Team Ineos (Formerly the Sky thread)

[Dear Wiggo]

That's a bold statement, and as you say it is a belief rather that a proven fact. Clearer training regimes can tweak athletes performance, and form can fluctuate over a career.

No, Jimmy. Sorry. Brad knew his numbers, knew what won him the gongs, and did not deliver on the day. CLearer training regimes do not tweak anything. Elite track riders do 35,000km on the road. Same as a pro.

However his focus was never the road until post-Beijing i.e. he wasn't trying very hard, and his training and focus was about the track.

Now you are being deliberately blind. Brad himself took 2 weeks in Mallorca in 2006 to train for one stage of one race with a team of people dedicated to him.

It is a complete fabrication to say this is not focusing on the road. Your eyes are completely blinkered. Do not read what Krebs Cycle or ACC says as gospel - read what Brad himself says.

Bard by his own admission didn't really think much about his road career until after 2008. That means he was neither training specifically for it, and wasn't training that hard for it, nor was he mentally focussed on it. To suceed on the road takes both tremendous physical strength but also mental strength.

Again. Not what Brad said. I have posted Brad's very words in this thread, and you are ignoring them, putting your fingers in your ears and saying, "lalalalalala". Sorry. That is not going to change what he has been documented as saying.

Hypothetical of course, but that is one possible paradigm: yours is another. Neither is the definitive answer, however I do acknowledge both are plausible.

Of course you do. You have faith. Good. But I don't believe in unicorns. Or magic.

 

[Wallace and Gromit]

630W for Z.

4:15 inside on an african hardwood track for Brad at 82kg.

4:35 for Zabriskie on a road. I would guesstimate 10 seconds to come to a complete stop and turn around (the TT was out and back 2km) and get going again vs going straight through (@ 53km/hr).

I have always wondered what a stop and restart costs in terms of time vs continuing through - if anyone can provide data or a model for this I would be very interested.

Very rough calculation:
Let's say 100m to get to a stop.
53km/hr is 14.7m/s so 6.8 seconds.
Linear decelleration gives average 26.5km/hr = 13.5seconds
Difference for the distance travelled to turn around: 6.8seconds.

Turn for 2 seconds.

Give them 100m to accelerate back up to 53km/hr: 6.8seconds difference to just riding through at 53km/hr

Total: 15seconds

So assuming no mid-point turn, I estimate a time of 4:35-15 = 4:20 for the TT.

On the road.

If anyone else wants to have a crack at this and point out my error, please do. But at face value, based on these calculations, if Zabriskie was on a track vs on the road, I'd hazard another 5 seconds or so for rolling resistance, taking him down to 4:15.

Giving Brad 4:26.

Nice analysis, which seems to demonstrate that Wiggo rode the equivalent of an IP in 4:26, when he's ridden at least 10 IPs around the 4:16 mark in competitions. Ergo, Wiggo's performance in the 2006 TT was sub-par by his standards.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Careful, talking sense may lead you into pages and pages of Dear Wiggo Ring sophistry...just ask acoggan and Krebs Cycle.

Do you realise how predictable you are now?

Perhaps you could insult me now, and tell me to grow up like uncle Krebs, or perhaps you could disagree with what I am writing and show me the error of my ways. Pretty comfortable it will be the former.

I am waiting for:
1. you to explain how training up steep climbs at altitude adds to a cyclist's performance.
2. acoggan to agree with your physiological "knowledge"
3. acoggan to point out the post(s) where I don't know what I am talking about.

To paint me as a sophist seems remarkably hypocritical. To not be able to rebutt a single point I have posted without changing the point to suit your own narrative is also saddening.

At least Krebs Cycle (where is he these days?) could point to studies that might or not might not back up his claims.... you? insults only. And really broken physiology.

 

[JimmyFingers]

No, Jimmy. Sorry. Brad knew his numbers, knew what won him the gongs, and did not deliver on the day. CLearer training regimes do not tweak anything. Elite track riders do 35,000km on the road. Same as a pro.


Now you are being deliberately blind. Brad himself took 2 weeks in Mallorca in 2006 to train for one stage of one race with a team of people dedicated to him.

It is a complete fabrication to say this is not focusing on the road. Your eyes are completely blinkered. Do not read what Krebs Cycle or ACC says as gospel - read what Brad himself says.

