The Froome Files, test data only thread

[Digger]

The fax itself is embarrassing - a two year old could spot the discrepancies - let's cut jeroen slack and say ok he didn't reference it in his final report, fair enough...but there is a direct quote from an interview he gave where he says froome just lost the fat - well in order for you to say that you've got to be basing it on the fax. So you can't have it both ways.
That fax I showed it to some friends and they laughed at how absurd both versions were. But amazingly they could used in defence of froome.

 

[red_flanders]

Re:

I don't see anybody being pissed though, at least not about the scholarly paper.
Ive seen people poking fun at the lack of Max Hr measurement, and people deploring The amateurism of the Esquire Job/fax.
And sone People beong annoyed about the PR behind it. Fromie claiming it shows he clean etc.
But thats it.
Nobody is pissed about the way 'it' was performed.

The point is that there has been a lot of debate about very minute details of a process that ultimately doesn't matter since it can't answer the pertinent questions. We really should drop that line of discussion, it goes nowhere. I think this crowd is rightly skeptical of Dr. Swart due to his willingness to participate in what appears to be a transparently fraudulent effort to declare Froome clean. I don't think debating the science or his testing methodology gets us anywhere. He knows far more about the physiology than we ever will.

Brailsford and Froome wanted to create some noise around "clean" and "testing". Dr. Swart decided to participate and has offered conclusions that don't seem to logically follow the limits of the testing. That is the area which interests me. Maybe there are good answers as to how and why he arrives at these conclusions.

I'm left with my questions in the post above. I realize that any meaningful answer to them would take a lot of time. As such I'm in no hurry, but would love to get a PM if Dr. Swart does choose to address them. If there were good answers to them I think he could clear up a lot.

 

[veganrob]

Re: Re:

The question is not "what is the limits of normal human capabilities", but of Froome's capabilities as a clean rider. So the tests proved absolutely nothing of what people want to know.
How did he get from 2007 to 2011. Or more accurately Tour of Poland to Vuelta.

and yet it seems people are not happy about that. this cant prove nothing but we moan about it anyway. they allegedly didnt record the HR, they shoulda done this, coulda done that etc
if the test cant prove he´s clean, which it cant, dont waste time being pissed about the way it was performed

Who's pissed? Not me. But the whole test was set up to prove he was a clean athlete, wasn't it? I didn't set it up. That was Michelle. Talk to her.

 

[thehog]

Re:

The fax itself is embarrassing - a two year old could spot the discrepancies - let's cut jeroen slack and say ok he didn't reference it in his final report, fair enough...but there is a direct quote from an interview he gave where he says froome just lost the fat - well in order for you to say that you've got to be basing it on the fax. So you can't have it both ways.
That fax I showed it to some friends and they laughed at how absurd both versions were. But amazingly they could used in defence of froome.

The irony was lost on Swart whilst he was questioning Wiggins on his TUE(s), and forgetting he was willing to accept a feeble looking bit of paper as virtue. Wiggins never should have taken taken the cortisone at least the TUE was an original without badly photoshopped extras - those binder holes, c'mon! l

 

[Ironhead Slim]

So...

Red_Flanders asked some good questions per John Swanson's request.

Why no answers from Jeroen Swart?

 

[Alex Simmons/RST]

Re:

I don't know if people are saying that HR is a reliable indicator of a rider doping. What they are saying is HR is an important part of a riders physiology and one of several indicators to what a rider is capable of.

But they'd be wrong.

Two riders might have the same HR but this has no bearing on what each is physiologically capable of. Surely people understand that?

From there a riders doping status could be debated.

From there nothing can be debated, certainly not a rider's doping status, let alone cycling capabilities.

Maybe a bad anaology is "does a power meter make you a faster rider?" That answer is obviously No. But one can be a valuable part of your training knowledge which can help you make decisions to make you a faster rider.

You're right, it's a bad analogy.

