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Dumoulin.

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Jul 31, 2015
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You are right, but my point is Vuelta produces shock after shock. 2013 Vuelta, for instance, was a disgrace. You would never see Papi win Giro or le Tour. Don't put Hesjedal's Giro victory in the equation, the level of the competition was very low that year. There must be a reason these guys are choosing Vuelta instead. Dawg also started his ascension here.
 
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StannisBaratheon said:
You are right, but my point is Vuelta produces shock after shock. 2013 Vuelta, for instance, was a disgrace. You would never see Papi win Giro or le Tour. Don't put Hesjedal's Giro victory in the equation, the level of the competition was very low that year. There must be a reason these guys are choosing Vuelta instead. Dawg also started his ascension here.

You might have a point. Afterall everything looks so amateurish in the Vuelta, starting with the rogue motards. Testing would be just the next step.

Back on topic though, I don't think Dumoulin falls in with those names.
 
What worries me most isn't the fact that individuals suddenly perform really good, it's that suddenly whole teams are controlling entire GT's having 5 men in the last 20 on a MTF. That's way more detrimental to the racing than 2 doped guys going head to head
 
Re: Re:

WillemS said:
carton said:
(if Froome is currently doping, the bayesian odds for Dumoulin doing what he did clean are next to nil).

Care to elaborate on that? Not the theoretical background of Bayesian statistics, but how you're able to update your posterior probabilities with such determination based on a single performance comparison. I would say that beating a doper might make it more likely that you dope, increasing the odds ratio in the favour of doping, but a "next to nil" estimate seems pretty far fetched based on this piece of introduced evidence alone. The only thing you're doing is rationalizing a gut feeling with scientific terms.
I think most opinions on internet forums are rationalizations on the gut feelings that compel us to blab to strangers about the minutiae of topics that we're not paid to research or discuss.

But in any case, I admit it was a hastily written, hastily arrived-at conclusion. I have not actually managed to even postulate a proper hypothesis in such a way as to actually be able use Bayesian inference as it is commonly understood to determine anything about Dumoulin's performance. In any case such an estimation would likely rely on assumptions so strong as to render the results suspect (because then again who actually was a clean cyclist, after all). However, what I actually meant to say and what I will still assert is that however you want to go about calculating it the conditional probability that a rider of his characteristics could manage these kinds of performances clean given an otherwise dirty peloton is IMHO very likely to be minute. As always, YMMV (but if it does, and you think you can adequately support it, I'd be very interested in how).

Just to double down on it, his was at the very least by far the most remarkable ride today from someone who doesn't ride for one of the two teams the UCI has tried to delicense out of the sport for systematic doping. To be clear, I don't know if Dumoulin is doping. Also, (and I've been ridiculed for this ad nauseum on this forum) I don't know if Froome is doping. Going into this GT, I found it much more likely that Dumoulin was clean than Froome. Given what has transpired, however, I find it very hard to imagine how the Dutchman could be doing this clean while guys he left cracked like peanuts like Froome and Quintana (who climbed better than Froome did in the Tour) were doping. I really don't know how you can rationally believe one and not the other.
 
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Bernie's eyesore said:
StannisBaratheon said:
If Domoulin was to join Sky he would win TDF 2016.

Who is to say he won't win it anyway? If we get a route anything like 2012's next year then Dumoulin will probably be favourite.
Froome would win anyway. (barring crash)

Which would be fun because we could say Froome won the most climbing heavy tt light TDF ever in 2015 and then the exact opposite in 2016.
 
Re:

StannisBaratheon said:
You are right, but my point is Vuelta produces shock after shock. 2013 Vuelta, for instance, was a disgrace. You would never see Papi win Giro or le Tour. Don't put Hesjedal's Giro victory in the equation, the level of the competition was very low that year. There must be a reason these guys are choosing Vuelta instead. Dawg also started his ascension here.
Armstrong too. 4th in 1998.
 
Re: Re:

PremierAndrew said:
BigMac said:
Tyr said:
BigMac said:
Tyr said:
I hope Dumuolin gets busted this very Vuelta. That would shut this bunch of delusional Dutch fanboys for good.

