Besting a pure climber known (now) to have been well and truly juiced by nearly 4 minutes. That’s…………impressive.
The thing is, everything on the Tour is faster now. Average speed of stages is well up into the mid 40’s kph, often higher on flat days.
But if we assume that the old approach of dope to the gills is near impossible now (I’m not suggesting doping is non-existent, just that the previous approach of whacking yourself full of EPO and extra blood is simply not possible anymore due to biometric passports and far better anti-doping), everyone has had to look elsewhere for gains. Aero was the obvious one and a quick glance at bikes now vs bikes then shows massive gains in aero – integrated cables, aero tube shapes, carbon wheels plus the clothing, helmets, even shoe covers and socks etc – everything is aero-optimised to the nth degree.
Nutrition is way more scientific, there’s loads more data like power, HR, cadence, climb profiles and so on, better tactics and riders are more like robots than ever before – able to sit there and ride at precise power outputs for pre-determined times and fuel on personalised nutrition programmes to the nearest g of carbohydrate.
It is genuinely a different sport from back then – I believe it is much cleaner although how clean is anyone’s guess given the relative lack of high-profile busts. Most anti-doping wins seem to come from amateur level “Gran Fondo” type events and there was quite a funny example recently of such an event in Spain where, midway through, word got round that anti-doping were at the finish and about 130 riders simply abandoned there and then.
https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/anti-doping-showed-up-at-an-amateur-race-in-valencia-130-riders-dropped-out/
