seypat

choddo

I actually have sympathy for Armstrong's descent into the mire of 80s pro cycling. He didn't start the rot. But he perfected it and made more money out of it, and did more than anyone else to almost make it mandatory. LeMond, imho, showed that talent and hard work can make a great sport.

I don't pretend there's no cheating going on now but I think it's a much cleaner sport than it was and personally I want to see as fair (and safe) a sport as possible and that overrides spectacle at all costs for me.

rsbob 

Please pass the earthworms.

ArgoMan

I saw where Lemond said that without the PEDS, Armstrong wasn't even a top-30 rider. Think that's accurate?

choddo

well top 30 was the elite of the elite with circa 200 on the Tour and maybe 400 across all 3, and those 30 were mostly at it, so very hard to say.

ArgoMan

Yeah, so I don't know if Lemond was speaking anecdotally or if he was just taking a jab at Armstrong. But it was Gred Lemond talking, and if he was being serious it was a heck of a thing to say. Armstrong was so dominant. Not only did he win 7 Tours, but I think he placed 2nd at one time.

tempocyclist

I guess we'll never really know, and top 30 is still a boss of a rider.

Pre any TdF victories he still dominated. He was the National Sprint Triathlon champion twice as a teenager, and was the USA National Road Race Champion at the age of 20. He won the UCI World Championship in 1993 before he even began doping (apparently) so there's that too!

Pretty much the entire top 30 during the Armstrong-era would have been on the gear also, so it's a moot point really. LeMond always seems to come off as bitter and jealous.

Eric F 

Depends. If everyone else was still on PEDs (they were), Lemond is probably right. If everyone is clean, I’m not so sure. That said, it’s all speculation.

Eric F 

I don’t recall the exact timeline of things, but I’m fairly sure that Armstrong was on something in 93 (based on what I’ve read). I think it was just later that he was on the good stuff.

Jughed

Top 30 of what group.

clean riders? Or, among doped riders?


A clean rider in the top 30 among doped riders… if that was what Greg was saying, then he was essentially saying LA was one of the best.

LA was an arsehole, and Greg came off as bitter and jealous.

And I like watching both of them, and I ride both a Trek and a Lemond.

terrymorse 

Some estimated best power numbers (W/kg) for the best riders, taken from climbs during TdF, in chronological order:

Lemond: 5.7
Indurain: 6.35
Riis: 6.47
Ullrich: 6.33
Pantani: 6.63
Armstrong (Alpe d'Huez TT): 6.97
Pogacar: 6.4
Vingegaard: 6.9

znomit

Fastest. The word is fastest.

Jughed

That last feller is way suspicious to me… both of them for that matter.

Just these past few years we’ve seen a number of riders start to crack into the time ranges of the dopers. The ADZ top 100 climbs were frozen for about 10 years, then 8-10 riders hit the top 20 on one stage of the tour.

Pog/Vingo putting up numbers = to that of Pantani and Armstrong… because of better nutrition!!!

Armstrong claimed better nutrition as well.

PeteHski

If you listen to what some of the older current pros are saying (GT is a good example, following his GTCC podcast) it’s more about their entire lifestyle, training, sleep, nutrition on and off the bike and other marginal gains. GT says that training methods and nutrition have changed dramatically since he started as a pro two decades earlier. It’s not just Pog and Vinny either. There’s a whole bunch of young cycling superstars emerging from this post doping era. They have a different mentality and are generally more team focused than the likes of Lance. The teams themselves are also far more corporate and any sign of systematic doping would be a marketing disaster.

I think it is unfair to be cynical at this point. The culture has definitely changed and the evidence of high level cheating is weak. I’m sure there are still some cheats, but probably not many operating at the very highest level. It would be much harder to hide in this climate

terrymorse 

Increased carbs per hour is the latest performance magic. It's the Carbohydrate Revolution, baby!

And let's not forget the secret sauce: lots and lots of zone 2 training.

Jughed

Yeah yeah, that’s it!!!

Lance trained year round, low carb in the off-season and rode endless hours of Z2/Z3, did altitude and interval training and consumed 1000 grams of carbs per day when racing.

He trained his fat burning systems and his glucose burning systems… didn’t gain weight in the off-season…

Cross training, cyclocross, stretching, weights…

He essentially did what they do now +\-.

Call me a skeptic/cynic… but these boys are putting out more w/kg than MR 60 did.

Mr 60 made Lance look like a choirboy… EPO, straight up roids… and who knows what else. And these guys are fitter…

I just ain’t buying it. Just like I didn’t buy what Lance was selling.

znomit

Hey look, a squirrel!

PeteHski

When GT interviewed Mark Cavendish last year after the TdF he asked him what he thought was the biggest single change during his long career in the peloton. Cav’s answer was carb mixes that don’t mess up your gut! GT agreed that was a game-changer for him too. GT has also talked about new coaching methods in recent years and how the young guys are doing things differently. He joked about how Tom Pidcock had never even experienced a hangover!

