Power Numbers and blood testing

[reubenr]

It's just an observation that power numbers do not and can not tell the whole story about a rider. Who knows what he would be like without using any performance enhancing drug? We may well be looking at a lot of mediocre riders that would be in the back of the pack, if it wasn't for the juice they are riding. So, we shouldn't get carried away with selective releases of power numbers. What we should all be looking for is an actual blood testing regimen designed to catch dopers. We don't have one.

 

[SeriousSam]

Yes, it would be clearly absurd to sanction anyone for being too quick. Even if the physiological traits implied by going really quick are exceedingly rare.

They can still constitute strong evidence of doping. Though not nearly as strong evidence of doping as dominating a sport where PEDs are highly useful and the probability to get away with using them, if you're smart, is low.

 

[gazr99]

Nice of you to prove a point I believe in. Sky could have released numbers that most people had guessed and thought were achievable by a clean rider and people still wouldn't believe it

 

[Lyon]

Re:

Nice of you to prove a point I believe in. Sky could have released numbers that most people had guessed and thought were achievable by a clean rider and people still wouldn't believe it

That the numbers can be achieved by a clean rider doesnt mean that the rider achieving them is clean.

 

[gazr99]

Re: Re:

Nice of you to prove a point I believe in. Sky could have released numbers that most people had guessed and thought were achievable by a clean rider and people still wouldn't believe it

That the numbers can be achieved by a clean rider doesnt mean that the rider achieving them is clean.

True, but that's my whole point. People were still going to say he is doping whatever numbers Sky released

 

[Lyon]

Re: Re:

Nice of you to prove a point I believe in. Sky could have released numbers that most people had guessed and thought were achievable by a clean rider and people still wouldn't believe it

That the numbers can be achieved by a clean rider doesnt mean that the rider achieving them is clean.

True, but that's my whole point. People were still going to say he is doping whatever numbers Sky released

Yes, that is the burden of pro cycling. A burden Sky seem to refuse to bear.

 

[saganftw]

Numbers are for 99% of public who dont even know what it means.They see a number and someone they trust saying its humanly possible.They dont know or care that the clean cyclist just rode faster uphill than Armstrong or Pantani,and even if they know they attribute it to advancement in technology or human evolution or f****ing tailwind.

All i see is a guy who quacks like Armstrong,walks like Armstrong and rides as fast.

 

[reubenr]

It makes you wonder why a team that is supposed to be sophisticated and on the cutting edge of cycling, like Sky, would release power numbers in an effort to quell the controversy around Froome's performance? Fog and Dodge? It would seem that something more is required than that.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

It makes you wonder why a team that is supposed to be sophisticated and on the cutting edge of cycling, like Sky, would release power numbers in an effort to quell the controversy around Froome's performance? Fog and Dodge? It would seem that something more is required than that.

It's too late for them now. The snowball of doubts have grown too big. They needed to be doing this back in 2011 after the Vuelta, realistically, if they genuinely wanted to assuage doubts. They needed to publish pre-2011 Vuelta information when they did the Grappe exercise in 2013 (and maybe not pick the same doctor that said Armstrong was clean). They've now reached the point where they've lied, misled and misrepresented so much that no matter what they release, they're going to be accused of fudging it if it doesn't look suspicious, and any fluctuations will be pounced upon like a pack of hyenas. They're trying to calm the storm by releasing what they have to to say that they did their bit for clean cycling, and the British press will lap it up. They may even say it puts Sky laying down the gauntlet of transparency to other teams (few of them, of course, will mention that Nairo Quintana - hardly somebody that there are no suspicions about - published his VO2Max apropos of nothing a few weeks ago, and that Movistar have released Valverde's power data back in the 2013 Tour as well), because they know they can trust a large part of their readership only to be interested where the British riders & team are concerned.

A lot of what has happened at this Tour is not specifically about Sky. Some of it isn't even about Chris Froome. It's a lot of built up resentment and anger that we've seen the sport have a big opportunity to rebuild itself in the wake of the downfall of Armstrong and the replacement of McQuaid. A whole tainted generation could be kicked away and we could start again, but what we're seeing is the same speeds, the same ineffectual regulators, the same worrying connections between top teams and the top brass at the UCI, and the same type of racing. Whoever started putting out the performances like this next was bound to face backlash, because as speeds continue to increase back to the EPO era speeds, fans were bound to baulk at some point.

