Okay, somewhere to discuss performances at the Tour: are they clean or not?

Some good intro posts from The Science of Sport and we can look forward to upcoming articles.

http://www.sportsscientists.com/

"A sustained (over 40 minutes) power output of greater than 6.2 W/kg at the end of a Tour stage is simply not physiologically believable, and is strongly suggestive of doping. In fact, anything above 6.0 W/kg is very, very suspect. Those are power outputs that are produced by riders who are doping, because the physiology required to drive that kind of performance, well, it just doesn't exist."

Wish I'd preserved the link to a recent interview/piece on Columbian riders where I think Herrera was quoted to have said something along these lines:

"When I started seeing the big, fat riders win mountain stages I knew that doping had become the norm"

note: it's a brit book i got this out of (you can sub a$$es and airplanes if you prefer)

A link here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_at_the_Tour_de_France

The referenced New Scientist article is also good reading:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2072...rug-cheats.html

...mostly known stuff, but the article also doesn't consider the possibility that Armstrong's 'superhuman' performances were evidence of doping.

interesting report, I have a question some of you may be able to answer. I have heard other quote Wattage outputs by watching it on TV etc. Is there a formula for this? is it something other then a Watt meter on a bike? how is this calculated?

I have the same question for VO2 Max. I was tested once and had to wear head gear and essentially breath into a computer, how are they calculating this to know if they are out of "normal parameters" ?

Are these performances clean? Probably not.
Are most of the riders on the same (or similar) programs? Probably.\
Does this make it acceptable? Absolutely not.

So where does this leave us?

There's my quick $.02.

is anybody else waiting for a ball to drop before the Tour starts?

or is that not happening anymore, these last minute exclusions to give the illusion of having a handle on doping, because they realised how horrible it was PR wise?

Watts/kg. can be calculated directly from VAM, vertical meters in an hour, with VAM in turn determined by timing riders up well-known climbs. (Can also be determined from flat ITT rides, but more complicated, as wind resistance has to be taken into account). There are lots of sites where the formulas are given. Often if you follow a race online, you can determine the time pretty accurately from the time the riders of interest are reported to begin climbing till the time they finish. Of course, values are affected by factors such as weather conditions, whether the climb is continuous or has false flats, and so on, but still, since every Tour has major climbs that have been used in past Tours, comparisons with earlier Tours are inevitable.

You cannot determine V02 just from race parameters. As you indicated, you have to go into a lab and be tested.



There is that rumor of a WSJ article, concerning the investigations of Floyd's claims, supposedly it was going to come out this week. Seems to me if it's something really shocking, they would want to publish it by tomorrow. I think the impact of an article like that is lessened somewhat if it comes out during the Tour, when it has to compete with news of the Tour itself. The day before the Tour seems to me ideal, because you have public interest peaking, people waiting around ready to devour any news that comes out.

But it can't be anything too juicy, according to HWMNBN:

http://sports.yahoo.com/sc/news?slug=ap-to...rance-armstrong

If like me you're not so good with formulas you can use the online vam calculator . Not just for Tour performances, its good fun for working out the stats on my own climbs on the way home from work!

edit: I just checked it and its not working this morning. ho hum.

Just to note, The Science of Sport post is based around the idea that VO2 max can be measured from power:

"...The first involves the use of a published paper called "Peak power output predicts maximal oxygen uptake and performance time in trained cyclists". This study looked at 100 trained cyclists and established the following relationship between oxygen consumption (VO2) and power output. The relationship is:

VO2 (L/min) = (0.01141 x Power output) + 0.435

Therefore, if you take the power output of 560W, and you apply this equation, you will calculate an oxygen consumption of 6.82 L/min. Relative to body mass, this is equal to 97.49 ml/kg/min..."

The bog standard power calculation for watts on climbs is (according to Allen Lim):
(weight of bike and rider (kg) x 9.8 x elevation gain (metres)) / time (seconds) = power (watts)

So the key things to know are weight (which is often equalized at 78 kgs for comparison between riders), elevation gain (see your Tour guide), and the time taken to complete the climb (get the stopwatch out when watching the TV). Not so good for comparing different climbs, but good for relative comparisons between riders on a particular climb in the race or over the years.

Hogwash....that would never hold up in court, to accept the premise and use it as the standard to define doping as the Eggheads would have you believe you have to then accept that all great athletes are dopers and that never has any one person been able to achieve superhuman effort or ability. sorry I think it looks good on paper but will not pass muster.

If you accept it then just stop watching sports,because the entertainment value of sport is to see people achieve what others can not. By that standard, Eric Hyden, Steve Prefontaine, Carl Lewis, Mark Spitz, Jesse Owens were all dopers. There is still a human element in sports, there are still people who have a greater capacity to tap their own potential and suffer more and tolerate it. If there is not I do not want to watch.

That's very interesting, but note that it is an empirical correlation, not a logical one. They found in a study of riders that this formula predicted V02 with high accuracy. There are other factors that determine watts or power besides V02, which is why I stated it could not be determined from race parameters alone. What this study seems to have found is that these other factors are not that important, i.e, they either make a relatively insignificant contribution, or are more or less the same for all the riders. As long as that is the case, then maybe a fairly good estimate of V02 is possible, but it is still an estimate, and depends on these other factors being unimportant. For example, it might turn out that for non-elite riders, this formula would not work.

