Jonas Vingegaard: Something is Rotten

[RobertCrawley]

Jonas lost at least one fan in Texas:

In the microphones of NOS, after repeatedly being asked about the topic, his answer was sharper: “I can say that these are not times like with Lance Armstrong. We run on different fuel than Armstrong did. The sport is clearly different now. I am happy that I won the stage on Tuesday and I am 100 percent sure that no one will ever take those victories away from me.”

"We run on different fuel than Armstrong did" - Jonas Vingegaard tackles doping speculations head on

Stages 16 and 17 saw a dominant Jonas Vingegaard. After his time-trial triumph questions were raised all throughout social media and other media outlets including L'Équipe. Vingegaard, who has said to...

cyclinguptodate.com

 

[Riek s]

Jonas lost at least one fan in Texas:

In the microphones of NOS, after repeatedly being asked about the topic, his answer was sharper: “I can say that these are not times like with Lance Armstrong. We run on different fuel than Armstrong did. The sport is clearly different now. I am happy that I won the stage on Tuesday and I am 100 percent sure that no one will ever take those victories away from me.”

"We run on different fuel than Armstrong did" - Jonas Vingegaard tackles doping speculations head on

Stages 16 and 17 saw a dominant Jonas Vingegaard. After his time-trial triumph questions were raised all throughout social media and other media outlets including L'Équipe. Vingegaard, who has said to...

cyclinguptodate.com

electricity?

 

[Rackham]

Jonas lost at least one fan in Texas:

In the microphones of NOS, after repeatedly being asked about the topic, his answer was sharper: “I can say that these are not times like with Lance Armstrong. We run on different fuel than Armstrong did. The sport is clearly different now. I am happy that I won the stage on Tuesday and I am 100 percent sure that no one will ever take those victories away from me.”

"We run on different fuel than Armstrong did" - Jonas Vingegaard tackles doping speculations head on

Stages 16 and 17 saw a dominant Jonas Vingegaard. After his time-trial triumph questions were raised all throughout social media and other media outlets including L'Équipe. Vingegaard, who has said to...

cyclinguptodate.com

Vingegaard is caught between a rock & a hard place.

He produced the single greatest time trial performance ever, i.e. a sort of pinnacle of human endurance unseen in pro-cycling. No hyperbole, his ITT was otherworldly & I won't let anyone convince me otherwise with sh*t like Vinge somehow won on the descents, his cornering skills, his position on the bike or his nutrition aka whatever he ate for breakfast.

I mean Vingegaard, his team & his fans need to own this already. It was the most extraordinary thing. I'm still in sock tbh. But whad'ya know, the narrative is now all about damage control & repeating (even with the help of guys like David Walsh) the "we're cleanz!" mantra.

Moral of the story? Maybe he should have stuck to the plan & done 360 watts during his 'I'm taking it easy' parts of the ITT instead of 380. It would have saved him some post performance hassle in the form of disbelievers... disbelieving.

He still would have handily won the Tour as well.

 

[sam6]

Jonas says that he doesn't take anything he wouldn't give to his 2 yo daughter

Is it bad the implication I took from this is that he is also doping his daughter and grooming her to be a mutant cyclist already?

 

[Salvarani]

Vingegaard is caught between a rock & a hard place.

He produced the single greatest time trial performance ever, i.e. a sort of pinnacle of human endurance unseen in pro-cycling. No hyperbole, his ITT was otherworldly & I won't let anyone convince me otherwise with sh*t like Vinge somehow won on the descents, his cornering skills, his position on the bike or his nutrition aka whatever he ate for breakfast.

I mean Vingegaard, his team & his fans need to own this already. It was the most extraordinary thing. I'm still in sock tbh. But whad'ya know, the narrative is now all about damage control & repeating (even with the help of guys like David Walsh) the "we're cleanz!" mantra.

Moral of the story? Maybe he should have stuck to the plan & done 360 watts during his 'I'm taking it easy' parts of the ITT instead of 380. It would have saved him some post performance hassle in the form of disbelievers... disbelieving.

He still would have handily won the Tour as well.

His comments about his watts, not seeing those numbers before and so on... has definitely woken people up. See if it will come back to bite him... but as you say or alluded to, the whole PR-machine is working for him or being quiet/not as critical. Some seem to be employed on this forum as well to throw up the same arguments, in his or they´s defence, as been told before. History always repeats itself.

