Dave_1 said:
No, I have not backed off. You are not entitled to your own facts. You are only entitled to your own opinion. Don't forget that. How uninformed am I re contrast of ITT vs road stage on same mountain? Pantani 37 minutes in road stage up Alpe D'huez...LA 37 minutes in the MTT at Alpe D'huez. froome 41 minutes in road stage up Alpe D'huez in 2013..but some insist he must be drugged. The TT vs road stage thing ..it's a red herring. I suggest you do not make any assumptions about what you think I don't know. I know a lot more than you think. You should learn a little from this encounter
Let me outline the differences bewteen a road stage and a TT stage on Ventoux.
• Riding ~200 km before hitting the ascent vs. warming up near bus
• Different bike
• Riding your own pace
• No race tactics involved, pure effort
For every major climb that has done both road stages and TT's the TT times are uniformly faster. You can't simply pick one time from two different riders and extrapolate that to a trend. In addition to it being 2 different riders, tactics and conditions blur the issue.
When you look at groups of times, as normal, TT times go to the top. Outliers exist but the trend is more than clear. This is a fact, and ignoring it would indicated maybe you're not really all about the facts. I can't believe you actually think it doesn't matter. It's not even a question.
Ventoux particulars. TT times in bold. Note Armstrong's times. For the TT, consistently a minute faster than his road stage times.
1. 2004: 55:51 Iban Mayo 23.10 km/h
2. 2004: 56:26 Tyler Hamilton 22.86 km/h
3. 1999: 56:50 Jonathan Vaughters 22.70 km/h
4. 2004: 56:54 Oscar Sevilla 22.67 km/h
5. 1999: 57:33 Alexander Vinokourov 22.42 km/h
6. 1994: 57:34 Marco Pantani 22.41 km/h
7. 1999: 57:34 Wladimir Belli 22.41 km/h
8. 2004: 57:39 Juan Miguel Mercado 22.38 km/h
9. 1999: 57:42 Joseba Beloki 22.36 km/h
10. 2004: 57:49 Lance Armstrong 22.31 km/h
11. 1999: 57:52 Lance Armstrong 22.29 km/h
12. 2004: 58:14 Inigo Landaluze 22.15 km/h
13. 1999: 58:15 Kevin Livingston 22.15 km/h
14. 1999: 58:31 David Moncoutie 22.05 km/h
15. 2004: 58:35 José Enrique Gutierrez 22.02 km/h
16. 2009: 58:45 Andy Schleck 21.96 km/h
17. 2009: 58:45 Alberto Contador 21.96 km/h
18. 2009: 58:48 Lance Armstrong 21.94 km/h
19. 2009: 58:50 Fränk Schleck 21.93 km/h
20. 1999: 58:51 Unai Osa 21.92 km/h
21. 2009: 58:53 Roman Kreuziger 21.91 km/h
22. 2002: 59:00 Lance Armstrong 21.86 km/h
23. 2013: 59:00 Chris Froome 21.86 km/h
24. 1994: 59:02 Richard Virenque 21.85 km/h
25. 1994: 59:02 Armand De Las Cuevas 21.85 km/h
There is a very, very strong trend of TT times at the top. The other strong trend is that all but 2 of those riders have been popped for doping or strongly linked to doping or doping doctors. One, Moncoutie, is the outlier in the TT. The other is Froome, who somehow manages to match the times of Armstrong, Virenque, Contador and Schleck...clean.
The facts are that TT's are ridden faster than road stages. The conclusions based on those facts are opinion. You can certainly be of the opinion that Froome is clean. You can't invent facts about TTs not having faster times than road stages. It's absurd.