Geraint Thomas, the next british hope

[Koronin]

How about this. Each person is going to react differently to whatever doping method is being used. Each person is different thus the reaction is going to be different.

 

[Ripper]

Jeebus Chryst there are some idiots on this thread. And sometimes they get persnickety at MI.

It's a strange, troll like world

 

[TourOfSardinia]

Re:

Jeebus Chryst there are some idiots on this thread. And sometimes they get persnickety at MI.

It's a strange, troll like world

it's not strange at all - clinic threads have always been like that

Sam is the only fully dedicated believer/bot while the Tdf is on going
the rest will return once the podium is theirs to defend.

 

[rick james]

Re: Re:

My point is not how Sky are winning, the point is why don't others? If you and I know how it's done why don't / can't other teams? Or rather why do they keep trying to beat donkeys with racehorses if that's not the optimum rider to win with?

You appear to be asking yourself this question as you come through a period known as ‘denial’. I’ll leave you to your journey.

maybe if you answered the question it would help

 

[Saint Unix]

Re: Re:

maybe if you answered the question it would help

What's the point? Every question has been answered and every false statement has been proven wrong and Sam is still incapable of understanding the error of his ways.

 

[AnatoleNovak]

Re:

Here's a beauty. Geraint Thomas is the first rider in 40 years to win two mountain stages in a row.

It's one big joke. At least the booing let's them know we the public don't believe they're clean. It's just the people running the sport who let them away with it. Oh and their fanbois who would still deny they doped even if Wiggo, G and Froomey all confessed on Oprah. Sam would still be in denial.

Rominger 1993?

 

[Red Rick]

There’s a lot of misinformation being tossed around carelessly on this thread. Let’s start with facts.

Mass increases with the cube of height, while surface area increases with the square of height. Since power, resulting from muscle size, is proportional to mass, while wind resistance is proportional to surface area, it follows that, other things being equal (i.e., similar body proportions), larger riders tend to be better TTers than smaller ones. Their mass and power increases by the cube, while the air resistance that’s the primary force a TTer has to overcome increases by the square. This is just physics.

What about climbing? Here the key ratio is not power/surface area, but power to weight, since most of the work done in climbing, assuming a fairly steep slope, is expended to overcome gravity. Do smaller riders have a power/weight advantage? No. Since power increases with mass, and weight increases with (is) mass, other things being equal, there is no size advantage.

So why does the conventional wisdom say that smaller riders tend to be better climbers? It has to be based on physiology, not physics, and goes back to surface area. Smaller riders have a larger ratio of surface area/mass than larger riders, and while this is a disadvantage in flat riding, it provides potential advantages in climbing.

First, the larger surface area means more efficient heat loss. While riders can become overheated in any kind of terrain, in climbing, where the pace is slower, movement has less of a cooling effect. Riders tend to heat up, particularly, obviously, on very hot days. But smaller riders will heat up more slowly, and require less energy to cool down.

But surface area isn’t just external, it’s also internal. Interior surfaces play a key role in power production, from bringing oxygen into the lungs to transporting it to the muscles. At every step, larger surface/mass ratio means more efficient energy production and utilization. Smaller riders, smaller athletes in general, should—again, other things being equal—have greater values of parameters like V02 max (per kg) and efficiency. Greater surface area/mass should also enhance recovery, because again, surfaces are critical in transporting needed molecules to the muscles, as well as removing waste products.

In fact, this greater efficiency should come into play in any type of racing, including time trials. Having a higher V02max is obviously an advantage there, too. It’s just that in this case, the effect of wind resistance is generally much greater. In climbing, where wind resistance is greatly reduced, the advantages of surface area should predominate.

Obviously, no two athletes are exactly alike in body shape and proportion, so there will be all kinds of exceptions and qualifications. But being smaller should predispose riders to being better climbers. The notion that larger, heavier riders have an advantage in climbing over smaller ones is not supported by any science I’m aware of.

In Power/Weight there should be a slight size disadvantage, because the air and the blood has to travel a slightly longer way in bigger riders, so they'd have a bit more resistance in the blood vessels.

Similarly, how does lung capacity and lung surface area increase with a change in height?

 

[VO2 Max]

There’s a lot of misinformation being tossed around carelessly on this thread. Let’s start with facts.

Mass increases with the cube of height, while surface area increases with the square of height. Since power, resulting from muscle size, is proportional to mass, while wind resistance is proportional to surface area, it follows that, other things being equal (i.e., similar body proportions), larger riders tend to be better TTers than smaller ones. Their mass and power increases by the cube, wh

[loads of good stuff trimmed for length]

hletes are exactly alike in body shape and proportion, so there will be all kinds of exceptions and qualifications. But being smaller should predispose riders to being better climbers. The notion that larger, heavier riders have an advantage in climbing over smaller ones is not supported by any science I’m aware of.