 

[Riek s]

Vingegaard is caught between a rock & a hard place.

He produced the single greatest time trial performance ever, i.e. a sort of pinnacle of human endurance unseen in pro-cycling. No hyperbole, his ITT was otherworldly & I won't let anyone convince me otherwise with sh*t like Vinge somehow won on the descents, his cornering skills, his position on the bike or his nutrition aka whatever he ate for breakfast.

I mean Vingegaard, his team & his fans need to own this already. It was the most extraordinary thing. I'm still in sock tbh. But whad'ya know, the narrative is now all about damage control & repeating (even with the help of guys like David Walsh) the "we're cleanz!" mantra.

Moral of the story? Maybe he should have stuck to the plan & done 360 watts during his 'I'm taking it easy' parts of the ITT instead of 380. It would have saved him some post performance hassle in the form of disbelievers... disbelieving.

He still would have handily won the Tour as well.

and 360W should have been flat out balls to the grass performance for a guy with his weight and being clean. e.g. that should be close to humanly possible for someone his weight in TT position. So we are already allowing some leeway in assuming that 360 is taking it 'easy'. (im using 59kg for him)

 

[Rico044]

Blood passport manipulation still doesn't make any sense to me, unless beating 55% hematocrits falls within BP range

Blood passport manipulation still doesn't make any sense to me, unless beating 55% hematocrits falls within BP range now.

I'm not sure they would need to be over 50% to explain the performances we are seeing. The thing is, bike tech, aerodynamics, training improvement, and nutrition are all making a difference. Just not enough of a difference to explain these records while claiming the riders are on bread and water. But I think if you combine all of the honest gains above with a basic micro-dosing/bb regiment, then its feasible that someone could beat the records of the mid 90s at a hematocrit of say 48%.

But as I said in an early post- I think there are substances out there that have nothing to do with RBCs. Take AICAR for example. Our body produces it naturally. It is very hard to detect. I tried to google and find a single positive test for it and could not. The scientific consensus is that AICAR would be very performance enhancing, so I find it hard to believe it is not being used. Who knows what other drugs are out there which act of the mitochondria like AICAR.

 

[ontheroad]

Vingegaard is caught between a rock & a hard place.

He produced the single greatest time trial performance ever, i.e. a sort of pinnacle of human endurance unseen in pro-cycling. No hyperbole, his ITT was otherworldly & I won't let anyone convince me otherwise with sh*t like Vinge somehow won on the descents, his cornering skills, his position on the bike or his nutrition aka whatever he ate for breakfast.

I mean Vingegaard, his team & his fans need to own this already. It was the most extraordinary thing. I'm still in sock tbh. But whad'ya know, the narrative is now all about damage control & repeating (even with the help of guys like David Walsh) the "we're cleanz!" mantra.

Moral of the story? Maybe he should have stuck to the plan & done 360 watts during his 'I'm taking it easy' parts of the ITT instead of 380. It would have saved him some post performance hassle in the form of disbelievers... disbelieving.

He still would have handily won the Tour as well.

I think they would have done except for the fact that they thought UAE would go thermonuclear with Pog and were leaving absolutely nothing to chance. They weren't going to be caught cack handed after PDBF 2020. Instead UAE just went nuclear with Pogacar at his ususal expected level. If Pog wasn't in the race I believe that Jumbo would have ensured a fairly routine win for Vingegaard which would have helped avoid the extra scrutiny now placed upon them. Much in the manner of Froomes latter victories where he just smashed the first big mountain stage and then rode conservative from then until Paris.

At the level he is now riding he could easily win 6+ Tours and a quite a few TT world championships.

 

[RobertCrawley]

I think they would have done except for the fact that they thought UAE would go thermonuclear with Pog and were leaving absolutely nothing to chance. They weren't going to be caught cack handed after PDBF 2020. Instead UAE just went nuclear with Pogacar at his ususal expected level. If Pog wasn't in the race I believe that Jumbo would have ensured a fairly routine win for Vingegaard which would have helped avoid the extra scrutiny now placed upon them. Much in the manner of Froomes latter victories where he just smashed the first big mountain stage and then rode conservative from then until Paris.

At the level he is now riding he easily could win 6+ Tours and a quite a few TT world championships.

We've heard this before: Bernal, Pogačar, and now Vingegaard. Things happen.

