Tadej Pogacar and Mauro Giannetti

[Casual cyclist]

Contrary to popular belief there is very little pull of the crank in the ascending phase of the contralateral (the leg that is not pushing) leg. There is some variation between cyclists but by en large it's the downwards stroke that pushes the contralateral pedal up, not the concentric action of the hamstrings. Actually it's more efficient as avoids muscular co-contraction

I was about to the say the same. But you have said it already. As far as recall, it was found that even top level cyclists just lift the back leg to avoid dead weigh effect, but do not exert any significant pulling effort. But anybody with cycling experience just knows that pulling hard on the back pedal feels unnatural and is actually counterproductive as it can detract from the main effort of pushing which for obvious reasons is much much more effective in max force development. And this is where the weight shifts forward naturally and almost unconsciously. Just look at the guy in pink jersey right behind the motoring away Pogo. He desperately throws his whole weight on the pedals... to no avail, of course.

 

[Ripper]

If I understand you correct, you're saying that biological passports are 0% effective in catching dopers and since you brought up Lance Armstrong to the discussion, he used EPO & blood bags which today would have easily been detected with the biological passport.

I believe the poster inferred the biopassport is highly ineffective, not 0% effective.

Are you aware that microdosing EPO is quite achievable while on the biopassport? And doing so, along with blood bags and altitude training, can obfuscate test results quite well?

 

[Red Rick]

Micro dosing whatever. Seems very hard to believe Plateau de Beille was microdosing.

 

[topcat]

Wow.
Some suspect a motor is in use. Some believe this is too far fetched. Both reasonable views.
But any sane person would believe blood manipulation is going on.

 

[pelotonIQ]

I believe the poster inferred the biopassport is highly ineffective, not 0% effective.

Are you aware that microdosing EPO is quite achievable while on the biopassport? And doing so, along with blood bags and altitude training, can obfuscate test results quite well?

I know, that's why I said that with the biological passport you can't do it à la Lance with blood bags and big doses of EPO anymore. Those days are pretty much over. So now the goalpost shifts, first it was that Pogacar was full scale doping, now it's shifted to microdosing.

And corticosteroids and methamphetamices which were the drug of choice in the 60s and 70s would have been easily detected by the anti-doping tests of the 80s. Your point being?

You're comparing Pogacar with Lance. Lance used blood bags & epo. If you think Pogacar is using something else then why not say it?

I would start by testing him... Him and his bike(s).

Pro-cyclists in general are subjected to anti-doping year round in and out of competition let alone Pogacar and his bicycle is also checked, regularly. They also do extra doping control pre-TdF and during TdF and the tests are analyzed at WADA's lab.

Did you think he wasn't getting tested and his bicycle checked at all?

 

[cnort]

Did you think he wasn't getting tested and his bicycle checked at all?

There was that post-Worlds kerfuffle with his bike and the official. Do we know if his bike was checked in the end or what the outcome of that was? Is there any reporting of who was dope and or motor-doping tested after races?

 

[pelotonIQ]

There was that post-Worlds kerfuffle with his bike and the official. Do we know if his bike was checked in the end or what the outcome of that was? Is there any reporting of who was dope and or motor-doping tested after races?

They are X-rayed and I assume they also strip the bicycle. They did it with Roglic bicycle back when he was smacking everyone around.

 

[Casual cyclist]

Thank you for posting a more cooperative post this time and thanks for the analysis. I will ass to it a little bit because Pog and pretty much everyone else uses two sided cranks, therefore we need to take into account the pull/push of both legs, so on average maybe 150N are pulled and 450-500N are pushed and obviously the legs switch roles each half revolution. I tired this on my bike and I could not do it but I am no Pog. In any case I was close enough to conclude that Pog could have done it semi-easily. I admit that I had I had a free choice I would have stood up on the pedals.

And so would he... if he had to produce all that power by his muscular effort. Newton or Maxwell analogue he might be in your view, he still has legs growing in the same direction as you and gravity still points in the same direction with respect to his body. And, him being a stick-like low twitch dominated endurance athlete, his pure muscle strength is nothing to write home about.

 

[Raest]

I know, that's why I said that with the biological passport you can't do it à la Lance with blood bags and big doses of EPO anymore. Those days are pretty much over. So now the goalpost shifts, first it was that Pogacar was full scale doping, now it's shifted to microdosing.

You're comparing Pogacar with Lance. Lance used blood bags & epo. If you think Pogacar is using something else then why not say it?