Nice. Remember also the second law of motion which means it's easier for a lighter guy to accelerate; all else being equal a lighter guy can always jump away from a larger guy uphill. One of Dumoulin's strengths especially is how calm he stays when the attacks come, as a rider it's actually difficult to fight your instincts and deliberately let the wheel go. Thomas tends to respond a bit more quickly, you'd expect him to have a relatively high anaerobic ability given his team pursuit training and having been able to hang with the big hitters at RVV once upon a time, but still not immediately. It would be interesting to know the amount of numerical modelling that goes on behind the scenes because there actually could be some marginal gains there - I know when I was racing timetrials at my own low level I used to run solvers to work out how best to share my critical NP across the varying gradients of the course, you'd at least hope that pro teams would approach these things with more sophistication and have models of how their key riders will respond to different time periods over their FTP and the trade off on the overall NP for the whole climb.

 

[Merckx index]

In Power/Weight there should be a slight size disadvantage, because the air and the blood has to travel a slightly longer way in bigger riders, so they'd have a bit more resistance in the blood vessels.

If you mean resistance as in a fluid flowing through a pipe, that’s blood pressure. Based on what I said previously, you might predict that taller people would have higher blood pressure (related to cross-sectional area of vessels), but studies have actually found the opposite. It’s complicated, because the causes seem to involve changes in blood vessels during aging, and I’m not sure they would apply to athletes in their prime. There have also been studies of developing children, where blood pressure increases with age, and does seem related to greater size.

If you mean resistance in that more energy is expended for transport, the larger riders will have proportionally more energy.

Similarly, how does lung capacity and lung surface area increase with a change in height?

Again, surface area does not increase as fast as mass.


Btw, didn't LA win two (or more) mountain stages in a row? Or they don't count for this conversation?

 

[SeriousSam]

Re power and mass being proportional.

Don't find this intuitive. Would expect diminishing returns, and perhaps even increasing returns if you start with an extraordinarily light person (ie power as a function of mass is initially convex, then becomes linear and then becomes concave).

Really easy to answer this empirically though. Does anyone have a large sample of wattages and weights for professional cyclists and can post the scatter plot?

 

[Red Rick]

In Power/Weight there should be a slight size disadvantage, because the air and the blood has to travel a slightly longer way in bigger riders, so they'd have a bit more resistance in the blood vessels.

If you mean resistance as in a fluid flowing through a pipe, that’s blood pressure. Based on what I said previously, you might predict that taller people would have higher blood pressure (related to cross-sectional area of vessels), but studies have actually found the opposite. It’s complicated, because the causes seem to involve changes in blood vessels during aging, and I’m not sure they would apply to athletes in their prime. There have also been studies of developing children, where blood pressure increases with age, and does seem related to greater size.

If you mean resistance in that more energy is expended for transport, the larger riders will have proportionally more energy.

Similarly, how does lung capacity and lung surface area increase with a change in height?

Again, surface area does not increase as fast as mass.


Btw, didn't LA win two (or more) mountain stages in a row? Or they don't count for this conversation?

I didn't really mean blood pressure. I was saying the distance the blood has to travel is longer. So a rider who's 20% heavier may have to pump 20% more blood around, but also accoss a larger distance, which would probably increase about linearly with height.

 

[Merckx index]

Re power and mass being proportional.

Don't find this intuitive. Would expect diminishing returns, and perhaps even increasing returns if you start with an extraordinarily light person (ie power as a function of mass is initially convex, then becomes linear and then becomes concave).

Again, this logic assumes similar body types/proportions. Given that, muscle mass should increase in parallel with total body mass, and muscle mass should be proportional to power (except that larger muscles have a lower surface/mass ratio, which again, is the advantage of the smaller rider).

Really easy to answer this empirically though. Does anyone have a large sample of wattages and weights for professional cyclists and can post the scatter plot?

Yes, this is a very good point. I should have said before that while the physics that makes larger riders better TTers is pretty much beyond argument, just why smaller riders tend to be better climbers is open to a little debate, at least with regard to the importance of various factors. But surface area is a critical concept in biology, and is well accepted as a major factor in explaining certain differences among organisms.

I didn't really mean blood pressure. I was saying the distance the blood has to travel is longer. So a rider who's 20% heavier may have to pump 20% more blood around, but also across a larger distance, which would probably increase about linearly with height.

Distance traveled should not matter, because most of the time in a bike race, the body is at equilibrium. E.g., on a mountain top finish, a rider is putting out as much power as he can without going in the red, so the rate of oxygen coming into the lungs, the rate of absorption into the blood stream, the rate of blood flow, the rate of delivery of oxygen to the tissues is more or less constant. It doesn’t matter how long it takes a given oxygen molecule to travel from the lungs to the muscle, because there is already all the oxygen possible at the muscle. All the incoming oxygen does is bump, so to speak, the oxygen at the end of the chain.

