Interesting choice of TT route, favouring climbers. The footage made a point of showing Kung turn himself inside out to no effect.
Sorry was being sarcastic, no way could anyone assume either of the top 2 have been protected.
In the world of some random cyclist "I'm just sorry you don't believe". I also believe that pog used those words deliberately a couple of years ago to stick 2 fingers up at all of us
Watched the TT again and what also stands out is the quality of JVs ride. Technically it is superb, he is clearly maintaining huge speed and momentum in the corners at some risk.
also read somewhere that his Vo2 max is something like 97.. clearly he didn't get that measured using the Garmin app.
Is there actually a plausible mechanism these days to get the kind of short term/overnight gain they used to get from blood doping? I've always assumed the biological passport would put a stop to anything like that.
Doesn't mean they're all clean, given the history of the sport you'd be brave to rule out anyone being (carefully, micro)dosed to the gills, but if that's the case then it's been the case for the whole tour. So the relative performances today can't really be explained by doping and you're back to the usual sporting stuff. Maybe it's a question of how much you think it's built on a foundation of pharmaceutical assistance.
Is there actually a plausible mechanism these days to get the kind of short term/overnight gain they used to get from blood doping?
Couple of ibuprofen and an early night.
"Couple of ibuprofen and an early night"
I tried that but didn't get the promised 7w per Kg it said on the box...
i'm unsure but his descending was indeed insane. I was watching from behind my hands at various points. He was fully committed and beautiful to watch
His legs have an ungainly pedalling style. Probably costs him a few watts in aero gainz..
maybe I’m just bitter as I’m a pog fan and was hoping for a shoot out tomorrow.
I tried that but didn’t get the promised 7w per Kg it said on the box…
I can confirm through extensive testing that red wine and late nights can get you to 3.5.....
maybe I’m just bitter as I’m a pog fan and was hoping for a shoot out tomorrow
There could well still be a shoot out.
Pog still looks better on a bike so he's still my fav. Vingagoago was railing those corners TBF but he still rides like a bag of spanners compared to Pog.
Neutral observer with the GC podium 24/7 for the whole 3 weeks. Only way. You go for a piss, I watch. Never happen but its the only way to 100% know.
Which makes me kind of wonder why someone hasn't done this yet. Maybe a slightly lesser rider/team as a way of forcing the hand of others.
Jumbo Visma took over the Rabobank team, who were known for doping….. hmmmm
The doping itself was no longer really the preserve of the teams after the team-based affairs - much too easy a target to go after for the vamps. It became all about recommendations and 'individual' decisions and turning a blind eye.
I so want Vingegaard and Pogacar to be clean. But that time difference? Over that field? And Van Aert? My eyebrows are slightly north of where they usually reside.
When I looked at the forum home page and saw 115 replies before I watched the highlights i suspected something "interesting" had happened.
My eyebrows are also raised...
Mad day. Defies comment really
however:
You shouldn’t get a running shove up the road for a voluntary bike change on a TT…
Posted 5 hours ago
Agreed, and faking a problem would need too much judgment. Only answer really is no push-offs in a TT (or else you have to change to same type of bike you start on)
For the record all stage winners and the yellow jersey are tested daily. All riders gave a biological blood passport sample at the start of the race. Blood sampling during the trial is very infrequent. All TT bikes are x-rayed for a motor. And one presumes back up bikes too.
An interesting stat is that taking the ratio of 1-2 place time difference to 1-10 gives a ratio of 0.47. That’s unexceptional based on other tour TTs, but this is a short climbing TT. And the absolute differences are huge!
the gap between 1st and 3rd, was the same as the gap between 3rd and 50th........
Watched it last night and concluded something is not right. When a skinny little guy is putting out more power than WVA on the flatter bits of the stage. That performance was a bit too good to be true. In the past all the too good performances on the tour have been proved to be artificially enhanced. I hope I’m wrong but I think not.
Watched the TT again and what also stands out is the quality of JVs ride. Technically it is superb, he is clearly maintaining huge speed and momentum in the corners at some risk.
+1
Healthy cynicism is always needed but that was cool to watch and clearly carrying a lot more speed everywhere through technique as well as power. In some places positioning himself in rather weird positions to keep the bike weighted right and also keep hard pedalling going simultaneously which was cool
possible to gain a second or more on some of those corners if you risk it? (Pog smooth but visibly conservative from what I could see). Lots of corners. Plus bike change. Still a huge power ride but not sure it's as much of a fitness h2h as is being implied
Remco and Rog have put huge although admittedly lesser gaps into a strong field on time trials that suited them particularly well this year
I'm.erring towards the side of legitimate as well. Technically, he was superb & the position, the lines through the corners, that was spot on. He'd obviously ridden that dozens of times.
Don't forget as well that 15" of that time gap was down to Pogacar changing bikes.