 

[lenric]

so much theory and speculation and after all the dude just had to control his nerves and start believing in himself. started seeing rocky movies in the corona lockdowns and got absolute belief in himself and started chewing slovenians for breakfast.
please disperse now

 

[Rackham]

I think they would have done except for the fact that they thought UAE would go thermonuclear with Pog and were leaving absolutely nothing to chance. They weren't going to be caught cack handed after PDBF 2020.

I agree.

It's probably also worth looking into how Vinge was spawned in the first place, i.e. a result of Jumbo's obsession with "smashing Pogačar". You see when Roglič lost LPDBF, he took it okay, all things considered. I don't think he lost sleep over it. Sh*t happens, whatever. Does he even have agency in this aspect? Probably not, i.e. he just races whatever Jumbo says he races & does his job.

But Jumbo? Oh boy, I reckon the guys who run that team took the hit from that 2020 debacle really hard. It's no accident that Vinge went from bottle carrier to dropping Pog on the Ventoux between November 2020 & July 2021. The plan was evident & Vingegaard owes his superpowers to Jumbo's fixation on Pog & UAE (their plan in the 2021 Tour was to double tag Pog, which required a second rider at a high enough level).

Remove Pog from the picture & suddenly Jumbo's need to elevate Vingegaard to his current level disappears entirely. What I'm saying is Vinge's rise is artificial as can be, i.e. a product of a super team delivering a super rider at a convenient moment to take down a "hated rival" who they wanted to punish for a past "offense". Just listen to how Grischa Niermann makes stuff personal on the team radio (like during 2020 TdF when behind the scenes footage showed Grischa screaming "c*nt Pogačar!" after he won the Grand Colombier stage in front of Roglič).

People have speculated for 25 years about L.A. being a sociopath. Well IMO the guys behind the scenes at Jumbo aren't too far off that level either.

 

[Salvarani]

I think they would have done except for the fact that they thought UAE would go thermonuclear with Pog and were leaving absolutely nothing to chance. They weren't going to be caught cack handed after PDBF 2020. Instead UAE just went nuclear with Pogacar at his ususal expected level. If Pog wasn't in the race I believe that Jumbo would have ensured a fairly routine win for Vingegaard which would have helped avoid the extra scrutiny now placed upon them. Much in the manner of Froomes latter victories where he just smashed the first big mountain stage and then rode conservative from then until Paris.

At the level he is now riding he could easily win 6+ Tours and a quite a few TT world championships.

I think you are spot on. That is exactly what happened here and they overdid it on some never seen before stuff.

Pog has been at his ceiling. His ITT this year is the best he can produce. The best he probably has produced. Which still beats everyone by quite a lot, but not Vinge. He was still far behind Vinge, who is even a level or more above Pog.

 

[lenric]

Just listen to how Grischa Niermann makes stuff personal on the team radio (like during 2020 TdF when behind the scenes footage showed Grischa screaming "c*nt Pogačar!" after he won the Grand Colombier stage in front of Roglič).

like "show the world you're the strongest"?

 

[Rackham]

like "show the world you're the strongest"?

Yeah I caught that. It was something which contradicted the later pretence that Vinge wanted to go slower at some points (which is a bad joke anyway).

I think they wanted to crush Pog. All sense & self-awareness of their projected image in the sport went out the window & the goal was smash him.

It's just within context (& Pog's relative performance) the result is deliriously unnatural & impossible.

 

[Rob5091]

like "show the world you're the strongest"?

Thinking back on the tour so far, I think Jumbo's plan before the Tour would have been because of Pogacar's possible lack of preparation, to go hard in the first two weeks and go all in on the TT (since it was the logical stage where Vingegaard could make a difference). After Pogacar's dropped time on stage 5 (and UAE sitting on the back of the peloton in stages 3 & 4 leading to rumors of someone being sick) Jumbo went all in on stage 6 but Pogacar did n't crack but in fact took back time.
Back to plan A for Jumbo then and meticulous planning for the TT (which Pogacar boasted about doing in 2020 on the LPBF TT) together with Vingegaard using as little energy as possible before it. No hoping in the pool on the rest day but working out the minutiae of the TT.

 

[Fantastico]

Biological passports are a history of measurements to determine whether there are changes in rider's body that shows doping. If there are irregularities with a biological passport of any rider, then we have a problem.

That's why it's hard to cheat these days. Is the peloton completely clean? I doubt it. TUEs are a problem, in my view. But almost certainly a high-profile rider would be exposed if he tried to beat the current system.