Again. Not what Brad said. I have posted Brad's very words in this thread, and you are ignoring them, putting your fingers in your ears and saying, "lalalalalala". Sorry. That is not going to change what he has been documented as saying.

Actually what I was saying was you can't read so much into one single race. He may have prepared very hard for that one race and came 21st in 2006, underperforming badly but that one performance in isolation does not prove your point, and certainly doesn't prove Bradley is a poor athlete that needs drugs to be successful on the road. I have read plenty of Brad's words too, and he has said he didn't take road racing seriously until after Beijing, when he started to believe he could win races. Why did he start to believe? Because he started to believe he wasn't racing against doped up riders all the time. We know his reaction to the Confidis affair in 2007, we know how angry he was and how disillusioned he was with racing on the road.

Why did he come 21st in 2006? Perhaps because the 20 riders above him were on Poe. Why can he now win? Perhaps because now they aren't.

As I said, different paradigms. You know better than me results from 2006 must be looked with an asterisk against them, we know the levels of performance achieved by EPO-using riders were beyond physiologically plausible ones and clean riders simply couldn't live with them. For me that's clear reason Brad got pummelled in a 4k TT in 2006, and doesn't mean he's incapable of achieving what he has achieved clean.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Nice analysis, which seems to demonstrate that Wiggo rode the equivalent of an IP in 4:26, when he's ridden at least 10 IPs around the 4:16 mark in competitions. Ergo, Wiggo's performance in the 2006 TT was sub-par by his standards.

He said he was hitting the magic number (580W) in training. People always PB in competition. If anything, he hit better numbers in the TT than in training. Anyone with a PM experiences this. Without fail.

Agreed, Wiggo's performance was sub-par. But it also indicates Zabriskie rode an equivalent time on the road to Brad's times on the track. My whole point being, Brad appears as a demi-god on the track, but the pool of talent focusing to the extent he did, on that single, 4km event, year after year, is miniscule.

If you are one of 18 people in the world who compete in the suspended from satellite, inverted extreme ironing event and are World Champion, that does not necessarily mean that competing against the far larger pool of speed ironers down at the local Chinese laundromat automatically leads to you being world-class there as well.

The only argument offered for Brad's dominance on the road since 2009 is that he was such a massive motor. That is presumed due to his dominance in the IP. An event for which there are very few competitors. There are 850 pro road riders registered for the ABP. They are, for the most part, the cream of the crop. There are maybe 30 IPers max in the world.

One final point: David Zabriskie weighs around 67kg. Brad was around 75kg in 2006 - his lean road racing weight. So on a W/kg basis, Brad needs to generate 10% more absolute power, on a guy who is 10% lighter than him.

That is a bucketload more power.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Actually what I was saying was you can't read so much into one single race. He may have prepared very hard for that one race and came 21st in 2006, underperforming badly but that one performance in isolation does not prove your point, and certainly doesn't prove Bradley is a poor athlete that needs drugs to be successful on the road. I have read plenty of Brad's words too, and he has said he didn't take road racing seriously until after Beijing, when he started to believe he could win races. Why did he start to believe? Because he started to believe he wasn't racing against doped up riders all the time. We know his reaction to the Confidis affair in 2007, we know how angry he was and how disillusioned he was with racing on the road.

We are going to have to agree to disagree. These are not the words of a man who "didn't take road racing seriously until after Beijing". No way, no how. I am incredulous that you cannot see this...

Here's what he said in 2006:

I spent two weeks in Majorca at a training camp, getting away from the British spring weather. I've had a little team around me, a masseur, a mechanic and some video analysis guys from the English Institute of Sport and it has gone well
...
As the jargon has it, I'm 'hitting the numbers'. What that means in plain English is this: we train with special cranks (made by a German company, SRM) that record the power you are putting into the pedals.

That means you can work out the power you need for a certain time to maintain a certain speed over a certain distance. To win the Olympic gold medal in Athens, for example, I needed to be riding at 570 or 580 watts for four minutes. I'm about 10 or 15 watts better than I was in Athens, which means that if I rode the Olympic pursuit against myself today I would be two seconds faster. That's simply because of the way you progress physically as you get older.

