Doping megathread - I can't even think of a witty tagline

I would agree. Hardly EPO and not blood doping. Who knows 🤷‍♂️

https://www.planetrugby.com/news/springboks-world-cup-winners-career-in-tatters-ahead-of-doping-ban?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3ibiTt0zIH-sA9sKnwyeBjr1jX4pUOus-IBtPythGENJ_p6OgIJ5dIdn4_aem_CH-DiPHWtJqKRhlUj5FsnQ#Echobox=1721552218

Figured it was relevant to the conversation previously about rugby

I’d say Armstrong’s ego is massively bruised, regardless of whether Pog is juiced up to the gills or not, he’s destroyed Armstrong’s times and is being spoken about as being one of the greatest of all time. That’ll have Armstrong absolutely fuming. I’d say even the slight possibility of Pog being clean and still smashing him, has him foaming at the mouth.

Three biggest takeaways for me between Pantani's ascent and now are:

1. Gearing. Huge difference between having to grind your ways up steep climbs on 44-23 lowest gear (somebody somewhere in this forum dug this out) and spinning your way up them in much lower gears. And its not just the climbs in question, the grinding on previous steep climbs will wear the legs down.
2. Altitude training
3. Training methodology. The impression I always got from ex pros books is that while they understood the benefits of base training well there was very little methodology. Always struck me that they were hugely talented guys who mainly spent hours cycling their bikes (for the base) and would then take in some hills to mix in intensity. And then depend on races to get race fitness. This is a world apart from structured training with power meters and we are now at a point where the majority of younger pros would have done structured training with PMs and coaches from the beginning of their teenage years. In my view, this makes a massive difference and cannot be ignored.

If Vingegaard looked fresh as a daisy after each stage, despite losing, I'd agree.

Instead he looked wiped (and human) after each stage.

Today was the first day I actually saw Pogacar break a sweat. Every other day it was a walk in the park for him.

I don't think training-wise Pogacar does anything that different to the other major teams, eg Ineos, in terms of altitude training. And Carapaz for example grew up at altitude.

Maybe Pogacar is clean, but his performance was without doubt superhuman.

https://escapecollective.com/opinion-we-cant-yet-explain-tadej-pogacars-sudden-leap/

This is a bit light on substance, for example leaning on the previous discussion here about the 6.4W/Kg, it doesn't illustrate that or where it came from or how it was achieved. It doesn't delve into this 120g of Carbs per hour thing as well. I know some journalists are wary of being parrots for bunkum science as well, so maybe there's an element of that in it.

It also leaves out the elephant in the room of the estimation of Pog climbing at 7W/Kg for 30 plus minutes..

Leaving aside the question of doping, everyone is interested in how Pogacar improved so much. He always had the explosive kick and was able to launch himself quickly out of the pack. But his ability to sustain it over long distances in the mountains in successive days and weeks is something else.

People are saying he's done things differently this year, and the different preparation has helped, such as doing the Giro.

However, this makes is sound like all the other GC teams are amateurish in their approach and well behind. I don't think that's true. All the major GC teams put a major effort into bike technology, training, nutrition and general preparation, including altitude training. If they thought doing the Giro would help prepare better for the Tour, then you'd see this more frequently. At best Pogacar's changes in preparation should deliver marginal gains, as they are marginally better than what others have done.

One thing in Pogacar's favour however, is that outside Vingegaard, Evenepoel and very occassionally Roglic, there's a real lack of genuine contendors who can put it up to Pogacar. Its a bit like men's tennis, when the big three could thrive in a relatively weak era among the rest.

I'm not necessarily suggesting that a national team has a doping regime in the way you're describing it - bringing in a group of players from different clubs and getting them on board with a doping system at national level. If the clubs themselves - or even just the very top players - are tolerant of playing fast and loose with performance enhancers year round, the national team will benefit from that. In 2008 there were only 5 players in the squad not playing in La Liga. In 2010 it was 3. In 2012 it was 4. Half of the squad were made up of players from just 2 clubs.

In terms of what help - who knows. I didn't know what Ketones were when they became news a couple of years ago. This new malarkey that people are referencing with Pog - no idea what that is either. I've no idea what's out there these days. But what I do know is that if you take a puff of an inhaler in cycling you're hammered, your team is ridiculed and the entire sport goes under the microscope. Whereas in contact sports it seem to be just accepted that pain killers are standard treatment for injuries.

Even down to diet - cyclists (and track athletes to a lesser degree) seem obsessed with knowing what's in their food - the fact that cheat meals, dream foods after Tours etc are spoken about - is in contrast with footballers who never publicly mention these kind of things. That's indicative of a culture where the fear of eating contaminated food is non existent… leading you to wonder just how scrupulous the testing is at all. In a world where there's so much at stake, and so many options to enhance performance through 'supplements', along with a seemingly non-existent testing regime… why is it that cyclists are naïve for trusting Pog's performance but there's no questions asked about the levels of performance of top footballers?

Spain played a very intense pressing game at their peak - as soon as they lost possession they would swarm opponents to get it back. Their style may look easy, but its the non-stop running and movement off the ball, often not picked up by cameras, which gradually wears teams down. The sheer relentlessness of it all.

I completely agree with you in terms of people believing what they want to and perceived biases etc. I think cycling suffers a lot for that, especially because it's not really aligned on national lines. Athletics had a very similar issue with doping in the same eras as cycling - but because it's organised along national lines people seem much more willing to forget and overlook. I've no proof of anything, the only difference is that I view all sports through the same prism and see cycling's more regular reports of doping fails as evidence of a more vigorous approach to catching the dopers rather than evidence of a more prevalent doping culture these days.

Applying the "it would be so difficult to do it surely it's not being done" logic to cycling, you'd have to ask yourself why top cyclists would dope for relatively minimal financial reward (compare pro cycling to other pro sports in terms of what the average pro earns) in what must be the strictest anti-doping system in world sport and where every unusual performance is scrutinised to death by even your average fan on the internet.

I think a fully fit Vingo would have run it far closer than 6 minutes at the end so if there is a "something" it's reasonable to assume that it is available to Visma and possibly QuickStep too, as the top 3 were ten minutes clear of everyone else.

But the "something" must be on very limited circulation within the teams because it would have made sense to democratise that within a team to keep more riders in play for the GC.

What I find most surprising is that INEOS haven't got this.

https://cyclingmagazine.ca/sections/news/romain-bardet-this-tour-was-40-watts-an-hour-more/

Just putting this in here for reading material.

I don't think so, I just think it's a statement of I'm happy to be getting the f*ck out of here.

There's also the case of financial doping that's rarely mentioned, where teams like UAE can "buy up" other GC contenders and make domestiques out of them - not new of course, as SKY were doing it years ago.