There might be an effect when changing speeds, but it’s not going to be very large, because you still have that existing chain of oxygen transport. All you’re doing is tweaking it slightly.

 

[samhocking]

Re: Re:

My point is not how Sky are winning, the point is why don't others? If you and I know how it's done why don't / can't other teams? Or rather why do they keep trying to beat donkeys with racehorses if that's not the optimum rider to win with?

You appear to be asking yourself this question as you come through a period known as ‘denial’. I’ll leave you to your journey.

maybe if you answered the question it would help

Nobody has ever been able to answer that question. It seems pretty logical when the clinic says you can't turn donkeys into race horses without doping while also claiming riders like Pantani & Contador have the required palamares despite dopers too that explains why they were so good? That doesn't make logical sense to me. Froome wiped the floor of Contador, Nibali, Wiggins etc. So does that mean grwdual, believable GC palamares is meaningless to doping if you are not a race horse like Froome? If everyone responds differently to doping, why do teams keep trying to beat Sky with non-responders with believable palamares? Why don't the simply find another Froome donkey who will respond in the required way and win Tour de France?

 

[franic]

Re: Re:

My point is not how Sky are winning, the point is why don't others? If you and I know how it's done why don't / can't other teams? Or rather why do they keep trying to beat donkeys with racehorses if that's not the optimum rider to win with?

You appear to be asking yourself this question as you come through a period known as ‘denial’. I’ll leave you to your journey.

maybe if you answered the question it would help

Nobody has ever been able to answer that question. It seems pretty logical when the clinic says you can't turn donkeys into race horses without doping while also claiming riders like Pantani & Contador have the required palamares despite dopers too that explains why they were so good? That doesn't make logical sense to me. Froome wiped the floor of Contador, Nibali, Wiggins etc. So does that mean grwdual, believable GC palamares is meaningless to doping if you are not a race horse like Froome? If everyone responds differently to doping, why do teams keep trying to beat Sky with non-responders with believable palamares? Why don't the simply find another Froome donkey who will respond in the required way and win Tour de France?

Maybe they don't have access to the same type of "technology" whatever "technology" means

 

[Escarabajo]

I never in my life imagined this guy was going to contend for a win at the Tour de France. I accept it that I am disgusted by it. I hope someone in the future, jut like in the case of US Postal, will do something about stopping the laboratory that Sky have created. I am an engineer but I don't need to understand equations in the case of Thomas. His case is as horrible as the one for Wiggins. Maybe worse because he is winning MT finishes.

 

[samhocking]

So we now have unknown labatories explaining Sky's success?
So this is nothing like US Postal doping exactly the same as everyone else then?

 

[Mamil]

Re:

So we now have unknown labatories explaining Sky's success?
So this is nothing like US Postal doping exactly the same as everyone else then?

This is Armstrong's last great lie, which far too many people seem to still be swallowing. Because the nature of the evidence that came out was based largely on controlled testimony, rather than actual physical or chemical evidence, he has been able to spin the story that he was just taking the same as everyone else, but just doing it better.

The odds of this being true are infinitesimally small. The reality is that USPS most probably did have access to products and facilities that others didn't, and the budget to exploit them to the full, plus protection from the UCI even beyond that which is already established fact. What exactly he took is impossible to say, but the nature of his dominance over a long period of time leaves little doubt that it can't all have been based on him being a super-responder, better training or simply having more of the same stuff.

Same goes for Sky. They have products, or at the very least a method of combining particular substances, that no-one else does. Froome is a bit of an outlier, in that he clearly made the initial jump himself, but Sky certainly have sustained and perfected his prep since 2011, while doing the same on their own terms for the likes of Wiggins and Thomas.

 

[samhocking]

But no evidence that was so. We know with relative confidence, he took EPO, Blood, Corticosteroid, Testosterone & HGH due to his own testimony and others testimony like Landis etc that that was what they took? Are we now saying ontop of EPO, Blood, Corticosteroid, Testosterone & HGH there is another substance US Postal paid to have developed bolted on that explains their success? That is taking this into areas only ever discussed in theory, not to mention they then claimed damages for Armstrong's doping? Once banned, wouldn't Armstrong's lawyers simply say. US Postal paid to have EPO2 developed to win Tour?

I would agree, many riders in many teams used variants of substances that might not be detected or switched to techniques that couldn't be so easily detected, but it still seemed to involve variants of EPO, Blood manipulation, HGH etc and tried and tested by all teams and their doctors.

