Are these gaps so different than what we’ve seen historically? Aren’t MANY riders beating these previous records? Isn’t every stage raced at shocking speeds? At some point some guys are just better. Seems to me what we’re seeing maps quite well to widespread use of…something.
Most plausible explanation I’ve heard yet.
If it’s accessible to all the teams, and these guys aren’t truly harming themselves, I actually don’t have a huge issue with it.
Professionalisation should mean gaps between riders would be shrinking, surely? If everything we hear about nutrition & equipment was true, then there should be a real battle at the top of the sport because it would equalize levels, i.e. whereas in the past the gaps in the Merckx era (for example) really were huge because pro dopers were riding against a bunch of semi pros... who were probably also doping but not as efficiently. Rinse repeat 1980's, 1990's & 2000's.
We basically haven't seen gaps like these & performance differences of this sort since 2009, IMO. That's when Contador walked the Tour in Bruyneel's team before he lost a level or two for reasons we know.
The real killer (to use a Sean Kelly-ism) & total unmasking of the man behind the curtain is today on Stage 15 there's nowhere for the people who believe in miracles to hide. It was a hard multi col Pyrenean slog (this has often been used to handwave mutant performances in modern cycling by claiming unipuerto stages favor record breaking), it was raced super hard from the beginning with Visma on the front (again, stages raced at a slower speed behind a breakaway have been used to minimize ascent speeds by claiming the riders were fresh) & this stage came the day after another Pyrenean stage at the end of week 2 just before rest day.
Aka on paper, the stage was set for for fatigue to slow the riders. They should be tired.
I'll speculate here but in old currency (aka dope terminology from 20 years ago) what happened was a blood bag bonanza. In that scenario Vinge did his last night in order to save his TdF after yesterday's defeat, hence why Visma drilled it today. I can only imagine what Pog has done to be at this level. The mind boggles.