Racing comes easy after this because you taper down and are fresh for the day. It's as Armstrong said, that riding the Tour is the easy bit and the tough part is the months of preparation

Last week was tough in a different way. You have to keep relaxed and resist the temptation to do any more work. Everything has been done and you can't get any fitter. You just have to sit and wait rather than risk losing by doing one more training session because you have panicked. It was like this before the Olympics - you need bottle to wait, have faith and do nothing.
...
all my training in recent weeks has been geared up to one incredibly short effort.
...
I know that I have the ability to win today. I don't feel that there can be anyone who is stronger.

This "Brad said" stuff above? Sounds like Brad BSing, to me. Lance was doping. For me, this is a tell from Brad.

The reason I harp on about this one event is not because it proves he was a poor athlete, not at all. It's because it's the first race I can find where his belief in himself, based on his medals, and his dedication to his training is obvious.

And I am sorry, but he fails miserably.

It's day 1 of the 1000 days that Tyler writes about:

If I was not doping, and getting worked over, and said "You know what, stuff this, I'm joining" then I too, would start to believe I could win, after all those years of not winning, and it would be because the testosterone was helping me train harder, for longer, the cortisone was easing the pain, and the EPO was boosting my power 5-10%.

1000 days from that Dauphine prologue places Brad squarely at the start of the 2009 season, and look at his first TT performance:

1. [ESP] CONTADOR VELASCO Alberto AST 11'05" 40
2. [GBR] WIGGINS Bradley GRM 07" 25
3. [ESP] SANCHEZ GIL Luis Leon GCE 09" 15
4. [GER] MARTIN Tony THR 11" 10
5. [GBR] MILLAR David GRM 14" 5
6. [NED] POSTHUMA Joost RAB 18" 3
7. [FRA] CHAVANEL Sylvain QST 19" 2
8. [ESP] COLOM MAS Antonio KAT 19" 1
9. [RUS] KARPETS Vladimir KAT 21" 0
10. [FRA] PAURIOL Rémi COF 22" 0

He's hitting it out of the park in 2nd. Not his fault that a doped Contador is still better than a doped Wiggins. Oh. Contador wasn't doping? Ok.

 

[JimmyFingers]

Fair enough, you make some strong arguements, but I do feel you are trying to extrapolate a weighty conclusion from a single race. As I tried to illustrate, there are other variables that can affect performance on the day, and also the factor in he was likely to be riding against juiced competitors.

As you say, we'll agree to disagree. Chapeau

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Why did he come 21st in 2006? Perhaps because the 20 riders above him were on Poe. Why can he now win? Perhaps because now they aren't.

Logically, if POE gives you 10% - and Brad is 10% behind so it looks like it can - if you take people off POE - he is equal with them.

Vino was on POE, and in 2007 Brad said - I hope to win the TT (only) in 2 years and not finish 2 minutes in front of 5th place (requiring an additional 10% in power) coz I am clean.

In 2012, Brad did not equal the now POE-free riders. He beat them by 2:25. I do not believe those riders are POE-free, btw.

In 2007 he knew what a 2 minute gap meant.

In 2012, it's all good. I have a massive motor.

No.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Fair enough, you make some strong arguements, but I do feel you are trying to extrapolate a weighty conclusion from a single race. As I tried to illustrate, there are other variables that can affect performance on the day, and also the factor in he was likely to be riding against juiced competitors.

As you say, we'll agree to disagree. Chapeau

Completely OT, but I would like to thank you for discussing with me, and keeping it civil. It is a welcome change.

 

[Galic Ho]

Wiggins self confesses to having been lazy when it came to training anf totally switched off after Beijing. In comes Kerrison for 2010 who focuses on high intensity and far more training than racing for all of the 'A Team'. Unfortunately the sport has had (and continues to have, despite protestations from the likes of Cav and Roche) so many bad eggs that cynicism is a default position for many, especially on this forum. That cynicism can be levelled at virtually every genuine GC contender, and in some cases it's justified. For me, the thing that goes in Froome and Wiggins' favour (for now) is their route to where they are. Froome a tactically naive ex-MTB rider and full-time student in Africa who rarely rode more than 100km races before moving to Europe, Wiggins the lazy but naturally talented track cyclist who dabbled on the road.