Pro-cyclists in general are subjected to anti-doping year round in and out of competition let alone Pogacar and his bicycle is also checked, regularly. They also do extra doping control pre-TdF and during TdF and the tests are analyzed at WADA's lab.

Did you think he wasn't getting tested and his bicycle checked at all?

You keep missing — or ignoring — the point. I am not comparing Pog to Lance (though I’m about to); I am comparing the line of argument used to argue in favour of them being clean. That line of argument is exactly the same in both cases, and since in Lance’s case all those who followed it were shown to be spectacularly wrong, I claim the same is happening with the people (you, for example) who use that line of argument in defence of Pog.

The reason being that, in both cases, you are arguing against the obvious.

Case in point (now I am comparing Pog to Armstrong): In the heyday of EPO, Lance — doped to the gills — won 7 Tours de France riding in a manner that many people, not wearing blinkers and with a basic understanding of physics and human physiology, rightly claimed was supraphysiological and therefore suspect. And all those people were proven right. Lance himself is on record stating that his doped numbers were 10–15% higher than what he could do clean.

And now we have Pog eclipsing everything Lance — or any other rider of that era, or since — ever did, surpassing everything exercise physiologists thought possible, and people claim that because he hasn’t been caught doping, he must be clean.

So you can obfuscate all you want but the bottom line is that unless he is a mutant what he is doing is supraphysiological and highly unlikely to not be the result of some type of illegal enhancement, mechanical or chemical.

Edit: The fact that you can argue (as you were doing the other day) that a rider can contest and win monuments (against generational talents better suited to the parcours than him) without being in peak shape is mind boggling to me.

Edit2: The fact that he has not been caught (yet) means either that people have not tried to catch him or that he is using something that is not detectable or known at the moment. Much like EPO was not detectable until 2000 and homologous blood doping until 2004 whereas still there is no test to detect autologous blood doping and people rely on the flawed blood passport.

 

[Notarobot]

He uses CRISPR. UAE and China are so into that. UAE created Pogacar. It's gene editing after birth, read into it, it's possible.

 

[Rackham]

You keep missing — or ignoring — the point. I am not comparing Pog to Lance (though I’m about to); I am comparing the line of argument used to argue in favour of them being clean. That line of argument is exactly the same in both cases, and since in Lance’s case all those who followed it were shown to be spectacularly wrong, I claim the same is happening with the people (you, for example) who use that line of argument in defence of Pog.

The reason being that, in both cases, you are arguing against the obvious.

Case in point (now I am comparing Pog to Armstrong): In the heyday of EPO, Lance — doped to the gills — won 7 Tours de France riding in a manner that many people, not wearing blinkers and with a basic understanding of physics and human physiology, rightly claimed was supraphysiological and therefore suspect. And all those people were proven right. Lance himself is on record stating that his doped numbers were 10–15% higher than what he could do clean.

And now we have Pog eclipsing everything Lance — or any other rider of that era, or since — ever did, surpassing everything exercise physiologists thought possible, and people claim that because he hasn’t been caught doping, he must be clean.

So you can obfuscate all you want but the bottom line is that unless he is a mutant what he is doing is supraphysiological and highly unlikely to not be the result of some type of illegal enhancement, mechanical or chemical.

Edit: The fact that you can argue (as you were doing the other day) that a rider can contest and win monuments (against generational talents better suited to the parcours than him) without being in peak shape is mind boggling to me.

Good read and great post.

It seems like it's the actual supraphysiological part of Pog's dominance that's actually making his fans defend him even more in doping conversations, i.e. as far as I can tell it's the superhuman aspect of his dominance that's pretty much incarnating a sort of pro-sport manifestation of the old adage "the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it".

It's like the more grotesque and clown-esque his performances are, the more his fans become entrenched in the belief he really is a demi god on a bike because it's the only thing that makes sense in their eyes.

The truth meanwhile is likely much, much more mundane. Talented kid, great bike rider, psychologically predisposed to do whatever it takes to win, great super responder and an absolute ruthless team manager (Gianetti) who finally acquired the means (UAE silly money) to achieve with young Pogi what he failed to achieve with Ricco.

Add the fact others are on programs themselves (Alpecin, Visma and the rest) and voilà, an arms race in which these top teams have become greedy as hell because if Pogi isn't winning, some other 'doped rider' is.

