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Who had the Biggest sporting change in History?

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Who has the biggest performance jump from Donkey to Race Horse

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Riis has to take the price.

Concerning Froome on the other hand I dont think that much. Surely he made a very suspicious performance jump before the 2011 Vuelta, but as said he was always a complete stageracingtalent.

As u23-rider he battled with the likes of Fuglsang, Frank, Mollema and Costa in races like GP Tell and Giro Regioni and was seen back then as a really big stageracingtalent where a later TDF win would not seem completely impossible. The years afterwards where he seemed stagnated with only very small climpses of big talent (but a few) ment a lot of people forgot about this U23-talent or lost confidence in this talent (like I did myself) but to say it was never there before 2011 is just plain wrong.
 
Jun 25, 2013
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red_flanders said:
He doesn't have a low V02 max. It was 84, which is very high. Not high enough to support his ridiculous performances, but on no planet is 84 a low V02 max.

Low to be a good climber though - Froome's one is unknown, right?
 
Jan 20, 2013
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red_flanders said:
No idea, and have wondered the same about a lot of these results. That said, it's the measure that exists for Armstrong and it's certainly far from low.

I'm sure someone more knowledgeable about the test can comment on how doping might alter it.

"In order to understand the mechanism of EPO as an ergogenic aid it is necessary to understand the limiting factors for maximum oxygen uptake during endurance performance. Maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max) was first defined by Hill et al
(1922) who stated:
1. There is an upper limit to oxygen uptake
2. There are interindividual differences in VO2Max
3. A high VO2 Max is prerequisite in endurance performance
4. VO2max is limited by the cardiorespiratory system to transport O2 to the muscles."

"Bassett and Howley (2000) described four limiting factors of VO2Max. They were:
1.Pulmonary diffusing capacity
2. Cardiac output
3. Oxygen carrying capacity
4. Skeletal muscle limitations

The first three can be described as central limitations and the fourth peripheral. It is the third of these which is affected by EPO and haemoglobin levels. The use of recombinant EPO has been shown to increase VO2max (Ekblom and Berglund 1991). "

As doping exists in the world of sport, and has done so for many decades now, this whole thread and arguments therein re who has the most natural talent is non sequential. You can not know the answer without knowledge of a person's doping history. The longer the history an individual's doping is or was i.e. at what age they started doping is, I would say, a key to their natural talent.

And like that little spat Lemond had with Armstrong, went something like this.....mirror mirror on the wall, who has the largest Vo2Max of them all?
 
darwin553 said:
Low to be a good climber though - Froome's one is unknown, right?
depends. according to doc veloclinic, the best climbers in the vuelta performed in a manner implying 90+ml/kg/min vo2maxes while doing roughly 6,0w/kg.

IMHO 85 is huge, even for pro riders and top notch climbers. doubly so if you're clean.

of course, climbing prowess also depends on other factors such as how large a fraction of the vo2 one can maintain at FTP, efficiency (less so), fatigue in GTs (much so), and so on.

froome's vo2max is not known, but taking doc's analysis as a guideline, it is fair to assume that at the tour it was jacked up to the ballpark of 90-95 since his performances imply that level.

oh, and just to clarify: 90+ values are extremely rare. during those years indurain only clocked in 88 if i remember correctly.
 
LaFlorecita said:
Get your facts straight.

It's probably no use arguing with a troll though.
Actually, I got my facts from albertocontador.org.
In my post I said Contador didn't win any races in
his first two years as an amateur, at his web-site
it says "He didn't win any races as a cadet or his
first year in the juvenil category", a direct quote.

I believe calling another poster "a troll" is a banning
offense, young lady.
 
Apr 20, 2012
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oldcrank said:
I believe calling another poster "a troll" is a banning
offense, young lady.
Good thing selective sharing of information is not a banning offence oldcrank, too bad you missed the part on Aldopo.org where it was clearly stated:

''KOM:
* VUELTA AL BESAYA [often on Pena Cabarga]
* RUTA DEL VINO [funny name]
* SIERRA NORTE
* VUELTA A TAVALERA''


Age 17.

But hey, you surely just missed that one.

Did he not dope for those accomplishments? Doubt it.

But hey, you got your big moment. Again.
 
oldcrank said:
Actually, I got my facts from albertocontador.org.
In my post I said Contador didn't win any races in
his first two years as an amateur, at his web-site
it says "He didn't win any races as a cadet or his
first year in the juvenil category", a direct quote.

I believe calling another poster "a troll" is a banning
offense, young lady.

You said he did not win any races before joining Saiz's team. That is not true.
 
Fearless Greg Lemond said:
Good thing selective sharing of information is not a banning offence oldcrank, too bad you missed the part on Aldopo.org where it was clearly stated:

''KOM:
* VUELTA AL BESAYA [often on Pena Cabarga]
* RUTA DEL VINO [funny name]
* SIERRA NORTE
* VUELTA A TAVALERA''


Age 17.

But hey, you surely just missed that one.

Did he not dope for those accomplishments? Doubt it.

But hey, you got your big moment. Again.