Classic selection bias. So Wiggins was taking it easy after Beijing (August 2008) and only cared after Kerrison's arrival in 2010! Trollololololololol. Man you fanboys are insane!

I guess Brad was just super lazy in 2009 at Garmin when he came 4th in the Tour (or is it 3rd now?) after losing a ton of weight. And then gets serious in 2010, the year he sucked big time in Sky's first season and was beaten for GC in the Tour by his team mate and domestique Thomas Löfkvist. Great analogy. It was awesome!!!

You are going to need to step your game up about 20 notches, you're playing in the big leagues now.

 

[Andy99]

wrong thread.

 

[JimmyFingers]

Completely OT, but I would like to thank you for discussing with me, and keeping it civil. It is a welcome change.

The feeling is mutual

 

[Wallace and Gromit]

He said he was hitting the magic number (580W) in training. People always PB in competition. If anything, he hit better numbers in the TT than in training. Anyone with a PM experiences this. Without fail.

Agreed, Wiggo's performance was sub-par. But it also indicates Zabriskie rode an equivalent time on the road to Brad's times on the track. My whole point being, Brad appears as a demi-god on the track, but the pool of talent focusing to the extent he did, on that single, 4km event, year after year, is miniscule.

If you are one of 18 people in the world who compete in the suspended from satellite, inverted extreme ironing event and are World Champion, that does not necessarily mean that competing against the far larger pool of speed ironers down at the local Chinese laundromat automatically leads to you being world-class there as well.

The only argument offered for Brad's dominance on the road since 2009 is that he was such a massive motor. That is presumed due to his dominance in the IP. An event for which there are very few competitors. There are 850 pro road riders registered for the ABP. They are, for the most part, the cream of the crop. There are maybe 30 IPers max in the world.

One final point: David Zabriskie weighs around 67kg. Brad was around 75kg in 2006 - his lean road racing weight. So on a W/kg basis, Brad needs to generate 10% more absolute power, on a guy who is 10% lighter than him.

That is a bucketload more power.

First bold part... I assume you mean that people only do PBs in competitions rather than always. Wiggo producing 580 watts in training does not mean he would do it in competition - it merely indicates the upper bound on what might be achieved, subject to an extra second or two (maybe) from the excitement of competition.

Second bold part... Your estimate of DZ's equivalent 4k IP time is only an estimate, and is therefore subject to a margin of error. DZ's IP time might be "only" 4:20, which though good, is still a long way short of Wiggo. (It may also be 4:10, though on the balance of probabilities, this is unlikely.)

Re the IP "pond" being a small one, I'd agree with this. As such, you can actually make your point that Wiggo was only a big fish in a small pond compared to the "roadies" by reference to his best road performances during his track days, which were good, but nothing stellar eg the 2007 Tour prologue and TTs. You don't need to muddy the waters by focusing on a single race where even by your own admission, Wiggo was 10 seconds below his normal 4k performance.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Re the IP "pond" being a small one, I'd agree with this. As such, you can actually make your point that Wiggo was only a big fish in a small pond compared to the "roadies" by reference to his best road performances during his track days, which were good, but nothing stellar eg the 2007 Tour prologue and TTs. You don't need to muddy the waters by focusing on a single race where even by your own admission, Wiggo was 10 seconds below his normal 4k performance.

The 2006 race is his sole focus, and only 100m longer than his world and olympic medals. If there is something else affecting his performance to lose 10 seconds, it's affecting Zabriskie too. One thing could be humidity inside a velodrome in Beijing vs outside.

More important for me was the 1000 days point.

2007 Tour prologue he still needs 10% more power to match the winners. And he most definitely aimed to win that.

 

[Wallace and Gromit]

If there is something else affecting [Wiggo's] performance to lose 10 seconds, it's affecting Zabriskie too.

My initial assessment of underperformance by Wiggo (or that Zabriskie etc. were doped) was based on his time-gap to O'Grady. There's no way a top-form Wiggo would lose over 4k to a O'Grady, based on a decent volume of data from their respective track careers, albeit some it indirectly via comparisons to McGee.

If there was a general factor such as humidty, wind, road resistance etc. making Wiggo go slower than in Athens (ie slower than his potential over 4k on the boards), it would make O'Grady go slower as well, and therefore slower than Wiggo.

