State of the Peloton 2024

[Ripper]

Take me back to sagan, Alaphilippe and kwiatoski on the poggio. Stannard vs terprstrA in the rain. Pinot vs Nibali on civiglio.

These days I am embarrassed to be fan of the sport. July is my least favourite month

The 2019 Tour de France is looking pretty clean-ish compared to now.

 

[Rico044]

The 2019 Tour de France is looking pretty clean-ish compared to now.

The freaking 2004 tour looks clean compared to this! I don't understand how they are SMASHING records set by riders pre-epo test. Meaning these previous record holders almost certainly had hcts right around 50%. Sure....bike tech and nutrition are better, but that doesn't come close to explaining the performances on these steep climbs. Either its mechanical (god forbid) or they are racing with hcts near 50 along with some other form of enhancement (something at the mitochondria level?).

 

[Rob5091]

As CN and I have written before this feels like 1999 and "Tour of Renewal" all over again. Everybody's clean and winning by staying at altitiude for 3 weeks. BS! If Vingegaard had not crashed at Itzulia think of what we might have been witness to.

 

[Penninepeddler]

As CN and I have written before this feels like 1999 and "Tour of Renewal" all over again. Everybody's clean and winning by staying at altitiude for 3 weeks. BS! If Vingegaard had not crashed at Itzulia think of what we might have been witness to.

Serge Pauwels yesterday said, with a straight face:

"The 90s, that was the era of super fuel. That has been replaced by altitude training."

Lmfao. Yeh, altitude training definitely gives the same/better results as EPO... not like altitude training has been around in pro sports for 30 years now.

 

[zlev11]

Maybe these types of performances will cause race organizers to use some unknown climbs in the future? Because I think Alpe d'Huez and Ventoux may be no go zones after this. (Although yesterday already tells the story given that Plateau de Beille was a commonly used climb in the past)

I was thinking about this last night. what will happen when someone obliterates the Alpe d'Huez record? a climb with years and years of history through all different doping eras. the media wont be able to shove it under the rug as easily as they have with these performances so far.

 

[zlev11]

Pantani didn’t attack the climb the way they did yesterday. Yesterday’s gap to Pantani was larger than the one Pantani had to super climber Bobby Julich in 1998 at 1:30.

how do you explain how much faster they were than 2007 then? Contador and Rasmussen are two of the best climbers of their generation and we know for a fact those riders were blood doping, with no biopassport limitations.

 

[Ilmaestro99]

"The 90s, that was the era of super fuel. That has been replaced by altitude training."

Lmfao. Yeh, altitude training definitely gives the same/better results as EPO... not like altitude training has been around in pro sports for 30 years now

Yes. Guess who it was who started doing the training camps at the hotel on Teide. And guess which decade

 

[Rackham]

Serge Pauwels yesterday said, with a straight face:

"The 90s, that was the era of super fuel. That has been replaced by altitude training."

Lmfao. Yeh, altitude training definitely gives the same/better results as EPO... not like altitude training has been around in pro sports for 30 years now.

The French football team 'prepared' for the 1998 World Cup in Tignes.

That's with all their Juventus players (Deschamps, Zidane) & others who played in Italy who were well versed in PED culture.

Pauwels is clearly happy with the scraps he's getting right now (his wage, basically) & the omerta reigns supreme.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

Yes. Guess who it was who started doing the training camps at the hotel on Teide. And guess which decade

Was it me?

Or actually I didn't visit Teide when I went to Tenerife. Guess I dodged a bullet there, since it could have been like going to Chernobyl in late April 1986.

 

[zlev11]

the outcry will never come from the media. there are no Paul Kimmage's anymore, they have all been carefully removed from the cycling media. now everyone is a cheerleader with skin in the game (their own jobs). the outcry will have to come from inside the peloton, either someone speaking up and revealing what is going on, or someone going to the authorities behind the scenes.

 

[Monoxidator]

Imagine if instead of traditional "altitude training" you could dose a poisonous gas in a precisely controlled way to progressively stress the body in the same way altitude training does. Instead of hoping for the best at 1800 meters, you could modulate the effects, accumulate them and progressively overload the system until the adaptations are beyond even what dosing with EPO could do.

