What was Ala on for today? :O After this year losing so often I am in huge disbelief. And I am an Ala fan :O
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This when I am going to ask; in the past they doped really young. How is that nowadays? When do they start?
That's actually not true. Vaughters said he was shocked when he discovered how young Dekker was when he'd started doping as that was not the norm as he understood it.
Vaughters says a LOT of things.
I thought I read somewhere that doping among juniors in lower series is a problem, but I can't remember where I read it. (I've read Dekker's book and Macur's book about Armstrong, but I doubt it was in either.) Might even have been here in the forum. 
Shots fired, i.e. Romain Bardet got a little angsty on Twitter last night:
View: https://twitter.com/romainbardet/status/1444380549817176069
"When I see these images of the Tour of Emilia, one of my favorite races, I feel I didn't climb the same side of the San Luca during those years (put simply, 2km at 10%), was it Moto-GP this year?"
...
View: https://twitter.com/romainbardet/status/1444380549817176069
"When I see these images of the Tour of Emilia, one of my favorite races, I feel I didn't climb the same side of the San Luca during those years (put simply, 2km at 10%), was it Moto-GP this year?"
...
Yet his climbing speeds at AG2R were not far behind the best last year and he was 4th on the gc, only 30sec down before his crash on stage 13 of the 2020 Tour.
If only he'd tweeted something like that last week after Alaphilippe's repeated nuclear digs in the world championship road race.
Not a chance though.
He was ahead of the stronger climbers (Pogacar, Landa, Porte, Uran, Yates, Lopez, mas) because of crosswinds.
Only ahead of him was Roglic, injured Bernal and guillaum Martin lol
Wait :O Is Bardet saying straight out he thinks Rogla had a motor in his bike yesterday????
Lmao they didn't even do a fast time on San Luca. They just did interval training and were relatively fresh for the final 500m.
definitely less fresh compared to other editions due to the relatively early selection
No if you wait until the final 500m 5% part of a 2km 10% climb ofcourse you can sprint like a crazy man much better than if you go all out from the bottom. That difference is a lot bigger than the difference from the earlier selection.
Romain Bardet is also being extremely disingenuous because this is Primoz Roglic, i.e. a rider everyone in the peloton knows has fast twitch muscles (which he also used when he was a ski jumper) & a lethal uphill sprint. It's almost a meme at this point (i.e. his rivals getting stomped on). So Bardet looks like a cretin to be honest when he's feigning "surprise" at something we've seen countless times over the past 2 years.
The main reason I reacted was because I didn't think riders openly said these things. I thought omerta was still the norm?
Every so often there's some bitterness & barely concealed accusations of wrongdoing posted on social media by a rider/ex rider.
Sometimes ostensibly (as Bradet just did & Stéphane Heulot did last year as well), more tacitly (like Thibaut Pinot who accused riders who use cortisone injections of basically doping) & sometimes way more subtly (like current riders such as Thomas De Gendt & others who say they're doing their "best numbers" & still getting dropped).
The peloton is one big dysfunctional (un)happy family.
Why the french riders and other french people are always crying? Just because there are riders better than the french riders, means that they are doped?!
Pinot liked Bardet's Tweet. And Alexandre Geniez i.e. a TotalEnergies rider who abandoned during the race on Saturday labelled it "Formula 1" on Strava: 167.2 km Ride Activity on 2 October 2021 by Alexandre G. on Strava
I wish it wasn't like this but it's indeed endemic among some riders/cycling commentators in this country & dates back to Festina 1998. It's a cultural aspect of the sport here, actually, i.e. moralism with themselves as the heroes.
Once they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar in the 1990's many decided they'd rain on everyone else's parade ad-infinitum. Think of it as the equivalent of Lance Armstrong fans who now roam around the internet shouting "all dopers!" at every winner.
Bardet, Pinot & their friends were raised in that sort of environment.
I honestly do tend to trust ex dopers that say that most are doping. Even if "most" or "everyone" could be everything from 30-80%. It's still enough that from a subjective point you can call it "everyone", especially if those who constantly wins have a rate like 40% or above.
I do follow Rasmussen. I don't find him trustworthy, and he's whiny, but when he has his talks about doping he doesn't feel completely off. (Debate is still out with me if I want to put him in the Armstrong full on narc corner. I haven't read his books yet. But the way Dekker described people in his book made me think Rasmussen wasn't a complete ***. Rather some other diagnosis.
(Narc = short for narcissist)
Armstrong I can't stand because too much narc. And I hate machoism so even Vaughters isn't fun for me to listen to, even if I want to read his book.
I still find the idea of motor doping weird. I believe it's more likely they're doing bloodsports and the other usual suspects.
An ex-doper saying everyone else is doping is often simply justifying their own doping. It is naïve to believe that the truth sets them free, especially in the face of their continued omertà on key elements of their own doping.
If you want to believe that most are doping you will, of course, believe those who play to that point of view, without critically questioning what they are saying and why they are saying it. Which makes you no better than those who willingly believe that all is well and the only people talking about doping are bitter, cynical, unable to keep up, or even the heroes of their own story trying to claim the moral high ground.
One of them being that Mark Padun is allegedly a member of the 6 liters club (ie his absolute VO2max is 6 L/min).
Vaughters implied that if Padun weighted 60 kg (incidentally that's his reported weight on PCS) his relative VO2max would be 100 ml/kg/min.
You can hear it yourself on the latest episode of the Cycling Podcast. According to Vaughters, nobody he has ever worked with is a 6 litres athlete. He says that LeMond and Indurain may have done a 6 liter test during their careers though.
Tbh those gas exchanges thingimajings have a huge amount of variance depending on the brand.
But I'm gonna guess it's not about that and Johnny V is talking out his rear again
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