Tadej Pogacar and Mauro Giannetti

[Raest]

No, I do not see the problem. Why do you assume that, in theory, we are able to pinpoint why and how someone is superior in a particular endeavor? Can you tell me how exactly Newton got to be Newton? I make no such assumption and even if, in theory, we would be able to accurately pinpoint a particular set of characteristics one might have to make him superior, we are certainly not at that stage of scientific development at the moment.

It's a textbook case of the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy. You assume that he is somehow genetically superior because he excels without any evidence to support this supposed genetic superiority and when challenged on the fact (all available evidence suggests that he is NOT that genetically superior) you claim that he has some nebulous genetic advantage only you don't know what it is. But there must exist because he wins (all the bloody time).

Edit: Every time this argument was made it turned out that the athlete in question was just better at cheating than anybody else.

 

[Salvarani]

When I look at Pog first and second year as a junior.

I just get the impression he needed to adapt, grow and learned from the experience from facing better competition. Improved from those sensations going into his second year, where he had much better success.

Same story in the U21s. First year was a learning curve and then in the second year he improved a lot. Did well in minor pro races, before winning Tour de l'Avenir.

That seems pretty natural to me.

There are also countless stories about that he was a very small kid, who developed physically later, but being laps ahead of other kids in local races in the small nation of Slovenia.

If the real talent and genetics was there, it is not strange that he improved through each season described like above. Coming from a small cycling nation and not training as a professional yet... there was just a slight delay. He needed to physically develop and he improved from getting to race internationally. Riding harder races and facing better competition. He grew stronger, which we can see through every year of his development.

 

[Raest]

This is not necessary. It can very well be that cycling capabilities do not develop linearly. What I mean is that it might be so that there is an inflection age after which a cyclist's capabilities rise with an exceptional rate (I am tempted to say exponentially ).

But Carlsen, Gauss, Euler, etc. (to use your previous argument) were earmarked to excel from a very young age. They were outliers as kids and teenagers. You can't have it both ways.

 

[Divergence]

It's a textbook case of the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy. You assume that he is somehow genetically superior because he excels without any evidence to support this supposed genetic superiority and when challenged on the fact (all available evidence suggests that he is NOT that genetically superior) you claim that he has some nebulous genetic advantage only you don't know what it is. But there must exist because he wins (all the bloody time).

Edit: Every time this argument was made it turned out that the athlete in question was just better at cheating than anybody else.

Well by that token you want to believe his cheating is vastly better than that of his rivals and you go with that assumption even though there is no evidence for it. It is kinda the same what you are doing with the difference that doping methods are fairly standardized and it is extremely improbable that Pog is the only one with the super sauce (if such a thing exists). What I am saying is that it is possible that such huge chasms in performance could be explained by having a better aptitude for the endeavor in question.

 

[Gianetti_Is_The_Goat]

Let's look at it logically.

We know a couple of things:
- Pog wasn't stellar until he signed for UAE in 2018.
- Mauro the Great has never played fair, not as a rider and not as a sports director and was called out by his own team's (!) press representative in 2008.
- He continued in the same way, as he was Menchovs and Cobo's sports director in 2011.
- In the era of 'specialization' and a global peloton, Pogacar dominates all season, on any terrain, in every discipline, something we have never see before. No, Valverde didn't even come close.
- UAE is basically a reboot of Lampre Merida which had numerous riders and staff convicted to actual jail sentences, one of them being Manuele Mori, who is now a member of... UAE.

For the believers I have the following questions,
- What are your most convincing arguments to argue in favour of Pogacar playing fair?
- What made Gianetti and Matxin suddenly ethically conscious?
- Why are people like Hauptmann and Mori part of UAE?

 

[Netserk]

The reality is the more of an outlier something is, the bigger the distance to its nearest neighbor is.

Depends on the distribution, not true for a normal one. Yes, the highest value in a given sample is further from the next than the 2nd is to the 3rd, but that distance decreases in a bigger or more selected sample. If the sample is two points, the expected difference is ~.8 standard deviations, and as the sample approaches an infinite amount of points, the expected differences between the two greatest values approaches 0.

 

[Divergence]

But Carlsen, Gauss, Euler, etc. (to use your previous argument) were earmarked to excel from a very young age. They were outliers as kids and teenagers. You can't have it both ways.

Well, as far as I know there is nothing extremely noteworthy about Euler and Newton in their early childhoods (when compared to other great mathematicians) and there is the sum of the natural numbers up to 100 as the only anecdote about Gauss's early childhood. But later....
Edit: Carlsen was a prodigy but again, who compared to other chess prodigies, nothing out of the ordinary up to age 12 or so.

 

[Raest]

Well by that token you want to believe his cheating is vastly better than that of his rivals and you go with that assumption even though there is no evidence for it. It is kinda the same what you are doing with the difference that doping methods are fairly standardized and it is extremely improbable that Pog is the only one with the super sauce (if such a thing exists). What I am saying is that it is possible that such huge chasms in performance could be explained by having a better aptitude for the endeavor in question.