 

[Peyroteo94]

In this case I believe it's the other way around, the ones believing that Tadej doesn't have some clear advantage over the competition, are the ones who believe in miracles/fairytales, just like Santa Claus. What it is then, that's not clear, but this part of the forum is for conversation on that topic. And yes after the past year and a half, theres no way I can be sure that e-assistance was never used. Even the 2020 PDBF TT with coalminer flat and bikechange is suspicious at least. The super fast seated accelarations are out of this planet too, when you in fact need a lot of power to the pedals to make it happen. Other very good riders around him are standing, pushing everything they got and get no where. If this would happen a few times a year, then yes maybe plausible without an advantage in the peds/motor department, but this happens basically every race all around the year. Always nose breathing and fresh as a daisy.

In the sport we are watching just not plausible, no matter how super extra terrestial talented you supposedly are. And Teddy isn't even that much more talented than the competition, there are other generational talents(Poggie wasn't even considered one of them)in the peloton too. I will never be convinced, that Tadej is more than a top5 talent of his generation and even that is a long shot, before the Gianetti/UAE magic was introduced there was basically nothing. The Slovenia is small country, so he never got proper training explanation, doesn't stand water either. Compared to the population they are actually quite a big cycling nation, it's not only Teddy.

Edit. Typo

Tell me who was considered a generational talent if Pogacar wasn't one of them. Remco, Hirschi and?

 

[Casual cyclist]

He uses CRISPR. UAE and China are so into that. UAE created Pogacar. It's gene editing after birth, read into it, it's possible.

If you keep "reading into" what's out there to read, you can also find out that a manned mission to Mars, "return" to the Moon with a lunar base etc. "are possible" at the current level, and not just possible, but are, in fact, in an active preparation stage, and "we" will soon be there. But abstract possibility is often ages and epochs away from real feasibility. Same here: purposeful gene editing is now sci-fi, but a simple brushless motor in the frame is an everyday reality. The end effect is about the same (assuming your fantasy about gene editing possibilities runs far enough). The slightly modified proverbial "Occam's razor" then makes the rational choice very simple.

 

[Rou]

All this talk about Pogacar cheating. I will not defend him that he is clean because this is professional sport. None of the top dogs are clean.
Merckx the Goat himself was not clean and was busted for doping.
When I watch the duels with Jonas in July and Mathieu in April I don't bother myself with thinking '' Is this guy clean or not'' because thinking that all these athletes are clean is delusional.
However the motor doping is pure speculation in my opinion.

 

[Epicycle2]

I haven't paid attention to who's defending Tadej but with Lance his strident defenders were American fans that were very new to the sport, most weren't even following the sport during the Festina Tour when Julich did well, so they had no real understanding of just how saturated cycling is with doping. They just couldn't imagine that their cowboy hero on the bike might not be the good guy.

The current newer generation of cycling fans didn't go through the 1990s and 2000s with police raids and rider after rider getting popped so they may not have the same perspective on it as folks that followed the sport during those times.

 

[Divergence]

Contrary to popular belief there is very little pull of the crank in the ascending phase of the contralateral (the leg that is not pushing) leg. There is some variation between cyclists but by en large it's the downwards stroke that pushes the contralateral pedal up, not the concentric action of the hamstrings. Actually it's more efficient as avoids muscular co-contraction

I was about to the say the same. But you have said it already. As far as recall, it was found that even top level cyclists just lift the back leg to avoid dead weigh effect, but do not exert any significant pulling effort. But anybody with cycling experience just knows that pulling hard on the back pedal feels unnatural and is actually counterproductive as it can detract from the main effort of pushing which for obvious reasons is much much more effective in max force development. And this is where the weight shifts forward naturally and almost unconsciously. Just look at the guy in pink jersey right behind the motoring away Pogo. He desperately throws his whole weight on the pedals... to no avail, of course.

OK, I admit I may have exaggerated a bit the 150W on the upstroke, maybe it is 50W max if you focus on doing it (I agree it is not natural, at least for me, to pull on the upstroke). In any case you both disregard the fact that I almost did what he did. I managed 600+W for 10s or so and I might be described as a climber, so not much muscle in there.

And so would he... if he had to produce all that power by his muscular effort. Newton or Maxwell analogue he might be in your view, he still has legs growing in the same direction as you and gravity still points in the same direction with respect to his body. And, him being a stick-like low twitch dominated endurance athlete, his pure muscle strength is nothing to write home about.

Well who knows why did not stand up on the pedals, but it is possible to do that power seated and hence you cannot use his FW performance to deduce anything. I, at least, need a more concrete proof before I can say yes, this is the smoking gun.

