Must be something like that. I've turned off coverage in order to get some work done, but he dropped behind early to the medical car and struggled.
Is that not true of everything you can do to improve performance? In terms of diet, training, coaching etc. Different people respond in different ways to these things.
Curious about Jitty Slitter his idea too but I suppose it is about combining the freaks of nature (the individual) with freaks of nature (the synthetic medicine such as EPO). Adding two freaks of nature together. Also whether the body starts to react and behave different as it usually does. Something that isn't just in daily food, but designed specifically on purpose to effectuate the deviating reaction. N.B. However, EPO turned a few mediocre cyclists into world class athletes, such as Bjarne Riis.
Great ride by Geschke. Gutted for Tejay. Obviously, Froome learned from his mistakes in the Dauphine.
I can't be arsed to dig out the material - but IIRC the key idea is that drugs like EPO are not a level playing field. They produce the various drug signatures. e.g. One or two guys with amazing levels of performance beyond everyone else. As you rightly point out - mediocre athletes don't become ATGs just by good training. Everyone is training! The reverse of this is very good talents who just can't seem to be fit enough. Or as the media likes to think - they are "too lazy"
Riis perhaps took it further than anyone else before him. The anecdote he himself tells is that his hematocrit values were so high the year he won the tour that he sometimes had trouble bending his fingers properly.
Difficult to say. Piotr Ugrumov in 1994 seems a good candidate as well (from 32 to 60% HCT). Conconi, Ferrari for the win! Conconi even used UCI money for his experiments, haha. After that the rest woke up Paris Roubaix 1996 (which was another Italian team, as trivia) The Vandeweghe book is really good about all of this by the way.
Oh I remember that Museeuw edition of P-R very well. I saw that at a family party at my great-uncle's place.
He doesn't have the same strange career progression but I'd wager that Welsh ******** Geraint Thomas is an even bigger fraud than Froome. Very similar to Hincapie, except that he's even better and more consistent at both the one-day events and high mountains, and then maintaining the peak for multiple months. Just as Froome it even looks ugly (Lance Armstrong sort of looked elegant in a way and Pantani was born with the bike). We'll see what Richie Porte can do without Skynet. He had always a talent for the medium-sized mountains though.
I think i was reading yesterday that the Sky drones were expecting to get tired soon on account of how much water they carried for Froome in the first week Lets see if it actually happens
If there's any interest left at all in this years Grand Tour. Bardet and Rolland make it a 1-2 finish for the home team All the usual suspects are still up top. Now back to the "Who can pontificate the best on team Sky's drug running" Despite negative results from drug tests. Thread!
I think we will see Geraint Thomas drop Contador on the climb to the Alpe d'Huez and asked by Skynet to slow down.
Les Lacelles? That was amazing. And it didn't look super hard, either. It would be a ton of fun to ride.
It was a longer version of hills that I do and then add switchbacks. 3.5k 7%, 17% at its worst. Plus the overhead views, especially of the fans on top watching over. It was very cool. So that was the first time they climbed that? They'll be back.
les lacets. the best part would be that even if the road's not closed off it's too narrow for a car to pass a bicycle.
Are you out of your ever loving mind....!!! Today's may not be as impressive looking but it's even harder. 13,500ft of climbing. We used to ride the Welsh mtns. Not a touch on what we're seeing on TV here but still a good test. Ask Thomas. We had to ride 5 miles down along cobblestone roads to get the ferry across the Mersey. (That'd make a song title ) then another 20 miles just to get to the start of a time trial. Good warm up. Taking the mtn bike to the park trails is hard these days.
No, not at all. I know I can ride that. Will take me longer than the pro's did yesterday, but those climbs are in my 47-yo wheel house.
when I first saw it, I thought they were previewing Alpe d huez. The pictures a little later on when all the riders were on it and the team cars and support vehicles, I thought I was in a 1980's arcade playing centipede.