Green Tea said:
I said.
There were guys with higher VO2's in the both peletons than Cancellara.
EPO/Doping in general enhances VO2.
Cancellara beats higher VO2's.
Now what???...
Cancellara could very well have the highest VO2MAX in the peloton. In flat races like Paris Roubaix and Flanders (relatively flat) absolute VO2MAX rules.
Here I'm talking about L/Min - there's no doubt guys in the peloton with higher relative VO2MAX (ml/min/kg) than Fabian but that doesn't really matter in flat races. another way of expressing it is that W/KG is not very important in flat races, what's important is the absolute wattage you can produce at threshold. Cancellara, Boonen and Hushovd are some of the largest/tallest guys in the peloton, and therefore there absolute VO2MAX is among the very highest, since this is largely determined by body size.
That doesn't mean that a good anaerobic work capacity isn't usefull for these races, of course it's nice to be able to power over those hills in flanders, and do a strong attack on the flats, but it's far from the most important factor.