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Most memorable doped perfomances?

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Re:

Jagartrott said:
I further refer you to any statistical handbook. Not worth discussing this anymore if you don't know how statistics work. There is no trend break in the series depicted above (apart from the drop in time gain rate around 35 km), hence 'fading' cannot be made concrete.

I genuinely don’t know when people are trolling or not anymore.

You’re arguing Froome didn’t fade, except for the last part where he relatively speaking, faded? But you can’t measure this from the maximum time gap? This is an n=1, the data set is relative time difference between two people, statistics doesn’t even play in to it, as there are none! By that logic you can’t really say Pinot is fading today, because if you start at the beginning of the tour, he’s still performing well above the mean of the peloton, and it would be disingenuous to measure from his peak relative to the rest? Insanity.

I think you have heard about p-hacking in science, where researchers ends the study once there is a statistical significant result instead of ending it at the predetermined time at which a probability value would actually be the result of a real effect.
 
It is indeed a simple time series, which reached a peak and then declined. Which means he faded.

Froome gained 213 seconds in the 70km from 80 to go until 10 to go. If he had continued at that rate he would have won by c 244 seconds. That did not happen: he won by "only" 180 seconds. That means he faded: he did not continue to perform at the same level compared to those who were in competition with him.

If you don't agree with that, please tell me what you mean by the word "faded", and why you think Franckschleck's comment was factually correct.
 
For the sake of it, I'll continue.
There is uncertainty about each point in the time series. Therefore, you cannot pick one arbitrary point to start an analysis. In my climate analogy, deniers often use (used, since a few years even that doesn't work any more) the 'warming stopped in 1998' argument. Now, 1998 happens to be an extreme El Nino year, which pushes temperatures up. By using that starting point, they disregard the wider trend. Like in the Froome time series, there is stochasticity here, so you have to take that into account. Froome, at the 10 km mark, may have been holding back a bit, may have been eating, or the other group may have started riding faster, for example Reichenbach giving it one last push, or the GPS signal flickered. This is not enough to constitute fading (which I'm assuming means time losses instead of gains) in itself, it has to be compared to the points before and after. What do we so in the graph: some wobbles in the last 10 k, but no trend break - because that would constitute time losses that exceed the margin of uncertainty, for which there's no clear visual indication of that here. This, by the way, is more or less confirmed by Froome himself, who said that he never exceeded his limits and looked remarkably fresh after he finished.

To end, I'll show the '98 warming stopped (cf. Froome started losing time at 10 km to go) argument in perspective. You can see on Froome's graph that there seemed to be a sudden gain in time between 12 and 10 km - which exacerbated the peak (and is indicative of stochasticity):
Temperaturanstieg-vergleich-zwischen-ausschnitt-und-gesamtverlauf.gif
 
So Froome didn't fade at all, he continued stretching his advantage over the pursuers all the way to the end. If you want to believe that, go ahead and enjoy your intellectual fantasy and creating your own definition of what fading means. Just keep ignoring the teleological nature of a finish line in a race and the simple facts of the race times.

In the meantime, I note that Franckschleck has made no attempt to align himself with your attempts to defend his erroneous comment.
 
I do enjoy intellectual fantasies, yes.
If only we had Froome's data eh, we would be able to tell for sure whether he was fading or not. In his own words, he was not and rode controlled throughout, and I might add today supports that impression. The 'simple fact' of the time series does not support a significant drop in performance vis-à-vis Dumoulin. I don't really care about Fränk, I was trying to point out that you cannot cherry pick and then lecture someone else about getting facts straight and talking about confirmation bias. It's just not correct.
 
Would it be too far outside the box to nominate for "Most Memorable Doped Performance" the segment of Chris Froome's career extending from the 2011 Vuelta to the current Giro? -- Memorable, as in, unable to be forgotten or otherwise gotten out of mind, like a really bad recurring nightmare.
 
Oct 28, 2012
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Whatever you want to take from the graph, it certainly doesn’t show if Froome faded or not. It shows a change in the rate of time gained, but there is nothing in the graph that points to the reason for the change.
 
freddybobs said:
Whatever you want to take from the graph, it certainly doesn’t show if Froome faded or not. It shows a change in the rate of time gained, but there is nothing in the graph that points to the reason for the change.

Yes, is it not perfectly plausible that his opponents increased their tempo, whilst Froome's remained constant?
 
The Hegelian said:
freddybobs said:
Whatever you want to take from the graph, it certainly doesn’t show if Froome faded or not. It shows a change in the rate of time gained, but there is nothing in the graph that points to the reason for the change.

Yes, is it not perfectly plausible that his opponents increased their tempo, whilst Froome's remained constant?

Correct. This is the argument jagartrott should have made. This data is intrinsically unable to prove or disprove the hypothesis that Froome faded. It's also perfectly plausible that Froome increased his tempo while the others increased theirs by even more. Impossible to say with this data.