 

[veganrob]

Re: Re:

I don't know if people are saying that HR is a reliable indicator of a rider doping. What they are saying is HR is an important part of a riders physiology and one of several indicators to what a rider is capable of.

But they'd be wrong.

Two riders might have the same HR but this has no bearing on what each is physiologically capable of. Surely people understand that?

From there a riders doping status could be debated.

From there nothing can be debated, certainly not a rider's doping status, let alone cycling capabilities.

Maybe a bad anaology is "does a power meter make you a faster rider?" That answer is obviously No. But one can be a valuable part of your training knowledge which can help you make decisions to make you a faster rider.

You're right, it's a bad analogy.

You like to pick apart each sentence and take out of context instead of taking the whole of the idea. Your attempts to shut down discussions make you appear to be very closed minded. I never thought of you that way before.

 

[Alex Simmons/RST]

Re: Re:

I don't know if people are saying that HR is a reliable indicator of a rider doping. What they are saying is HR is an important part of a riders physiology and one of several indicators to what a rider is capable of.

But they'd be wrong.

Two riders might have the same HR but this has no bearing on what each is physiologically capable of. Surely people understand that?

From there a riders doping status could be debated.

From there nothing can be debated, certainly not a rider's doping status, let alone cycling capabilities.

Maybe a bad anaology is "does a power meter make you a faster rider?" That answer is obviously No. But one can be a valuable part of your training knowledge which can help you make decisions to make you a faster rider.

You're right, it's a bad analogy.

You like to pick apart each sentence and take out of context instead of taking the whole of the idea. Your attempts to shut down discussions make you appear to be very closed minded. I never thought of you that way before.

So I respond specifically to each sentence, and the logic flow and that's shutting something down? There's nothing to shut down.

Perhaps if I ask a question to keep the conversation going lest i be accused of shutting it down again - can you provide a plausible means by which HR data can infer a rider's performance capability and/or a rider's doping status?

 

[meat puppet]

The interest is on the HR of an individual athlete, froome, on different occasions. So no comparisons between athletes but an athlete in different times.

For all the faults that the power meter sales lobby and its street team wants to pin on HRMs, there are a couple things that are worthwhile.

First, HR tends to rise when power output increases. Power costs oxygen and it is delivered by the cardiorespitory system. In the ventoux case this kind of rise barely occurs,although the increase in power is large. The question is why. To have more systained power cardiac output must rise.

Second Fatigue will have been a factor as it reduces HR. And the context is a GT. But how large a factor was fatigue? To establish that some sort of baseline would help. And if he was really fatigued, whence the ability to increase output dramatically with the known increased oxygen cost involved and barely an increase in the delivery of it?

In the 2011 vuelta ITT froome had a HR of 145ish, which indicates it is naturally low. However, this is post transformation. Would be interesting to compare his hero and zero values, here. What I don't get is why sky pr machinery and hired gun physios did not simply try and *** down the HR discussion by showing that it has been constantly naturally low, end of.

 

[Alex Simmons/RST]

Re:

The interest is on the HR of an individual athlete, froome, on different occasions. So no comparisons between athletes but an athlete in different times.

For all the faults that the power meter sales lobby and its street team wants to pin on HRMs, there are a couple things that are worthwhile.

First, HR tends to rise when power output increases. Power costs oxygen and it is delivered by the cardiorespitory system. In the ventoux case this kind of rise barely occurs,although the increase in power is large. The question is why. To have more systained power cardiac output must rise.

So if it doesn't, then what would you think about the quality of the data? Keep in mind we already know the crank power data reasonably* matches the climbing rate.

Second Fatigue will have been a factor as it reduces HR. And the context is a GT. But how large a factor was fatigue? To establish that some sort of baseline would help. And if he was really fatigued, whence the ability to increase output dramatically with the known increased oxygen cost involved and barely an increase in the delivery of it?

Fatigue can also result in an elevated HR response. HR response doesn't immediately follow power but lags somewhat, has a modest but certainly not perfect correlation with power (especially when riding outdoors and in race scenarios) and more importantly HR response is a function of many things other than how hard one happens to be be pedalling.

