Recent content by Ruklaw

Yeah, major issue is that the guys/teams that might be beating him have knocked it back a bit, or aren't riding. UAE have obviously decided to knock it back a bit (Soler excepted...). Kuss is still recovering from his celebrations last year (or decided he doesn't want to risk taking so much of...

The thing about the bio passport, is if you get a rider young and get him on a blood boosting program before he has entered bio passport testing, then you can set a higher baseline for that testing - your young talent 'naturally' has a high haematocrit, and you can boost them even higher when...

My primary takeaway was that Roglic must be suffering - his team hadn't been chasing because he was struggling. But even given that, Ben was crazy strong - I mean if that had been Wout, or MVDP or Pog then we'd have heard the commentators bringing out all those cliches "that is just superb...

Not normal is the new normal.

Early days still at the Vuelta, but can we conclude that UAE have dialled it back a bit? Aside from the prologue win UAE have been pretty invisible and only Almeida survived yesterday.

I did perhaps sound a bit harsh about Thorpe, which wasn't my intention, more simply to make the point that his unbeatable PB was assisted by a suit that is also now illegal in the sport. He did break the then world record in tiny speedos back in 1999 (3:41:83) so of course there was a lot more...

It's fair to point out that Thorpe also swam in a full body suit, which presumably he didn't just do for the style but for the reduction in drag - and he struggled considerably on his attempted comeback when he had to wear just shorts. It does seem like 400m was probably a sweet spot where the...

The flaw in the argument you are making is that it's a lot easier to blood dope and otherwise prepare someone with a 60 vo2 max up to 95 than it is to take someone with a huge cardiovascular engine and make them really skilful with a football. Of course the best footballers are good at...

Yeah, I mean it's obvious that these riders are doping, and it's also obvious they ain't getting popped. The reason can be summarized in a pub quiz question that also came up on Lance's podcast - who was the last Belgian to podium on the tour? The answer is Jurgen Van Den Broeck in 2010 - but...

The possibility is that he was saving legs for the next couple of days, as he does apparently regret never taking a world tour breakaway win. This obviously isn't a particularly likely goal but it might be worth rolling the dice for - he did beat some fairly decent riders on the way to the GB...

I think the worst thing about the stage yesterday is that it killed off any notion of Visma or Jonas being tactically good racers. I mean seriously, you towed your direct rival for 5km up a mountain - why? - did it not occur to them to knock it back when they didn't shift Pog? He'd shown...

I think the bigger problem with sprint motors is the wattages required - I mean, so long as it is reasonably sustained, even an extra 50w for a gc guy would be plenty for them to kill off rivals over a long climb - similar on a TT. With a sprinter where 1500-2000w isn't unheard of, how much...

I suppose he could have. I mean, the other possibility is simply that a rider who was already widely recognized as the greatest sprinter of all time managed to win another sprint. There is some precedent in sprinters still being able to perform at an older age - the great Reg Harris won the...

Nothing particularly new about using sleeping pills as a training aid is there? I'm sure Tyler Hamilton talked about using them to cut weight - go out for a long training ride, come home chug a big bottle of fizzy water and sleeping pills and you can sleep for hours instead of noticing that...

It's early days. His performance so far isn't a million miles from where he was in the first half of the giro last year. I suspect he'll do reasonably well in the TT on Friday, then come that final day TT we're going to see some absolutely bonkers times (whether from Rog or whoever else).