The Froome Files, test data only thread

[Franklin]

Or we have to go to this scenario:

Early career: Doesn't like riding in a peloon, so gets gassed quickyl. This ensures he doesn't rise over domestique.
Doesnt believe in himself so doesn't dare to go into the pain zone.
Some small results and some showing in the Giro (but that seems just so low for his power!)
In 2011 he becomes so frustrated and scared for his career that he breaks this mental block. This is aided by him having to grow into the leaders position (we have seen domestiques cling onto jerseys).

Still Major problems with him beating AC, Nibali and Quintana... unless we opt for them being clean as well. Or Froome is just that good... but then the whole narrative becomes juvenile-dream fanfiction....

Consdering the state of the sport and the consistent verifable lieing of Brailsford it's quite outlandish imho.

 

[thehog]

Re: Re:

Has it been confirmed the fax did come from La Cound? Because I cannot see, given the controversy these tests arose from that, if so, this did not raise a bit of a red flag.

.

"He has other interesting news: Michelle has finally managed to track down the report from the tests carried out on Froome in Lausanne on 25 July, 2007."

I took that to mean she got hold of it.

http://chrisfroome.esquire.co.uk/

"So Professor the actor's spouse showed me this 8 year old fax from a discredited UCI official known to warn possible dopers of potential doping violations - I see no reason to doubt its contents."

Indeed that was my issue, young scientist falls in love with his subject and no longer sees numbers just love.

I jest, Swart did state that he did not confirm the 2007 data, more so Moore asked for an opinion, he commented with Moore tying the melody around the words; "he always had a big engine", case closed.

What's clear is lab testing has now gone celebrity.

 

[Franklin]

Re:

Hmm, not sure anyone's making the point you are disagreeing with? But even so I can think of one rider in 2007 who looked like he was getting the hang of the 'starvation diet with no power loss' look. Good job Froome never rode on the same team as his doctor or one might become suspicous...

Very good point, indeed so good that I'm slapping my forehead right now.

But that still doesn't explain away the raw power. There's more to cycling than GT's... yet he was a marginal rider.

Or the answer is Zorzoli... but why would he overstate the power of a marginal rider? We enter antidated conspiracy ideas.

It's unsolveable unless something scandalous happens.

 

[thehog]

Re:

Perhaps the following works for me, but there are huge issues, first of them is lack of any meaningful data. And I'm sure there are many more issues I'm not seeing

1. 16.9% fat is silly territory and clearly untrue. His earlier reported weight is correct: 70-71kg.
2. But the weight loss hinted at is more or less true... so Froome is actually not 67kg, but 65-66ish

And that's quite the territory we enter power/weight (and makes maintaining such power even more out of there). It explains why they came up with such a blatantly ridonculous starting weight.

Major problems:
- It's making his earlier career even more crazy
- no data to support my outlandish theory

What, you don't think that fax data is real?

I see no issue with the fact he performed for a one off test and never again until four years later

 

[roundabout]

Re: Re:

Has it been confirmed the fax did come from La Cound? Because I cannot see, given the controversy these tests arose from that, if so, this did not raise a bit of a red flag.

.

"He has other interesting news: Michelle has finally managed to track down the report from the tests carried out on Froome in Lausanne on 25 July, 2007."

I took that to mean she got hold of it.

http://chrisfroome.esquire.co.uk/

"So Professor the actor's spouse showed me this 8 year old fax from a discredited UCI official known to warn possible dopers of potential doping violations - I see no reason to doubt its contents."

Apart from the fax being addressed to Zorzoli I don't think it has been stated anywhere where Cound got it from.

 

[Jacques de Molay]

Has anyone had a look at the print issue of Esquire yet?

Because there has to more content than what was offered online. Either that, or this is the worst closing sentence in the history of "journalism."

However, bearing those limitations in mind, Froome’s haemoglobin was 14.5 on this occasion.

Spellbinding.

 

[bewildered]

sorry where is it stated that it's a fax?