In the 2011 vuelta ITT froome had a HR of 145ish, which indicates it is naturally low. However, this is post transformation. Would be interesting to compare his hero and zero values, here. What I don't get is why sky pr machinery and hired gun physios did not simply try and **** down the HR discussion by showing that it has been constantly naturally low, end of.

I can't answer that question but even if Sky did (i) have the data and (ii) released it, it's still not going to tell us much about performance or doping status.


* It'll only ever be reasonable due to the nature of variable error introduced by the type of power meter with his preferred chainrings.

 

[Alex Simmons/RST]

Just for reference:
http://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Fulltext/2017/01000/The_Physiological_Profile_of_a_Multiple_Tour_de.14.aspx

 

[sniper]

Re:

Elephant in the room.

I have addressed this question before as well.

The power meter data from the Ventoux video would have been recorded from a stages unit. As such, any motor used to drive the crank axle or a rim or any other known method of motorised doping would not have contributed to the power reading from the Stages. i.e the Stages would have demonstrated a lower power output than required to perform the work of climbing at the rate recorded. As it did not, there can clearly be no motor.

This simple point seems to be lost in the hysteria surrounding HR values.

"clearly". "simple point".
Your certainty here is weird and in fact totally inappropriate.

Here you go:

This looks like SRM
http://img.theepochtimes.com/n3/eet-content/uploads/2013/07/Froome15Ventoux1735093581.jpg

In the case of SRM a small crank axle motor *would* have contributed to the power reading.
So there would be no problems with the power output for the Ventoux stage.

So Jeroen you are clearing Froome based on the dubious assumption that he's using a Stages unit.
Odd.
Can somebody provide evidence that Froome was using a Stages unit?

 

[gillan1969]

Re:

The interest is on the HR of an individual athlete, froome, on different occasions. So no comparisons between athletes but an athlete in different times.

For all the faults that the power meter sales lobby and its street team wants to pin on HRMs, there are a couple things that are worthwhile.

First, HR tends to rise when power output increases. Power costs oxygen and it is delivered by the cardiorespitory system. In the ventoux case this kind of rise barely occurs,although the increase in power is large. The question is why. To have more systained power cardiac output must rise.

Second Fatigue will have been a factor as it reduces HR. And the context is a GT. But how large a factor was fatigue? To establish that some sort of baseline would help. And if he was really fatigued, whence the ability to increase output dramatically with the known increased oxygen cost involved and barely an increase in the delivery of it?

In the 2011 vuelta ITT froome had a HR of 145ish, which indicates it is naturally low. However, this is post transformation. Would be interesting to compare his hero and zero values, here. What I don't get is why sky pr machinery and hired gun physios did not simply try and **** down the HR discussion by showing that it has been constantly naturally low, end of.

indeed meat puppet...its not Froome vs other its what his heart rate does under different conditions...especially at the upper limits that is interesting, or could be interesting i should say...the relationship can be inferred but why infer when you can measure..

of course as is pointed out...this is somewhat irrelevant as it was a good study conducted well...exactly what was intended....Swart and the test have played a part in a bigger strategy to seek to demonstrate that Froome is clean...
the three issues raised...and how the strategy has worked
1. Vayer's mutant criticism - look, proper study done by proper scientists and in journal - not mutant
2. transormtaion - look easily explained - he just lost the fat
3. psuedo sciene...look we use real scientist (see point 1)

when a rabbit is pulled from a hat...a rabbit is pulled from a hat....its what goes on around that is the magic

....and Moore has done his work

 

[pastronef]

Re: Re:

Elephant in the room.

I have addressed this question before as well.

The power meter data from the Ventoux video would have been recorded from a stages unit. As such, any motor used to drive the crank axle or a rim or any other known method of motorised doping would not have contributed to the power reading from the Stages. i.e the Stages would have demonstrated a lower power output than required to perform the work of climbing at the rate recorded. As it did not, there can clearly be no motor.