But that's not to say that it being Sky has been nothing to do with it. Sky is a team that inspired such ridicule at first with their revolutionary "bringing science to the sport" (which a lot of teams who were doing all their budget would allow in the sports science area rather resented) and pompous approach (quoth Marc Madiot: "I put riders in wind tunnels too, but I don't have to put out a press release about it"), and now they are doing what they're doing while shoving their egregious wealth in other teams' faces (look at our Jags! Look at our Range Rovers! Get out of the way of our oversized motorhome fleet!) and not endearing themselves to fans (put up the screens so they can't see! You're all jealous, lazy and idle wankers who can't stand that we achieve stuff and you don't! What do you mean, you want to see interesting, attacking racing? Look at our train!). They're like the Chelsea FC, the Real Madrid, the New England Patriots. So you take the latent anger in the fans at being told to lap up the same story that tasted like a slap in the face before, and add that in.

Then add in that it's Chris Froome, a transformation story that has seldom been told without a bitter aftertaste in the recent history of the sport. A guy who has veered between being a decent but dull, bland guy at times, and (perhaps most when his voice is being piloted by his wife, given her behaviour at other times) vindictive, grudgeful and nasty at others. A guy whose success is hard to buy because of its sudden, suspicious timing, the catalogue of lies that have surrounded it, and the sheer difficulty of looking at his unique, awkward technique with elbows and knees akimbo and say "that is the best cyclist in the world". Even if the numbers fit fine with what's humanly achievable clean, people will always look at his paucity of results before September 2011 and his technique and say, "is it achievable clean coming from him?" Some of that is purely subjective, some of it is pattern recognition.

So what you have is a latent sense of frustration, despondency and disillusionment among the fans that the jettisoning of the big bad bogeyman of the past and the changing of the guard at the UCI has not led to any change whatsoever. Then you add a team it's difficult to feel any sympathy for (at least until somebody splashes urine in their faces). Then on top of that you add a rider it's difficult to feel any sympathy for, and a backstory that requires a lot of leaps of faith. And then you take those leaps of faith and make them harder to take by drowning them in a river of half-truths, misrepresentations, misdirections and so on. And you have the perfect recipe for the fans turning on the race, turning on the riders, and refusing to believe the story they're being told. The nature of social media and modern mass media is such that the story is harder to control than it was 15 years ago, so the fans turning on the race and the riders (and Sky are naturally at the forefront of that) has become a story before the talking points against them could be put into place.

So now, all that Brailsford is able to do is throw what he can to try to placate them, and while he may be able to convince the complicit, the casual fans and those who want to believe, he's never going to gain back all of the trust that he, along with Froome, Porte and the sport as a whole, have lost. It's like putting a really nice layer of icing on a cake that's been burnt to a crisp. The veneer is there, and it looks lovely, but it doesn't change the fact that it was already ruined before they got to it.

 

[roundabout]

Quintana published his VO2 Max?

I've seen second hand reports of his tests when he was a teenager, but I missed this.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Quintana published his VO2 Max?

I've seen second hand reports of his tests when he was a teenager, but I missed this.

Those stories re-doing the rounds might be where I'm getting it from, I first saw people mentioning (with specific values) his VO2max quite recently.

 

[roundabout]

Yeah, a specific announcement from Quintana's camp probably would have been big enough news for even me not to miss.

 

[reubenr]

[Libertine Seguros]

Thank you for an incredibly insightful post that kind of sums of the state of things for the last several years or more. I do not take issue with anything you said. You said it all, and it all needed to be said. Whether or not it is too late remains a question, at least in my mind, but you may answered that, as well. I guess I just don't want to believe that, so I'm kind of willing to try anything, and it may turn out to be more of an economic thing than anything else. In other words, the money is just not there to ensure a clean testing regimen. I for one do not believe much in the spiel that the dopers are ahead of the curve, the testing criteria, etc., but even if they were, save the samples. The problem, as I see it, is that they do not do blood tests at the right times of the day, let alone enough. There is no incentive in the cycling world to catch any one. The incentive is quite the reverse. The Blood Passport System is a farce, and the amount of time that elapses between a "positive" finding and a conviction (or dismissal) is totally absurd.

 

[ray j willings]

It's just an observation that power numbers do not and can not tell the whole story about a rider. Who knows what he would be like without using any performance enhancing drug? We may well be looking at a lot of mediocre riders that would be in the back of the pack, if it wasn't for the juice they are riding. So, we shouldn't get carried away with selective releases of power numbers. What we should all be looking for is an actual blood testing regimen designed to catch dopers. We don't have one.