 

[thehog]

Re: Re:

Has it been confirmed the fax did come from La Cound? Because I cannot see, given the controversy these tests arose from that, if so, this did not raise a bit of a red flag.

.

"He has other interesting news: Michelle has finally managed to track down the report from the tests carried out on Froome in Lausanne on 25 July, 2007."

I took that to mean she got hold of it.

http://chrisfroome.esquire.co.uk/

"So Professor the actor's spouse showed me this 8 year old fax from a discredited UCI official known to warn possible dopers of potential doping violations - I see no reason to doubt its contents."

Apart from the fax being addressed to Zorzoli I don't think it has been stated anywhere where Cound got it from.

The Swiss Medical Center on the fax header, no?

It's fairly standard for medical units to hand out medical records to people other than those who they pertain to

 

[thehog]

Has anyone had a look at the print issue of Esquire yet?

Because there has to more content than what was offered online. Either that, or this is the worst closing sentence in the history of "journalism."

However, bearing those limitations in mind, Froome’s haemoglobin was 14.5 on this occasion.

Spellbinding.

It's impressive;

Now, in the final throes, the lab staff begin to encourage Froome, yelling him on as his elbows bend and his head sinks and he cracks. Abruptly the force goes out of the pedals like air from a popped balloon. “Off the charts,” says Bell. “We’ve never had anything close to that in the lab.”

 

[bewildered]

when you say fax do you perhaps mean photocopy or scanned copy? My understanding of the word fax is that it was sent over a facsimile machine. There is no indication of that from what i can see? No fax numbers in the header or footer and no fax numbers for Zorzoli under his address?

 

[acoggan]

Re:

acoggan I'm curious - if a PhD student you were supervising used a fax similar to the 2007 one to you as data what would you say to them? I'd expect a fax from a figure like Zorzoli uncovered by the subject's girlfriend to be looked at extremely critically - could it actually be used in anyway?

It would depend on the context, and the purpose for which it was being used.

For example, if someone like Froome had been tested by said student, they were presenting the data in an internal seminar, and it was just a passing comment along the lines of "Interestingly, the present data are similar to those previously obtained on the subject, albeit using methods not known in detail", then I wouldn't really bat an eye.

OTOH, if the data were being presented in a more formal situation as strong evidence that the athlete's VO2max (and lean body mass) hadn't changed between 2007 and 2015, then I'd object on the basis that the comparison is one of apples and oranges.

Specific to the present situation, I could more readily see the data mentioned in a Discussion to provide context, vs. being included in the Results, even if the methods were well-described (again, due to the apples-vs.-oranges aspect).

Regardless, the issue would be one of data qualify/verifiability, and not one of provenance (like a piece of art) or chain of custody (as, e.g., legal evidence). (As dpjbaltimore has rightfully pointed out, in science there exists, by necessity, a certain degree of trust, something that has been true ever since people stopped physically performing their experiments in front of the Royal Society and starting reporting them in written form.)

 

[thehog]

I don't know who messed with the document but It looks so fake. The page proportions simply don't match up. The page at the top overlaps the pages underneath and is wider on both top sides (?) but then skims down and runs level with the page at the bottom rim. It's very messed up. The page actually gets skinner as it runs down?!

That's terrible Photoshopping.

 

[BikeCentric]

Absolute hilarious joke for Froome to try to claim he was ever anywhere near 17% body fat as a pro cyclist. I gained 30 pounds over the last 3 years after I quit bike racing and went to night school - this brought me up to 18% body fat. I'm now back down to 15%, having lost 15 pounds of fat over the past year since I got my degree and have been riding the bike again. Still fat as can be (for a cyclist) and have a disgusting gut roll.

