Did you have to be on the Program to win ANYTHING?

[Autobus]

I'm trying to figure out whether back in the bad old days if a rider could ever score a big win if they were not on a program. In the forum it's been shown that a rider could use either their team's program, or, if they had enough money, their own. I have no doubt that a GC candidate for a GT would be doping, but what about somebody taking their once in a lifetime win?

I'll use Magnus Backstedt as an example, not because I am specifically concerned about whether was doping, but I just happen to know his history better than most similar riders of his era. Before the 1998 Tour his biggest win was the GP D'Isbergues, so he was likely not to be making the kind of salary to afford a personal program. He was also riding for Gan, which as far as I know, was not one of the big providers of EPO to its riders. The stage he won, the 19th, was late enough in the race to have no bearing on the GC and those in the winning break were not even in the hunt for the Green jersey (though O'Grady, the runner up for the Green, was in the next group). Also, the next stage was the final time trial, so those with ambition likely held something back during the 19th stage.

After 1998 and leading up to his 2004 win of PR, his biggest wins were the Swedish National RR and TT Championships. Again, he was riding for teams that were not known as providers (CA and Fakta), and he was still not likely earning enough to obtain his own supply or demonstrating the kind of results that would lead one to believe that he was.

But 2004 was different. First, he moved to Alessio-Bianchi. While they had some riders either in 2004 or previously who were likely doping, their results were not showing they had an effective program. But then Maggy takes second in Gent Wevelgem and wins Paris Roubaix. While the circumstances of his win greatly helped him--he was able to latch onto Museeuw's last attack before Museeuw's late puncture, Van Petegem also had a late puncture, Boonen and Hincapie both made numerous earlier attacks and Boonen was likely riding for Museeuw, and no real sprinters were in the winning break--until 2004 Backstedt just hadn't these kinds of results in races of the caliber of PR. Was he just lucky, or did he find a team that had the resources that helped him win?

 

[D-Queued]

Venturing an opinion:

The peloton has been known to let (unknown) riders escape for stage wins in their hometown.

But, as with the case of Simeoni, there is being on the program and being on the program. If you don't pay your <ahem> dues, you may not get favorable treatment.

Basso appears to have been allowed a stage win when his mother/grandmother was sick (watch the movie...) in return for 'assistance'.

The gains from doping are huge. Even for (gruelling) one day events. I've witnessed more than one local race where the programmed riders are sent to the front with a mission to rip the pack apart early on. It works. Sh*t can and does happen, though, like crashes and flats.

The problem is that while it is possible, it is just not probable.

Dave.

 

[Autobus]

I do believe that if the Green jersey was pretty well decided there were and are opportunities for unexpected stage finishes towards the end of the Tour. Backstedt was by then a steady rider in the peloton, probably best known for working for Boardman, O'Grady, and Moncassin. In 98 he probably got into the break to help O'Grady, but the break stuck and he was fastest in the sprint. I would be more inclined to believe he was not on the program then than in 2004.

These would be the circumstances where I'd have to believe clean riders would have their best chance, these and the give aways you mentioned. Do the circumstances of any other wins during this era (besides the give aways) suggest a probable clean winner?

 

[kurtinsc]

I have no real basis for believing this... but my thought is that you can win sprints and prologue or slightly longer TT's, and road stages from breakaways without dope (or at least not heavy EPO/Steroid/HGH style doping).

I think doping heavily still helps with those, but you can still overcome dopers if you had enough natural talent and luck in those areas. When it comes to mountain stages, longer one day races with tough parcours, northern classics, or long TT's... then I don't think you are going to win against a properly doped competitor with anywhere near the amount of talent.

In general, I use Lemond as the measuring stick (for good or bad). A top-talent rider against an undoped peloton = a win in the TDF (1990). A top talent rider who's not doped up against a mostly doped peloton = 7th in the TDF 13 minutes behind (1991).

 

[Magnus]

The one rider that was definitely undoped in the 90'ies, Christophe Basson, won a stage in Dauphiné Libéré in '99 iirc. Not a huge victory, but for the vast majority of riders on the Pro Tour (or whatever it's called nowadays) a stage victory in Dauphiné is a season's if not career's biggest achievement.

 

[Magnus]

Concerning Backstädt:
He might not have bin doping.
During the '98 tour a lot of riders probably didn't follow their program. (Riis writes in his Bio that he flushed his stash when the police started searching the riders' hotels.)
Paris-Roubaix sometimes has a surprising outcome. Besides Bäckstedt, Knaven and Guesdon springs to mind.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Those GC-irrelevant stages where the break is just allowed to disappear and the péloton comes in several minutes down are usually the best chances for the clean riders to win races. Either that or big mountain stages where there are no bonus seconds, or the GC riders don't want to fight for them and so let the breakaways have a chance of winning. Those are the kind of stages David Moncoutié has been winning for a while, but the more common ones are those that finish without an MTF, like the stages Fedrigo and Casar won in the Tour, and the ones that Luís León Sánchez and Fedrigo won in 2009. I'm less convinced about Luisle, but David Moncoutié and Pierrick Fedrigo are two riders I'm more than happy to stick my neck out and say are clean, and I'm reasonably satisfied by Sandy Casar.

