Richie Porte - what do we know about him?

[samhocking]

Sure Franklin, Sky are no different than any other team apart from only Sky have worked out how to copy Armstrong, Postal and pay off UCI. Oh and of course no other team has millions of posts trying to work it out too lol!

 

[The Hitch]

How do Sky have 25 years of data and others don't? Rabo sponsored the Dutch track team for years as well as having a almost exclusively dutch road team with a lot of overlap. Teams like Lampre and Euskaltel were in the sport for decades. But Sky were the only team collecting data? Sell that to me?

 

[Franklin]

Re:

Sure Franklin, Sky are no different than any other team apart from only Sky have worked out how to copy Armstrong, Postal and pay off UCI. Oh and of course no other team has millions of posts trying to work it out too lol!

Hey Sam, sorry that I'm going to torch this strawman with ease. I do wonder if you have trouble reading or just being disingenious. You can answer that one yourself.

I said "History (and the now!) show many others just like Sky". That you translate that in any other team is funny considering everyone can scroll up and see your reading failure.

Too bad Sam, discussing only works if you can actually follow the matter at hand and are able to intelligibly read other posts. You are failing quite hard at this as can be seen by anyone.

And of course someone who has trouble reading also missed that indeed the UCI did protect people like Contador. Denying the possibility goes flat against the facts.

@Hitch... don't bother with the facts, as Sam here lives in a fantasy where Sky invented everything. Being confronted with a 16 year mainstream article shows how little he knows about the terms he's tossing around.

 

[DA_Man]

Whoever's done any competitive racing at all knows how difficult it is to make any gains in relative performance when at the pinnacle of a rider's career. Your form just plateaus, no matter how hard you try, how many times you peak, whether you go back to "basics," take up or re-take swimming, rub ten out instead of one a day, et cetera.

Along come these freaks of (anabolic) nature, the mega-responders, who can't hold form one year and then blow right through past bests because they took up wood chopping. And then you have the real "freaks of nature" like Froome, Rumsas or Valls, who bother not to even show some face in the amateur ranks, just to keep up appearances, and then dominate the sport out of nowhere right after being diagnosed with carrying a nasty parasite and suffering bouts of sport-induced asthma that needs to be treated right smack in the middle of a grueling profesional cycling competition and are usually followed by an out of this world attack that drops even known dopers.

That people, TO THIS DAY, still think Chris Froome or Ritchie Porte are clean is just beyond me.

 

[nayr497]

At least Froome could ride with some style if he was going to cheat. But cheating and looking ugly doing it, now that's insulting to the fans...

 

[frenchfry]

Re: Re:

Will he be able to sustain this shape into the Giro? He seems to be in very good form too early i think.

Sky's "marginal gains" approach allows them to peak year round.

I suspect they change pillows mid-season, thus permitting the season long peak.

 

[ScienceIsCool]

http://www.ausport.gov.au/information/ais

I really don't think Sky have even a fraction of 1% of the data or experience that these guys do. 30 years of state sponsored research and an entire catalogue of publications. PhD candidates, post-docs and career scientists as far as the eye can see. You'll notice that Australians are generally quite successful in cycling, but by no means could you cobble together an all Australian team and dominate the sport. Sky as a creation of British Cycling, showing the world how it's really done, is just silly.

John Swanson

 

[DA_Man]

Re:

At least Froome could ride with some style if he was going to cheat. But cheating and looking ugly doing it, now that's insulting to the fans...

It's right down nasty.

His style is so biomechanically off that it's odd. I imagine it to be the style of a person who's ridden the stationary bike all their lives and then switch on to the road bike out of the blue.

 

[the sceptic]

Re:

http://www.ausport.gov.au/information/ais

I really don't think Sky have even a fraction of 1% of the data or experience that these guys do. 30 years of state sponsored research and an entire catalogue of publications. PhD candidates, post-docs and career scientists as far as the eye can see. You'll notice that Australians are generally quite successful in cycling, but by no means could you cobble together an all Australian team and dominate the sport. Sky as a creation of British Cycling, showing the world how it's really done, is just silly.

John Swanson

good post.

I think Sky has a lot of doping experience. They went out there and hired a lot of old school dopers and the belgian version of Dr Ferrari. This coupled with a big budget and UCI protection and you get US postal 2.0

 

[More Strides than Rides]

In all fairness to Sam, he is right. The error is on the posters who say that Sky peaks all year round. They don't. We can look at Froome's Green Mt. Time comapred to repeated efforts during the Tour, at a much higher level, and then a little less at the Vuelta. There is a trend toward a peak performance, and then a trend away from it. (speaking very generally of course. That's the point, is that general comments cannot be specific...)

What we are seeing, and mis-labeling peaking, is that sky dominates year round; that their base level fitness is a step (or three) higher than everyone else, at all points in the season. We see that Froome's Green Mt. time is what others only hope to reach by July. So while maybe it is correct to say peak results, it is certainly not peak fitness (And certainly, it is a broader peak than the LA type: 49 weeks of crap for 3 weeks of awesome, but still a peaking process).

That, samhocking, is very achievable through doping.

Edit: Also, the year round peak is not just people joking about sky, it comes from their own mouth. But, all that is BS anyway... The data are there. It is not a year round peak. Year round winning, yes, but not maintenance of peak performance all year.

 

[sniper]

Re:

http://www.ausport.gov.au/information/ais

I really don't think Sky have even a fraction of 1% of the data or experience that these guys do. 30 years of state sponsored research and an entire catalogue of publications. PhD candidates, post-docs and career scientists as far as the eye can see. You'll notice that Australians are generally quite successful in cycling, but by no means could you cobble together an all Australian team and dominate the sport. Sky as a creation of British Cycling, showing the world how it's really done, is just silly.