I highly doubt he doped back then. I think at the earliest he started a year later, in 2001, when he joined Iberdrola.
 
oldcrank said:
No, the fact is he did not when a single race his first
two years as an amateur, a time when most future
champions are showing a wealth of natural talent.
However, when he came under the wing of Mr. Saiz
a truly astonishing transformation took place.
Again, I said "he did not when (sic, meant win) a single race
his first two years as an amateur" a fact that can be found
at http://www.albertocontador.org
 
oldcrank said:
It looks like I said "Zero wins his first two years as an amateur."

oldcrank said:
Again, I said "he did not when (sic, meant win) a single race
his first two years as an amateur" a fact that can be found
at http://www.albertocontador.org

But you completely ignored the fact that he did win several races before he joined Saiz. So he didn't undergo an "astonishing transformation" when he joined Saiz.
 
LaFlorecita said:
But you completely ignored the fact that he did win several races before he joined Saiz. So he didn't undergo an "astonishing transformation" when he joined Saiz.
Well according to albertocontador.org he won a total
of four races before he joined Iberdrola. So that is a
total of four wins in his first three years.

And actually you are correct about his "astonishing
transformation"...that came under Bruyneel. Alberto,
who won a total of four races in his first three years
as an amateur suddenly wins four Grand Tours in three
years, after one 31st place finish a couple of years earlier.
 
oldcrank said:
Well according to albertocontador.org he won a total
of four races before he joined Iberdrola. So that is a
total of four wins in his first three years.

And actually you are correct about his "astonishing
transformation"...that came under Bruyneel. Alberto,
who won a total of four races in his first three years
as an amateur suddenly wins four Grand Tours in three
years, after one 31st place finish a couple of years earlier.

Okay. Whatever. As I said before, arguing with you is useless :) keep trolling mate
 
LaFlorecita said:
Okay. Whatever. As I said before, arguing with you is useless :) keep trolling mate
This thread is titled "Who had the Biggest sporting change in History?" and the obvious choice is Alberto Contador who went from winning a total of four races in three years as an amateur to winning four Grand Tours in three years. So I voted for Alberto Contador and you objected. I used information from the albertocontador.org website to back up my argument yet you persist in calling me "a troll" and telling me to "keep trolling". I hope you noticed that I did not object to you voting for Chris Froome. I hope you noticed that I did not call you "a troll". I believe you have much to learn about cycling, young lady, but perhaps even more to learn about manners.
 
oldcrank said:
This thread is titled "Who had the Biggest sporting change in History?" and the obvious choice is Alberto Contador who went from winning a total of four races in three years as an amateur to winning four Grand Tours in three years. So I voted for Alberto Contador and you objected. I used information from the albertocontador.org website to back up my argument yet you persist in calling me "a troll" and telling me to "keep trolling". I hope you noticed that I did not object to you voting for Chris Froome. I hope you noticed that I did not call you "a troll". I believe you have much to learn about cycling, young lady, but perhaps even more to learn about manners.

I believe you should realize Contador showed talent even before joining Saiz, then gradually built up to winning GTs, old man. What's more, he showed 10 times the talent Froome showed before 2011. He won king of the mountains classifications as a junior, set the record on Subida a Gorla, won a time trial in 2003, won stages in the Tour Down Under, Setmana Catalana and Tour de Suisse + GC in Setmana Catalana and a 4th place in GC at the Tour de Suisse in 2005, then won stages in the Tour de Romandie and Tour de Suisse in 2006, finished 2nd in the Tour de Romandie GC in between Evans (1st) and Valverde (3rd), and finished 5th in the Vuelta al Pais Vasco. Then he joined Discovery and again won some 1 week stage races, plus the Tour.

I am not saying he never doped, in fact I believe he's been doping ever since he turned pro, but that does not mean he never showed any natural progression or talent. You do not seem to get that though, and you continue to argue that Froome is sooo clean and sooo talented, yet he showed no talent at all, except for a 34th place in the Common Wealth tt or whatever the **** sky fanboys keep pointing at as proof their boy is clean.

I get the feeling though that it would've been better to spend my time not writing posts convincing you, as you'll come up with a ridiculous post with ridiculous cut off sentences babbling on about how big of a cheat Contador is and pointing at "evidence" you found while putting your fingers in your ears and shouting "I can't hear you" when people come up with evidence that your claims may not necessarily be true.

Have a nice evening, old man.
 
To the question in the thread title, Laurent Jalabert

For the donkey-to-racehorse question, there isn't really a difference between Riis and Froome: Froome just got luckier in the sense of finding the prep that worked for him at a younger age. Riis was already 32 when he won the Tour; Froome just 28. Riis is still making a good living from the sport nearly twenty years later of course so he wasn't that unlucky.

Horner isn't really a transformation (yet) - he's just an extreme version of the end-of-contract-take-a-big-chance phenomenon we've seen plenty of times before. We'll see next year whether he intends to go down the JuanJo Cobo route or the Froome route.
 
On the question of Lance's VO2max, the high score of 84 was when his haematocrit was jacked to 48, whilst his "normal" level appears to be around 39 so I'm guessing his actual VO2max was in the mid 70s??

No link, from memory it was in the article describing his huge heart induced aerodynamic hump and triple sized pipe from lheart to legs :) ....I'm pretty sure I linked it last year
 

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