LargusMeans said:
How is it that you can give LA a free pass, who during his time was the BEST CLIMBER in the tour and the BEST TT as well? But no, thats not possible for anyone else to do that? And its the 19th day of racing?
Nobody, in the history of the sport, with AC's physiological conditions has been able to generate those kind of watts in a time trial before. The sheer incredible and novelty aspects of his feat, in this day and age, automatically start raising the red flags.
Armstrong became the best climber during his day due to EPO doping and intensive training, his performances in the time trials were also due to this, though, at the physiological level, it was much easier to expect that from him, than what we are presently seeing from AC.
That Lance doped/s and AC too, is to me beyond a doubt. And that goes for all the main competitors at the top of the Tour GC. In this sense, however, I don't attribute AC's ride yesterday to doping but to his incredible genetics. If nobody doped, everybody would have just gone a bit slower, but the result would have probably been the same. What we are getting with AC today thus, is the demonstration of a phenom the likes of which the sport has perhaps never before seen.
His past as an amatuer in Spain, when he was already being compared to Pantani on the climbs, together with his rapid ascention to the world's best rider before his 27th birhtday, to me has indicated (doping aside) that his pedigree is exceptional, even if his performance yesterday was unedited.