This simple point seems to be lost in the hysteria surrounding HR values.

"clearly". "simple point".
Your certainty here is weird and in fact totally inappropriate.

Here you go:

This looks like SRM
http://img.theepochtimes.com/n3/eet-content/uploads/2013/07/Froome15Ventoux1735093581.jpg

In the case of SRM a small crank axle motor *would* have contributed to the power reading.
So there would be no problems with the power output for the Ventoux stage.

So Jeroen you are clearing Froome based on the dubious assumption that he's using a Stages unit.
Odd.
Can somebody provide evidence that Froome was using a Stages unit?

Sky was sponsored by Stages from 2014.
they used Srm until 2013.

 

[thehog]

Re: Re:

Elephant in the room.

I have addressed this question before as well.

The power meter data from the Ventoux video would have been recorded from a stages unit. As such, any motor used to drive the crank axle or a rim or any other known method of motorised doping would not have contributed to the power reading from the Stages. i.e the Stages would have demonstrated a lower power output than required to perform the work of climbing at the rate recorded. As it did not, there can clearly be no motor.

This simple point seems to be lost in the hysteria surrounding HR values.

"clearly". "simple point".
Your certainty here is weird and in fact totally inappropriate.

Here you go:

This looks like SRM
http://img.theepochtimes.com/n3/eet-content/uploads/2013/07/Froome15Ventoux1735093581.jpg

In the case of SRM a small crank axle motor *would* have contributed to the power reading.
So there would be no problems with the power output for the Ventoux stage.

So Jeroen you are clearing Froome based on the dubious assumption that he's using a Stages unit.
Odd.
Can somebody provide evidence that Froome was using a Stages unit?

Dr. Swart is an intelligent, well researched person. How he can be so wrong on something so easily verified is baffling. He appears to spring into defense mode prior to conducting research and offering a considered scientific opinion.

The example above is beyond words. Senza parole.

 

[sniper]

Thanks, Pastronef.

And Jeroen didn't know or bother to check that?
Senza parole indeed.

Added to what Varjas is saying about the 15 sec boost and high cadence,
added to the visual evidence of Froome's never-before-or-after-seen seated acceleration away from Contador,
and added to the remarkably low heart rate during said acceleration (never going above 162-3, which is almost unheard of at that level),
there clearly could be a motor.

 

[thehog]

"He just lost the fat, there can be no motor"

:lol:

 

[Jeroen Swart]

Re:

Thanks, Pastronef.

And Jeroen didn't know or bother to check that?
Senza parole indeed.

Added to what Varjas is saying about the 15 sec boost and high cadence,
added to the visual evidence of Froome's never-before-or-after-seen seated acceleration away from Contador,
and added to the remarkably low heart rate during said acceleration (never going above 162-3, which is almost unheard of at that level),
there clearly could be a motor.

Honest mistake here. I should have checked. I assumed they were already using Stages.

So the power data doesn't really tell us anything if he was using an SRM.

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

Thanks, Pastronef.

And Jeroen didn't know or bother to check that?
Senza parole indeed.

Added to what Varjas is saying about the 15 sec boost and high cadence,
added to the visual evidence of Froome's never-before-or-after-seen seated acceleration away from Contador,
and added to the remarkably low heart rate during said acceleration (never going above 162-3, which is almost unheard of at that level),
there clearly could be a motor.

Honest mistake here. I should have checked. I assumed they were already using Stages.

So the power data doesn't really tell us anything if he was using an SRM.

Cheers.

And look, nobody blames you for not knowing.
The problem for me lies in the misplaced confidence with which you brush aside certain speculation.
"clearly there can be no motor". "simple point".
I think you should be much more cautious in your formulation.

That also concerns the way you vouch for the Fax.
You cannot just say "I trust those guys, ergo the Fax is real".