Anyway, back in my racer boy days I didn't know a single Cat 4 who was over 12% body fat. I raced Cat 3 road, Cat 1 XC mountain bike, Cat 3 cyclocross for 5 years or so, always consistently around 10% body fat. No we were not getting hydrostaticly tested but all of us had wifi body fat scales and would weigh ourselves daily. Not that electrical impedance home body fat scales are all that accurate, but you've got years of data with weight and body fat % and you know at all times what your weight, approximate body fat %, and more important the trend change in these measurements is. It's obviously so hugely important even for a middle category amateur racer.

17% for a pro cyclist is ludicrous crazy town obese fat bastard territory. No chance any pro comes anywhere near that number ever, especially when being fast on the bike is your livelihood.

Clearly nothing has changed in pro cycling after all these years - teams still treating the fans as if they're all absolute idiots.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Coggan citing Coyle's study as good science. smmfh.

 

[acoggan]

Re:

Coggan citing Coyle's study as good science. smmfh.

I have never said that Coyle's study was "good science". In fact, I have said from the outset that I have always been ambivalent about whether it was worthy of publication in the place.

 

[86TDFWinner]

Absolute hilarious joke for Froome to try to claim he was ever anywhere near 17% body fat as a pro cyclist. I gained 30 pounds over the last 3 years after I quit bike racing and went to night school - this brought me up to 18% body fat. I'm now back down to 15%, having lost 15 pounds of fat over the past year since I got my degree and have been riding the bike again. Still fat as can be (for a cyclist) and have a disgusting gut roll.

Anyway, back in my racer boy days I didn't know a single Cat 4 who was over 12% body fat. I raced Cat 3 road, Cat 1 XC mountain bike, Cat 3 cyclocross for 5 years or so, always consistently around 10% body fat. No we were not getting hydrostaticly tested but all of us had wifi body fat scales and would weigh ourselves daily. Not that electrical impedance home body fat scales are all that accurate, but you've got years of data with weight and body fat % and you know at all times what your weight, approximate body fat %, and more important the trend change in these measurements is. It's obviously so hugely important even for a middle category amateur racer.

17% for a pro cyclist is ludicrous crazy town obese fat bastard territory. No chance any pro comes anywhere near that number ever, especially when being fast on the bike is your livelihood.

Clearly nothing has changed in pro cycling after all these years - teams still treating the fans as if they're all absolute idiots.

Exactly! Excellent post.

 

[red_flanders]

Re:

No, but you would no for sure you could get him down to the Vuelta 2011 weight. 70kg. Just keep in mind this was the biggest step in performance. The period (years) after Wiggins won the Tour was when Froome became super emaciated and dropped probably another 5kg. Ultimately the big performance gains were made just by dropping the excess fat and *whatever else sky uncovered*. Don't forget Froome was by far the strongest rider at the 2012 TdF.

I never really get why people take self-reported weight from any rider as a fact. Riders have been lying about this number forever, for a host of reasons.

We don't know what his weight was at the 2011 Vuelta was, unless there is some record of an independent party's test which I've missed.

 

[thehog]

Absolute hilarious joke for Froome to try to claim he was ever anywhere near 17% body fat as a pro cyclist. I gained 30 pounds over the last 3 years after I quit bike racing and went to night school - this brought me up to 18% body fat. I'm now back down to 15%, having lost 15 pounds of fat over the past year since I got my degree and have been riding the bike again. Still fat as can be (for a cyclist) and have a disgusting gut roll.

Anyway, back in my racer boy days I didn't know a single Cat 4 who was over 12% body fat. I raced Cat 3 road, Cat 1 XC mountain bike, Cat 3 cyclocross for 5 years or so, always consistently around 10% body fat. No we were not getting hydrostaticly tested but all of us had wifi body fat scales and would weigh ourselves daily. Not that electrical impedance home body fat scales are all that accurate, but you've got years of data with weight and body fat % and you know at all times what your weight, approximate body fat %, and more important the trend change in these measurements is. It's obviously so hugely important even for a middle category amateur racer.

17% for a pro cyclist is ludicrous crazy town obese fat bastard territory. No chance any pro comes anywhere near that number ever, especially when being fast on the bike is your livelihood.

