Most Suspicious Performance Of The Last 5 Years

[PhiLiz]

Compared to W52 at 2015 Volta (a Portugal) all the others mentioned in the thread seem legit. This Veloso donk would've dropped bulked Froome if given the chance...

 

[Libertine Seguros]

That Veloso donk has actually won the Volta a Catalunya and a Vuelta mountain stage (his name is Gustavo César Veloso, due to naming conventions he's known as César mostly in Spain, but since riding in Portugal the latter surname has been preferred), but yes, W52 have been taking us on a trip back a decade. You shouldn't underestimate Filipe Cardoso's solo win at Senhora da Graça either, but Rui "Chris Horner" Sousa is more ridiculous than César, because César at least has a palmarès outside of the Volta... Sousa has been a ridiculous doper for over a decade, and is actually getting closer to winning the Volta now than he did in peak years.

Amazed to discover not one person has mentioned either of the Törku Super Beasts, Ivaïlo Gabrovski or Mustafa Sayar either. It's a close fight as to which was most ridiculous; Gabrovski at least had something of a palmarès beforehand, albeit having not achieved anything in western Europe in almost a decade, but the team was weaker then and he had to chase down every move solo for the rest of the week, whereas when Sayar won it they only had to defend through two flat stages; however, Sayar was a complete unknown who ground everybody off his wheel on a 9% climb while climbing in a gear Bert Grabsch would have baulked at, then promptly DNFed or DNSed everything he raced from then until his eventual ban - also you have to add the level of brazen, uncaring doping that can come only from being in the same team everybody's already marked as suspect after the previous year and being so blatant you can't even be bothered to disguise the needle marks.

 

[BigMac]

Rui Sousa powering away on Torre whilst Delio Fernández literally stops to aid a dying Gustavo César was almost Monte Farinha levels of *** and certainly a lot funnier.

 

[Saint Unix]

1. Pretty much everything Sky has done since 2011. Froome in particular, but Wiggins, Thomas and Porte deserve mentions too.
2. Horner's 2013 Vuelta
3. Gilbert's nuclear 2011
4. Hesjedal's Giro
5. Toss-up between the stuff Zakarin has been doing post-Romandie and Aru/Landa last season.

 

[thehog]

Re:

1. Pretty much everything Sky has done since 2011. Froome in particular, but Wiggins, Thomas and Porte deserve mentions too.
2. Horner's 2013 Vuelta
3. Gilbert's nuclear 2011
4. Hesjedal's Giro
5. Toss-up between the stuff Zakarin has been doing post-Romandie and Aru/Landa last season.

Agree with this list. Sky certainly started the arms race again. Even Contador has dialled 2009 back in.

 

[euroking]

From what I'm hearing Portugal haven't really "cleaned" up their act

 

[CheckMyPecs]

Horner. Horner. Horner. Balding 40-somethings may look up to him as an idol, but with the razor-thin margins seen in elite cycling there's no way a fossil like Horner could overcome the biology of ageing.

 

[thehog]

Re:

Horner. Horner. Horner. Balding 40-somethings may look up to him as an idol, but with the razor-thin margins seen in elite cycling there's no way a fossil like Horner could overcome the biology of ageing.

Horner releasing his passport, to be told by the UCI that normally it would have been flagged. Big LOLs all round for that effort!

The UCI got what they deserved. I only wish he won the Tour the following year. Would have made cycling awesome!

 

[Saint Unix]

Horner's Vuelta is easily the most over-the-top hilarious single performance of all time. There's not a thing he did in that race that is remotely believable. The only reason I don't have it at number one on my list is the combined power of all the shyte Sky have been dishing out both on and off the bike in the last five years.

 

[Eyeballs Out]

I was trying to think of something comparable to Hayman (not so much in terms of massive improvement but in terms of winning one of the biggest races of the year after no racing) and Horner was the only one that I could think of that came close. Horner was injured for for most of that season but he did have 6 days racing in the Tour of Utah rather than just 2 days and he did win the queen stage there

 

[More Strides than Rides]

Re:

I was trying to think of something comparable to Hayman (not so much in terms of massive improvement but in terms of winning one of the biggest races of the year after no racing) and Horner was the only one that I could think of that came close. Horner was injured for for most of that season but he did have 6 days racing in the Tour of Utah rather than just 2 days and he did win the queen stage there

I'm all for raised eyebrows, but comparing Hayman to Horner is way too big of a stretch.

 

[CheckMyPecs]

Re:

I was trying to think of something comparable to Hayman (not so much in terms of massive improvement but in terms of winning one of the biggest races of the year after no racing) and Horner was the only one that I could think of that came close. Horner was injured for for most of that season but he did have 6 days racing in the Tour of Utah rather than just 2 days and he did win the queen stage there

Hayman simply won the lottery, no need to look for a doping explanation.

