Tour De France 2021
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@scribe said in Tour De France 2021:
This is quite telling from De Gendt. Numbers he would normally post in one of his legendary breakaways, and he ends up spat out the back.
De Gendt: It's clear that the general level is just much higher at the Tour de France
'The day has to come when the young riders are better but they have done it very suddenly'
I mean there's defo something going on but the fact that you there's a massive increase in level from juniors up even outside of pro ranks gives you some hope that it's not just relatd to doping.
personally I believe it's the wide spread availability of power meters.. just means that every training session is tailored to improve performance rather than just 'riding'.
add things like Zwift to that as well - in that there are stacks of training plans in there anyone can just use that's going to lift your riding. -
anyway back todays stage fuck me that was good - my eyes defo had a bit of wees in them at the end watching that result.
if anyone ever questions how cycling is a team sport get them to watch the last 5km of that stage. Amazing teamwork that resulted in Cav getting an armchair ride to 150m of the line and he finished it off.
Right up there with watching a rolling maul that starts 50 metres out go over the line
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Interesting article on Pog and potential doping from last year, after his incredible TT.
Doubt Is Haunting Tadej Pogačar After His Tour de France Win. That’s Not Fair
We should be celebrating one of the best Tour performances ever. Instead, we’re still dealing with the sport’s past.
Presents a couple of sides to the story.
San Millán also said that Pogačar’s test results confirm he’s physiologically elite even among elite athletes: his metabolic efficiency, lactate clearance, and power output are all among the best he’s ever tested. (Metabolism is a special focus for san Millán, who is an assistant professor at the University of Colorado's School of Medicine.) A new study from san Millán on metabolic efficiency in WorldTour cyclists, published in June, hints at what he’s saying. The test subjects included UAE riders, and one subject in particular shows remarkable lactate clearance, implying exceptional recovery capacity from hard efforts.
AND...
According to Pogačar’s own power file from Stage 8, which he uploaded to Strava, he sustained 6.5 watts of power per kilogram of body weight on the 24:35 Peyresourde effort, including a stretch of 10 minutes at 6.77 w/kg. (All figures are calculated based on Pogačar’s listed weight of 66 kilograms.)
That’s significant because power-to-weight ratio is one of the purest expressions of climbing ability in the sport. A well-known chart from training gurus Hunter Allen and Andrew Coggan lays out the range of w/kg ratios for different time periods, which is called a power curve. For elite male riders, it stops at 6.4 w/kg for functional threshold power (FTP). Aldo Sassi—a longtime, respected coach who died of cancer in 2010—said earlier that year that 6.2 w/kg was close to the upper FTP limit for a clean rider.
Several analyses of Pogačar’s Strava data estimate that his FTP is right at that number. By way of comparison: Lance Armstrong’s coach, the infamous Dr. Michele Ferrari, said that his target for Armstrong—who we now know was thoroughly and aggressively doping with a wide range of substances and techniques—was an FTP of 6.7 w/kg.
I've seen a few rides this year that have made me wonder - and I'm sure in the Covid environment that doping testing of elite athletes has been hugely scaled back - opening the door for those who want to cheat to do so.
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A record equalling stage win for Cavendish, what a come back. It's funny that he admits he used to be a prick in his younger days (didn't we all), but had grown up
“I’m not going to lie – I think sometimes I have been personally picked at, but on the same level, I have also been a prick,” Cavendish said. “That’s what happens when you’re young. For many years I suffered the consequences of being brash and young and without an education of how to behave with the media.
“As you grow older and you have a family and responsibility, you learn how to behave and unfortunately some people didn’t want to let go of what I was like when I was younger, even though I had changed. It maybe took time away for me to get that chip off my shoulder. I’m a grown-up now: I’m not a 20-year old-boy who wanted to fight the world.””
Where as Merkx hasn't and is still a childish prick lol
“Of course there’s a difference between us,” the Belgian, now 76, said. “I won 34 Tour stages by winning sprints, in the mountains, in time trials and going on the attack on the descents. Let’s not forget the five yellow jerseys I’ve got at home plus the 96 days I wore it. Does that not seem much?””
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@machpants said in Tour De France 2021:
Where as Merkx hasn't and is still a childish prick lol
“Of course there’s a difference between us,” the Belgian, now 76, said. “I won 34 Tour stages by winning sprints, in the mountains, in time trials and going on the attack on the descents. Let’s not forget the five yellow jerseys I’ve got at home plus the 96 days I wore it. Does that not seem much?””