The hemoglobin in the blood increases, but slowly and consistently in such a way that doesn't trigger any crazy alarms. There's plausible deniability of "altitude training"... it's the perfect way around the system.

Of course there's the dark side of the whole situation when all of a sudden guys start getting heart attacks in their late 20's because their blood is thicker than honey. Or a kid trying to turn pro hears about it and has to go to hospital or dies due to not having the budget and controls of a big team.

 

[Slavique Nuke]

It's getting quite comical that guys keep comparing Pantani's record to yesterday. All you have to do is use your brain and open the video of the 1998 stage on one of the video sharing sites.

Look how they were racing there before Pantani's attack, like a big herd of cows.

Compare this to yesterday's stage. It's like a completely different sport. Where Jorgenson drilled in front completely from the start of the climb until only the very few best were left and then for many kilometres Vingegaard paced at maximum. The two efforts are not even comparable as Pantani attacked alone. Yesterday's record was a once in a lifetime situation. It's hard to imagine again a race situation where Vingegaard paces Pogacar for more than 5 kilometres with maximum effort. Or vice versa.

 

[zlev11]

there's always one

 

[Monoxidator]

LOL

 

[Rob5091]

Pogi Porridge (tm) "The Breakfast of Champions" and tyres ...
https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/th...ition-at-tour-de-france-after-record-display/

"For example, six years ago, when I started, it was a lot about carbohydrates, we had white pasta, white rice and maybe omelette for breakfast," he said. "Now we have more normal breakfast, like rice porridge, oatmeal, pancakes, bread. I think this little thing already makes a difference.

"The bikes are also so much faster, especially the tyres. The tyres make the biggest difference from what we had six years ago or 10 years ago, and the wheels, aerodynamics, frames, it's just amazing how different the bike is now."

Not only at the Tour ...

The first three riders on the stage all finished inside Pantani's 1998 time, after all, while this season alone has seen record-setting average speeds at six Classics, including Milan-San Remo, the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix.

 

[FroomeWagon]

the outcry will never come from the media. there are no Paul Kimmage's anymore, they have all been carefully removed from the cycling media. now everyone is a cheerleader with skin in the game (their own jobs). the outcry will have to come from inside the peloton, either someone speaking up and revealing what is going on, or someone going to the authorities behind the scenes.

I think riders (and their handlers) have also learned not to be an ass about winning (aka Armstrong). In general, fans enjoy Pogi, Vingo, and Remco and consequently they will be able to continue doing what they are doing unless they start acting like jerks. Pogi shaking Vingo's hand (Stage 11) when Vingo beat him or Remco congratulating Pogi yesterday during the warm down makes it a lot harder to dislike these guys.

Just don't piss off the French public by rubbing their face in it and everyone will probably be ok.

 

[Mayomaniac]

This is why we can't have nice things, as soon as they relax a bit about Antidoping the same old guys from back in the day (who are now/still running teams) take it too far.
The only way this arms race ends is big police raids or if people start dropping dead because they took it too far.

 

[Valv.Piti]

there's always one

Its a good point. Yesterday was an absolutely perfect situation for a record setting time and a scenario you'd rarely ever see on such a climb in TdF.

Not saying there's no doping, but what he's saying is obviously correct. I think posters in the clinic generally have to not just scream doping at everything without ALSO factoring in the specific racing situation that led to this performance. The pacing from bottom to the top was absolutely perfect and was in essence a TTT - 5 km of Jorgenson, Vingegaard and Pog each going all out in all of the intervals being at front.

It is different to 1998. Pantani WOULD have gone significantly faster if the raced played out the same way it did in 1998 from bottom to top. How many seconds or minutes? I don't know, but it was obviously advantage Pog. Just as you really can't compare it to the stop and go racing which happened in 2007 and especially 2011 and 2015. MR and Contador could also have gone significantly faster (not close to Pog, mind) had they raced like yesterday.

 

[zlev11]

Its a good point. Yesterday was an absolutely perfect situation for a record setting time and a scenario you'd rarely ever see on such a climb in TdF.

Not saying there's no doping, but what he's saying is obviously correct. I think posters in the clinic generally have to not just scream doping at everything without ALSO factoring in the specific racing situation that led to this performance. The pacing from bottom to the top was absolutely perfect and was in essence a TTT - 5 km of Jorgenson, Vingegaard and Pog each going all out in all of the intervals being at front.