Your not going to get one, its to expensive plus there's not the incentive especially to catch the big names "money makers" Say Froome got busted, cycling would take such a huge it bigger than Armstrong. No lessons learned all you managers teams UCI have just lied. Thrown out of the Olympics etc etc Sponsors pulling out millions lost....Its not going to happen. I would be shocked. A few token gestures to make it look like its on top of things but look at the times up the climbs ,,,Its the same old same old.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

[Libertine Seguros]

Thank you for an incredibly insightful post that kind of sums of the state of things for the last several years or more. I do not take issue with anything you said. You said it all, and it all needed to be said. Whether or not it is too late remains a question, at least in my mind, but you may answered that, as well. I guess I just don't want to believe that, so I'm kind of willing to try anything, and it may turn out to be more of an economic thing than anything else. In other words, the money is just not there to ensure a clean testing regimen. I for one do not believe much in the spiel that the dopers are ahead of the curve, the testing criteria, etc., but even if they were, save the samples. The problem, as I see it, is that they do not do blood tests at the right times of the day, let alone enough. There is no incentive in the cycling world to catch any one. The incentive is quite the reverse. The Blood Passport System is a farce, and the amount of time that elapses between a "positive" finding and a conviction (or dismissal) is totally absurd.

When I say it's too late, I mean it's too late for Sky to quell the doubts. They didn't get in with the transparency and honesty early enough, and now the resentment and mistrust is such that everything they do to try to be open will be picked apart, and no amount of openness will win back that trust. They've hidden so much for so long, and promised so many things they had no intention of delivering, that a large section of the audience simply won't believe what they're being told no matter what Sky try to tell them anymore.

It's not too late to save cycling; but it's too late for Sky to be the centrepiece of the clean revolution that they claimed to be. In 2012 they seemed genuinely taken aback by the questions being asked of their performance. But they've had three years of it now and they're still getting faster, surely they should have been better prepared to deal with doubts. I mean, Tiernan-Locke said shortly after his Pecharromán-like rise to fame that he knew fans would have doubts and he would look to do tests to assuage them, so at least he had a bit of self-awareness. Sky were caught on the hop in 2012, and they look like they're still playing catch-up now.

 

[reubenr]

Libertine Seguros

Your quote: "It's not too late to save cycling; but it's too late for Sky to be the centrepiece of the clean revolution that they claimed to be. In 2012 they seemed genuinely taken aback by the questions being asked of their performance. But they've had three years of it now and they're still getting faster, surely they should have been better prepared to deal with doubts. I mean, Tiernan-Locke said shortly after his Pecharromán-like rise to fame that he knew fans would have doubts and he would look to do tests to assuage them, so at least he had a bit of self-awareness. Sky were caught on the hop in 2012, and they look like they're still playing catch-up now.[/quote]"

Whether it is too late or not, and whether there is a will, there is certainly a way. I am not optimistic, since it has been pretty much the same old, same old, as you have pointed out, and others have added their doubts. As a fan, the question becomes what to do? I ride a bike, so I always have my own cycling to fall back on for enjoyment, which at times is immense, even when I'm not at my VO Max. It is all so very disappointing. You look at the fans lining the roads, and it makes you wonder. There must be some kind of way.

 

[SeriousSam]

Another LS masterpiece. Are you actually a writer?

 

[reubenr]

[Libertine Seguros

Noticed this article this morning on Cycling News: http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/night-time-doping-tests-blocked-by-french-law-at-tour-de-france

About night time testing to possibly prevent micro dosing. I find it very strange that in France there would not have been an effort to put this in place prior to the TDF, rather than after it. The problem may be is that it works. The riders have rejected these kind of proposals in the past because of the potential for disruption in their privacy, but they are professional cyclists, and it would seem that this would just be part of the job, to submit to testing, when ever. It's not as if anybody is going to be woken up in the middle of the night. I have no clue about the exact parameters for proper testing, but, on the other hand, if the cyclists are waking up in the night to take a dose, then I think it is only fair for them to wake up for a test. I'm sure every one in cycling knows the optimum time, so this is not even a guessing game here.

 

[mrhender]

It's too late for them now. The snowball of doubts have grown too big. They needed to be doing this back in 2011 after the Vuelta, realistically, if they genuinely wanted to assuage doubts. They needed to publish pre-2011 Vuelta information when they did the Grappe exercise in 2013 (and maybe not pick the same doctor that said Armstrong was clean). They've now reached the point where they've lied, misled and misrepresented so much that no matter what they release, they're going to be accused of fudging it if it doesn't look suspicious, and any fluctuations will be pounced upon like a pack of hyenas. They're trying to calm the storm by releasing what they have to to say that they did their bit for clean cycling, and the British press will lap it up. They may even say it puts Sky laying down the gauntlet of transparency to other teams (few of them, of course, will mention that Nairo Quintana - hardly somebody that there are no suspicions about - published his VO2Max apropos of nothing a few weeks ago, and that Movistar have released Valverde's power data back in the 2013 Tour as well), because they know they can trust a large part of their readership only to be interested where the British riders & team are concerned.

