State of Peloton 2023

[Nick2413]

If you could get there simply by pushing the existing stuff to the extreme we would have seen that way earlier.

This is a great point! They've likely tried a lot of different methods with the past PEDs, now they're onto something new.


The riding is crazy, noboby drops the entire peloton day after day on pan y agua. Nobody.

That implies the bottleneck is in the doping itself, rather than corruption. I believe all the key stakeholders are complicit and factors like money/power/influence are what get you a seat at the table in today’s cycling, not some fancy new drugs, although those probably play some role as well.

 

[fbjim]

im a big fan of the current peloton state. this may have to do with my first tours de france i seriously followed being 2006/2007 and one of my favorite memories being Ricardo Ricco going up the Aspin on rocket boosters

 

[pastronef]

Part of me wonders if any of this is related to Tom Dumoulin retiring early - an unwillingness to participate / accept the associated risks.

well, Dumo morphed from Kittel's train man and TT specialist into skinny climber beating Quintana and winning the Giro. so he took the risks he needed to take. the Dumoulin good boy narrative always felt weird for me

 

[Red Rick]

im a big fan of the current peloton state. this may have to do with my first tours de france i seriously followed being 2006/2007 and one of my favorite memories being Ricardo Ricco going up the Aspin on rocket boosters

If the bottleneck is corruption, then why 1) does it continue to go faster every single year and 2) was there such a clear divide of have and have nots in the GTs in 2020. Why were the big money team in Ineos getting left behind like crazy in the 2020 Tour before suddenly flying and winning the Giro with 7 stages along with it?

 

[Mayomaniac]

If the bottleneck is corruption, then why 1) does it continue to go faster every single year and 2) was there such a clear divide of have and have nots in the GTs in 2020. Why were the big money team in Ineos getting left behind like crazy in the 2020 Tour before suddenly flying and winning the Giro with 7 stages along with it?

I guess with pretty much only internal testing for large parts of 2020 out of competition the teams were able to really figure out how to optimize blood doping without triggering the bio passport. The teams at the top, those who were already winning and dominating, probably had less incentive to take risks and really experiment with stuff. Of course this doesn't explain Dennis going getting dropped by meh climbers on Madonna di Campiglio to Stelvio Dennis one day later, the supercharging of domestiques is a bit wild (see McNulty suddenly flying last year at the Tour right after Majka got injured and he got dropped by other breakaway riders).

 

[fbjim]

riders being strong on one day and weak the next, I'm pretty sure, predates the dope era. there's a reason there's a specific French slang term for the phenomenon where a rider having a strong race has one day where he gets dropped and looks ba.d

there's also the matter of the generational shift. whatever teams are doing, maybe it's better if you do it with fresh young riders rather than the riders of the 2010s before the big shift with Pogacar/Vingegaard/Remco (and even WvA and VDP) coming in.

 

[fbjim]

now what I do find interesting is that doping is often more associated with old athletes overperforming. Look at the likes of tennis's eternal superstars for a good example of this. so maybe we have a combination of a) younger riders getting "good training" at a younger age, and b) the age of the idea of the GC rider having to be a knowledgeable veteran being behind us, as opposed to pure peak athleticism.

 

[Salvarani]

now what I do find interesting is that doping is often more associated with old athletes overperforming. Look at the likes of tennis's eternal superstars for a good example of this. so maybe we have a combination of a) younger riders getting "good training" at a younger age, and b) the age of the idea of the GC rider having to be a knowledgeable veteran being behind us, as opposed to pure peak athleticism.

I think the gap between a rider going into pros to best riders, was a lot bigger back then. There was also more of hierarchy type of thing going on in a lot teams. You had to earn leadership and the climate was a lot tougher.

 

[Red Rick]

I guess with pretty much only internal testing for large parts of 2020 out of competition the teams were able to really figure out how to optimize blood doping without triggering the bio passport. The teams at the top, those who were already winning and dominating, probably had less incentive to take risks and really experiment with stuff. Of course this doesn't explain Dennis going getting dropped by meh climbers on Madonna di Campiglio to Stelvio Dennis one day later, the supercharging of domestiques is a bit wild (see McNulty suddenly flying last year at the Tour right after Majka got injured and he got dropped by other breakaway riders).

Pigs started flying as early as February that year.

In addition how did knowledge of how to push it super far without triggering the passport transfer between teams so quickly when by all means you'd want to keep it as secret as possbile.

 

[veganrob]

well, Dumo morphed from Kittel's train man and TT specialist into skinny climber beating Quintana and winning the Giro. so he took the risks he needed to take. the Dumoulin good boy narrative always felt weird for me

Yep. He did what he had to do to win Giro and be threats in other GT's. I think it burnt him out though. Tough physically and mentally to keep that up.

 

[the delgados]

Can we all agree that the best young rider classification is redundant?
It seems that human evolution has reached a point where 23 year-old riders now win grand tours.

 

[Izzyeviel]

I agree. Bring back the combination jersey!

 

[Rob5091]

https://velo.outsideonline.com/road...are-the-highest-in-the-modern-era-of-cycling/
Zach Nehr gets his calculator out and has a crack at some w/kg.