It is different to 1998. Pantani WOULD have gone significantly faster if the raced played out the same way it did in 1998 from bottom to top.

Pantani went all out from like 11k to go. this argument might hold water if the gap was 20-30 seconds but he crushed it by FOUR MINUTES. the whole previous part of the stage was ridden extremely hard too.

 

[Valv.Piti]

Pantani went all out from like 11k to go. this argument might hold water if the gap was 20-30 seconds but he crushed it by FOUR MINUTES. the whole previous part of the stage was ridden extremely hard too.

I say the pacing CONTRIBUTED to the difference, not that it is all the difference ofc. Thats should be very clear if you chose to read my post. How much time? We simply don't know, but its incredibly disingenious just to shrug it off. Thats not how it works, and you can definitely do better than that. Every racing situation is different, but find to riders that can pace you to 5,4 km in 1998 in Pantani's preferred tempo and you and I know that the time obviously would be better than was it was that day.

 

[zlev11]

I say the pacing CONTRIBUTED to the difference, not that it is all the difference ofc. Thats should be very clear if you chose to read my post. How much time? We simply don't know, but its incredibly disingenious just to shrug it off. Thats not how it works, and you can definitely do better than that. Every racing situation is different, but find to riders that can pace you to 5,4 km in 1998 in Pantani's preferred tempo and you and I know that the time obviously would be better.

sure the pacing contributed but they still have to, you know, ride that pace. going slower at the bottom allows you to go faster at the top, especially since Pantani was alone taking time, he was going as hard as possible. i do agree that him sitting on Vingegaard for about 5k helped him a bit, but i think maybe that gave him 30-40 seconds maximum? still would've been ridiculous. it's really just a semantical argument.

 

[Rob5091]

If yesterday was a one off, then sure how it was raced meant fast times, but this whole year has been faster and faster races. That times from the EPO-era are being beaten leads one to think that it might not be EPO but it can not be just porridge and tyres.

 

[Valv.Piti]

sure the pacing contributed but they still have to, you know, ride that pace. going slower at the bottom allows you to go faster at the top, especially since Pantani was alone taking time, he was going as hard as possible. i do agree that him sitting on Vingegaard for about 5k helped him a bit, but i think maybe that gave him 30-40 seconds maximum? still would've been ridiculous. it's really just a semantical argument.

I'd think between 1-1,5 minutes difference in draft and pacing at the speeds they were going getting paced for about 11 km. But thats just a guess, Im sure some people know a lot more about that than me.

I do agree that the performance was completely out of this world. Just saying that the race situations for both climbs were very different, a variable like everything else like the rest of the stage, previous stages, the weather, wind etc. etc. and we all have to account for that when comparing these times. Its a tad too easy just to look at a time and scream doping, even though in this instance, its probably not too far off given the stratospheric level. At least that can help us understand the difference a bit better, thats all.

 

[Slavique Nuke]

Pantani went all out from like 11k to go. this argument might hold water if the gap was 20-30 seconds but he crushed it by FOUR MINUTES. the whole previous part of the stage was ridden extremely hard too.

You seem to struggle with even the most basic physics. How can a guy who soloed for almost 12 kilometres be faster than a guy who was paced by a two-time TdF winner at maximum effort until the last 5 kilometres?

+ I didn't measure the time but I think Jorgenson already had a massive lead over the 1998 peloton when Pantani attacked.

 

[Tim Cahill]

Something must be wrong somewhere, some kind of freak tailwind or an error everyone is making in the calculations, I just don't get it at all, this stage was the most absurd outlier in what has become a packed field in the past few years.

I can accept that maybe like a 5% increase in performance on final climb values over about 10 years could possibly be reached by numerous small improvements in multiple areas.

How can they explain a 10% increase in performance at the top level of the sport from this time last year? This is even with last years displays looking comically dodgy.

Not just that, but also a massive improvement upon the numbers on the final climb that they posted in an easier mountain stage the day before.

I've watched the stage, this and Pantani's record, the way it was raced can't amount for that much of a differential, maybe if it was a minute then fine, race conditions and all that, but almost 4 minutes, wtf. Like, this might've been the hardest raced mountain stage start-finish I can remember and they still did that on the last climb, it's like extreme fatigue is somehow making them stronger.