I think a lot of Clinicians are experiencing some ambiguity over Nibali’s performance to date. On the one hand, he is dominating the Tour, and making it look pretty easy. On the other hand, his estimated power values up the first two major climbs have been within the range that most observers regard as possible without doping.
Just because a performance is considered possible without doping, of course, doesn’t mean it’s possible for any rider without doping. DiLuca was not riding like an alien when he was nabbed at the Giro last year, but he was apparently performing better than he was capable of clean. What we would really like to do is be able to judge performances for individual riders on a standard appropriate to them. Welcome to the Functional Threshold Power Passport, an idea whose time has not yet come, but which I think could be a key anti-doping tool in the future.
To understand how it works, and what it can accomplish, consider the current blood passport, and the system that preceded it, the 50% hematocrit rule. The 50% HT criterion is a lot like the 6.5 watts/kg level (or any other level beyond which you believe undoped performance is not possible). On the one hand, it could penalize a few riders who have naturally very high HTs; this problem was avoided by having riders demonstrate this, then get an exemption. On the other hand—and this is the much more serious problem with the 50% rule—it allowed any rider with a lower HT to raise his HT with impunity up to 50%. And even worse, it meant the lower the natural HT, the greater the potential advantage.
The blood passport avoids these problems by determining a baseline value of HT (and some other parameters), then looks for values that exceed (or in the case of some values, fail to match) this value by a significant degree. This helps level the playing field, by judging any rider’s HT or other blood values in relationship to what it has been in the past. While a rider who knows what he’s doing can still boost his HT a little bit, generally it isn’t safe to boost it very much, and crucially, no rider has much of an advantage over another. If your natural HT is 40, you might boost it 5% to 42, but if your natural HT is 50, you might also boost it 5% to 52.5. There are ways of getting larger boosts, but still, riders with lower HTs are not privileged over riders with higher HTs.
As I see it, the same is true with drawing a line in the sand regarding watts/kg values. Depending on this line, a few riders may be able to exceed it naturally. But the much larger problem is that many riders may not even reach it with doping. What we really need is a baseline power value. It might conceivably be 6.5 watts/kg for 45 min for some exceptionally talented rider, but it might be 6.0, or 5.5 or even 5.0 watts/kg for some other rider. The rider is then judged by how much he exceeds this value, rather than some arbitrary value that is the same for everyone.
For those of you who feel that anti-doping fervor has reached the point where any rider who performs well is immediately the object of suspicion, I understand that this kind of system looks like your worst nightmare. But hear me out. I’m not proposing that riders be sanctioned on the basis of this kind of analysis. Nor is it necessary that teams publish these data, though I certainly wish they would.
What I’m proposing is that every team be required to make periodic (at least annually) measurements of every rider’s V02max, lactate threshold and efficiency. These three values, taken together, pretty much indicate the maximum power the rider is capable of putting out. They should have enormous predictive value on how fast a GT contender can climb certain mountains, with the usual precautions about wind, drafting, strategy, and so on. And when a rider has spent several years at the elite level, these values ought to stabilize to a large degree.
In fact both of these latter two claims—that they have great predictive value for climbing times and that they don’t change much when a rider reaches a certain point in his career—can be tested by such data. We ought to want to know more about how predictive power values obtained in the laboratory are for climbs in real races, and we certainly ought to want to know more about for how long and how much natural improvements in these parameters are possible. All this information would go into constructing the baselines, and crucially, the amount of deviation from them that seems plausible.
The teams would then be responsible for monitoring the power values of their riders. Though they would not have to release these data to the public, they would be required to provide them to the appropriate anti-doping officials. These officials could then be on the alert for performances that seem to exceed significantly what the rider has previously been capable of performing—again, based on what the data indicate about natural improvements.
When a rider exceeded what is considered his natural range, he would be identified publicly, and while his natural baseline would not be published, the public could get a very good idea of what it was based on the performance that led to his targeting. The rider and his team, needless to say, would not enjoy this privileged information being outed, and that itself, it seems to me, would be an important deterrent. I think the public has a right to know when a rider has far exceeded what he has ever been capable of doing before, not just by comparing with previous finishes, as was the case with Froome in 2011, but with hard data.
I have some other ideas about how to develop this system, but for now I’ve written enough, and will let others respond to it. I know there are many possible objections to it, from both sides of the aisle, so to speak--those who think it's an unfair way to judge riders, and others who may think it's too weak an approach to do much good--but I think with enough data the system can become very useful.