I didn't write doping specifically, I wrote cheating. And you are correct that I cannot prove it but I have precedent and history to support my claim that his supremacy cannot be explained physiologically. By the process of elimination I conclude that is more likely to have an illicit advantage that nobody else has (which as happened before). Am I 100% certain? No. But it's the most likely explanation.

 

[Raest]

Well, as far as I know there is nothing extremely noteworthy about Euler and Newton in their early childhoods (when compared to other great mathematicians) and there is the sum of the natural numbers up to 100 as the only anecdote about Gauss's early childhood. But later....
Edit: Carlsen was a prodigy but again, who compared to other chess prodigies, nothing out of the ordinary up to age 12 or so.

Well people tended to be less diligent in recording intelligence anecdotes from one's childhood in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Bolded: Really? So he went from playing his first chess tournament at 8 years of age to GM at 12 and that's nothing out of the ordinary up to the age of 12? You have some high standards...

 

[Netserk]

Well people tended to be less diligent in recording intelligence anecdotes from one's childhood in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Bolded: Really? So he went from playing his first chess tournament at 8 years of age to GM at 12 and that's nothing out of the ordinary up to the age of 12? You have some high standards...

Without commenting on Carlsen specifically, the Wilson effect is well-established.

 

[Divergence]

Depends on the distribution, not true for a normal one. Yes, the highest value in a given sample is further from the next than the 2nd is to the 3rd, but that distance decreases in a bigger or more selected sample. If the sample is two points, the expected difference is ~.8 standard deviations, and as the sample approaches an infinite amount of points, the expected differences between the two greatest values approaches 0.

What you wrote is true but it is not applicable to the conversation. The number of samples stays fairly constant (even with the raise of population and interest in the sport the number of samples might grow an order of magnitude, but I doubt it would cause this difference of ordered statistics to reach its limit (even though it depends on the parameters of the distribution of course)). Additionally, we are probably talking about a multivariate (normal) distribution here and I do not know how the ordered statistics behave in this case (seems like a nice problem though ).

I didn't write doping specifically, I wrote cheating. And you are correct that I cannot prove it but I have precedent and history to support my claim that his supremacy cannot be explained physiologically. By the process of elimination I conclude that is more likely to have an illicit advantage that nobody else has (which as happened before). Am I 100% certain? No. But it's the most likely explanation.

OK, then agree to disagree. I believe it is more likely he is just ultra talented for the sport rather than him either having some superfueel nobody else has or him using a motor. To justify this I referenced some exceptional achievers above.

Well people tended to be less diligent in recording intelligence anecdotes from one's childhood in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Bolded: Really? So he went from playing his first chess tournament at 8 years of age to GM at 12 and that's nothing out of the ordinary up to the age of 12? You have some high standards...

Yes, I am comparing him to other top GMs who arguably had even better performances at ages 7 or 8 but did not reach Carlsen's heights later on.

Without commenting on Carlsen specifically, the Wilson effect is well-established.

I did not know the name Wilson Effect but I did know the twins study where their IQ tents towards the same value later on in life. However, IQ is an one-dimensional parameter (even though it may encompass many traits); bear in mind that we are talking about about a multivariate pdf here most likely.

 

[Notarobot]

What annoys me is the silent of the peleton. Back in the LA era riders knew they couldn't win TDF, but they had a fair shot at any other race. With this Poga dude there's nothing left, nothing. He gives no stages away, remember Jorgensen in last years TDF. That was totally unnecessary. Poga takes everything, other riders must feel horrible, they must know what's up.

 

[SHAD0W93]

What annoys me is the silent of the peleton. Back in the LA era riders knew they couldn't win TDF, but they had a fair shot at any other race. With this Poga dude there's nothing left, nothing. He gives no stages away, remember Jorgensen in last years TDF. That was totally unnecessary. Poga takes everything, other riders must feel horrible, they must know what's up.

Pogacar beating Jorgenson was to send a message to Visma that he is better than they thought.

 

[ashhutch1997]

What annoys me is the silent of the peleton. Back in the LA era riders knew they couldn't win TDF, but they had a fair shot at any other race. With this Poga dude there's nothing left, nothing. He gives no stages away, remember Jorgensen in last years TDF. That was totally unnecessary. Poga takes everything, other riders must feel horrible, they must know what's up.

Yeah that's worse than Lance Armstrong, he would regularly give away the yellow jersey (often to french riders) and would give stages away.

 

[Gianetti_Is_The_Goat]

What annoys me is the silent of the peleton. Back in the LA era riders knew they couldn't win TDF, but they had a fair shot at any other race. With this Poga dude there's nothing left, nothing. He gives no stages away, remember Jorgensen in last years TDF. That was totally unnecessary. Poga takes everything, other riders must feel horrible, they must know what's up.

