Peter Pouly: 38-year-old part-time bike mechanic who suddenly started beating Tabriz Petrochemical Team in the Tour de Ijen thanks to three straight victories in the MTF at the Ijen Crater. Ijen is the only pro race he does anything in most years.
2014 Ijen Crater stage:
1 Peter Pouly
2 Hossein Askari (Pishgaman Yazd) +51"
3 Amir Zargari (Pishgaman Yazd) +1'40"
4 Amir Kolahdouz (Tabriz Petrochemical Team) +1'40"
5 Mirsamad Pourseyedi (Tabriz Petrochemical Team) +2'42"
At this point, he had no international results to speak of as a roadie and only some decent amateur MTB background from about a decade earlier.
In 2015, he returned:
1 Peter Pouly
2 Daniel Whitehouse (Team Ukyo) +1'35"
3 Benjami Prades Reverter (Matrix-Powertag) +3'20"
4 Saeid Safarzadeh (Tabriz Shahrdari Team) +3'31"
5 Edgar Pinto (Sky Dive Dubai) +3'31"
Less of the Iranian motorbikes (Safarzadeh is nothing like the level of ridiculousness of Pourseyedi, Rahim Emami or Askari) but for reference, Edgar Pinto was 5th in the Volta a Portugal in 2014.
Based on these performances, after the Tour de Ijen he was signed by the Iranian Pishgaman Yazd team and rode the Tour of Japan, however he was over 20 minutes down, and was utterly annihilated by Mirsamad Pourseyedi in the 11km Mount Fuji hillclimb, losing 10 minutes. Three teammates - Rahim Emami (himself a formerly busted doper), Askari and Zargari (those riders he annihilated on the Ijen Crater 12 months earlier) were 2nd, 3rd and 4th and Pouly was nowhere just two weeks after his display in Indonesia. Those people he beat on the Ijen Crater? Well, Whitehouse was 13th to Mount Fuji (+2'28" from Mirsamad), Prades was 17th (+3'11") and Pinto was just outside the top 20 on the stage, so their levels relative to one another did not change drastically.
This year, Pouly's dominance at the Crater was even greater than usual, albeit helped enormously by the race being coterminous with the Iranian national championships, which has meant that Tabriz and Pishgaman Yazd have neglected to compete.
1 Peter Pouly (Singha Infinite)
2 David Jai Crawford (Kinan Team) +2'26
3 Bambang Suryadi (Black Inc Cycling Team) +4'27
4 Logan Griffin (Black Inc Cycling Team) +5'07
5 Benjami Prades Reverter (Team Ukyo) +5'16
So you can see the relative performance of Prades year on year that allows you to compare. Also for reference, Daniel Whitehouse was 8th, +5'25, riding for the Malaysian Terengganu team. Prades is in his early 30s (33 I believe) at this point, but Whitehouse should in theory be getting stronger, as he's just 21. Also, in 6th on the same time as Prades was Ricardo García, former WT domestique who's still just 28.
While opinion on the value of many of the UCI Asia Tour races varies, it definitely remains quite undoubtably the case that Pouly is one of the biggest "alarm bells ringing" case in recent years.