 

[thehog]

Re: Re:

I was trying to think of something comparable to Hayman (not so much in terms of massive improvement but in terms of winning one of the biggest races of the year after no racing) and Horner was the only one that I could think of that came close. Horner was injured for for most of that season but he did have 6 days racing in the Tour of Utah rather than just 2 days and he did win the queen stage there

Hayman simply won the lottery, no need to look for a doping explanation.

True but the fact that he even had a ticket in the final lottery was very suspicious. He had little business being up there with Boonen considering his most recent opponents have been on the home trainer.

A chance win would have been like when the aussie speedskater, Steven Bradbury won gold in 2012. The entire field crashed out in both his semi-final and final. He was coming last by a considerable margin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAADWfJO2qM

 

[Valv.Piti]

Valverde's Ardennes campaign was very suspicious in 2015.

Whatever Quintana does in Columbia is also semi dodgy.

Contador's climb in the ITT on Arrate smells of 09 domination. 2+2.

 

[bikenrrd]

Hayman has raced Roubaix 15 times before and finished top ten twice, so it's not that unbelievable. That is, if he'd have raced at some point this year.

 

[thehog]

Re:

Hayman has raced Roubaix 15 times before and finished top ten twice, so it's not that unbelievable. That is, if he'd have raced at some point this year.

Just like Stuey Mate, because he's a good guy, who likes a beer, he'd never dope. Maybe only tried it once

 

[Saint Unix]

Hayman had a pretty easy race up until Groupe Boonen caught up with the breakaway, and once the front group had formed the strongest two riders, Boonen and Vanmarcke, were doing most of the work. It came down to five guys who were all completely f*cked by the end of the race. When it gets to that point its just a matter of squeezing out the last droplets of power from your legs and pray that you respond to the right attacks. Boasson Hagen and Hayman had done by far the least of the five over the course of the race, which is what they had to do in order to have a fighting chance against three stronger cobblestone riders. If they had put in the same shift as Boonen they'd have completely blown out.

As it turned out, Hayman was the one who managed to stick to Boonens wheel when he went just before the velodrome, while Hagen got stuck with closing the gap behind them. That was the difference between one of them fighting for the win and the other finishing a few seconds behind. He also got extremely lucky at the end, with Boonen getting boxed out by Stannard and Vanmarcke, who are nothing special in a sprint, and the fact that the strongest finishers among the pre-race favorites (Degenkolb, Sagan, Kristoff) were far behind or not even at the start. I think it was more a case of the planets aligning than doping. It's hard to see any other way he could have won that race. Everything went in his favor.

Obviously any monument win will attract suspicion here, especially if it comes off the back of a period on the sidelines due to injury, but I didn't see anything on Sunday that made me sound the alarms. I saw five well-known cobblestone specialists grinding themselves into the ground in a race that was blown completely open 120kms before the finish. A freak race with a freak winner.

 

[Eyeballs Out]

Re:

Hayman had a pretty easy race up until Groupe Boonen caught up with the breakaway, and once the front group had formed the strongest two riders, Boonen and Vanmarcke, were doing most of the work. It came down to five guys who were all completely f*cked by the end of the race. When it gets to that point its just a matter of squeezing out the last droplets of power from your legs and pray that you respond to the right attacks. Boasson Hagen and Hayman had done by far the least of the five over the course of the race, which is what they had to do in order to have a fighting chance against three stronger cobblestone riders. If they had put in the same shift as Boonen they'd have completely blown out.

As it turned out, Hayman was the one who managed to stick to Boonens wheel when he went just before the velodrome, while Hagen got stuck with closing the gap behind them. That was the difference between one of them fighting for the win and the other finishing a few seconds behind. He also got extremely lucky at the end, with Boonen getting boxed out by Stannard and Vanmarcke, who are nothing special in a sprint, and the fact that the strongest finishers among the pre-race favorites (Degenkolb, Sagan, Kristoff) were far behind or not even at the start. I think it was more a case of the planets aligning than doping. It's hard to see any other way he could have won that race. Everything went in his favor.

Obviously any monument win will attract suspicion here, especially if it comes off the back of a period on the sidelines due to injury, but I didn't see anything on Sunday that made me sound the alarms. I saw five well-known cobblestone specialists grinding themselves into the ground in a race that was blown completely open 120kms before the finish. A freak race with a freak winner.

