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Tadej Pogacar and Mauro Giannetti

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That's because traditionally you had to be good at TTs as well to be competitive in the Tour. This new phenomenon of small, featherweight riders like Pogacar, Vingegaard and Remco cranking out faster flat TTs than the big, tanky specialists is indicative of some next-level alien mutant gear being used. How the f*** are they producing all those watts?

One of the best time trialists of all times is Bernard Hinault, Hinault was like a cm shorter and a kg lighter than Pogacar. If you take the PCS data, than Hinault is basically the lightest of the all time greats.
 
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tbf the people worshipping Lance were 99% American with no context of the sport so i would say they were actually way dumber. but cycling fans on the whole, absolutely not.

Sky had nouveau Brits who'd never watched a bike race before (Chris Boardman was long since forgotten) fight tooth & nail for the 'believability' of Wiggins & Froome.

New fans who want superheroes, naïve fans who believe in miracles, chauvinistic fans who back their own national heroes & biased fans who think their guy is the Mr Cleanz of cycling whilst the guys who beat him are filthy cheats.

That's the usual patchwork of those who get agitated at doping allegations against their favorite riders.

I mean why can't we just call a spade a spade? Visma & UAE treat fans like suckers... & they're by & large absolutely spot on. It's an easy sell when 'disbelievers' are labelled grouchy party-poopers.
 
wonder if Daniel Lloyd will bring this up at some point? since he likes posting outrageous Pogacar stats for twitter engagement.

View: https://x.com/ammattipyoraily/status/1814352481154904359


7 minutes? yeah the stage was much easier (with the same exact last 120k), but 7 minutes??? on two of the foremost EPO pioneers.
Over 30 years ago. Yawn.

Things get better and improve naturally. It is just the evolution of everything. ;)
 
wonder if Daniel Lloyd will bring this up at some point? since he likes posting outrageous Pogacar stats for twitter engagement.

View: https://x.com/ammattipyoraily/status/1814352481154904359


7 minutes? yeah the stage was much easier (with the same exact last 120k), but 7 minutes??? on two of the foremost EPO pioneers.

If Gee takes 4, he might as well take 7. I guess.

But the differences are so astronomical in comparison with the 90ies right now. I mean how do guys who were around for a while in the "clean" age cope with this. I am looking at Thomas e.g., who pushed his best ever watts last year and was around when 6.0 watts/kg for 30 minutes would get you pretty far, now Georg Zimmerman is saying that's his level.

I mean: if you teleport Pogacar in say the 2013 Tour, he wins by 30 minutes probably, doing 3 100km+ solos along the way. To me that one hears so little out of the Peloton about this is a clear indication that the new stuff is widespread.
 
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If Gee takes 4, he might as well take 7. I guess.

But the differences are so astronomical in comparison with the 90ies right now. I mean how do guys who were around for a while in the "clean" age cope with this. I am looking at Thomas e.g., who pushed his best ever watts last year and was around when 6.0 watts/kg for 30 minutes would get you pretty far, now Georg Zimmerman is saying that's his level.

I mean: if you teleport Pogacar in say the 2013 Tour, he wins by 30 minutes probably, doing 3 100km+ solos along the way. To me that one hears so little out of the Peloton about this is a clear indication that the new stuff is widespread.
I think a lot of riders are using altitude and Spanish privacy laws to mask blood manipulation ... but it's degrees. For the rich teams they're doing it to a much larger extent.
 
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It's funny thinking back to those years where a climbing record would come up and it would be something from the 90s that you knew the current riders wouldn't get close to, like the records of Flo-Jo etc in athletics. A memory from a darker time, that the commentators would try to avoid mentioning.

But the way things have changed in the last few years, with bike tech and porridge, they'll all be obliterated in due course.
 
It's funny thinking back to those years where a climbing record would come up and it would be something from the 90s that you knew the current riders wouldn't get close to, like the records of Flo-Jo etc in athletics. A memory from a darker time, that the commentators would try to avoid mentioning.

But the way things have changed in the last few years, with bike tech and porridge, they'll all be obliterated in due course.
Rolled oats are that much better than Wheaties I guess.
 
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Ah plus ca change.

I think the main obvious difference between Lance and Pog, is that one has oodles of charm and the other is a ***. This might explain why people are prepared to shrug their shoulders and watch the fun.
Lance is actually pretty charismatic and always has been. He's charismatic in that *** jock, type-a personality way, someone that would definitely participate in bullying. But he's pretty fun to listen to at the same time.
 
Lance is actually pretty charismatic and always has been. He's charismatic in that *** jock, type-a personality way, someone that would definitely participate in bullying. But he's pretty fun to listen to at the same time.
Well, I'm a subscriber now because he/they have unique insights. And, as he says. He has changed his views. He's entertaining in the same way as Clarkson is entertaining.... but only because they have a Hincapie/James May in the room. I'm watching now and I think he is right.
And maybe Pogacar's charm won't carry him too far now.
 
Pogi doesn't seem like the brightest kid, I think it would be fairly easy to trip him up into spilling something ... like asking him "Others have noted what a big difference altitude training makes. Once you got to 60% HC with all your altitude training, what kind of difference did that make to your performance?"
If he isn't the brightest it means he can be on stuff he has no idea about :O
 
Pogi doesn't seem like the brightest kid, I think it would be fairly easy to trip him up into spilling something ... like asking him "Others have noted what a big difference altitude training makes. Once you got to 60% HC with all your altitude training, what kind of difference did that make to your performance?"

I don't know what is HC. Do you mean HC climbs? After 60% of them the difference is still small as it's the start of my attack. Porridge is crucial to my performance BTW.