 

[Jeroen Swart]

Re: Re:

One thing we did clarify with the testing is that the performances we have seen in the races are within the limits of normal human abilities. Which puts to rest all these inferences that a performance was "mutant" or otherwise.

What are the limits of normal human abilities? How are these determined? Does the testing assume that his test performance is the same as what we've seen in races or does it only establish his abilities at the time tested? I assume you are suggesting the former but I would like that explained as it seems clear with doping possibly involved these conclusions seem premature. If the latter than how does this testing put anything "to rest'?

Once again, whether it was done cleanly or not is not established by the climbing rate or the physiological testing. Neither will answer that question.

Did not Froome/Sky engage i this exercise to show that Froome was clean? No question this test wasn't going to establish that. If that is true, doesn't your reputation become entangled with a fairly dodgy and transparently false PR exercise? Would that not explain some of the reaction you're getting here, informed or otherwise?

By "The limits of human performance" I refer to the recorded distribution of VO2 max values collected over a period of approximately a century of research, starting with the work of AV Hill in 1922. This data has a normal distribution as does most physiological variation. The VO2 max recorded by Froome in the lab, his efficiency values and what flows from it - The workload at VO2max are within that normal distribution. The sub maximal workload required to climb at the rate recorded during key wins in his career fall at a percentage of peak that are compatible with him sustaining those sub maximal workloads for the duration required. Hence it can be inferred that the performances in the field are compatible with normal human physiological limits.

If you refer back to the 2015 Tour and the discussions on social media, you will see that a lot of the discussion was around whether the performances were credible. Vayer, Tucker, Puchowicz and others were inferring that the performances were not possible by a clean athlete. I was quite adamant at the time that putting these thresholds on performances and calling them impossible was not in keeping with known physiological limits.

There were quite a few posts so feel free to go and reread them.

In addition, there were calls for transparency and for him to undergo physiological testing, specifically a VO2 max test. Tucker, Grappe and a few others.

The testing stemmed from the two points above. There was never any claim that they were to assess whether he was doped on not.

 

[Freddythefrog]

Great to see you here Jeroen.
Have you ever tested an elite cyclist with 17% body fat ?
And what do you think now it is pointed out about that rounding error on the fax for the BMI ? No scientist would make that error and it is too far away for any of the other data to generate it if that was recorded more precisely but also rounded for the fax.

 

[Jeroen Swart]

Re: Re:

Thanks, Pastronef.

And Jeroen didn't know or bother to check that?
Senza parole indeed.

Added to what Varjas is saying about the 15 sec boost and high cadence,
added to the visual evidence of Froome's never-before-or-after-seen seated acceleration away from Contador,
and added to the remarkably low heart rate during said acceleration (never going above 162-3, which is almost unheard of at that level),
there clearly could be a motor.

Honest mistake here. I should have checked. I assumed they were already using Stages.

So the power data doesn't really tell us anything if he was using an SRM.

Cheers.

And look, nobody blames you for not knowing.
The problem for me lies in the misplaced confidence with which you brush aside certain speculation.
"clearly there can be no motor". "simple point".
I think you should be much more cautious in your formulation.

That also concerns the way you vouch for the Fax.
You cannot just say "I trust those guys, ergo the Fax is real".

On the first point - This is a forum discussion and so it doesn't really lend itself to doing research between responses. I was under the impression they were on Stages and made a point related to that.

With regards to the fax:

If I had not been in correspondence with the scientists who collected the data I would be more circumspect. There are a lot of comments here that Michelle doctored the fax etc. That is not the case.

There were some changes that Esquire made to the image. They highlighted sections and made some other visual changes. A lot of individuals have jumped on that on this forum as proof that the results were somehow doctored. That is not correct.

Can I have 100% faith in the data on the fax? No. I did not collect the data myself and I have not seen the raw data. But the scientists are well respected and independent of Team Sky and the UCI. I have no reason to doubt the veracity of the data.