I must have been doped to the eyeballs because none of that matches what I watched

 

[Maxiton]

Re:

Hayman had a pretty easy race up until Groupe Boonen caught up with the breakaway, and once the front group had formed the strongest two riders, Boonen and Vanmarcke, were doing most of the work. It came down to five guys who were all completely f*cked by the end of the race. When it gets to that point its just a matter of squeezing out the last droplets of power from your legs and pray that you respond to the right attacks. Boasson Hagen and Hayman had done by far the least of the five over the course of the race, which is what they had to do in order to have a fighting chance against three stronger cobblestone riders. If they had put in the same shift as Boonen they'd have completely blown out.

As it turned out, Hayman was the one who managed to stick to Boonens wheel when he went just before the velodrome, while Hagen got stuck with closing the gap behind them. That was the difference between one of them fighting for the win and the other finishing a few seconds behind. He also got extremely lucky at the end, with Boonen getting boxed out by Stannard and Vanmarcke, who are nothing special in a sprint, and the fact that the strongest finishers among the pre-race favorites (Degenkolb, Sagan, Kristoff) were far behind or not even at the start. I think it was more a case of the planets aligning than doping. It's hard to see any other way he could have won that race. Everything went in his favor.

Obviously any monument win will attract suspicion here, especially if it comes off the back of a period on the sidelines due to injury, but I didn't see anything on Sunday that made me sound the alarms. I saw five well-known cobblestone specialists grinding themselves into the ground in a race that was blown completely open 120kms before the finish. A freak race with a freak winner.

There's some truth in what you say, but the fact remains that Hayman had the legs to contend at the front and jump when he needed to jump and sustain the effort long enough to get over the line, whereas Boonen was in the lead most of the way around the track but delayed his sprint, let Hayman take the lead, got boxed in briefly, could still have jumped for the win, which is plainly what he was planning to do, but he didn't have the legs. Here's the video.

So we are still where we began, with an aged domestique who had no race days in his legs beating Tom Boonen to the line.

 

[The Hegelian]

But how good is Boonen these days? He has clearly and visibly declined, especially his sprint. And he did a lot of chasing and attacking in the last 5K. Was obviously cooked.

The mark on Hayman is his history. Rabobank in the 00's et al. That he kept his head, gambled a bit in the last 5K and arrived fresher and won the sprint - not particularly eye brow raising.

 

[BigMac]

Re: Re:

Hayman has raced Roubaix 15 times before and finished top ten twice, so it's not that unbelievable. That is, if he'd have raced at some point this year.

Just like Stuey Mate, because he's a good guy, who likes a beer, he'd never dope. Maybe only tried it once

That's completely unrelated and you know it.

 

[hrotha]

Hayman was top 10 twice, yes - eons ago. He was quite clearly past his prime until last Sunday.
He was on the break but he had far from an easy ride there. He was even going solo at some point.
He wasn't on Boonen's wheel - he had to catch up where others couldn't.

He was freakishly strong.

 

[PhiLiz]

Re:

That Veloso donk has actually won the Volta a Catalunya and a Vuelta mountain stage (his name is Gustavo César Veloso, due to naming conventions he's known as César mostly in Spain, but since riding in Portugal the latter surname has been preferred), but yes, W52 have been taking us on a trip back a decade. You shouldn't underestimate Filipe Cardoso's solo win at Senhora da Graça either, but Rui "Chris Horner" Sousa is more ridiculous than César, because César at least has a palmarès outside of the Volta... Sousa has been a ridiculous doper for over a decade, and is actually getting closer to winning the Volta now than he did in peak years.

Actually, they can both be a joke...

Sousa has probably doped for close to 15 years now. He was at MSS and actually has a better overall result than Veloso at the Vuelta.

Cardoso is also a joke... A really bad sprinter winning at a summit like that even if it's not a really hard one is just ridiculous.

Back to Veloso, the Catalunya win was very uncharacteristic as I recall. Won in the last day after being allowed to escape in a really odd breakaway on a flat stage. Not exactly vintage display... And then for three years he just vanishes, not producing any results before he reappears in Portugal and stars producing solid displays in the mountain on the first year, winning on the second and then dominating in Lelli-style...

I strongly believe most of the top 5 guys in the last years were heavily plumped but the prize for the more hilarious have to be this recycled Spanish guys who arrive and crush everybody. Veloso still has a few years to overcome Dopid Blanco (who actually had a palmares unlike Veloso) and his amazing wins atop Serra da Estrela...

 

[therealthing]

To revive this thread- here are some from the past year I've picked out:
•Nibali 2016 Giro
•Van Avermaet Olympics
•Gilbert 2017 Flanders
•Valverde's remarkable run of wins early 2017

 

[therhodeo]

I'm going to make the call and say Valverde's 2017 Ardenne's campaign.