Clearly nothing has changed in pro cycling after all these years - teams still treating the fans as if they're all absolute idiots.

Considering he did his own altitude camp in 2007, trained like crazy and raced like crazy prior to the July 2007 test, I'm surprised he was carrying 17% body fat. His own book details his training & racing, he was doing stage races as well prior to the test, he fails to mention the test but you think whist at the WCC UCI Center they would have told him to lay off the pies! No way after that schedule was he 17% riding full time having the test in July 2007.

The 17% body fat is as ridiculous as th Lance 500 tests!

 

[Lyon]

If only the Internet hadn't happened.

 

[Random Direction]

Does the font on the fax match 2007 standards?

Oh, here is a pic of a dude at 17 p body fat. Compare to hog's version of Chris above....

http://paindatabase.com/body-fat/

 

[Lyon]

Re:

I think he does enjoy the twitter attention. He would've stopped long ago if he did not IMO. I do wish he would take a few extra seconds to proofread.

Jeroen Swart ‏@JeroenSwart 20m20 minutes ago
@vamosalberto @festinaboy @chrisfroome maybe you should preach those words to some of the lunching mob in July? And to Antoine.

This is why most scientists should stick to being simply researchers. Collect the data, leave the conclusions to others. Swart is turning into a payed beard and he may not even know it.

 

[LaFlorecita]

Re:

Does the font on the fax match 2007 standards?

Oh, here is a pic of a dude at 17 p body fat. Compare to hog's version of Chris above....

http://paindatabase.com/body-fat/

I think what those pictures show us is that we cannot accurately judge a person's fat percentage just by looking at them.
A DEXA scan, I would assume, also measures internal fat (i.e. fat between organs) whereas a skin fold test cannot measure this and only measures the fat between the muscles and the skin. So with a skin fold test, I guess Froome would score way lower.

 

[thehog]

Ferrari's take, with his normal dry humour

Futile & Incomplete Froome's Tests
By: Michele Ferrari
Published: 6 Dec 2015



Three weeks after the victorious TdF 2015, forced by the inevitable suspicions of doping, Chris Froome was submitted to a lab test at the GSK Human Performance Lab in London.
It took more than 100 days for his entourage to filter and make the results finally public.
The report presents all the limitations of a test carried out in a laboratory, but some information is interesting.

Prior to the actual performance testing, Froome was recorded to have a weight of 70.8 kg (9.8% fat), a whopping 3.8 kg above the weight declared at the TdF (67 kg), which is basically like saying that, after the 3-week stage race, he accumulated an average of 180g of weight per day, corresponding to an overfeeding of 1628 Kcal per day. A real sponge, which is suggesting of previous important caloric restrictions.

After only 10min (sic) of warm-up, Chris was subjected to a "sub-maximal aerobic test": 8x 4min starting from 250w, with steps of 25w, up to a maximum of 425w.
The pedaling cadence was not given, a fundamental parameter for evaluating cycling performances, those of Chris Froome in particular.
It is not so much the values of AT2 = 379w and AT4 = 419w that grab my attention, but their ​​Heart Rate values: 127 and 138 ppm respectively, compared with a HRmax of around 175 bpm, as reported by Froome himself. The Report, seriously lacking, does not mention the value of HR max reached in the next test (VO2max).

But even more surprising is the modest increase of Heart Rate in the progression from 250w to 425w: about 35bpm (the Report does not show the exact data), equal to 5.0 w/beat, which shows
a cardiac efficiency truly above average; this in my opinion is the most significant data out of all the testing.

The value of AT4 = 419w is definitely an underestimation by approximately 10% of the value recorded by Froome in a road test: in his autobiography "The Climb", Chris himself wrote he climbed the Col De La Madone in 30'09", six days before the start of the TdF 2013, developing an average FTP of 459w (6.85 w/kg with his TdF weight)...