 

[roundabout]

Knaven was both doping (when a team finishes 4 out of the top 5 it's not a stretch) and lucky that Museeuw punctured late in the race.

 

[Magnus]

Knaven was both doping (when a team finishes 4 out of the top 5 it's not a stretch) and lucky that Museeuw punctured late in the race.

I don't think Museeuw puncturing had anything to do with it. Wasn't it three Domo riders and one non-Domo rider and the non-Domo rider gave up when Knaven attacked?

 

[Suedehead]

Besides his win in P-R he had a 7 (98) and a 4 (05). Throw in a knee injury around 2000 and its difficult to draw any conlusions weather he was on a program or not.
When he left liquigas for slipstream he said something that could be interpreted as the moral standard was not perfect at liquigas (Di Luca was team leader), as I recall.

 

[roundabout]

As far as i remember Knaven made the winning attack shortly after Museew got back after his puncture.

 

[Autobus]

Part of my reason for asking is to help me recognize clean performances. These days I try to stay agnostic unless a rider blatently fails the sniff test, i.e., does the performance smell bad. The most obvious cases in recent past for me were Schumacher, Ricco, and Kohl. There certainly have been enough performances that smell bad that overall I'm not often surprised when a rider tests positive, but I also want to be able to unreservedly applaud a great result from time to time. I certainly appreciate an exciting race or result, but the ability to think that rider did it all on his own makes it all that much better.

 

[D-Queued]

I have no real basis for believing this... but my thought is that you can win sprints and prologue or slightly longer TT's, and road stages from breakaways without dope (or at least not heavy EPO/Steroid/HGH style doping).

I think doping heavily still helps with those, but you can still overcome dopers if you had enough natural talent and luck in those areas. ....

Standing vertical jump has a strong correlation to sprinting ability.

Training (especially plyometrics) has been extremely effective in improving standing vertical (mostly by tricking the body to overcome its natural safety factors).

However, HGH also has HUGE benefits in this area. NBA players with freakish vertical are long suspected (with proof... but I ain't searching for it now, too lazy) to have been using HGH.

Part of my reason for asking is to help me recognize clean performances. ...

Hard, really hard. Even good friends may turn out to be using when you were hoping it was not the case.

Dave.

 

[DirtyWorks]

Flandis Reference

I recall somewhere in the FLandis' email blow-up that he won an elite event dope-free, but then asked to get on the program to get to the next level. I'm sure someone can/will correct me if I'm wrong.

I think the wins at that level are extremely difficult without doping. It still is the case that those riders are the 'biggest fish in the best pond.'

 

[Autobus]

I think the wins at that level are extremely difficult without doping. It still is the case that those riders are the 'biggest fish in the best pond.'

Especially these days I totally believe you. Would anyone even conceive of a team of riders one year from being amatures riding the Giro and winning two stages anymore? Maybe if they were sponsored by Amgen.

 

[Mambo95]

I recall somewhere in the FLandis' email blow-up that he won an elite event dope-free, but then asked to get on the program to get to the next level. I'm sure someone can/will correct me if I'm wrong.

I think it was coming 2nd in the 2002 Dauphine.


(PS Backstedt would be one of the first names I'd put on a list of clean riders).

 

[BotanyBay]

I recall somewhere in the FLandis' email blow-up that he won an elite event dope-free, but then asked to get on the program to get to the next level. I'm sure someone can/will correct me if I'm wrong.

I think the wins at that level are extremely difficult without doping. It still is the case that those riders are the 'biggest fish in the best pond.'

Guys, Floyd rode for Mercury. John Wordin, Gord Fraser, etc. I can't believe any of you think he was a clean rider before he came to Postal. Floyd just wants to limit the bomb damage to those he truly hates.

And he expects us to believe he was some naive mennonite boy from Pennsyltucky? Ain't gonna work.

 

[Mambo95]

Guys, Floyd rode for Mercury. John Wordin, Gord Fraser, etc. I can't believe any of you think he was a clean rider before he came to Postal. Floyd just wants to limit the bomb damage to those he truly hates.

And he expects us to believe he was some naive mennonite boy from Pennsyltucky? Ain't gonna work.

He wrote it in his famous e-mail. If you don't believe that bit, then you how can you believe any of the rest of it? You can't really pick and choose which bits fit your views and dismiss the rest as lies.

 

[BotanyBay]

He wrote it in his famous e-mail. If you don't believe that bit, then you how can you believe any of the rest of it? You can't really pick and choose which bits fit your views and dismiss the rest as lies.