 

[Casual cyclist]

OK, I admit I may have exaggerated a bit the 150W on the upstroke, maybe it is 50W max if you focus on doing it (I agree it is not natural, at least for me, to pull on the upstroke). In any case you both disregard the fact that I almost did what he did. I managed 600+W for 10s or so and I might be described as a climber, so not much muscle in there.

Recall that 700W during the first stage of that "attack" was very conservative estimate. It was said earlier during the FW circus discussion that doing 500W average on that climb would have you out the back of the lead group to which I'd fully agree. So, if the group was moving along at around 600W and Pogo made a 30m gap in around 10s (as he did), his power would have to exceed that of the group by 50% or so which places it in 900W range. In addition, during the first 2 or 3 seconds, he had to move with considerable acceleration which makes the power output even higher (remember Newton's second law?). And he did not stand even initially. Why, you ask. No need, I say.

Well who knows why did not stand up on the pedals, but it is possible to do that power seated and hence you cannot use his FW performance to deduce anything. I, at least, need a more concrete proof before I can say yes, this is the smoking gun.

What a surprise! Who could have thought?

Edit: P.S. I have already mentioned that the speed on initial separation of Pogo from the group was (deliberately?) not shown during TV translation which switch to the view from the front from the overhead one a moment ago. But the TV commentators saw it better and literally said that "the world champion just sails away as though the others were riding with their brakes on." So grotesque did that separation look.

 

[Divergence]

Recall that 700W during the first stage of that "attack" was very conservative estimate. It was said earlier during the FW circus discussion that doing 500W average on that climb would have you out the back of the lead group to which I'd fully agree. So, if the group was moving along at around 600W and Pogo made a 30m gap in around 10s (as he did), his power would have to exceed that of the group by 50% or so which places it in 900W range. In addition, during the first 2 or 3 seconds, he had to move with considerable acceleration which makes the power output even higher (remember Newton's second law?). And he did not stand even initially. Why, you ask. No need, I say.

What a surprise! Who could have thought?

Well I guess we have different standards of proof then.
Regarding Newton's second law you do not have it quite correct. Acceleration is force divided by mass and it is a vector so let us just say that it is directed forward as seen by Pog. Therefore if he was riding 600W and moving forward with velocity v, and he instantaneously starts generating 900W he will accelerate (ever decreasingly) until all the forces balance out and he is moving with 1.5*v. So, no need for extra power output to produce considerable acceleration.

 

[Froome]

There is a simple way to prove he is doped.

What was his FTP last year? 430 watts if 66 kg right?

FTP is a fresh effort during 40 min/1 hour.

430/66=6.5 w/kg.


He did 6.85 w/kg during 40 min on Plateau de beille, after a hard stage, it wasn't a "fresh effort".


This is a fact right?

 

[pelotonIQ]

You keep missing — or ignoring — the point. I am not comparing Pog to Lance (though I’m about to); I am comparing the line of argument used to argue in favour of them being clean. That line of argument is exactly the same in both cases, and since in Lance’s case all those who followed it were shown to be spectacularly wrong, I claim the same is happening with the people (you, for example) who use that line of argument in defence of Pog.

Yet in every example you compare Pogacar with Lance and draw parallels from there.

Case in point (now I am comparing Pog to Armstrong): In the heyday of EPO, Lance — doped to the gills — won 7 Tours de France riding in a manner that many people, not wearing blinkers and with a basic understanding of physics and human physiology, rightly claimed was supraphysiological and therefore suspect. And all those people were proven right. Lance himself is on record stating that his doped numbers were 10–15% higher than what he could do clean.

Since the days of blood bags and big doses of EPO are over we can safely say that Pogacar isn't on either. Now the question that's begging to be asked, what is he on? I asked this question earlier and nobody seems to have a clue.

And now we have Pog eclipsing everything Lance — or any other rider of that era, or since — ever did, surpassing everything exercise physiologists thought possible, and people claim that because he hasn’t been caught doping, he must be clean.

So you can obfuscate all you want but the bottom line is that unless he is a mutant what he is doing is supraphysiological and highly unlikely to not be the result of some type of illegal enhancement, mechanical or chemical.

You keep dodging many questions to maintain your ambiguity, what constitutes as a 'clean' rider for you? Is it someone on bread & water? Is it someone that doesn't take anything banned? This is where we differ, I do not believe Pogacar is taking anything that's banned. If you didn't know, there exists a grey-zone of substances and methods which currently aren't banned and which may or may not get banned in the future depending on what the research says, we have an example of that and that was the use of CO-rebreathing which later got banned and teams stopped using that method.