The decision to not publish the data in tandem with the manuscript we wrote had nothing to do with lack of faith in the data. It was more to do with the length of the manuscript and that the data were collected using differing equipment and methodologies. Which was one of the key criticisms of the Coyle data.

 

[Jeroen Swart]

Re:

Great to see you here Jeroen.
Have you ever tested an elite cyclist with 17% body fat ?
And what do you think now it is pointed out about that rounding error on the fax for the BMI ? No scientist would make that error and it is too far away for any of the other data to generate it if that was recorded more precisely but also rounded for the fax.

Yes. I have tested many top international athletes with high body fat %. There is an assumption that they are all lean. Many of them struggle with their weight.

And 17% can look lean on certain somatotypes. Froome looked absolutely emaciated when we tested him but was at just under 10% BF. This was 1 week before the Vuelta. Go and look at that footage of last year's Vuelta and see whether you think he looks like he is carrying close to 10% BF. That picture of him posted yesterday could be well over 20% BF. There are a few others from that year where his face is completely round and suggest he was often at above 17% BF.

The data on the fax was not for a scientific manuscript. It was for commercial purposes. BMI is also not a variable that any performance physiologist would even consider as relevant. It is therefore fairly meaningless. It is also not likely a rounding error as claimed. The value was 21.85. More likely is that they reported the value without the decimal places. Considering how vague BMI values are, I don't consider that a problem. It could simply be that the system was set up to not report the decimal places and simply spat out the value as 21 instead of 21.85.

 

[thehog]

Re: Re:

Thanks, Pastronef.

And Jeroen didn't know or bother to check that?
Senza parole indeed.

Added to what Varjas is saying about the 15 sec boost and high cadence,
added to the visual evidence of Froome's never-before-or-after-seen seated acceleration away from Contador,
and added to the remarkably low heart rate during said acceleration (never going above 162-3, which is almost unheard of at that level),
there clearly could be a motor.

Honest mistake here. I should have checked. I assumed they were already using Stages.

I like your work; but you were making an assumption with underlined text, stating categorically that "there can be no motor". When you jump to conclusions like that it dilutes your other good work.

 

[thehog]

Re: Re:

Thanks, Pastronef.

And Jeroen didn't know or bother to check that?
Senza parole indeed.

Added to what Varjas is saying about the 15 sec boost and high cadence,
added to the visual evidence of Froome's never-before-or-after-seen seated acceleration away from Contador,
and added to the remarkably low heart rate during said acceleration (never going above 162-3, which is almost unheard of at that level),
there clearly could be a motor.

Honest mistake here. I should have checked. I assumed they were already using Stages.

So the power data doesn't really tell us anything if he was using an SRM.

Cheers.

And look, nobody blames you for not knowing.
The problem for me lies in the misplaced confidence with which you brush aside certain speculation.
"clearly there can be no motor". "simple point".
I think you should be much more cautious in your formulation.

That also concerns the way you vouch for the Fax.
You cannot just say "I trust those guys, ergo the Fax is real".

On the first point - This is a forum discussion and so it doesn't really lend itself to doing research between responses. I was under the impression they were on Stages and made a point related to that.

With regards to the fax:

If I had not been in correspondence with the scientists who collected the data I would be more circumspect. There are a lot of comments here that Michelle doctored the fax etc. That is not the case.

There were some changes that Esquire made to the image. They highlighted sections and made some other visual changes. A lot of individuals have jumped on that on this forum as proof that the results were somehow doctored. That is not correct.

Can I have 100% faith in the data on the fax? No. I did not collect the data myself and I have not seen the raw data. But the scientists are well respected and independent of Team Sky and the UCI. I have no reason to doubt the veracity of the data.

The decision to not publish the data in tandem with the manuscript we wrote had nothing to do with lack of faith in the data. It was more to do with the length of the manuscript and that the data were collected using differing equipment and methodologies. Which was one of the key criticisms of the Coyle data.

Independent of the UCI?

You may wish to review that statement.