A lot of what has happened at this Tour is not specifically about Sky. Some of it isn't even about Chris Froome. It's a lot of built up resentment and anger that we've seen the sport have a big opportunity to rebuild itself in the wake of the downfall of Armstrong and the replacement of McQuaid. A whole tainted generation could be kicked away and we could start again, but what we're seeing is the same speeds, the same ineffectual regulators, the same worrying connections between top teams and the top brass at the UCI, and the same type of racing. Whoever started putting out the performances like this next was bound to face backlash, because as speeds continue to increase back to the EPO era speeds, fans were bound to baulk at some point.

But that's not to say that it being Sky has been nothing to do with it. Sky is a team that inspired such ridicule at first with their revolutionary "bringing science to the sport" (which a lot of teams who were doing all their budget would allow in the sports science area rather resented) and pompous approach (quoth Marc Madiot: "I put riders in wind tunnels too, but I don't have to put out a press release about it"), and now they are doing what they're doing while shoving their egregious wealth in other teams' faces (look at our Jags! Look at our Range Rovers! Get out of the way of our oversized motorhome fleet!) and not endearing themselves to fans (put up the screens so they can't see! You're all jealous, lazy and idle wankers who can't stand that we achieve stuff and you don't! What do you mean, you want to see interesting, attacking racing? Look at our train!). They're like the Chelsea FC, the Real Madrid, the New England Patriots. So you take the latent anger in the fans at being told to lap up the same story that tasted like a slap in the face before, and add that in.

Then add in that it's Chris Froome, a transformation story that has seldom been told without a bitter aftertaste in the recent history of the sport. A guy who has veered between being a decent but dull, bland guy at times, and (perhaps most when his voice is being piloted by his wife, given her behaviour at other times) vindictive, grudgeful and nasty at others. A guy whose success is hard to buy because of its sudden, suspicious timing, the catalogue of lies that have surrounded it, and the sheer difficulty of looking at his unique, awkward technique with elbows and knees akimbo and say "that is the best cyclist in the world". Even if the numbers fit fine with what's humanly achievable clean, people will always look at his paucity of results before September 2011 and his technique and say, "is it achievable clean coming from him?" Some of that is purely subjective, some of it is pattern recognition.

So what you have is a latent sense of frustration, despondency and disillusionment among the fans that the jettisoning of the big bad bogeyman of the past and the changing of the guard at the UCI has not led to any change whatsoever. Then you add a team it's difficult to feel any sympathy for (at least until somebody splashes urine in their faces). Then on top of that you add a rider it's difficult to feel any sympathy for, and a backstory that requires a lot of leaps of faith. And then you take those leaps of faith and make them harder to take by drowning them in a river of half-truths, misrepresentations, misdirections and so on. And you have the perfect recipe for the fans turning on the race, turning on the riders, and refusing to believe the story they're being told. The nature of social media and modern mass media is such that the story is harder to control than it was 15 years ago, so the fans turning on the race and the riders (and Sky are naturally at the forefront of that) has become a story before the talking points against them could be put into place.

So now, all that Brailsford is able to do is throw what he can to try to placate them, and while he may be able to convince the complicit, the casual fans and those who want to believe, he's never going to gain back all of the trust that he, along with Froome, Porte and the sport as a whole, have lost. It's like putting a really nice layer of icing on a cake that's been burnt to a crisp. The veneer is there, and it looks lovely, but it doesn't change the fact that it was already ruined before they got to it.

Excellent post Libertine....

It seems you are getting credit for it elsewhere as well..

Well deserved....!!

 

[Phrazz]

Re:

Numbers are for 99% of public who dont even know what it means.They see a number and someone they trust saying its humanly possible.They dont know or care that the clean cyclist just rode faster uphill than Armstrong or Pantani,and even if they know they attribute it to advancement in technology or human evolution or f****ing tailwind.

All i see is a guy who quacks like Armstrong,walks like Armstrong and rides as fast.

This is just such rubbish, seems to be based on jealousy, Sky are well funded but don't hold that against them, that's just stupid. The best funded team have the most resources to apply to deliver success. If they were poorly funded and winning then I would be suspicious, right?

Looking at the numbers doesn't tell you anything, all your comments are pure speculation. Whoever wins ends up having the best figures on the part of the course where they demonstrate their winning talent over the rest of the peloton. It is not possible to identify doping by looking at the power data.

Comments here are too filled with jealousy and resentment to have any value, they are not scientific. Too emotional.