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Tadej Pogacar and Mauro Giannetti

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PdB was maybe Visma-LAB reaction to Pla d'Adet. It's possible that they planned it for the last weekend but decided to react immediately not to lose more time. To their astonishement it didn't work!
I can imagine that they haven't been left as shell shocked in the Visma control room since PDBF 2020. The plan almost worked to perfection but the only thing you can't control is the opposition.
 
I don’t think any of the top 3 guys are remotely surprised at each other. Whatever method is being used, they’re all in on it. Unless people think 3 or 4 different new methods suddenly emerged overnight.

Visma didn’t think they have some secret sauce for stage 15 that would dominate Pog, they knew he was doing it too but still had to go as hard as possible to try taking time back.

Maybe they used it to a lesser degree on stage 14, but since stage 15 was obviously going to be massive they all went all in. Only question is if they’ll be synced up on the final few stages as well, perhaps they can’t max it out every stage or don’t want to risk it.
 
Vingegaard also beat Pantani's record by a big margin (and after a horrible injury in April), hell even Evenepoel beat Pantani's record by over 30 seconds (sure he had some very good climbing performances in the past - 2022 Vuelta, 2023 Catalunya etc. - but I did not expect him to beat Pantani's record). The times on PdB just look so absurd to me.

Also I think Pla d'Adet was already very suspect (suspect even compared to their previous years I mean), and clearly better than Pogacar 2020 Peyresourde (and they already improved year to year since then but had a massive jump this year) but PdB was next level.
I wasn't just talking about Pogacar, even the watts of Evenepoel were ridiculous.
 
Armstrong was clean, compared with sunday.

It was incredible but let's not pretend that your hero was more believable. 3 months after leaving ICU and after 6 weeks of preparations he has his best ever performance and a huuuge leap compared to Saturday: clearly planned by Visma to destroy Pogi, even Jorgenson was suddenly thermonuclear, On top of that 68 seconds don't reflect the difference in performance between the mutants: the difference between them was actually smaller (due to Vingo pacing for 5km and obviously losing more energy plus he cooked himself with an unoptimal pace). Either you consistently believe in miracles and "taking a lot of stuff" by Vingo since his crash or not but don't suddenly change into an anti-doping guy when your hero loses.
 
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I think only some kind of blood doping or motors could so suddenly improve performances to such a degree. I've always dismissed motors up until now for climbing performances, as blood doping has been sufficient to explain what we've witnessed, but this time it's seriously WTAF.
Not that its technically not possible but what I always think with motors - isn't it the most easiest thing in the world to detect them?
 
Froome even cleaner (and I've argued for years with mental people foaming from their mouths ffs...)
Froome is in the realm of plausibility for me, at least in terms of not using super powerful PEDs...he probably used some stuff to cut weight. His watts were never insane, don't think he ever did over 6 w/kg for more than 20 min.
Speeds generally nose dived during the Sky era. Then speeds became insane after Covid.
 
So much talk of "incredible naturally low lactate levels"

Talk about "specialised training that has come on leaps and bounds quickly"

Insane 100 rpm+ cadences on climbs

Is this 1999?


Also this made me laugh so *** much from Guimard:


“Today’s riders, at the same age as in the past, have between 50 and 100 watts more power. Over the last 25 years, the population has grown by about 20 cm.”

Has he got dementia?

Average male height of European men born in:

1978: 177.03 cm
1987: 177.20 cm
1996: 177.22 cm