Originally Posted by
canklecat
Go back to the Floyd Landis case at the 2006 Tour de France. It's among the few cases where an athlete admitted to specifics about doping and the effects.
Short version:
- Without adequate juicing, Landis was physically exhausted and lost 10 minutes, and the yellow jersey, in Stage 16.
- With juice, the next day on another mountain stage Landis won Stage 17 and secured the TdF win with a long solo breakaway, basically turning a mountain stage into a time trial, along with solid performances in subsequent stages. One of the most spectacular come from behind victories in cycling history. Check out the videos on YouTube.
Yeah, that kinda got everyone's attention.
That's how much difference it makes.
While steroids almost certainly helped him, I don't think it's fair to say they were responsible for the difference here. First, Floyd was using PEDs before those rides. Second, people often have bad days and then rebound the following day (or vice versa). Finally, his gap on the last day was largely due to teams letting him go.
Again, I'm sure the use of steroids helped here, but it's impossible from this single anecdotal data point to say how much they actually helped and how much was from other factors.