Why would you assume everyone who's still giving him the benefit of the doubt is Dutch?

Being Dutch and wanting to defend their compatriot along with plain delirium are the only reasonable explanations of why someone would defend this ridicolous transfomation.

I think you haven't followed Dumoulin much to label this a 'ridiculous transformation'. That or you haven't seen many ridiculous transformations.

Dumoulin's transformation in climbing ability is no smaller than G's transformation
Not sure about that yet. Not yet anyway.
 
Its quite silly to compare Geraint with Dumoulin. Thomas G. is 30 years old, Dumoulin is 24 going on 25 and has been steadily progressing his entire career. Ive always forseen Dumoulin ending up where he is now, down the line. So now hes ended up there faster than I predicted so compared to his earlier progress this is quite a leap, but I can still wrap my head around it.
 
Aug 6, 2011
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Re: Re:

carton said:
I think most opinions on internet forums are rationalizations on the gut feelings that compel us to blab to strangers about the minutiae of topics that we're not paid to research or discuss.

Oh, that's certainly true and I'm certainly not going to object to that.

However, you were trying to give weight to your expression of gut feelings by alluding to some scientific method supposedly supporting it. As you've now mentioned yourself, there currently no decent basis to calculate such a Bayesian posterior or conditional probability (depending on your preferred terminology), nor do I think that the evidence "He outclimbs Froome at this particular instance" is enough to increase the odds of doping significantly, without introducing any additional evidence. The only thing you could do is an "expert estimate" of the conditional probability, but in this case it would just be a "gut feeling estimate", so the mention of "Bayesian odds" is in fact nothing more than a "gut feeling". To me, it seemed that you were only using scientific terms to make your gut feeling appear to be more than what it is, a gut feeling.

carton said:
I really don't know how you can rationally believe one and not the other.

I don't. However, I can disagree with the arguments you use, while still agreeing with your conclusion.
 
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WillemS said:
The only thing you could do is an "expert estimate" of the conditional probability, but in this case it would just be a "gut feeling estimate", so the mention of "Bayesian odds" is in fact nothing more than a "gut feeling". To me, it seemed that you were only using scientific terms to make your gut feeling appear to be more than what it is, a gut feeling.
Ever heard of Hanlon's razor? Again, Bayesian odds were shorthand for conditional probability (which is what they usually determine, P(A|B)). While I don't mind the rejoinder since getting there is harder than it seems at first blush, I doubt many here would assign the mere use of the former over the latter term any additional patina of scientific respectability.

And while I've already stated that any statistical analysis would rely on some strong assumptions, I do think you could cook something somewhat sensible up if you had enough time on your hands.
 
Well, I was waiting for this stage before I took a solid stance. It looks like we have a new contender for real, while Landa has also proved his transformation is long term and he's no one GT pony.

Will be interesting to see if they get the same leeway as the likes of Froome, Wigans, Vandevelde, Armstrong, Riis, Chiapucci etc received or if they get popped...
 
Oct 6, 2009
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42x16ss said:
Well, I was waiting for this stage before I took a solid stance. It looks like we have a new contender for real, while Landa has also proved his transformation is long term and he's no one GT pony.

Will be interesting to see if they get the same leeway as the likes of Froome, Wigans, Vandevelde, Armstrong, Riis, Chiapucci etc received or if they get popped...

Remember those news reports about German TV broadcasting the Tour again, but how they could drop the contract if anyone got popped? Nobody on the German team is getting popped. They might get to sit out a while with a mysterious illness/injury that lingers on and takes a lot of rest to cure, but they aren't getting popped.
 
Oct 6, 2009
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StannisBaratheon said:
You are right, but my point is Vuelta produces shock after shock. 2013 Vuelta, for instance, was a disgrace. You would never see Papi win Giro or le Tour. Don't put Hesjedal's Giro victory in the equation, the level of the competition was very low that year. There must be a reason these guys are choosing Vuelta instead. Dawg also started his ascension here.

The Vuelta being a race where anything goes doping-wise is a very old notion. Apparently nothing changes, and it's the go-to race for trying out a new program, stepping up a notch, saving a career/contract, etc.
 