Just because a performance is considered possible without doping, of course, doesn’t mean it’s possible for any rider without doping. DiLuca was not riding like an alien when he was nabbed at the Giro last year, but he was apparently performing better than he was capable of clean. What we would really like to do is be able to judge performances for individual riders on a standard appropriate to them. Welcome to the Functional Threshold Power Passport, an idea whose time has not yet come, but which I think could be a key anti-doping tool in the future.
To understand how it works, and what it can accomplish, consider the current blood passport, and the system that preceded it, the 50% hematocrit rule. The 50% HT criterion is a lot like the 6.5 watts/kg level (or any other level beyond which you believe undoped performance is not possible). On the one hand, it could penalize a few riders who have naturally very high HTs; this problem was avoided by having riders demonstrate this, then get an exemption. On the other hand—and this is the much more serious problem with the 50% rule—it allowed any rider with a lower HT to raise his HT with impunity up to 50%. And even worse, it meant the lower the natural HT, the greater the potential advantage.
The blood passport avoids these problems by determining a baseline value of HT (and some other parameters), then looks for values that exceed (or in the case of some values, fail to match) this value by a significant degree. This helps level the playing field, by judging any rider’s HT or other blood values in relationship to what it has been in the past. While a rider who knows what he’s doing can still boost his HT a little bit, generally it isn’t safe to boost it very much, and crucially, no rider has much of an advantage over another. If your natural HT is 40, you might boost it 5% to 42, but if your natural HT is 50, you might also boost it 5% to 52.5. There are ways of getting larger boosts, but still, riders with lower HTs are not privileged over riders with higher HTs.
As I see it, the same is true with drawing a line in the sand regarding watts/kg values. Depending on this line, a few riders may be able to exceed it naturally. But the much larger problem is that many riders may not even reach it with doping. What we really need is a baseline power value. It might conceivably be 6.5 watts/kg for 45 min for some exceptionally talented rider, but it might be 6.0, or 5.5 or even 5.0 watts/kg for some other rider. The rider is then judged by how much he exceeds this value, rather than some arbitrary value that is the same for everyone.
For those of you who feel that anti-doping fervor has reached the point where any rider who performs well is immediately the object of suspicion, I understand that this kind of system looks like your worst nightmare. But hear me out. I’m not proposing that riders be sanctioned on the basis of this kind of analysis. Nor is it necessary that teams publish these data, though I certainly wish they would.
What I’m proposing is that every team be required to make periodic (at least annually) measurements of every rider’s V02max, lactate threshold and efficiency. These three values, taken together, pretty much indicate the maximum power the rider is capable of putting out. They should have enormous predictive value on how fast a GT contender can climb certain mountains, with the usual precautions about wind, drafting, strategy, and so on. And when a rider has spent several years at the elite level, these values ought to stabilize to a large degree.
In fact both of these latter two claims—that they have great predictive value for climbing times and that they don’t change much when a rider reaches a certain point in his career—can be tested by such data. We ought to want to know more about how predictive power values obtained in the laboratory are for climbs in real races, and we certainly ought to want to know more about for how long and how much natural improvements in these parameters are possible. All this information would go into constructing the baselines, and crucially, the amount of deviation from them that seems plausible.
The teams would then be responsible for monitoring the power values of their riders. Though they would not have to release these data to the public, they would be required to provide them to the appropriate anti-doping officials. These officials could then be on the alert for performances that seem to exceed significantly what the rider has previously been capable of performing—again, based on what the data indicate about natural improvements.
When a rider exceeded what is considered his natural range, he would be identified publicly, and while his natural baseline would not be published, the public could get a very good idea of what it was based on the performance that led to his targeting. The rider and his team, needless to say, would not enjoy this privileged information being outed, and that itself, it seems to me, would be an important deterrent. I think the public has a right to know when a rider has far exceeded what he has ever been capable of doing before, not just by comparing with previous finishes, as was the case with Froome in 2011, but with hard data.
I have some other ideas about how to develop this system, but for now I’ve written enough, and will let others respond to it. I know there are many possible objections to it, from both sides of the aisle, so to speak--those who think it's an unfair way to judge riders, and others who may think it's too weak an approach to do much good--but I think with enough data the system can become very useful.
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