Recent content by ulrichw

You're making the same mistake Saint Unix attributes to Vayer (and Greg Lemond made on the air for Eurosport). The rings don't give a 6% advantage, and that's not what Sky (or anyone who knows what they're talking about) are saying. Due to the idiosyncrasies of how most crank-based powermeters...

This makes it seem like achieving 6.6 w/kg in the finale of a 1hr event is strong evidence of doping. I'm curious if either of you have any references to support this? It seems that pacing strategies would likely vary quite a bit for this less-than-flat timetrial. It wouldn't at all be...

Though no fan of Michele Ferrari, I think you're doing him a bit of disservice here. In the linked article MF (apt initials, eh?) refers to the *total* caloric expenditure over the entire stage to make the point that because he burned fat earlier in the stage, he started the last climb with...

Why were all of '93, '94, '95, '96 and '97 slower than all of '07, '08, '09, '10, '11 & '12? Same reason, IMO: Average speed over the entire duration of the race includes so much time spent at sub-maximal effort levels that doping is a relatively small influence (I'm not saying that there's...

Per UCI rules (this in section 12 which defines the penalties for "race incidents"): 12. Wilful obstruction of a rider or a team car [...] 12.2 Stage Race 50 and 10“ 50 + elimination on 2nd offence; For offence during last km of stage: 100, 30“ and relegation to end of stage for...

You clearly are more knowledgeable than I in the subject, but isn't this last statement a little out there? Thinking about the nature of aging, we know for sure that the age distribution can't be a normal distribution. My point was that even considering that Chris was doping, given that a...

Unless you believe that all previous winners won their Vueltas clean and that Horner was the only dirty rider in "his" Vuelta, these data just go to support the miraculous nature of his victory. Also, having little more than an intuitive understanding of stats, I'm wondering how one can...

The weight is actually a bit of a red herring in all of this. Assuming that the Pinot data is accurate, you can actually get a semi-decent estimate of other riders' w/kg by comparing climbing times. This is because for a sufficiently steep climb, w/kg is the dominant factor in climbing speed...

Thanks for the link! Quite informative. I have to disagree with your analysis, though - Dr. Veloclinic did a good job keeping his analysis objective. Specifically, I'd like to point out parts of the summary toward the end of the article: A more accurate summation of this article, in my...

Since this is getting fairly OT, I'll try to keep my answer short. I would simply seed the algorithm with filters based on my rider's known maximal efforts (e.g., peak 5m effort, peak 10m effort, etc.). The algorithm would then simply "tone down" any peaks that are too close to these maximal...

Yes - cross-checking against a known reference would be one way to determine certain types of manipulation (for example reducing the average wattage over an entire ride). As a matter of fact, this is a possible alternate explanation for data you mentioned before -where Chris' weight computes to...

ok, perhaps I was getting excited when I used the term "trivial" - Let's just say that for someone with programming expertise (I'm a software engineer by trade) it's not too difficult to come up with a program/scrip that does this. Admittedly, redoing the GPS tracks is a level more effort...

I'm curious about this portion of your statement: One thing I don't think I've seen mentioned here (at least not in the threads I follow) is the ease with which any power files can be manipulated. There's no technology in place to guard against forged files (at least not that I heard...

Not necessarily: I'm using the team vs. individual pursuit numbers just to get an approximate idea of how much faster a team will go than an individual - I'd argue that the ratio is similar whether doped or not. Boardman's effort after applying the adjustment was quite a bit in excess of the...

I think that's a bit of a strong statement. The world record for the team pursuit time is 3:51 - approximately 62.34 kph. The individual pursuit record over the same distance is 4:10 - approximately 57.37 kph. Taking the ratio of these times might be a way to approximately model the...