Think of it logically and financially. Team Sky are paid £31M/year by Sky Corp for what is ~£0.5B ROI. ANY entirely new drug that doesn't exist in medical world that might be not only more effective than EPO, but also undetectable too and totally not known about, costs at least a £billion to develop. Sky invest £7 Billion in football to see a £13 Billion turnover. Why would they even bother with doping in cycling, when far bigger returns with the brand seen by many millions more people can be found simply by paying for football TV rights and not have to bother with anything illegal like doping whatsoever, especially when it only ever returns £0.5B anyway? It certainly isn't worth it when their ROI is only £0.5B from Team Sky anyway.

I guess you could argue if Sky Corp had a new substance invented and say it cost £1B to have developed and tested they would see a return within a couple of Tour wins, but even so, compares to a guaranteed, perfectly legal money transaction they can find £13B in football anyway. Why not just invest £7.31B in football each year instead of £7B instead and forget cycling?

 

[poupou]

Re:

So we now have unknown labatories explaining Sky's success?
So this is nothing like US Postal doping exactly the same as everyone else then?

what is sure is that Sky have the same head-deep-in-sand fans!

 

[samhocking]

What entirely new substance/method not used or developed in the medical world did US Postal have a lab invent for them then for Armstrong only?

 

[Saint Unix]

At least there seems to be a consensus in this thread even among the bots that Sky are on some next level sauce to the point where we're not arguing whether they're doping or not, but whether they're using some new next generation super dope or not.

 

[samhocking]

I would say methods that involve very high levels of human science and physiological understanding, but not necessarily an actual identifiable substance, this is why they don't even drop off the pace after Jiffy Gate, TUE, Salbutomol. None of that describes what I would argue is an even higher level now with two riders at top of GC this year after all that, they are even stronger, is perhaps significant this isn't actually illegal what they are doing. Even new unknown substances and doping methods are already illegal lets not forget.

Just think of what BC are now currently doing with their Real-time Burger Analysis Van on the track for example in Manchester. Sure it's still a marginal gain, but it's taking known general sports science, analysis it and then pushing on by focusing on what is actually happening in real time, not in sports science theory, but visibly specific to each rider individually. Some of the stuff the university are working on with BC are really not seen in cycling anywhere as far as i'm aware. Even the Universities like Cambridge Uni that work with Sky and BC on their sports science sign NDAs on all their work etc so no other team/nation will ever know even in the future. Compare to e.g. Contador who trained on feel alone and as far as i'm aware didn't even have a coach either and that is still realtively normal in cycling outside Sky who insist on being coached internally with non-disclosure agreements too I believe.

Just take their approach to saddle sores. They spent nearly £0.5Million to eradicate saddle sores from all BC cyclists and all labia issues in their women too which is a huge restriction to women's success at very top level sometimes. If they are spending £0.5Million on research eradicate saddle sores and labia problems, imagine what they are also doing at a scientific performance level with universities to push that forward. Sure some believe sports science is at its peak already, but I simply don't see that. Why would only sports science in cycling stagnate, yet all other science in all areas of life continue progressing and making new discoveries?

 

[thehog]

Where to begin?

 

[samhocking]

Just a difference of opinion Hog. I begin from the belief the peloton is mostly not doping illegally, you begin from the belief they mostly are that's all. Either way, what makes the difference is not doping unless you believe only Sky have a substance not available to others and I don't believe financially there is the money in cycling to make that possible.

 

[veganrob]

Re:

I would say methods that involve very high levels of human science and physiological understanding, but not necessarily an actual identifiable substance, this is why they don't even drop off the pace after Jiffy Gate, TUE, Salbutomol. None of that describes what I would argue is an even higher level now with two riders at top of GC this year after all that, they are even stronger, is perhaps significant this isn't actually illegal what they are doing. Even new unknown substances and doping methods are already illegal lets not forget.

Just think of what BC are now currently doing with their Real-time Burger Analysis Van on the track for example in Manchester. Sure it's still a marginal gain, but it's taking known general sports science, analysis it and then pushing on by focusing on what is actually happening in real time, not in sports science theory, but visibly specific to each rider individually. Some of the stuff the university are working on with BC are really not seen in cycling anywhere as far as i'm aware. Even the Universities like Cambridge Uni that work with Sky and BC on their sports science sign NDAs on all their work etc so no other team/nation will ever know even in the future. Compare to e.g. Contador who trained on feel alone and as far as i'm aware didn't even have a coach either and that is still realtively normal in cycling outside Sky who insist on being coached internally with non-disclosure agreements too I believe.

Just take their approach to saddle sores. They spent nearly £0.5Million to eradicate saddle sores from all BC cyclists and all labia issues in their women too which is a huge restriction to women's success at very top level sometimes. If they are spending £0.5Million on research eradicate saddle sores and labia problems, imagine what they are also doing at a scientific performance level with universities to push that forward. Sure some believe sports science is at its peak already, but I simply don't see that. Why would only sports science in cycling stagnate, yet all other science in all areas of life continue progressing and making new discoveries?

If the ROIfor Sky is so small, why spend so much on saddle sore treatment?