Big Doopie said:Amazing that Lemond, mottet, fignon, claveyrolat and hampsten all did the best times of their careers chasing epo-driven chiappucci, Indurain and Bugno in 1991.
That year Lemond thought he was having an off year after dominating the first week. He couldn't explain why the peloton was going so fast, instead of slowing some riders seemed to get stronger and faster as the tour grew longer. Usually the best in the third week, lemond exhausted himself chasing the new epo wonders around France trying desperately to compete with them. And all the time wondering what was wrong with himself. Meantime he actually posted the best time of his career up l'alpe...But way behind the new epo kings.
Maybe you should have a look at the stage details firstly, in 91 it was the first mountain stage in the Alps and was only 129km in distance and the preceding climbs were the minor Col de Bayard right at the start of the stage and the gentle Col D'Ornon(avg 3.8%).
Compare that to 89 for example when the stage was run over the Galibier and the Croix de fer before reaching Alpe d'huez and was the third Alpine stage following the mountain TT and the stage over the Izoard into Briancon.
This why it is pure folly to pick out and compare individual times of individual years, how would they produce similar times when conditions are different?? Yes you can look at climbing times and see a general pattern in the increase in speed during the 90s and a slight decline in more recent times but to compare individual years can be misleading especially if the routes are very different.
Why would the 91 Alpe times be so fast and then the 92 times so much slower if EPO was the main factor?
How did LeMond go from 46/48 minutes or whatever in 86 to 42 minutes in 91, surely that is a nailed on sign of doping
BTW I am not saying Bugno/Chiappucci were not on EPO in 91 but a lot of guys were fast up Alpe d'huez in 91. Plus the super clean LeMond went faster in 91 than so-called uber-dopers like Valverde and Frank Schleck in 2008 and faster than Cadel. What does that say??