"clean", "suspect", "miraculous" and "mutants"

[King Boonen]

Try this account

For others:

https://twitter.com/lapreuvepar21

 

[Cyivel]

For others:

https://twitter.com/lapreuvepar21

That's not it fam, this is it

https://twitter.com/festinaboy

Tweet was 25th May

 

[Gregga]

Worth the money? Is it a magazine or a bound book?

So is it just that one climb that tips things against Contador? I'd still, foolishly probably, like to believe he is clean...

It's a magazine.

Worth the money, I don't know, a way to support Vayer/CCN actually.
I know Vayer and Portoleau calculations since Oct 2000 (Sport&Vie, french magazine), they used to be in the "trolls" category for a long time during LA's era so that's a king of revenge for them (Vayer's numbers about LA were already in LA Confidentiel in 2004)

About Contador, there's many climbs in the suspect zone, in the TdF but also in the Giro & Vuelta. IMO there's no doubt, heavy blood doping since 2007, huge power loss due to the BP, no way he could be clean

 

[King Boonen]

That's not it fam, this is it

https://twitter.com/festinaboy

Tweet was 25th May

Thanks very much!

 

[More Strides than Rides]

Someone should probably tweet him about what category Nibbles would be in based on the Giro.

He would not crack the top two tiers, and without reading the methodology I don't think he would even get suspect.

Between the weather, and the competition, he didn't have to put it all on the line. Any measurement of his performance is going to be a xx% of his max

 

[King Boonen]

He would not crack the top two tiers, and without reading the methodology I don't think he would even get suspect.

Between the weather, and the competition, he didn't have to put it all on the line. Any measurement of his performance is going to be a xx% of his max

See the tweet from 25th May by Vayer...

 

[valkus]

Got it yesterday

Worth of reading, though had some fights with my wife for loosing the time on that

If i'm not mistaken then Froomy is higher than wiggo because of vuelta performances, Wiggo was lower there.

Pitty that Sastre doesn't exist in this analysis. Though his 2008 Alpe dHuez time was below 39?

Impressive Hinault and LeMond Alpe dHuez time - 48 min!

 

[thehog]

The Dawg will achieve mutant status come July.

 

[valkus]

That only takes the tour though right? Wonder if 52 would be higher if it was taken into account that the rider had been on peak for 5 months prior and won 3 overalls and 4 stages in that time.

It takes not only tour stages. I dont remember exactly for Wiggins, but for Evans miraculous performances come from pre-tour2011 Dauphine 2011

 

[Gregga]

Pitty that Sastre doesn't exist in this analysis. Though his 2008 Alpe dHuez time was below 39?

Sastre did 39:01 in 2006 and 39:30 in 2008
http://www.cyclismag.com/article.php?sid=4386

Impressive Hinault and LeMond Alpe dHuez time - 48 min!

In his interview with Kimmage for 2r, Lemond explains that climb was "a training ride" as he waited for Hinault who had told him "the Tour is over" at the beginning of the climb... he had of course regrets about that as Hinault the day after told him it wasn't.

A typical Alpe d'Huez time in the eighties was 42' (Herrera '84, Fignon '89), not 48'

 

[valkus]

Briefly - they have 3 categories of performances:

1) Long mountain stages and measure performance at the last climb
2) mountain stages with no more than 2 climbs or uphill TT
3) breakaway performances (like Landis or Virenque or Voeckler)

For each of the categories they take the best performance ever: watts kept for different time.

That creates the black curve (watts for the given time duration) - super-mutants.

Then up to
-5% - mutant performance - red
-9% - miraculous performance
-13% suspicious performance.

Then they look at performances of different riders and place them accordingly. Of course if a guy have a record breaking times then he is a mutant.

 

[ChewbaccaD]

They calculate watts for a virtual 70kg rider with 8kg bike + equipment
So "suspect" is above 5.85 W/kg (=410/70)
"miraculous" is above 6.14 W/kg
"mutant" is above 6.4

IMO Contador shouldn't be among the "mutants", Verbier '09 seems to be an artefact in their calculations as at least 10 riders were mutants that day, including Wiggins, maybe a strong tailwind even though they said it had been taken into account.

Seriously? I am amazed by the blindness of people.

 

[Zweistein]

Things are skewed more if you look at it in terms of watts/kg. Pantani looks like an off the charts doper and the gap between Lemond and Armstrong increases. I think Lemond raced around 140 lbs ,I beleive, and Armstrong supposedly was around 160 lbs.

 

[icefire]

After the last paragraph in the article WADA should certify a few SRM models, force riders to give their data after a race and make positives based on this. It would be cheaper and faster than lab testing of body fluid samples. We could have cheaters busted even before showing up on the podium.

 

[icefire]

surprised they didnt analyze Sastre. Also is this what vayer had in mind when he made his tweet about Nibali? Because Nibali isn't mentioned here either.

If Sastre can win the Tour I can come back from retirement and race again

 

[More Strides than Rides]

See the tweet from 25th May by Vayer...

I'm on a work computer, which has blocked twitter (??). Can anyone share the tweet/conversation?

 

[Merckx index]

Things are skewed more if you look at it in terms of watts/kg. Pantani looks like an off the charts doper and the gap between Lemond and Armstrong increases. I think Lemond raced around 140 lbs ,I beleive, and Armstrong supposedly was around 160 lbs.

If Contador's actual weight was used I doubt he would be mutant. He's 8 to 10 Kgs below the normalized 70.

