Re:
Fergoose said:
The man did the crime and did the time, with perhaps the most incriminating evidence being the clear split in his career performance and energy outputs, pre and post ban. Pre ban we has a ferocious time trialist that could compete for time trial victories. He would also routinely top 6 watts per kilo output on long ascents in the middle of arduous Grand Tours. Post ban his performance levels, barring an occasional stage in the Giro, never reached anything like the same level, and certainly nothing like the same consistency. He has become routinely a complete non-factor in time trials.
That's mostly true, but the question is why? Some people, like this poster, seem to assume Contador stopped doping after the CB positive, or at least cut down on any program. The problem with that view--as an explanation for his performance decline--is that he was still at his peak in 2011, when the positive was known and he was in limbo over what his fate would be. If he was afraid to dope at that point, we should have seen a performance drop off, but the 2011 Giro was arguably his most dominant GT ever. He failed to podium in the TDF that year, but given that he was coming off the Giro, then crashed several times in the early stages of that TDF, his performance was certainly consistent with what he had done in prior years. There's no reason to think he wouldn't have won the 2011 TDF if he hadn't ridden the Giro.
Even dopers who continue to dope when returning from a suspension may have trouble, at least initially, at reaching previous levels because of the long layoff, but that doesn't apply here, either, because Contador was allowed to race all through 2011, and to begin the next season in January of 2012. By the time CAS got around to suspending him, in February, he missed only about seven months of racing, which shouldn't have been that hard to overcome. In any case, while the inactivity might have explained why he wasn't quite as strong as before in the 2012 Vuelta, he should have been back to normal by the following year, and he clearly wasn't.
So what happened? Was 2013 just an off year? I'm inclined to think so, because he was clearly stronger in 2014. Maybe not at the level of 2007-11, but certainly his performance in the early season races, and in the Vuelta consolation prize after he crashed out of the TDF, was consistent with what we might expect from the dominant earlier Contador when he passed 30. I'd say the same about 2015, when he won the Giro. He wasn't dominant as in 2011, but his performance was consistent with an older version of that 2011 rider.
So I don't think Contador's decline should be attributed to stopping doping. Without making any assertions about that one way or another, I think we can say that with the exception of 2013, Contador's performance following the suspension was quite consistent with aging. In retrospect, he had almost a decade when he was good enough to win GTs. He lost 2010 and 2011 from the CAS ruling, 2013 from who knows why, 2014 he had to settle for the Vuelta, and by 2015 he was no longer strong enough to win the Tour, but could win the Giro.
but Tibo can still improve 
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