainers totally changed the game for everyone.

Bolt of course never got caught and he's such a physical anomaly that there's a seam of hope that he might have been clean. Plus his teenage times also lend credence...when it would have been very difficult for him to access and afford decent drugs. But basically every other Jamaican athlete of his generation has tested positive. If Jamaican athletics were an eastern bloc weightlifting squad they'd have been permabanned from the Olympics

and it's not just Flojo. Almost none of the explosive women's track and field WRs...basically all the events where an excess of testosterone can advantage the women have gone for over 30 years. Not only 800 and below, but shot, discus, long jump, high jump, heptathlon. Javelin's only gone because they constantly change the weight and nature of the instrument.

of all the women's WRs, that Kratochvilova 800m mark may stand for another 20 years. Only Semenya has got close to it and well um...she has a few testosterone advantages of her own

I don't like to say it but Vingegaard isn't that physically good to win a tour by over 7 mins to his next rival especially someone like Pogacar. The rest of the field maybe. And that UAE team was strong this year.

"Physically good" by what metrics? VO2max? FTP? w/kg?

For the ITT, does "physically good" include CdA? What about normalized power, is the ability to have less power spikes part of being "physically good" or is that one of the non-physical skills?

Isn't dusting the field in a TT like he did after a rest day kinda sus?

There are various suspicious things, including him pushing w/kg numbers not seen since the EPO heyday in the mid 90s.

Not being "that physically good" without any context isn't one of them though.

I don’t know everything about PEDs but I’d be surprised if there was one that had a 24 hour turnaround that wouldn’t be easily detected

Obviously there are stimulants like pseudoephedrine that are really short term (we used to take it 60 mins before playing) but I think it would be very difficult to mask the usage of anything with such a fast turnaround

The commentators on Spanish tv only talked about pogacar winning the penultimate stage. Basically said nothing about vingegaard. Clearly don't like or trust him. I mean commentators like Pedro Delgado and Alberto Contador ..

I thought the "rest day" debate was more about removing the variables of less fatigue and faster recovery time from the equation?

fun Pantani article

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/66373364

Vingegaard and Roglic announced as co-leaders of Jumbo for the Vuelta. This has to be the ultimate flex right for Vingegaard and I honestly can't see Roglic beating him despite how unusual it is for a GC TdF contender to turn back up for the Vuelta.