It's been explained many times before, but people keep misunderstanding. The values are equivalent to watts/kg. The fact that they are listed in watts is misleading, because they assume a fixed value for the rider's weight (70 kg, I think) and bike weight (8 kg or so). IOW, they take watts/kg values, and determine what the watts would be IF the rider in question weighed 70 kg and his bike 8 kg. In fact, without power meters, all raw power data are in watts/kg. The time taken to climb a certain distance up a certain grade is proportional to watts/kg, not to watts.

So the fact that rider A is listed as 420 watts and rider B at 350 watts doesn't mean that rider A actually put out 420 watts and rider B actually put out 350 watts. The actual watts these riders put out is irrelevant to how they are classified.

Armstrong is green in 1999, except from Sestrières, against an almost clean post-Festina field he just had to control

And yet we know he took EPO for multiple stages in that Tour. Green while heavily doped. Must be the only one of the 21 with that honor.

As someone here pointed out the other day, if you do Alpe in 35 min, you are definitely doped, but if you do it in 45 min it doesn't necessarily mean you're clean.

After the last paragraph in the article WADA should certify a few SRM models, force riders to give their data after a race and make positives based on this. It would be cheaper and faster than lab testing of body fluid samples. We could have cheaters busted even before showing up on the podium.

I'm sure you're being sarcastic, but IMO, there's a lot of merit to that proposal. I've suggested before having a standard climb in every TDF or GT, so power can be estimated fairly accurately (subject to weather conditions and other variables that can't be controlled). One of the main lines of evidence for a cleaner peloton according to JV and some others is lower power values. If cycling really wanted to show this, they would do everything possible to measure power under conditions as standard as possible.

 

[L'arriviste]

Didn't realise this thread had started. I've been discussing the publication on another thread. Perhaps a mod can move that part because it was all OT.

Starting from:
http://forum.cyclingnews.com/showthread.php?p=1254365#post1254365

 

[icefire]

Armstrong is green in 1999, except from Sestrières, against an almost clean post-Festina field he just had to control

And yet we know he took EPO for multiple stages in that Tour. Green while heavily doped. Must be the only one of the 21 with that honor.

Indurain is also green in his first 3 wins, riding with the likes of Bugno, Chiapucci and Rominger.

 

[roundabout]

Sestrieres, Shmestrieres. What was the performance on the Galibier?

IIRC Alpe d'Huez was incredibly slow that year. Wind?

Piau-Engaly, didn't that stage explode on the Peyresourde? With 50km to go?

 

[Merckx index]

So the red line here is what exactly? The miraculous or mutant line?

The red line is an estimate of the Nibs' maximum power output, based on his best performance in the Giro. The author of that analysis argued that values that fell below the red line could be explained by other factors, e.g., not going all out on some MTFs.

In terms of the 21 Counts ranking, the red line would be between miraculous and mutant. 6.25 watts/kg or so for a sustained climb of around 40 minutes, or about 440 watts for the standard 70 kg. rider.

Thanks, so how do they explain it? He took "speed" to push back his limits and gain power ? I thought only EPO and BBs could do that, but since it was a short ITT...Could it be that their calcs are wrong sometimes, I hope they don't rule that out...

EDIT - it seems we're all struggling with that "power" concept, hope they have a decent explanation in the mag...

A short ITT would definitely make a difference. You can appreciate it from the red line in Nibs' analysis. The line goes up as time goes down, because more power can be put out for a shorter period of time. The line is in fact an estimate based on what he was known to put out in one sustained climb of around forty minutes.

However, I assume Vayer would have factored that in. He would either have to make all his power estimates from relatively sustained climbs, or use a projection like that red line to estimate what sustained power would be based on power output for shorter intervals.

If Hinault had a power output of 6.4 watts/kg for a sustained climb, around 40 min, then the only thing available at that time that would explain it would be blood transfusion. But there is no evidence that he did that, and if he did, one would expect he would do it at other times, as well.

I haven't read the book, of course, but if he's claiming Hinault did 6.4 watts/kg, then there is almost certainly something wrong with his calculations. Most likely he used too short an interval, and if he did, then many of his other estimates are probably wrong, too. But again, it seems hard to believe that Vayer would make a simple mistake like that.

Edit: Where did the 6.4 watts/kg come from? According to what I've seen, Hinault was classified as yellow. This would mean > 5.85 watts/kg. This I think is believable without EPO. Remember there is considerable variation in on the road estimates due to weather conditions. E.g., Hinault could have had a tail wind on that climb.

 

[Eshnar]

Dunno if someone mentioned it already (I hope someone did), but taking into accounts power outputs without considering anything else (how hard the stage was, the weather, the race as a whole) is pure rubbish.

 

[thehog]

Dunno if someone mentioned it already (I hope someone did), but taking into accounts power outputs without considering anything else (how hard the stage was, the weather, the race as a whole) is pure rubbish.

It's not total rubbish. What you you refer to are "variables". It doesn't make the findings redundant.

 

[Fearless Greg Lemond]

Dunno if someone mentioned it already (I hope someone did), but taking into accounts power outputs without considering anything else (how hard the stage was, the weather, the race as a whole) is pure rubbish.

Yeah, Portelau and Vayer are known quacks, Armstrong approves...

I see in the last colom 'cols'.

Never mind.

I pre-ordered it a month ago, I hope it is in the mail tomorrow.

 

[Eshnar]

It's not total rubbish. What you you refer to are "variables". It doesn't make the findings redundant.

It's rubbish in order to judge a performance. Ofc it's nice to have all this data, but to use them and write 'this is more suspect than that because the power output was higher' is rubbish.