So, whatever caused Wiggo's underperformance that day was something specific to him. There are any number of reasons why an athlete has a stinker despite having done stirring deeds in training in the lead up to an event.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

easy sog et al were on the juice.

 

[Wallace and Gromit]

easy sog et al were on the juice.

Which brings us to the next question...

What power has Wiggo been producing over prologues and short TTs this season? ie has Wiggo improved in absolute terms or relative terms over his specialist distance since 2008?

 

[Dalakhani]

I guess Brad was just super lazy in 2009 at Garmin when he came 4th in the Tour (or is it 3rd now?) after losing a ton of weight. And then gets serious in 2010, the year he sucked big time in Sky's first season

Welcome to the bizarro world of Bradley Wiggins.

"Lazy" = multiple world championships, multiple world records, Olympic gold medals and a 4th in the Tour de France.

"Working hard" = riding on the road like a 4k rider - winning a GC prologue and doing nothing in longer stages.

 

[Galic Ho]

Welcome to the bizarro world of Bradley Wiggins.

"Lazy" = multiple world championships, multiple world records, Olympic gold medals and a 4th in the Tour de France.

"Working hard" = riding on the road like a 4k rider - winning a GC prologue and doing nothing in longer stages.

I started the first Wiggins doping thread in the Clinic. I do not need convincing. But thanks anyway. I was poking fun at the logic used by the guy defending Wiggins. Truly, a bizarro world.

 

[Ryo Hazuki]

Classic selection bias. So Wiggins was taking it easy after Beijing (August 2008) and only cared after Kerrison's arrival in 2010! Trollololololololol. Man you fanboys are insane!

I guess Brad was just super lazy in 2009 at Garmin when he came 4th in the Tour (or is it 3rd now?) after losing a ton of weight. And then gets serious in 2010, the year he sucked big time in Sky's first season and was beaten for GC in the Tour by his team mate and domestique Thomas Löfkvist. Great analogy. It was awesome!!!

You are going to need to step your game up about 20 notches, you're playing in the big leagues now.

wiggins dropped more weight even than he had with garmin and his first tour with sky eh suffered from heatsickness. I'm the biggest wiggins hater on this forum but until now I don't see much proove he's doping. he also rides like a coward and has almost nothing left. see how hard he blew this years tour in the first mountainstage with froome accelerating. basically wiggins was at the level of jvdb and nibali. as he was in 2010

 

[thehog]

wiggins dropped more weight even than he had with garmin and his first tour with sky eh suffered from heatsickness. I'm the biggest wiggins hater on this forum but until now I don't see much proove he's doping. he also rides like a coward and has almost nothing left. see how hard he blew this years tour in the first mountainstage with froome accelerating. basically wiggins was at the level of jvdb and nibali. as he was in 2010

??

So being at the level o JVDB and Nibili means no doping?

He was superior to both as he managed to blow the entire field apart by 2 mins in the ITT.

Poor analysis.

 

[skidmark]

??

So being at the level o JVDB and Nibili means no doping?

He was superior to both as he managed to blow the entire field apart by 2 mins in the ITT.

Poor analysis.

But does being superior to both in the TT mean that he is doping? Or might it just mean that he's a better TTer than them?

I know your analysis is more in depth than that, but to counter Ryo's 'poor analysis' with that is pretty poor counter-analysis.

 

[thehog]

But does being superior to both in the TT mean that he is doping? Or might it just mean that he's a better TTer than them?

I know your analysis is more in depth than that, but to counter Ryo's 'poor analysis' with that is pretty poor counter-analysis.

I’ve provided enough analysis in the course of this thread. I was mealy dismissing lightweight reasoning for being clean. File it under warmdowns and reverse periodisation.

Move on please.

 

[Ryo Hazuki]

??

So being at the level o JVDB and Nibili means no doping?

He was superior to both as he managed to blow the entire field apart by 2 mins in the ITT.

Poor analysis.

he's a better itt rider obviously and always has been

 

[Ryo Hazuki]

I’ve provided enough analysis of the course of this thread. I was mealy dismissing lightweight reasoning for being clean. File it under warmdowns and reverse periodisation.

Move on please.

armstrong only managed to increase weight and muscle and climb even harder.