John Swanson

and australia too is having something of a peak period in cycling, with four or five wins in Monuments from 2007 onwards.
compare to the italians, who won their last Monument in 2008, then nothing.
that's odd, I thought it was more easy to dope for the Monuments.
According to Walsh logic, I guess that means that Italian cycling is cleaner than Australian, Irish and even British cycling.

 

[Franklin]

@more than strides>

Exactly. The "peak a whole year" is Sky rethoric. The real issue is: Dominate all year. But that actually is closely followed by the likes of Piti, AC, Sagan, Quinty etc. Very modern it seems.

 

[The Hitch]

Re:

to be fair Valverde and Murito actually do seem to peak year round. They win classics and stage races in the early months, are perennially on the podium of liege in April, compete for one of the gts in may or July and are invariably in competition for vuelta in late summer then world's and Lombardi in autumn. At no point to they exceed this peak and actually win a gt or worlds but at no point either do they lose form and not compete.

 

[Saint Unix]

That's true. When you look at the relatively small amount of important races those two actually win, the amont of UCI points they pick up is absolutely absurd. Being top 5 in two consecutive GCs is suspicious enough on its own, and they both pull that trick off fairly regularly. Managing to top that up with strong showings in all the hilly one-day races just makes it even more farcical.

But their maximum level isn't even close to the extra-terrestrial level of Froome in top form, so naturally, they don't get the same amount of attention. It also helps that Valverde and Purito have always been quite good at the whole bike lark.

 

[veganrob]

Some people seem to forget that doping allows one to train harder, thus achieve better results. Training is where most of the doping occurs. Yet Sky seem to do better than anyone else by merely going for a swim. Can someone please remind me, 2+2=?

 

[Archibald]

Re: Re:

Even their most corrupt on the take journos cant after 5 yeaes come up with one example of how sky actually revolutionized training in the sport. I think that is telling.

warm down rides on the turbos
so good, everyone's doing it now


although previously only done during the night to keep your blood thin, no?

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Good grief. 25 years of training data explain Sky's dominance, so what explains their utter crappiness in 2010?

What a *** argument.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Is it just me, or does Porte look skinnier in the arms?
If I look at elite swimmers, their arms are solid, not skinny.

How does Porte swim 20-27km/week and lose weight in his arms? I realise this is not the same level as an elite swimmer, but still cannot reconcile exercising a muscle group and having it shrink.

I do know cortisone will help catabolise muscle.
I do know, for example, T Hamilton would get home from a big ride, have some soda water and go to bed, not eating, allowing his body to eat itself to lose weight, and using EPO to sustain blood levels and most likely heart muscle mass.

 

[mrhender]

He looks veeeery skinny to me... Never seen him that skinny actually...

I don't know if they are planning on him to turn up at the Giro like a matchstick but would that not be a bit too risky?

I mean he will have very little body fat to burn and I can easily imagine him becoming fragile in the third week simply because the sustained effort of a GT and maybe cold/harsh weather will make his skinny body prone to illness thus he is ensured another bad day or two?

Is it just a balance between effort and risk of illness?

Is there some secret formula to avoid this?

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Yeah the side-on vision of him during that TT was a good inidcation of just how skinny he has become this year.

 

[sniper]

for the weight loss without loss of power we can speculate about AICAR again.
but it's a fair question: going out there without an ounce of body fat you would expect it would make him more susceptible to simple deseases like a cold/fever/chestinfection.

 

[May0maniac]

Re:

Yeah the side-on vision of him during that TT was a good inidcation of just how skinny he has become this year.

Apparently he was 59kg at the start of Paris-Nice.

 

[sniper]

that's ca. 4kg below his usual weight.
that's still a reasonable body mass index of 19.9.
Wiggins' body mass index when he weighed 69kg was 19.1.
didn't Froome weigh 64kg at some point? would have put his BMI at 18.7, just 0.2 away from being underweight.

(have there been riders riding with underweight, i.e. BMI below 18.5?)

 

[Night Rider]

Re:

for the weight loss without loss of power we can speculate about AICAR again.
but it's a fair question: going out there without an ounce of body fat you would expect it would make him more susceptible to simple deseases like a cold/fever/chestinfection.

Little Richie will get sick for sure during the giro at that weight.

I remember Doc Ferrari commenting during the 2013 Giro about other riders.

http://53x12.com/do/show?page=indepth.view&id=135

After nearly 1000 km under in the rain, the riders begin to pay the price.

Not only respiratory diseases but also muscle fatigue, tendinitis and digestive problems assaulted the more fragile athletes in the peloton.
Cyclists, in addition to food, ingest water and mud from the pavement, which often contains parasites: worm and protozoa infection are definitely not uncommon, draining the energies well beyond the physiological fatigue of a stage race.

And it is riders such as Wiggins and Hesjedal, along with Froome and Gesink, the prototypes of the latest generation of riders whose fragility I had already pointed out (see comment for the TdF of 07/24/12), that are the first to pay the price for such weather conditions, inevitably having to quit the Giro .
Physically very tall and perhaps too thin, they are more exposed to wind and cold compared to more compact and less taut athletes.

 

[Gung Ho Gun]

Re:

for the weight loss without loss of power we can speculate about AICAR again.
but it's a fair question: going out there without an ounce of body fat you would expect it would make him more susceptible to simple deseases like a cold/fever/chestinfection.

Nah, he lost all that weight because he finally stopped eating pizza
According to Belgian newspapers that is