He also sent a message to Evenepoel in FW. At the end of the day, this extreme arrogance could work against him. Are they going to prevent Ayuso from riding a GC in the TdF in het next 4 years? What about all the talented youngsters who can't aim for a win in MSR or PR until he has won it? What about Flanders, LBL or Lombardy? He reigns supreme for now, but how long can this last without opposition within the team?

 

[Notarobot]

Pogacar beating Jorgenson was to send a message to Visma that he is better than they thought.

But by that time JV was already minutes behind right? The guy (Poga) is just a worse bully than LA ever was. But he does it with a smile.

 

[Divergence]

Why should he not win whenever he can? Stage gifting is acceptable only to a teammate.

 

[Red Rick]

Let's look at it logically.

We know a couple of things:
- Pog wasn't stellar until he signed for UAE in 2018.
- Mauro the Great has never played fair, not as a rider and not as a sports director and was called out by his own team's (!) press representative in 2008.
- He continued in the same way, as he was Menchovs and Cobo's sports director in 2011.
- In the era of 'specialization' and a global peloton, Pogacar dominates all season, on any terrain, in every discipline, something we have never see before. No, Valverde didn't even come close.
- UAE is basically a reboot of Lampre Merida which had numerous riders and staff convicted to actual jail sentences, one of them being Manuele Mori, who is now a member of... UAE.

For the believers I have the following questions,
- What are your most convincing arguments to argue in favour of Pogacar playing fair?
- What made Gianetti and Matxin suddenly ethically conscious?
- Why are people like Hauptmann and Mori part of UAE?

Look at him, he basically looks like a puppy. He'd never do anything wrong.

 

[SorelyBoy]

The desire to win everything, and his apparent ability to do so at leisure, could well be his undoing, even if he plays the Mr Nice Guy to the other riders faces. Eventually this is all going to wear thin and riders, teams and sponsors are going to want to work out a way to get him. Be that via the police or journalists or both. Eventually the pressure builds to such a degree that something has to give. No team is a totally happy camp no matter the money. Who might consider blowing the lid on it? Who is the first domino?
Lance was the consummate politician in that he understood human nature to the point that he shared out the lesser prizes while reserving the best one for himself. If you played nice he was nice back. If you didn’t then he’d make your life a misery. Lance was the main guy and in any case he was only concerned with the TDF. Easier to control one race, and lots of other prizes to go around. However, with Pogacar I don’t think he’s in charge so much as the team and their sponsors. He’s no angel, far from it, but he’s not in control, if he ever was, in that he can’t get out of whatever he’s got himself into, because such regimes do not take kindly to such things. For the UAE it is about much more than sport, Pogacar is merely a pawn of their foreign policy. And they want him to win everything, sporting plausibility be damned. Something has got to give otherwise we might as all go and watch the wrestling for the next five or six years. And by that time UAE may well have a ready made replacement for Pogacar.

 

[Krzysztof_O]

Look at him, he basically looks like a puppy. He'd never do anything wrong.

Mauro is a good guy who deserves another chance. He himself said that he couldn't fully trust the previous generation of cyclists who did some ugly things in secret. However, the new generation of cyclists (headed by Teddy of course) is different: they are honest and fair. Mauro can sleep well again knowing that nothing bad will happen.

 

[Red Rick]

Mauro is a good guy who deserves another chance. He himself said that he couldn't fully trust the previous generation of cyclists who did some ugly things in secret. However, the new generation of cyclists (headed by Teddy of course) is different: they are honest and fair. Mauro can sleep well again knowing that nothing bad will happen.

Aye. The day he met Pogacar is the first time he smiled since the time he woke up from doping induced coma.

 

[Gianetti_Is_The_Goat]

Mauro is a good guy who deserves another chance. He himself said that he couldn't fully trust the previous generation of cyclists who did some ugly things in secret. However, the new generation of cyclists (headed by Teddy of course) is different: they are honest and fair. Mauro can sleep well again knowing that nothing bad will happen.

It's sad though. The guy is more dominant than TJV in its glory days.

 

[Krzysztof_O]

Aye. The day he met Pogacar is the first time he smiled since the time he woke up from doping induced coma.

Teddy brings smiles even to defeated cyclists i.e. Healy yesterday (when asked about retirement). He's universally loved by everyone (except Van Baarle).

 

[Samu Cuenca]

Mauro is a good guy who deserves another chance. He himself said that he couldn't fully trust the previous generation of cyclists who did some ugly things in secret. However, the new generation of cyclists (headed by Teddy of course) is different: they are honest and fair. Mauro can sleep well again knowing that nothing bad will happen.

Yeah, the current crop are all genuinely nice people. They don't have to sell ice cream once their careers are over to try and prove they're actually sweet and innocent.

 

[ashhutch1997]

Why should he not win whenever he can? Stage gifting is acceptable only to a teammate.

It's called politics.