As for the argument that jagartrott chose to make instead, put me in the baffled camp. The presence of a definite end point - the finish of the race and the accumulation of fatigue through each of those prior data points - has an impact. Furthermore, an anologous argument to the climate change argument he/you cited would actually be an argument that Chris Froome did not show superiority over his rivals that day because, look, starting at this arbitrary starting point and ending here, he actually lost time. The argument being floated instead was that, in looking at the data set in totality, there is a clear trend upward that then somewhat reverses in the last 10km. Maybe it would help us all understand your more uh sophisticated position if you could show a graph of what a fade would look like.
 
Oct 23, 2011
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I was just reading through this thread for some fun reading about Froome's performance, but as I read back a bit, I suddenly thought: did anybody mention mr. 63% Jimmy Briceño yet?

Showing up for a test with a hematocrit of 63% has to be a memorable doped performance in and of itself. Riis doesn't have *** on him.
 
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Re:

Maaaaaaaarten said:
I was just reading through this thread for some fun reading about Froome's performance, but as I read back a bit, I suddenly thought: did anybody mention mr. 63% Jimmy Briceño yet?

Showing up for a test with a hematocrit of 63% has to be a memorable doped performance in and of itself. Riis doesn't have **** on him.
I guess he was naturally starting pretty high (maybe living in extreme altitude?!). Otherwise, I cannot believe you can reach those levels even drinking EPO instead of water.
Then there is Alessandro Nista...
 
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Re:

flicker said:
SiAp1984 said:
Always wondered about this one. Is there any video material out there? Started watching the tour the year after (Ullrich) and only read about the stage you mentioned on CN.

Craig, right, Gonzales is a good example, too. Even Pevenage was stunned about it back then.

I am not sure, but if I remember correctly, I laughed about Bettinis second WC in Stuttgart. If I remember correctly, he attacked and worked all day long and still was able to sprint out Zabel and Valv(Piti)... For me, Bettini is the AC of the one-day-racers (never liked him). Would have loved him to get caught...

I wonder how many wins Bettini got clean, very few I will bet.
I don't know, but 2005 Zuri-Metzgete was more than impressive. With Paolini and Cunego he caught the attacking group with 45km to go, he left everybody with 36km to go, and then he gained alone 3mins on the Bernucci-Schleck duo. I would love to find the video somewhere.
 
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Re: Re:

Jagartrott said:
Armchair cyclist said:
Changing from gaining 30 seconds every 10km to losing 30 seconds in 10km, when the goal is to maximise time advantage at a particular end point, is not fading: definitely not correct.
Ah, back to square one I see.
Enjoy the rest of the discussion. I'm done.
I've re-read your whole discussion with @Armchair cyclist and @Oude Geuze and I was astonished by how far people can go to defend their favorite cyclist. Kudos to you for showing them how moronic and statistically illiterate was their argument. It seems to be that people definitely do not understand that:
1-there is measurement uncertainty around any point
2-the time series can be decomposed into cycles and trends (and the trend is pretty obvious in both of your examples)
 
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Re: Re:

burning said:
burning said:
GuyIncognito said:
GuyIncognito said:
Oh boy, I can think of quite a few blatant ones
Maybe if I can be bothered I'll type them out tomorrow

I might add a few more riders to this list. :p

Here is a few more:

Cunego - The stretch between 2014 Trentino and Giro was beyond awesome with 10 wins in a month or so (and add Lombardia as a side job). He was a good puncheur in that Giro (2 wins on uphill sprints), then he said f*ck you to Gibo and broke away 60km to go. He then toyed with Gibo on Bormio to add insult to the injury and would have won the next stage if he was allowed to ride all out. He was never the same in GTs even though he had a very good career. Also, one my favorite quotes is "The Damiano who won the Giro no longer exists". Also, he is one of the first Ibarguren specials.
That one in 2004 was pretty astonishing, BUT I must say that Damiano has been one of the most damaged riders by EPO. He had an incredible talent but you cannot notice that for many years he has been the first of the never-busted in many GTs and classics.
Still pretty suspicious in 2004:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAAfUh-xs3M
 
Something tells me we may be treated to another worthy entry/nomination for this thread in the coming week. I mean, right now, Froome's behind, albeit to his own teammate -- which should make it all even funnier when the inevitable comes to pass. Giro stage 19 will be hard to top, though, I'll admit. :)
 
JosephK said:
Something tells me we may be treated to another worthy entry/nomination for this thread in the coming week. I mean, right now, Froome's behind, albeit to his own teammate -- which should make it all even funnier when the inevitable comes to pass. Giro stage 19 will be hard to top, though, I'll admit. :)

Have to agree. No way Froome can keep it in his pants. 5 Tours to stick it Hinault and a Giro-Tour double. Froome will be Froome and give the Clinic 200 pages of extra posts :cool:
 
I dutifully add Thomas to this thread.

If I was in a naive mood, I could kind of buy the idea that he could climb in the lead group most of the time, ride a decent tt and recover/be consistent enough to be in the top 10-15.

But dominate the tour? He was easily the strongest climber - I think he had quite a lot in reserve. Better than Quintana, Landa, Bardet + all the other diesel-tt-GC riders.

I have this tdf win in the same category as Riis, Armstrong & Landis. Outranking Wiggins for doping memorability, and I guess Froome is his own special category.
 

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