 

[Riek s]

https://velo.outsideonline.com/road...are-the-highest-in-the-modern-era-of-cycling/
Zach Nehr gets his calculator out and has a crack at some w/kg.

yeah those numbers are completely rediculous.

 

[nayr497]

Wow! Pretty wild.

"The power numbers from this year’s Tour de France are the highest in the modern era of cycling. 7w/kg for 20 minutes is the new standard for GC contenders, and many of these performances come after 3500 kJs of work, at 1000-2000 meters above sea level, and in 30+°C (86+°F) temperatures."

 

[FrontHeadlock]

Can we all agree that the best young rider classification is redundant?
It seems that human evolution has reached a point where 23 year-old riders now win grand tours.

I think you should lose the ability to win Best Young Rider once you have won a jersey (at the end) in a Grand Tour.

 

[FrontHeadlock]

now what I do find interesting is that doping is often more associated with old athletes overperforming. Look at the likes of tennis's eternal superstars for a good example of this. so maybe we have a combination of a) younger riders getting "good training" at a younger age, and b) the age of the idea of the GC rider having to be a knowledgeable veteran being behind us, as opposed to pure peak athleticism.

Tennis has neither teams nor a lot of money unless you are very elite (and even at that, a player in the top 2-3 winning lots of big titles makes leaps and bounds more than the player in the next 5-6 who makes SFs).

So in tennis at least, it makes sense that the older players with the most to spend might be best positioned to dope. Otherwise you are perhaps relying on national tennis federations.

 

[SHAD0W93]

I'm not suggesting any conspiracy theory here, but it seems odd that Cavendish broke his collarbone after crashing in a relatively benign part of a stage where nothing was happening other than a touch of wheels after a feed zone.
In the past, that guy would get up after getting run over by a Mack Truck and finish the stage.
Maybe he was just looking for a way out after realizing he lacked both a team and wherewithal to duke it out by himself. No doubt his bones are brittle after sustaining multiple serious injuries, so I don't blame him for calling it a day.
Youtube awaits!
Just kidding. He is one of few who managed to make enough money during his career to consider a second job.

Cav said he landed on where he had the previous break from 2014 TdF crash

 

[Cookster15]

https://velo.outsideonline.com/road...are-the-highest-in-the-modern-era-of-cycling/
Zach Nehr gets his calculator out and has a crack at some w/kg.

These numbers are incredible. Also notable that Vingo and Pog were a full watt per kilo higher than Michael Woods on Puy de Dôme? But this also suggests not everyone has the same sauce?

Move over freaks of the 90s. Yes, we need to know how these numbers are possible without triggering adverse findings via the passport?

 

[Rob5091]

More on the "peloton à deux vitesses"
https://velo.outsideonline.com/road...rance/catch-pogacar-vingegaard-two-tier-race/
“If you see what they did on Tourmalet, the gap they made in 3km riding, that’s normally the difference uphill between the sprinters and the GC guys,” Bora Hansgrohe team manager Ralph Denk told Velo.

“They make it look like Mario Cipollini climbing with Marco Pantani.”

 

[Riek s]

More on the "peloton à deux vitesses"
https://velo.outsideonline.com/road...rance/catch-pogacar-vingegaard-two-tier-race/
“If you see what they did on Tourmalet, the gap they made in 3km riding, that’s normally the difference uphill between the sprinters and the GC guys,” Bora Hansgrohe team manager Ralph Denk told Velo.

“They make it look like Mario Cipollini climbing with Marco Pantani.”

Yeah, the article begins with how the peleton vows to bridge the gap, but doesn't say how. :')


At the end they talk about future prospects... but all in all, to compete they should push similar W/kg... to win they should push more. So unless we get a bust and everything is getting back to a more feasable level... its hard to see riders pushing more and more W/kg.. (but both aliens are pushing more W than last year so who knows..)

 

[Rob5091]

It was interesting that Pantani was used as an example. Otherwise, it could turn into what has happened with soccer, a few big teams with lots of money winning all the big competitions.

 

[Krzysztof_O]

It's different now than in 2020. Then the whole peleton was very fast (even Pog & Rog didn't have big advantage over the rest except PDBF by Pog). Now there are two guys who make the rest look like amateurs.

 

[pastronef]

a French MPCC team wins its 2nd TDF 2023 stage. one of the hardest stages, crazy fast right from the start, few minutes ahead of the fastest time schedule. #mpcc

 

[Samu Cuenca]

Based purely on how I think they come across on and off the bike, I believe the Major 2's respective introductions to the world of PEDs must have went something like this:

Pogačar will have been all like "Wow, this stuff can make me ride faster and make my hair glow twice as much? I want to try one of everything please" before he began to school people on the correct pronunciation of Erythropoietin shortly after.

Vingegaard on the other hand will have been hestitant and scared ar first, wondering if he should call his girlfriend or his mother and grandmother, but he quite quickly succumbed to peer pressure, telling himself it was okay because he was used to working with fishy stuff. Being introduced to it by a doctor also made him believe, that following a guy in a white outfit would always be the right thing to do.