Teams & Riders Froome Talk Only

[DirtyWorks]

..If Froome was shown to have a very high VOmax it wouldn't and shouldn't convince anybody he was clean...

If he was clean AND if he really had the claimed super-high VOmax, he would have destroyed fields in lower-ranked races. He would have come into his first grand tour top-10.

 

[martinvickers]

Before Froomes patriotic speech on how proud british he was during the press conference yesterday, he also thanked for all the support he has from Britain. The only reason for that is because he doesnt feel any support elsewhere.

This you can see anywhere during the discussions in regard of this debate.

Which all has absolutely nothing to do with the validity of the argument of the initial poster. It simply Is. Not. Relevant.

Address the points a poster makes. the points he makes, not his nationality, or what you think his motivations are.

 

[Granville57]

When was the last time you saw a sprinter charging the finish in a field sprint ...while seated?

Well that one is just too easy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJNLMYpr2TM

Watch the slow guy...in Yellow...especially the slo-mo at the end.

 

[mudbone]

On the first rest day, itv4 did a full segment (about 15 minutes) 'talking heads' set with Kimmage, Millar and Brailsford. Apparently they were going to do a recap of the Arsmtrong saga, but as Imlach said "we all know know, and we're sick to the back of giving him any more airtime"...

yes, and they used a Fall song for the Armstrong montage... amazing.

ITV aren't the clinic, they don't share clinic 'certainties' and phil and paul are phil and paul - but if you are suggesting the uk commentating media are ignoring the drugs angles, you're being pretty unfair, and frankly unrealistic - Eurosport maybe, but ITV have followed it for sure.

if you see my post above the one you quoted, you'll see i was making the same point you are. really good to see, and hope it continues, into other sports too.

 

[gooner]

Source?

10 c

His interview afterwards on Eurosport.

Kimmage just disagreed with him about it just there on Newstalk. Regarding Sunday on the Ventoux, he referred to it as "shock and awe" where he never seen anything like it. More or less said if Froome is clean, he is the greatest cyclist ever. Also got asked about Walsh's differing opinion where he said do you want me to lose my friendship with him. It will probably be up on their website later and I'll post it up here if it is.

 

[Spencer the Half Wit]

yes, and they used a Fall song for the Armstrong montage... amazing.



if you see my post above the one you quoted, you'll see i was making the same point you are. really good to see, and hope it continues, into other sports too.

Mr. Pharmacist, which I did laugh at.

 

[LesDiablesRouges]

But this is basically the argument about an implausible performance jump that many including myself have been making. If Froome was shown to have a very high VOmax it wouldn't and shouldn't convince anybody he was clean because that high VOmax could be the result of doping, right?

It's why Lemond has been recommending baseline VO2 max tabluations as part of the bio passport. If you can calculate a rider's VO2 max calculation say on a annual or bi annual basis you should get fairly consistent readings, with slight deviations for weight gain/loss. It would cut into to the use of performance enhancing because there are only suitable ranges that VO2 MAx can move aside from going dramtically downward.

I.e if a Rider at age 18 has a VO2 Max of 80 at say 80kg his weight dropping to to say 77kg is only going to increase his Vo2max by the slimmest of margins.

It's an asymptotic calculation. If 80 is your max at 18 you might be able to squeeze out what 81/82 with substantial weight loss, but absent tinkering with your oxygen intake unnaturally once you reach a baseline maximum you're not going to get past it by any substantial margin. Not to mention as you age your baseline max decreases.

 

[Stetoe]

http://cqranking.com/men/asp/gen/race.asp?raceid=11451

Froome's hilly ITT 60km in Giro 2009.
Ten Dam can be confident, Froome made up most of his time in the last 30km.

 

[The Hitch]

His interview afterwards on Eurosport.

.

Thanks. I hope that gets out to the rest of the peloton. Dont know if they care, or maybe he meant something else but that comment certainly makes froome look like he thinks he gets to decide who can attack and where

Kimmage just disagreed with him about it just there on Newstalk. Regarding Sunday on the Ventoux, he referred to it as "shock and awe" where he never seen anything like it. More or less said if Froome is clean, he is the greatest cyclist ever.

TBF that is pretty much common sense and i dont know why other people arent making more out of it. Everybody who ever got anywhere near Froomes power outputs was on mega oxygen vector doping. There can be no doubt that if Froome is several leagues above anyone who has ever touched a bicycle.

 

[gooner]

Kimmage interview.

45 mins 50 secs in.

http://www.newstalk.ie/player/listen_back/10/2637/16th_July_2013_-_Off_The_Ball_Part_1

 

[BYOP88]

Michael Hutchinson ‏@Doctor_Hutch 1h
Froome's just been asked if he as any TUE (therapeutic use exemptions for prescription medications). Says he has none. Interesting. #tdf

Seems that tweet has 'vanished'

Good post BYOP

 

[LesDiablesRouges]

Because VO2Max only increases by so much due to training. Figures of 25-30% are often given. Froome with minimal training would still have a formidable VO2Max for an amateur or a young pro. He would have dominated amateur racing at a young age right from the beginning.