For better or worse, the organisers found a course that suited the top 2. Gaps lower down can be at least partly explained by some riders not committing everything to it for various reasons.
I think JV committed everything to this one stage. That was it, one roll of the dice, bet the house on that, he knows he can control everything about it.
I think the biological passport and the sheer amount of testing he'll have had all Tour would make it difficult to be juiced to the gills. We're not at the old 50% haemocrit level any more (which was basically an open invite to load up on EPO to 49.9%!).
We already know both of them are way above everyone else so it's not a surprise to see them as the top 2. The gap is larger than expected but TP didn't look comfortable all through his ride.
In the post race interview JV said he thought his power meter was broken, he felt he was holding back in places but was still getting high readings.
Tricky one. Pog looked uncomfortable throughout, but perhaps we shouldn't be surprised given how much time he was taking out of WvA. And the fact that Vingo beat Pog shouldn't surprise us given he has given the impression in recent days of being capable of more than just man marking Pog. Looks like Pog's lack of match practice because of the injury layoff has cumulatively caught up with him, but that margin does leave an element of disbelief.
If you look at the stark figure, of the time gap between the two, then it looks 'unbelievable'.
But, it's probably more nuanced than that. Pog didn't look that smooth, efficient, or comfortable throughout, whereas Vingegaard looked totally focused and zoned in. His pedalling looked really efficient, technically, through the corners and down hill it looked perfect. So, if he's really targeted that stage, and it all gets executed perfectly, you could easily see his time being 20-30 seconds better than perhaps expected of a 'good' time for him. Likewise, if Pog was feeling a bit 'off', not quite match-fit, and was trying to 'measure' his effort a bit more, with more of an eye to today's, and subsequent stages, you could easily see his time being 20-30 seconds slower than you might expect. Cumulatively, that adds up to potentially 1 minute of the time gap, and so the remaining 20-30 seconds is just the 'natural' gap between them over such a stage?
Jumbo seem to feel that Pogacar underdelivered. I think they were expecting similar to what happened with Roglic and they know what Pogacar is capable of hence preparing so thoroughly for the TT.
If that was pog on a bad day, then his performance is similarly superhuman to ving.
Sorry the time gaps are insane
If you look at the stark figure, of the time gap between the two, then it looks ‘unbelievable’.
But, it’s probably more nuanced than that. Pog didn’t look that smooth, efficient, or comfortable throughout, whereas Vingegaard looked totally focused and zoned in. His pedalling looked really efficient, technically, through the corners and down hill it looked perfect. So, if he’s really targeted that stage, and it all gets executed perfectly, you could easily see his time being 20-30 seconds better than perhaps expected of a ‘good’ time for him. Likewise, if Pog was feeling a bit ‘off’, not quite match-fit, and was trying to ‘measure’ his effort a bit more, with more of an eye to today’s, and subsequent stages, you could easily see his time being 20-30 seconds slower than you might expect. Cumulatively, that adds up to potentially 1 minute of the time gap, and so the remaining 20-30 seconds is just the ‘natural’ gap between them over such a stage?
But that completely ignores every other rider out there... including lots of very very fast ones who seemed to try really hard.
the gap between 1st and 3rd, was the same as the gap between 3rd and 50th…
i mean, that really...
it's not just the differene between those two though, is it? On it's own that might be ok, but the margin from Tadej to WvA is almost as big as the margin from Jonas to Tadej - and WvA is the Belgian national TT champ, who had in turn beaten the French national champ by a MUCH smaller margin
Being a TT Champion has little bearing on that stage. Far too hilly for pure TT specialists - you put Ganna on a course like that he'd be nowhere, you put him on a flat power circuit, he'd put similar JV/TP sized gaps into everyone else.
That was a course for climbers who could TT. The Yates twins were famously rather poor at TTing (they've improved dramatically in recent years) but they were up there due to their climbing ability. Jai Hindley is another case in point, a climber who can TT.
That was a course for climbers who could TT. The Yates twins were famously rather poor at TTing (they’ve improved dramatically in recent years) but they were up there due to their climbing ability. Jai Hindley is another case in point, a climber who can TT.
So what you're saying is... The course really suited all the brilliant climbers... but Vingo still put a fortnight into them all 😀
Until there is a positive test, this is all just speculation. A healthy scepticism is understandable given cycling’s history, but I think you might as well assume what you are watching is clean until proven guilty because otherwise why bother watching?
What I want to know is what the hell was the winner drinking after he crossed the finish line?
It looked like some kind of putrid thing....maybe to flush out the drugs in his system ? 😂
People seem to quickly forget it is amazing Pog is even competing for Yellow after his crash before Le Tour. Must still be flippin' painful (or good use of TUE's)
The other factor is it doesn't matter how good a climber or TT'er you are, it matters how good you are after all those hard days previously. Gets in to dodgy territory again, but there's a reason the GC guys excelled on this stage.