Sure I can. I know that people with a lot to hide often only reveal the parts that are convenient for them. They're so good at rationalizing that they start believing their own lies. Also, I think we're going to see that these emails broke long after he was cooperating with the feds. He might have written the emails just to help provoke some decent chatter on things like existing phone taps, etc.

But I don't need to believe the emails. Everything he wrote in his emails, I already believed (independent of his timing). I didn't need him to drop a dime to validate it for me. And if you see Mr. Landis on a witness list, it will only be to verify the tapes he sat by and helped record. You won't see him giving direct testimony on the emails.

Novi is too smart to let his investigation rely on Froid.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

You're making the assumption that Floyd will have doped for every race he did once he started doping - the usual doping-is-like-a-lightswitch argument.

The Volta ao Algarve is an elite event. It was won by Floyd in 2004. It takes place in early February and many of the riders who participate just roll around for the km in the legs. Is it entirely unfeasible that a rider like Floyd could have won such an event clean, because there was no use in risking it at a small warmup race in February, before stepping the program up during the season proper, doing races with small amounts if any at all, stepping up to the full program at the Tour?

Is that really any more unbelievable than believing that once you've doped once you will dope for every single race you ever enter regardless of how small?

 

[Fester]

In terms of the opening question, yes, it was and is completely possible to win many races on a variety of terrain clean. It's usually a team effort and requires all on the team to race intelligently.

In races than only allow 6 riders per team luck become an important factor and can mean that a not so strong rider can win.

 

[BotanyBay]

You're making the assumption that Floyd will have doped for every race he did once he started doping - the usual doping-is-like-a-lightswitch argument.

The Volta ao Algarve is an elite event. It was won by Floyd in 2004. It takes place in early February and many of the riders who participate just roll around for the km in the legs. Is it entirely unfeasible that a rider like Floyd could have won such an event clean, because there was no use in risking it at a small warmup race in February, before stepping the program up during the season proper, doing races with small amounts if any at all, stepping up to the full program at the Tour?

Is that really any more unbelievable than believing that once you've doped once you will dope for every single race you ever enter regardless of how small?

You talk about doping as if they choose which races to "dope for". Can you do a shot of EPO the night before an event and get an advantage? Sure. But most riders are on doping PROGRAMS. They do it to attain a higher level of fitness for a really long period of time.

Assume that if they're dopers, they're doping for much (if not most) of the season. The doping allows them to get a much higher overall fitness level.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

So would Floyd have been doping for Paris-Nice when he was doing the Volta ao Algarve then? That's the assumption?

Or, if the whole season was built around Lance's Tour, would the other riders be required to be 'on the program' all year round? I mean, obviously there's going to be several races you're doping for in order to build up to that peak fitness, but I'm just not convinced that the doping has necessarily kicked in for everybody who's doing it in early February. Maybe for those whose season goals are in early April, but not for those whose targets are the Grand Tours - and that season Floyd's goals were the Tour for Lance, and then the Vuelta (which he led for a few days).

I'm not saying Floyd wasn't doping at the Volta ao Algarve that year, but I am thinking that it's possible to win elite races that are little more than early season training rides without the same chemical assistance required to win the Tour de France.

 

[Mambo95]

Sure I can. I know that people with a lot to hide often only reveal the parts that are convenient for them. They're so good at rationalizing that they start believing their own lies. Also, I think we're going to see that these emails broke long after he was cooperating with the feds. He might have written the emails just to help provoke some decent chatter on things like existing phone taps, etc.

But I don't need to believe the emails. Everything he wrote in his emails, I already believed (independent of his timing). I didn't need him to drop a dime to validate it for me. And if you see Mr. Landis on a witness list, it will only be to verify the tapes he sat by and helped record. You won't see him giving direct testimony on the emails.

Novi is too smart to let his investigation rely on Froid.

Maybe you have a point. The broad strokes of his e-mail (Armstrong and USP doped) were nothing knew. It confirmed what both you and I already thought.

However, many on here frequently refer to the minutiae of that e-mail, treating it almost as if it is a 'gospel'. I don't know if you are one of them.

But those that do, need to treat every disclosure on the same merits and not pick and choose as they see fit.

So if Landis says he came 2nd in the Dauphine clean, then it is just as valid a claim as any derogatory comment.

 

[Tyler'sTwin]

You talk about doping as if they choose which races to "dope for". Can you do a shot of EPO the night before an event and get an advantage? Sure. But most riders are on doping PROGRAMS. They do it to attain a higher level of fitness for a really long period of time.

Assume that if they're dopers, they're doping for much (if not most) of the season. The doping allows them to get a much higher overall fitness level.

But that type of doping is dismissed by just about everyone in the clinic. Most of y'all view blood boosting as something that gives almost magical powers whereas "recovery therapy" (thank you, David) is not that significant (doesn't turn a donkey into a thoroughbred, possible to win the Tour clean pre-EPO, etc).