Just to satisfy the curiosity, here are the times and relevant wattages recorded by some of the best cyclists in recent years on the Col De La Madone (13.1 km at an average gradient of 7%):

Richie Porte - 62kg (2014) in 29'40" - 431w - 6.96w/kg
Chris Froome - 67kg (2013) in 30'09" - 459w - 6.85w/kg
Tom Danielson - 59.5kg (2006) in 30'24" - 410w - 6.89w/kg
Lance Armstrong - 74.5Kg (1999) in 30'47" - 492w - 6.60 w/kg
Lance Armstrong - 75kg (2005) in 31'11" - 488w - 6.50w/kg
Lance Armstrong - 75 kg (2010) in 32'20" - 479w - 6.38 w/kg

15min after the "sub-maximal aerobic test", Froome performed the "incremental maximal test", starting from 150w with increments of 30w/min and measurement of oxygen consumption (VO2) taken on the average of 30". Again the cadence is completely unreported, if not for the fact that the test gets interrupted when the pedaling falls below 70RPM. The same omission is repeated with regards to the HR max achieved in the test.
VO2max is 5.91 l/min = 84.6 ml/kg/min = 88.2ml/kg/min with TdF weight (67kg).
An excellent value, but not significant in predicting performance, as premised by the very same carrying out the testing and as can be so easily guessed by comparing the "stratospheric" 92.0 ml/kg/min attributed to Greg Lemond for his Alpe d' Huez record (48min in the TdF 1985 together with Bernard Hinault), 10min away from the best times.

The Report also proposes the comparison with the test Froome carried out on 07/25/2007 at the Swiss Olympic Medical Center: 75.6 kg, 16.7% body fat, VO2max = 6.07 l/min = 80.2 ml/kg/min. This is also a value that is higher than the average of the professional cyclists, further confirming the futility of this measurement if we compare it with the inconsistent racing results of Froome back then.

Lastly, one can't help but smile at the conclusion of the South African physiologist Jeroen Swart: "He just lost the fat"... (a remark I seem to remember I already heard about 16 years ago).

http://www.53x12.com/do/show?page=article&id=137

 

[Jacques de Molay]

Re:

Oh, here is a pic of a dude at 17 p body fat. Compare to hog's version of Chris above....

http://paindatabase.com/body-fat/

Interesting link within that link.

Does Paul Ryan really have 6% body fat?
There have been lots and lots of studies using DEXA to study athletes’ bodyfat. I’ll point out one, which you can access here [see below]. The researchers looked at 64 elite soccer players in the English Premier league. Keep in mind that these guys are running for hours every day and are unlikely to have much body fat and have a good amount of leg muscle. Anyway, they found the average bodyfat to be around 10.5%. Also, 95% of the soccer players had body fat percentages between around 9% and 13%.

Source:
Body composition of English Premier League soccer players: influence of playing position, international status, and ethnicity.

J Sports Sci. 2009 Aug, 27

Sutton L, Scott M, Wallace J, Reilly T.

Abstract
Body composition is a key consideration in the physical make-up of professional soccer players. The aims of the present study were to determine whether the body composition of professional soccer players varied according to playing position, international status or ethnicity, and to establish which variables best distinguished the soccer players from a reference group.

Body composition was assessed using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry in 64 male professional soccer players. Measured variables included bone mineral density and the relative amounts of lean and fat mass. Data were analysed using analysis of variance and stepwise discriminant function. The soccer players recorded better values than a reference group (n = 24) for all body composition compartments.

Percent lean mass and bone mineral density were the variables best able to identify the soccer players (95.5% correctly classified). Differences in body composition were evident between goalkeepers and outfield players, but not between outfield playing positions. No differences were found on the basis of international status. The non-Caucasian players demonstrated significantly lower percent body fat (9.2 +/- 2.0%) than the Caucasian players (10.7 +/- 1.8%). It was concluded that body composition is important for elite soccer players, but that homogeneity between players at top professional clubs results in little variation between individuals.

 

[Winterfold]

Re:

sorry where is it stated that it's a fax?

You're right, it says report.