Edit: The fact that you can argue (as you were doing the other day) that a rider can contest and win monuments (against generational talents better suited to the parcours than him) without being in peak shape is mind boggling to me.

Why wouldn't it be possible? If we look at his latest race (LBL), his only competition was Evenepoel whom had a bad day.

Edit2: The fact that he has not been caught (yet) means either that people have not tried to catch him or that he is using something that is not detectable or known at the moment. Much like EPO was not detectable until 2000 and homologous blood doping until 2004 whereas still there is no test to detect autologous blood doping and people rely on the flawed blood passport.

You keep dismissing every anti-doping test Pogacar has taken, you keep dismissing every bicycle check that has been done. I asked you to explain how you would go about things if you were in place of the UCI and anti-doping, you replied ''I would start by testing him... Him and his bike(s).'' Well then you don't have to worry because he is continuously being tested.

 

[Blobs]

Tell me who was considered a generational talent if Pogacar wasn't one of them. Remco, Hirschi and?

A generational talent is by definition so rare that they only appear once per generation, on average. Remco was one. Pogi was not.

 

[Casual cyclist]

Well I guess we have different standards of proof then.
Regarding Newton's second law you do not have it quite correct. Acceleration is force divided by mass and it is a vector so let us just say that it is directed forward as seen by Pog. Therefore if he was riding 600W and moving forward with velocity v, and he instantaneously starts generating 900W he will accelerate (ever decreasingly) until all the forces balance out and he is moving with 1.5*v. So, no need for extra power output to produce considerable acceleration.

Let's take it one step at a time then. Say, the bunch was moving at a certain speed v before Pogo's bike burst of power. That required, for example, a steady 600W of power, most of which went into the increase of their potential energy in the gravitational field since they were going up quite a steep hill. Some power was also required to produce work against air and rolling resistance as well as the totality of internal friction. Up a steep hill, all those are relatively small. While the speed is constant, no power is used to increase the kinetic energy. Let us then say that Pogo+bike's Newton-like acceleration increased the speed from v to 1.5v.

What was the power during that burst and directly after when Pogo and his bike bike pretty much maintained the extra speed for a while? First of all, the power needed to maintain a higher speed increased mostly proportionally to the speed increase. (Actually it had to increase a bit more since the power going into potential energy increase grew proportionally, but that needed to do work against air and rolling resistance grew faster -- roughly as third and second power of speed, respectively.)

Then, during the acceleration period, some more power -- that is on top on what was required to maintain the given instantaneous speed -- was needed to increase the Pogo+bike kinetic energy. How large was that increase? Assuming the mass of Pogo+bike system to be about 72kg, the initial speed of 6m/c and the speed after the acceleration period of 9m/s, we obtain 72*(9^2-6^2)/2=1620 J. Assuming the time during which the acceleration was taking place to be 3s (it happened mighty quickly, remember), we obtain the average of 1620/3=540W worth of extra power. Now, towards the end of the acceleration episode, when the speed of 9m/s was almost gained, we have the total instantaneous power of roughly 1.5*600+540=1440W. The acceleration could last a bit longer and likely was not exactly constant and Pogo+bike power probably never went to quite that number, but the ballpark of numbers is pretty clear and pretty telling. wouldn't you say? And I do not even want to mention what kind of pedal force would a motor-free seated dirty-faced Pogo have to exert on the poor pedals and how realistic that would be. You can do that math yourself.

P.S. As a small off-topic bit, but slightly Newton laws related: I happen to have a PhD in physics. Do you?

 

[Raest]

[1]Yet in every example you compare Pogacar with Lance and draw parallels from there.


[2]Since the days of blood bags and big doses of EPO are over we can safely say that Pogacar isn't on either. Now the question that's begging to be asked, what is he on? I asked this question earlier and nobody seems to have a clue.

[3]You keep dodging many questions to maintain your ambiguity, what constitutes as a 'clean' rider for you? Is it someone on bread & water? Is it someone that doesn't take anything banned? This is where we differ, I do not believe Pogacar is taking anything that's banned. If you didn't know, there exists a grey-zone of substances and methods which currently aren't banned and which may or may not get banned in the future depending on what the research says, we have an example of that and that was the use of CO-rebreathing which later got banned and teams stopped using that method.