May 19, 2015
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StannisBaratheon said:
Vuelta is juice paradise, Cobo, Horner, and now this. The race is becoming laughable.

At least Cobo and Horner are climbers. Dumoulin is Indurain all over again but with better dope.

Even full doped-up Astana team (we all know what they did in the rest day) couldn't blow him up on one of the hardest GT stages ever.
 
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LeindersGains said:
StannisBaratheon said:
Vuelta is juice paradise, Cobo, Horner, and now this. The race is becoming laughable.

At least Cobo and Horner are climbers. Dumoulin is Indurain all over again but with better dope.

Even full doped-up Astana team (we all know what they did in the rest day) couldn't blow him up on one of the hardest GT stages ever.


Come on, this is such an exaggeration.
 
Re: Re:

BigMac said:
LeindersGains said:
StannisBaratheon said:
Vuelta is juice paradise, Cobo, Horner, and now this. The race is becoming laughable.

At least Cobo and Horner are climbers. Dumoulin is Indurain all over again but with better dope.

Even full doped-up Astana team (we all know what they did in the rest day) couldn't blow him up on one of the hardest GT stages ever.


Come on, this is such an exaggeration.
I agree here. What's happening now with Dumoulin is less believable than the jumps in form by Cobo, Horner, De Ghendt and Rolland but more so than Velits, Wigans, Froome, Piepoli and Kohl as some examples.
 
Re: Re:

LeindersGains said:
StannisBaratheon said:
Vuelta is juice paradise, Cobo, Horner, and now this. The race is becoming laughable.

At least Cobo and Horner are climbers. Dumoulin is Indurain all over again but with better dope.

Even full doped-up Astana team (we all know what they did in the rest day) couldn't blow him up on one of the hardest GT stages ever.
Cobo and Horner also dominated the mountain stages and dropped the whole peloton by minutes. Dumoulin just TT'd up a mountain and finished 9th. I love how people exaggerate everything by the power of 10.
 
Oct 16, 2010
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Re: Re:

BigMac said:
StannisBaratheon said:
Vuelta is juice paradise, Cobo, Horner, and now this. This race is becoming laughable.

As opposed to Armstrong's seven Tour wins, Wiggins Contador and Froome. Menchov, Basso and Di Luca.

And pretty much every other juice fueled edition of those races since the dawn of time.

Fair points, and yes doping is rampant in all three GTs.
However, one could argue that guys like Wiggins/froome/Lance never timed their doping program to peak for the vuelta. The race just isn't important enough compared to the TdF and even the Giro.

I also seem to remember some arguments that suggest testing at the Vuelta is really close to non-existent, and even more lax than at the TdF. There were stories about corrupt chaperones, lack of testing, etc. Maybe somebody can help me out here. (That's not to say testing is anywhere close to decent at the TdF of course.)

I admit i'm sort of intuitively tempted by the idea that many teams/riders use the vuelta to experiment (and i don't mean bike technology). Sky 2010 springs to mind of course. Horner also. And Contador 2012/14, two years when he was clearly holding back on the juice in the TdF (for understandable reasons), then seemed to go full genius in the Vuelta.
Top dogs like Lance/Froome/Wiggins, otoh, will always want to peak for the TdF.
 
Re: Re:

classicomano said:
LeindersGains said:
StannisBaratheon said:
Vuelta is juice paradise, Cobo, Horner, and now this. The race is becoming laughable.

At least Cobo and Horner are climbers. Dumoulin is Indurain all over again but with better dope.

Even full doped-up Astana team (we all know what they did in the rest day) couldn't blow him up on one of the hardest GT stages ever.
Cobo and Horner also dominated the mountain stages and dropped the whole peloton by minutes. Dumoulin just TT'd up a mountain and finished 9th. I love how people exaggerate everything by the power of 10.

Not sure I get the "he ttd up a mountain" explanation for when tter learns to climb.

It seems to me like a false attempt to make the ascent seem as something that suits dumoulins (and others before him) strengths, by throwing out a word that doesn't belong.

The mountain had nothing to do with tting, nor the stage. If you mean to say he paced himself, well they all did that. And all always do that. It's how mountains are ridden.
 

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