Yes the top two are suspicious but if you treat it more like the time difference to the Yates brothers, then it is probably as expected. Van Aert is more surprising not being such a pure climber and absolutely emptying himself most days.
A lot has been made about time differences/ distribution of times between the top two and the rest of the field but that seems to be the expected distribution among almost all stages not ending in a bunch finish. Even DH and Enduro has similar time distributions. One or two relatively way ahead of the field (exceptional talent/ stars align/ good doctor), tight field (they are all pros after all), then outliers at the end that had problems.
Watched the highlights last night
Crikey.
Side by side analysis of JOnas vs Tadej at the same points on the course
https://twitter.com/Domestique___/status/1681584084802306049
Genuinely informative, the differences are obvious when you watch it like this
Vingegaard looked totally focused and zoned in. His pedalling looked really efficient,
did it? one thing that stuck me was how weird his legs were at points, imagine a legs version of froomes elbows
example from 4m 30s here
His knees only went randomly funny very briefly, almost as if he was shaking some lactic acid out in the same way as you sometimes stand up just briefly for a change. He didn't pedal like that for any distance
That side by side video puts my mind at ease a bit - if Vingegaard is taking out almost a second on every downhill corner, that soon adds up. And, given it's really a climbing stage and those two would smoke everyone else on a mountain stage, it's not as suspicious as I first feared.
but I think you might as well assume what you are watching is clean until proven guilty because otherwise why bother watching?
I understand the sentiment, I watch all sport assuming that the top performers are sailing as close to being banned as they can, without stepping over the line that would see them thrown out. Personally I watch sport for the spectacle really. The performance of the individual athletes; regardless of whether they're supplemented or not, is so far beyond what I'm capable of anyway it makes no difference. Take the last DH race at Val Di Sole as a for instance, the top women averaged over 50kph on their runs, that's just so far beyond us normal humans they may as well be on drugs.
aberdeenlune
Free Member
Watched it last night and concluded something is not right. When a skinny little guy is putting out more power than WVA on the flatter bits of the stage. That performance was a bit too good to be true. In the past all the too good performances on the tour have been proved to be artificially enhanced. I hope I’m wrong but I think not.
18Kg in weight difference between Van Art and Vingegaard
When your 'favourite' doesn't win, it doesn't mean the others are on 'something'. Personally I don't give a shit what they're on, it's a spectator sport. And if you think the 'odd one or two' are on something and the others aren't, think again. This isn't the 90's. Vingegaard was by far the better rider on the day.
I'd like to see some side by side time splits on shorter parts of the course and the downhills in particular. As has been noted a few seconds here and there but also smoother = less effort in then getting back up to speed for cruising = more beans to give on the climb. Same on the bike swap, you can say it's 15s or whatever on the change itself but slow down, then speed up again, including the effort expended. I was astonished just comparing time over segments of Ride London that i ride anyway, just not having to slow at junctions and then speed up again put an extra couple of kph on my average speed over them.
That said - it still looks a bit funny, even after trying to find rationale. But I suspect some of that comes from watching the tour for the last 30 years where the reason behind these types of performances was PED's and so I'll always be sensitised now.
How many question Usain Bolt?
People are becoming obsessed with doping - even more so than the actual cycling.
The likes of 'Doping Weekly' with few articles on actual cycling🤣
Its easier to look at it as a graph
Pogacar took ~2.5 seconds/km out of Wout on La Planche. Today he took ~3.4 seconds/km out of him, on a course that in theory should be better for Wout. Okay maybe Wout hasn’t been climbing quite as well this year, but he still beat all the other GC riders so he must have been going well - so still a crazy performance from Pogacar.
Vingegaard took ~7.8 seconds/km out of Wout.
How many question Usain Bolt?
In fairness
Bolt consistently wins by the same margins, it isn't regularly nip and tuck and then one day when it all matters he wins by miles.
Bolt's times are typically 1-2% faster (eg: London Olympics, gap to 2nd and third was 1.2% and 1.7%. Vingegaard beat 2nd by 5% and 3rd (WvA, a top class TTer) by nearly 9%
Still not saying it was cheating, but it raises an eyebrow for sure.
In fairness too - I said the same about Froome when he blew all away that time but then you look at how much prep went into being ready for that. There may be (I hope there is) a rational reason, including as i said above being that much better across the whole course, not just the p/w bits.
Many, many people questioned Bolt at the time and there was a lot of suspicion around the Jamaican sprinters in general. Some of which turned out to be well founded as they ended up with bans.
I'm far happier that people are questioning this rather than just blindly accepting, doping is still very much "a thing" especially in athletics where earlier this year it felt like there was almost one elite level Kenyan distance runner caught per week. It helps keep the sport accountable and ensures that anti-doping efforts retain momentum.