[4]Why wouldn't it be possible? If we look at his latest race (LBL), his only competition was Evenepoel whom had a bad day.

[5]You keep dismissing every anti-doping test Pogacar has taken, you keep dismissing every bicycle check that has been done. I asked you to explain how you would go about things if you were in place of the UCI and anti-doping, you replied ''I would start by testing him... Him and his bike(s).'' Well then you don't have to worry because he is continuously being tested.

[1] No I did not do that. I wrote a rather lengthy post where I explained what I did, everybody else seemed to get it. There might be some nuance to it but it's hardly apocryphal. If you don't understand the difference despite being explained to you it's not on me.
[2] Again I addressed that. We cannot. TEsts can be beaten, not adminestered, samples can get lost or inadvertently destroyed (Tyler Hamilton says hi). There are plenty, multitudes of examples which conveniently you choose to ignore despite being one google search away. But I am not going to do it for you
[3] A clean rider is a rider that is not using chemical, or mechanical doping. And because I sense an attempt at sophistry here, a given substance does not have to be in the list of banned substances to be considered perfromance enhancing. There is a broader definition of what is doping based on the purpose and effect of said substance.

[4] His exploits on La Redoute have been extensively analysed by others. Worth a read.
[5] Says who? Paula Radcliffe (for example) had 3 adverse biological passport findings and noone knew nothing about it until a TV programme brought it to light. Let me repeat myself again for your benefit
a) we have established that tests can be beaten or results changed.
b) we have established that federations collude with star athletes to bury advserse findings, (and the UCI is one of the worst offenders)
c) you yourself implied in 3 that he might be using something that's not known yet (which of course IS doping)

You still haven't explained how he can be that much better, not compared to his contemporaries (which have also done ridiculous things) but compared to riders such as Armstrong and Pantani, that used "bags of blood and EPO" in your words.

 

[ashhutch1997]

And he insists he didn't do a transfusion the day before, like everyone assumes, right?

He might have transfused 2 days before, having a bad day on La Toussuire right after recharging.

He just bonked, simple as. You can be as doped to the gills as you want, if you don't have carbohydrates, you're screwed.
I think he was doping as per usual (probably on the rest days), its just he didn't need to attack at all up to that point.

 

[Cookster15]

[1] No I did not do that. I wrote a rather lengthy post where I explained what I did, everybody else seemed to get it. There might be some nuance to it but it's hardly apocryphal. If you don't understand the difference despite being explained to you it's not on me.
[2] Again I addressed that. We cannot. TEsts can be beaten, not adminestered, samples can get lost or inadvertently destroyed (Tyler Hamilton says hi). There are plenty, multitudes of examples which conveniently you choose to ignore despite being one google search away. But I am not going to do it for you
[3] A clean rider is a rider that is not using chemical, or mechanical doping. And because I sense an attempt at sophistry here, a given substance does not have to be in the list of banned substances to be considered perfromance enhancing. There is a broader definition of what is doping based on the purpose and effect of said substance.

[4] His exploits on La Redoute have been extensively analysed by others. Worth a read.
[5] Says who? Paula Radcliffe (for example) had 3 adverse biological passport findings and noone knew nothing about it until a TV programme brought it to light. Let me repeat myself again for your benefit
a) we have established that tests can be beaten or results changed.
b) we have established that federations collude with star athletes to bury advserse findings, (and the UCI is one of the worst offenders)
c) you yourself implied in 3 that he might be using something that's not known yet (which of course IS doping)

You still haven't explained how he can be that much better, not compared to his contemporaries (which have also done ridiculous things) but compared to riders such as Armstrong and Pantani, that used "bags of blood and EPO" in your words.

For the record I am just glad you are not propagating the motor doping nonsense. I can accept Pogi is doping but I cannot accept motors. The problems of the passport are of a legal and motivational point of view. I think if the passport were strictly administered there would be much less wiggle room. Your post suggests this isn't happening.

It was established long ago that autologous doping is detectable via the passport. And in theory EPO micro-dosing can't cover all the markers tracked which is why I reposted the ABP a day or so ago - recopied below. The markers tracked are under 2.1.1 Haematological Module.

Everyone who makes opinion here needs to read this. The only way this gets circumvented is lack of motivation by the UCI and the level of proof set by lawyers being too high. I am sure that could be challenged in court to but then that comes back to motivation (and money).

https://www.wada-ama.org/en/resources/world-anti-doping-program/athlete-biological-passport-abp-operating-guidelines