This is why a rider like LeMond was able to beat full grown U.S. pros when he was a junior, and that was being handicapped with the requirement to use junior gearing. As another example, Lemond rode l'Etape due Tour a few years ago because his son was riding it. He was fat and old. He obviously was not doing much training. He still finished in the top 10%. That is against amateurs who train hard for what is a long, difficult event. LeMond's results in those examples did not come from super secret training methods. It came from being vastly physiologically superior to the average amateur.

Anyone who has done much racing, bike, running, whatever, has encountered people who are--depressingly--superior to everyone else. It does not matter what type of training you do and how hard you do it. The talent difference is so large they beat people while barely trying.

There is no possible way that Froome spent his early years as an unremarkable amateur and early pro then suddenly discovered he had the potential to peak at a VO2Max of 90+. Impossible. He is doping.

To put this into context. Lemond had a VO2 Max of 92.5. Indurain had a VO2max of 88.

The top 1500 meter runner of all time (3 minutes 26 seconds would convert to approximately a Vo2 Max of approximately 83.6.

Lemond's VO2 Max would correspond to a time of 3 minutes 8 seconds and 50 some odd miliseconds.

If you took the top marathon runner's time of 2 hours 3 minutes and 2 seconds and calibrated it to Lemond's time you would have 1 hour 52 minutes and 45 seconds.

Lemond's VO2 Max levels are so far outside the standard deviations of normal human VO2 Max that he likely had at least 7% advantage over his competitors in terms oxygen uptake/conversion and possibly as great as 10%.

His VO2 Max is substantially better than the greatest long distance runners that have ever lived.

This is why people and the poster above are questioning Froome because natural VO2 max levels that defy convention don't magically appear all of the sudden. They are there from the beginning and they give a rider such a massive advantage.

 

[Deagol]

Climbing out of the saddle DOES create more drag than climbing seated. That should be intuitively obvious to you. And the pedaling stroke is more efficient when seated. But both those factors are overwhelmed by the additional raw power that is available from the system as a whole (quads, glutes, lats and the rest) when out of the saddle.

When was the last time you saw a sprinter charging the finish in a field sprint ...while seated?

That Contador climbs faster out of the saddle tells you the his climbing speed is limited by the max output of his engine, not by the amount of fuel available for his engine to burn. Efficiency is subordinated to sheer power.

Why does no one time trial while out of the saddle? Because in that discipline, power is subordinate to efficiency.

Yes, yes, yes, but I think your sarcasm meter needs adjusting

 

[Stradebianche]

Following up on that thread, here is another possibility to explain Froome's ET performance:

Schistosomiasis (Bilharzia) is known to result in a reduction of Hb/red cells. The mechanisms are still not clear, but probably there are several factors involved. Any reduction in red cells would trigger a homeostatic response in the body to increase EPO. So if Froome suffers from the disease, his natural EPO levels are getting a boost while he is symptomatic.

He supposedly has received treatment for the disease too keep it in check. Following treatment, his EPO and red cell levels should eventually stabilize. But during this period there would likely be a lag, in which the flatworms (or more precisely, their eggs, which seem to release the factors that reduce red cells) would be eliminated, but his EPO would remain elevated. The situation is somewhat analogous to the reported use of carbon monoxide as a PED. CO inactivates Hb, resulting in a stimulation of EPO. Again, the effect is only temporary, but the idea is that while the effect is there, the athlete will get a boost.

Treatment for schistosomiasis involves a single treatment with praziquantel once a year. Since it must be given annually, I assume the drug does not completely eliminate the organism's eggs, but merely suppresses them to a very low level. Under these conditions, I can well imagine a situation in Froome's body in which he could get the benefit of continual EPO stimulation from low levels of the antigens produced by the eggs. I would be very interested to see what his passport looks like. Since he and Sky have been very open about the effect of the disease on red cells, they must have seen some very dramatic changes in their levels. It makes me wonder how they were able to define a baseline at all.

This is an interesting post and could be very close to the mark i think.
Couple of questions spring to mind..
Do you think this disease could be "creatively managed" to time the "lag" where he has elevated EPO and zero symptoms to coincide with a GT or would the low level continual EPO stimulation be sufficient to give a near season long period of being "on form"?

The other thing i find interesting about the Bilharzia side of things is that this disease is very common in Africa,I read somewhere there are an estimated 2 billion carrying the infection worldwide.
I expected i would be able to find some evidence of another endurance athlete,perhaps an African distance runner who was infected and treated in a similar way.I thought it might be interesting to compare performance before and after as the clinic has done with the Dawg.The problem is i can't find anyone !

Is Froome is the only high level endurance athlete out there who is known to be carrying this disease or am i looking in the wrong place?