You heard of Operation Aderlass in Austria, right? And how many athletes practicing blood doping there had been banned based on the biological passport? None.

I am not saying the passport does not help. Indeed many Aderlass athletes allegedly showed atypical values in their passport, but even then, these showings had no consequences after all.

 

[magliaroz]

Yeah I caught that. It was something which contradicted the later pretence that Vinge wanted to go slower at some points (which is a bad joke anyway).

I think they wanted to crush Pog. All sense & self-awareness of their projected image in the sport went out the window & the goal was smash him.

It's just within context (& Pog's relative performance) the result is deliriously unnatural & impossible.

"You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain" should be Jumbo's new motto.

 

[Salvarani]

Yeah I caught that. It was something which contradicted the later pretence that Vinge wanted to go slower at some points (which is a bad joke anyway).

I think they wanted to crush Pog. All sense & self-awareness of their projected image in the sport went out the window & the goal was smash him.

It's just within context (& Pog's relative performance) the result is deliriously unnatural & impossible.

It basically showed everyone that Pog/UAE cant beat them. Not with Pog at least. He can beat everyone else quite comfortably, with the level he has, but not Vinge. Vinge is another animal.

If Pog goes back next year... I assume it will only be to put on a good show again for the audience, because he is not beating this version of Vinge. Nobody is unless Ayuso, Remco or someone else (who?) up their game. I cant imagine it right now though... because Vinge didnt even hit the ceiling here. He could have gone even further, if he really had to.

If they keep going with Pog to the Tour it will really be like Ullrich vs Armstrong. Armstrong never lost after his streak started. I can only see history repeating itself here. Unless they purposefully want to avoid a rider going on a streak like that, but greed is powerful.

Froome would have probably not lost either if not for crashing out in 2014. Then Thomas just showed up, they gave him access, and he was even better than Froome all of a sudden. Some sort of insurance because Froome had already won the Giro? They were unsure how it would go with the double and somehow Thomas ended up being even better, than they had thought. Lucky mistake? Then Bernal came just immediately after as well.

It is crazy how things play out.

 

[Rechtschreibfehler]

I think they would have done except for the fact that they thought UAE would go thermonuclear with Pog and were leaving absolutely nothing to chance. They weren't going to be caught cack handed after PDBF 2020. Instead UAE just went nuclear with Pogacar at his ususal expected level. If Pog wasn't in the race I believe that Jumbo would have ensured a fairly routine win for Vingegaard which would have helped avoid the extra scrutiny now placed upon them. Much in the manner of Froomes latter victories where he just smashed the first big mountain stage and then rode conservative from then until Paris.

At the level he is now riding he could easily win 6+ Tours and a quite a few TT world championships.

Well he did say he did not believe his power-meter, so to go all out to make sure to distance Pogacar makes pretty much sense.
It still amazes me that he himself didn't even expect this.

 

[nightowl]

like "show the world you're the strongest"?

That sounded so much like some evil genius unleashing his lab creation on the world in some superhero movie or something. It was uncanny

 

[Rob5091]

Pogacar as the new Pou Pou ? Who would have thought that in 2021. I do hope Pogacar does try for the Giro as Italy in May could suit him more then the Alps in July.

 

[lenric]

That sounded so much like some evil genius unleashing his lab creation on the world in some superhero movie or something. It was uncanny

I laughed quite hard at it, seemed like Doomsday vs Superman with Gal Gadot (Yates) and Batman (Soler) helping somewhat. Hopefully next year we'll have the end of the battle

 

[fmk_RoI]

Pogacar as the new Pou Pou ? Who would have thought that in 2021. I do hope Pogacar does try for the Giro as Italy in May could suit him more then the Alps in July.

Except that he's won the Tour. Tice. Poulidor never did. But apart from that ... hardly.

A two-time winner like Fignon would be more appropriate,. Or even the blessèd Gino - all he has to do is sit home doing nothing and then convince people he was in the resistance and saved the lives of thousands of people.

 

[magliaroz]

That sounded so much like some evil genius unleashing his lab creation on the world in some superhero movie or something. It was uncanny

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[ontheroad]

That sounded so much like some evil genius unleashing his lab creation on the world in some superhero movie or something. It was uncanny

Please tell me there is a GIF available for that, it is probably the most apt piece of audio from this Tour!