Big Doopie said:
However, the above 10 minute calculation is waaaaaaaaay off. Think about it, it's two minutes on every 40 minute climb and other losses on shorter climbs. also on a 3-4 col day, there is the fact that without epo you are getting steadily more tired in comparison to the epo rider so you are losing even more as you go along. we're no longer talking 10 mins in the whole tour but 10 mins in just one stage -- easy.
Plus -- as Poupou correctly points out -- it is the time to exhaustion that has the greatest difference -- over 50%. This is immense. And it goes right to the heart and main challenge of a 3 week Tour. It is why you will note that lemond (for example, but it happened to others) could still compete in the first week of a tour but steadily lost more and more time when he had been used to being the strongest in the third week. In fact his ability to last (let alone compete) in a three week tour became shorter and shorter from 1991-1994 as more and more riders got on epo.
so, ten minutes is totally off as an estimate.
an average pro rider on epo could absolutely become a racehorse in comparison to a much better -- but clean -- rider, particularly in a 3 week tour.
before epo, a three week tour was really only contested between a handfull of riders who had the quality of lasting three weeks without too many bad days. epo changed all that. armstrong is the poster child for that change.
You are really raising two issues: 1) a rider on EPO will be stronger on all the intermediate climbs as well as the final climb of a mountain stage; and 2) a rider on EPO will be stronger relative to an undoped rider as a GT progresses, because of faster recovery, day to day.
Wrt 1), the intermediate climbs in a mountain stage usually are not contested by the GC contenders. All the contenders, usually with some of their domestiques, generally stay together until the final climb. Riders do not lose additional minutes on the intermediate climbs unless they are sprinters, flat stage domestiques, riders saving themselves for a stage victory elsewhere, etc. For the main group of contenders, and this certainly includes guys hoping to finish in the top 10-20, the split usually doesn’t occur until the last climb. Because, of course, any contender who tries to break up the group will usually be reeled in on the descent.
EPO would enable a rider to stay in this group with less effort—and I pointed that out in my earlier post—and it might enable a rider to keep up who otherwise could not even hang with the relatively mild pace over the intermediate climbs. But a rider like that is going to get dropped on the final climb, anyway—that’s what I meant when I said it isn’t going to allow a nobody to win or even seriously contend.
Wrt 2), the main effect of EPO—which was what I was talking about (since other PEDs like steroids were clearly available to the peloton before EPO was)—would be to increase oxygen available for recovery. So yes, a rider on EPO would probably be a little stronger as time proceeds in a GT. But we really don’t know how large this effect could be, because oxygen is only one component of the recovery process. That is, oxygen may or may not be the rate-limiting factor in recovery. Nutrients are also important, and a rider can only consume and digest so much in a limited time.
There are other aspects of the study SoS discusses that are relevant. The subjects received a fairly large dose of EPO every other day for two weeks, then a weekly dose after that. Cyclists in a GT do not take EPO or transfuse this regularly. They target specific stages or sets of stages, and in the case of transfusion, probably only do it once or twice during a GT. This means that the benefits over the entire course of the GT are probably going to be relatively less than what was suggested in this study (even beyond the fact that the effects on the subjects were expected to be much larger than those on elite riders). In the case of transfusion, it usually isn't done until the first or second rest day; up to that time, the rider is getting no long term advantage over undoped competition.
Also, the time to exhaustion reported in this study was based on 80% of original power output. Following EPO administration, power output, as noted, increased, up to about 13% for these subjects. But when time to exhaustion was measured based on 80% of this increased power output, it was actually
reduced by about 27%. IOW, if a rider took full advantage of his increased power output, he would reach exhaustion
sooner. Clearly, there is a tradeoff here. If you use your increased power to drop others on the final climb and put time on them, you are likely to recover less, not more, slowly, than your competitors.
The bottom line is that we really have no way of accurately estimating how great the effects of blood doping may be. But using the 5% value, we can at least see estimate the advantage a rider might get in an ITT or a MTF. There is probably an additional advantage conferred from accelerated recovery day to day, but it is not at all clear how much it is.
Lemond’s example is problematic. I think he himself would admit he doesn’t know how much of his disadvantage might have resulted from riding clean, and how much from the effects of his hunting accident. Anyway, even in his decline, Lemond was not a donkey, at least not till the very end, when losing the will to train for what appeared to be a fruitless endeavor probably became a factor.
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