But let’s say your suspicions of cheating are correct. So what methods are they using and why is it mainly the young guns this time? It’s hard to imagine guys like Pog and Vinny rocking up in their early 20s with some superhuman, undetectable cheat. To me it seems more likely that they were simply trained more effectively from a young age with more professional support.

Polaris OBark

​​​​​​​I had a hunch you would say that.

Polaris OBark

It is hard to know.

Are the other 29 in the top-30 drug-free?

Do PEDS in fact enhance performance?

Erythropoietin, for example, stimulates over-production of red blood cells, but in order to deliver more oxygen, more iron/heme needs to be supplied, so it could result in an overall iron deficiency. That, combined with impaired circulation due to the sludge of excess red blood cells, could result in cardiovascular issues and other problems. The intent of injecting EPO, of course, is to enhance performance, but the actual, measurable effect might be minimal or even deleterious, especially if used long-term.

ArgoMan

I agree with the "suspicious" sentiment. I believe Vingegaard raced in the Vuelta de Espana after the Tour de France this past year. I believe he took 2nd to his teammate Sepp Kuss. That is simply a Herculean accomplishment from Vinegarrd. The Vuelta was about 1 month after the Tour. I don't think LA ever competed in any of the big European races, other than the Tour. To win the Tour in big fashion, and follow it up one month later with a 2nd at the Vuelta with the numbers he produced tells me one of two things: 1) Vingegaard is a physical specimen of once in every three generations who has dedicated himself in such a way as to milk every ounce of performance out of himself, or 2) he's doping. He's outpowering a doped up Pantani, who was a climbing monster, and is about equaling a doped up LA.

Jughed

Dont know exactly how… but my suspicion is getting the young athlete to an improved level prior to getting the passport, then micro dosing during the night, within the window of time when they are not allowed to be tested - I think it 11-6 at night.

Keeping the athletes at their inflated baseline levels throughout the tour.

Then using “legal” drug cocktails…

And whatever new hot substance that isn’t tested for, just like the early days of EPO.

You were in the auto racing world, so you have to understand the officials and rules trail the cheating. The teams are always one step ahead…

Its just hard to fathom that a 21 year old can exceed the abilities of well seasoned, highly doped athletes.

And that Pogs team manager has been popped twice for doping riders.

znomit

At what point did immersive waxing (also known as chain doping) become common?

PeteHski

All this because you simply don’t believe it would be possible to better doped performance levels from 20 years ago without doping.

What I observed over my 3 decades in motorsport was less and less cheating as the sport became more corporate and professional. The stakes become too high and involved too many people. I’m talking about technical cheating. You get the odd rogue spy, tactical and financial games. But illegal cars are a non-starter in the modern era. Obviously the legal boundaries are legitimately tested. Go back 40 years and there was a lot more dodgy stuff going on with the actual cars. It was easy to hide and few people needed to know.

Jughed

It's not just based off one metric, or one sport.

I'm skeptical about all sports, and many aspects of the sports - not just doping.

"Win at all costs" exists across the board, even for things like US Olympic teams.
-Watch the documentary called Athlete A. It's not about doping. It's about the physical, sexual and mental abuse the US female gymnasts had to endure in order to have a shot at the Olympic team. This was a high profile organization that produced athletes for the US Olympic team, it was the only way to get on the team - and the team doctor was sexually assaulting essentially every young girl on the team - every single one of them. And it was all covered up - the president of the organization covered it up, a university the doctor worked for covered it up.
All in the name of winning at all cost.

NFL - look at the build and speed of the players. Bigger, better, faster than ever before. Leaner, stronger, more muscular...
-Terrell Owens was a wide receiver, hall of famer... supposed to be one of the fast skinny guys. He was 6'2, 230# solid muscle. Completely ripped. More muscular and leaner than Arnold Schwarzenegger during his MR Olympia days... no way in hell was T.O. clean. T.O. is just an example - there are 100's of NFL players with insane bodies.

College football - local lower division college had a bunch of its athletes popped for using steroids - even the kicker was popped. The kicker. They didn't fail tests, they got caught with the drugs.

Then I listen to cues from older riders, even cues from Lance himself. Lance will say the same things they said in the past when someone doped up - "Looks like so and so was having his day". That was code back in the day for when they took a little extra something something. You still here that often from the old timers when they talk about stages or extra ordinary performances.

Name the sport - any sport, I don't think the athletes are clean. Not just cycling.

But I think historically that cycling was the biggest offender - and I don't think they've ever stopped. I think they had a period of trying to figure out the next best thing, and the lull of the 2012-2018/19 era shows that. But now all of the sudden they are back to matching the best times and records...

For 15 some years the top 100 times up Huez list barely changed. After the Lance era, one guy would pop up on there every so often - then all of the sudden 5 riders, at the end of a crazy hard stage, popped into the top 20 - fastest time up the Alp since 2006. 5 riders.

There is a notable gap between 2006-2018 in times up the Alp. Then all of the sudden multiple riders started to crack pre 06 times. I have a hard time believing that is all due to better carb intake...