Its also quite interesting how he managed to contract it in the first place.I would have expected that a pro cyclist brought up in Kenya/SA would be wiser than most about the dangers of fresh water contact and be ultra careful as a result.

 

[armchairclimber]

Seems that tweet has 'vanished'

Good post BYOP

Froome said that he has no TUEs on tape a few weeks ago IIRC.

 

[mewmewmew13]

Seems that tweet has 'vanished'

Good post BYOP

actually it is still there...


"@Doctor_Hutch: Froome's just been asked if he as any TUE (therapeutic use exemptions for prescription medications). Says he has none. Interesting. #tdf"

still on my timeline...since I retweeted it

my reply...

@mewmewmew13:" @Doctor_Hutch @captain_canaway he alone or is it whole team blanket TUE?"

 

[Red Lobster]

To put this into context. Lemond had a VO2 Max of 92.5. Indurain had a VO2max of 88.
...
This is why people and the poster above are questioning Froome because natural VO2 max levels that defy convention don't magically appear all of the sudden. They are there from the beginning and they give a rider such a massive advantage.

So what can we expect of Oskar Svendsen, the 18 year old Norwegian kid who I heard put up a 97.5 or something like that ... i.e., the highest score ever recorded.

 

[BYOP88]

actually it is still there...


"@Doctor_Hutch: Froome's just been asked if he as any TUE (therapeutic use exemptions for prescription medications). Says he has none. Interesting. #tdf"

still on my timeline...since I retweeted it

my reply...

@mewmewmew13:" @Doctor_Hutch @captain_canaway he alone or is it whole team blanket TUE?"

Ok just rechecked, it's still there. My bad!

 

[mewmewmew13]

Ok just rechecked, it's still there. My bad!

your quote was still awesome though

 

[thehog]

Ok just rechecked, it's still there. My bad!

These guys are about to trip over themselves. Brailsford in appeasing the dumbed down British media with seated attacks etc. will get dropped shortly.

These guys should shut up. I mean seriously. Challenging WADA and the UCI over their data? Are these guys serious? To me this is tantamount to a donation. Bullying WADA and the UCI to tell everyone they’re clean.

What are they on?

Vaughters has already told us the UCI has these numbers which are not released. Which demonstrate the blood values of teams.

 

[BYOP88]

your quote was still awesome though

In the style of TV's Craig Ferguson....'I KNOW!!'

 

[red_flanders]

So what can we expect of Oskar Svendsen, the 18 year old Norwegian kid who I heard put up a 97.5 or something like that ... i.e., the highest score ever recorded.

I would expect him to be a professional endurance athlete with a huge potential ceiling.

 

[Cerberus]

It's why Lemond has been recommending baseline VO2 max tabluations as part of the bio passport. If you can calculate a rider's VO2 max calculation say on a annual or bi annual basis you should get fairly consistent readings, with slight deviations for weight gain/loss. It would cut into to the use of performance enhancing because there are only suitable ranges that VO2 MAx can move aside from going dramtically downward.

I.e if a Rider at age 18 has a VO2 Max of 80 at say 80kg his weight dropping to to say 77kg is only going to increase his Vo2max by the slimmest of margins.

It's an asymptotic calculation. If 80 is your max at 18 you might be able to squeeze out what 81/82 with substantial weight loss, but absent tinkering with your oxygen intake unnaturally once you reach a baseline maximum you're not going to get past it by any substantial margin. Not to mention as you age your baseline max decreases.

Ah, ok, I think I see the argument beng made now. It's about using VOmax as a possible doping indicator. I though the argument made was that a high VO-max somehow could have explained Froome, which confused me.

To put this into context. Lemond had a VO2 Max of 92.5. Indurain had a VO2max of 88.

The top 1500 meter runner of all time (3 minutes 26 seconds would convert to approximately a Vo2 Max of approximately 83.6.

Lemond's VO2 Max would correspond to a time of 3 minutes 8 seconds and 50 some odd miliseconds.

If you took the top marathon runner's time of 2 hours 3 minutes and 2 seconds and calibrated it to Lemond's time you would have 1 hour 52 minutes and 45 seconds.

Lemond's VO2 Max levels are so far outside the standard deviations of normal human VO2 Max that he likely had at least 7% advantage over his competitors in terms oxygen uptake/conversion and possibly as great as 10%.

You realize that VOmax is only one factor in endurance sports, not the whole picture, right? When your model starts to predict Lemond (or anybody) could have knocked more than 10 minutes of the Marothon world record, you should conclude that your model is horribly, horribly wrong.

 

[Red Lobster]

I would expect him to be a professional endurance athlete with a huge potential ceiling.

He's already junior ITT world champion. His power output on our calibrated test ergometer at an lactate concentration of 4 mmol is above 400 Watts ... threshold watt measurement results are on a par with or better than both Hushovd and Boasson Hagen when they were the same age. So yeah, huge potential.

 

[Granville57]

Froome on Alpe 'd"Huez in 2008. Does he really look all that different?