Merckx has a point though, and Cav agrees. “I don’t think I can ever be compared with the great Eddy Merckx, the greatest male road cyclist of all time …”
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@scribe said in Tour De France 2021:
@machpants said in Tour De France 2021:
Where as Merkx hasn't and is still a childish prick lol
“Of course there’s a difference between us,” the Belgian, now 76, said. “I won 34 Tour stages by winning sprints, in the mountains, in time trials and going on the attack on the descents. Let’s not forget the five yellow jerseys I’ve got at home plus the 96 days I wore it. Does that not seem much?””
Merckx has a point though, and Cav agrees. “I don’t think I can ever be compared with the great Eddy Merckx, the greatest male road cyclist of all time …”
100% but no need to be a knob about it
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@scribe said in Tour De France 2021:
@tewaio that’s not out of the ordinary. Elissonde has always been a bit flaky. van Aert is a machine.
Van Aert certainly is. I was thinking about this more yesterday, while on a bike ride myself actually.
There has been a change in the last 5-10yrs where the old stereotype of tiny 50-something kg climbers dominating the mountains / the muscular 6ft+ sprinters winning stages, doesn't really apply anymore. "Big" (relatively) riders who are great all rounders now regularly win the huge mountain stages. Think WVA dominating twice up Ventoux this year, Geraint Thomas smashing the smaller climbers on Alpe d'Huez a few years ago, and many other instances.
How can this be? I totally get @WillieTheWaiter point about power meters becoming ubiquitous, meaning smarter training at lower levels, but this should have less impact in the pros. Ultimately weight is everything for these epic climbs. These are the same riders that famously carve the plastic housing off their bike computers to save an extra 10 grams. There's just no good explanation that, at the elite level, a 70kg all-rounder can beat a 55kg climbing specialist on some of the hardest climbing stages in the sport. Yet it happens all the time now. The commentators on today's coverage just said we might have the unprecedented situation of WVA wearing the polka dot jersey on the Champs-Élysée, yet winning the sprint!
I have a hypothesis as to why this is happening now in the sport, whereas it never used to. Pre 2010-ish everyone was doping, so the playing field was level and physics still applied - tiny climbers won climbing stages.
These days, my hypothesis is everyone is mico-dosing, so technically not doping in terms of testing over the thresholds, but still deriving an artificial performance advantage. You only have to watch the documentary Icarus to see how effective the gains can be from a sophisticated micro dosing regime, while always testing negative.
If you accept this hypothesis, one possible side effect is that riders with greater body mass can micro-dose more in absolute levels, while remaining under the thresholds for testing. If you imagine the amount of whatever doping chemical you can take "safely" scales linearly with body mass, whereas the performance benefit scales exponentially or something, then all of a sudden being bigger/heavier is a huge advantage. This would manifest as........big heavy riders winning climbs!
I'm sure I've not considered many important points regarding biochemistry etc, but it makes sense to me.....
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@stargazer said in Tour De France 2021:
I love mountain stages like this. I hope Bauke Mollema can stay ahead and win this stage, after that long solo.
Mollema was really active in breaks in the Giro, without getting a reward, so nice to see him win one here. He was in a couple of the unsuccessful breaks with George and they seemed pretty evenly matched, so hopefully an omen than George might be able to win one some day.
Meanwhile Stage 17 was a great one - watching Pog, Vingegaard and Carapaz fighting it out up the final climb.
Hard to know quite what to make of this tour - in a way, it's no surprise that Pog would manhandle his closest rivals in this race, because prior to the start - of the current top 10 - probably only Pog and Carapaz would have been in my top 10.
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Shenanigans!!! I call Shenanigans!!
No fucking way you can do that 2 days in a row. No fucking way.
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@machpants said in Tour De France 2021:
That was a fucking amazing performance by Pog. Aaaand the cops are investigating his team.
They’re investigating Bahrain Victorious aren’t they, not UAE? (Colbrelli turning into a mountain goat , anyone?) Still, 2 days in a row Pogacar looks like he’s out riding to pick up the Sunday papers. I want to celebrate him as a cycling freak, but I can’t.
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@scribe It's failing my "If it seems too good to be true it probably is" test.
Haven't seen last night's stage yet, but Stage 17, some of the best riders in the world have fallen by the wayside and Tadej is then able to launch attack after attack.
I guess that they're investigating Bahrain Victorious suggests that all is not well in the peloton. (As well as Colbrelli, I thought Caruso's performance in the Giro was well beyond what he'd shown before).
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@tewaio said in Tour De France 2021:
So Wout Van Aert did win the final sprint on the Champs-Élysées. And the hardest mountain stage 2x Ventoux. And a time trial. Competing in a peloton of highly, highly specialised elite riders.
so, shenanigans?
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The optimist in me looks at the guys who were out injured who were expected to be winning the sprints or the whole thing and wonders if this might have been an unusually weak field. But the pessimist in looks at the past, and there's plenty of precedent for doping and not much for a guy demolishing everyone else just because the top couple of riders were out injured.
