cawright1375 said:Excuse me if this is off topic, (or covered elsewhere) but a lot of the posts I've read on this thread seem to focus on the impossibility of a one day rider winning a Grand Tour (not to mention 7 back to back). So I'm wondering what you all make of Bradley Wiggins 4th place performance at the Tour, given that he posted his blood profile and attributes his success to considerable weight loss and refocusing on road cycling and puttting the track on the back burner for the time being. Becuase and you all may find this simplistic, but if you can believe Wiggins has done what he did clean and made what some consider a major performance breakthrough. Why can't you believe Lance did it? Granted Brad is a track rider, but to my understanding and having read In Pursuit of Glory it seems that track riding while needing a lot of power and endurance is not the same as what is needed for one day or even GTs?
While Wiggins definitely lost weight, he never said his improvement was because of his weight loss, that was just media hype. Wiggins's always had the power numbers and sustainability to do well in 1-3 week tours, at least according to Jonathan Vaughters and the Garmin gurus, it just took until this tour to believe in himself. He also was stuck between committing to the track and the road, but this year committed his training 100% to the road.
This is also only one part of the answer to your question. Some people are highly suspicious of Wiggins's improvement and such a dramatic improvement does warrant scrutiny, particularly in this day and age. Armstrong has a long history of factual and circumstantial evidence from which it is difficult to reasonably conclude that he did not dope, a history which Wiggins does not have.