In contrast, the relationship between VAM and power is a logical one. It does not require a study to prove it, but can be calculated from simple physical principles. It will hold for any rider (except some superhuman who rides so fast up a steep grade that wind resistance becomes significant--and even then, that could be factored into the calculation).

As I said before, because of all the race condition factors, it's very difficult to compare performances from year to year. Still, when one looks at many riders over many years, these factors tend to average out. Such large pools of data also address Adker's concern that individual efforts are being ignored. That argument simply isn't relevant when you are looking at the performance of a great many riders over a long period of time. The data I've seen make it pretty clear that power output has gone way up since EPO became widely available in the peloton. OTOH, trying to compare power output this year to that of last year, or a few years ago, is trickier.

Are you suggesting that Carl Lewis was a doper.

OMG!

Dave.

Dave,

that was expensive wine i was drinking! you should be ashamed of yourself!!!


this was posted in the other thread, but relevant here as it looks like maybe the WSJ is coming out with something after all...

eta: what effect do you think this will have? not just on LA, but on the Tour as a whole?

Pretty hard pressed to think of even a single "superhuman" cycling effort over the past 20 years that hasn't involved doping or someone linked to doping. Cancellara's classics, maybe? Course, he rides for Riis. Contador to some extent, though I don't think of him as having "superhuman" ability, even ignoring the Saiz/Bruyneel links. Otherwise...drawing a bit of a blank.

"Superhuman" efforts tend to raise suspicion because they are, in fact, superhuman.

So it is coming out tomorrow. Based on that teaser, I'd say they don't have anything new. It sounds like they're just re-hashing what's in Floyd's emails. Possibly some new information that Floyd hasn't mentioned yet will come to light, but I find it hard to believe that anything Floyd knows, by itself, will have much of an effect on either LA or the Tour. It's still just his word against everyone else's. It's what Novitsky can do with that information that will matter.

On the other hand, the fact that the WSJ, certainly no sensationalist tabloid, would come out with an article like this on the day the Tour starts has to make you wonder. The editors there must think they have something more damaging to someone than has yet seen the light.

If they had a legitimate bombshell, they probably wouldn't be sitting on it until tomorrow. So I'm guessing it's just more details from Landis.

On the other hand, Greg Lemond's prediction for Armstrong, via Cyclingnews:



The France bit is especially intriguing. Remember all the syringes and stuff the French police found in Astana's trash last year? Is that finally coming back to bite? Otherwise, why should Armstrong be wary of heading into France?

I know the CN article is new, but the Lemond quote is a repeat of something he said shortly after the Landis announcement during the Tour of California, pretty much word for word. I don't know if Lemond just likes how it sounds, so he added it to his blog, or if the CN editors patched in the quote to the blog which is otherwise basically about getting yourself ready for a specific race. Considering that Armstrong spent quite a bit of time in France recently re-conning parts of the route, I don't think he fears going into France.

Quite a trick to set limits to human endurances - not that I'm opposed to it and I'd welcome a deeper scientific study with more subjects.

I think it would open the door just as variations in the blood passport opens some to further testing.

But one doesn't win the tour on the basis of his VO2Max or ablility to produce wattage; though they do give some context to see how well some are endowed or conditioned to race a 21 day race. Or maybe not as recovery would have to be measured as well. (and how well a round of doping aids recovery for the next day or week.)

There is a "human" element as well as an intelligence and luck factor for that matter. Strength alone doesn't guaantee a tour win. Inteligence: when to use your strength and your teams strength or save it for later is also key.
The real human element is desire and grinta - I'll postulate that each rider might briefly be able to do something the scientists might claim superhuman for a stage that doesn't - or may have nothing to have to do with his doping or not doping. You might say it is when the rider through desire demands the ultimate from his body sometimes more than it could deliver on a test stand in a laboratory or on paper with numbers.
Call it a case of mind over matter or desire over exhaustion and why some succumb and some survive not only in cycling but in life too. Its just not something easily or simply mathematically quantifiable.
That said I'm all for anything reasonable that will root out the dopers and facilitators and get them out of all sports.

Agee 100% that within cycling and the doping culture it is very hard to tell what is real, but the idea that simple scientific parameters alone will define that any off the charts results can be determined to be my nefarious means would take the fun right out of sports entertainment. If you look at who I quoted all of the athletes had "superhuman" results in an age before doping existed. I hope we never get to the day when anything great accomplished in sports will be the very fact that it is better then anyone has done before is an automatic conclusion that doping is involved. Who wants to watch a sport where no one is any better then the other.

Are you really that naive? Doping existed long before Jesse Owens, never mind the others you listed who came much later.

So, err, what are you, err, saying?

Well endowed cyclists are better?

WSJ: Blood Brothers

this is also being discussed in the other thread, but I thought it was relevant on this one because it goes into more detail of how and when doping was done in the Tour... there has to be increased scrutiny now, even if it's reporters looking for the big story or whatnot.

are you that cynical? are you going back through history and pinning drugs on all athletic performances. Yikes!

Seems to me that there are FAR to many factors that are unique to each race to make any accurate comparisons. Wind direction/speed. Temp and humidity and road conditions can all add up to a big difference between years. Sorry, but I don't see how you can derive whether someone is doping by these measurables

If someone consistently puts out unbelievable numbers, that is a stronger indication than a one-off performance ... or is it?

You are correct which gives some credibility to the Passport system which measures you against you, however the premise of the article is that any ride that exceeds certain measurables is an indication of doping. That I do not buy.

Haven't seen this go up yet, the first of the 'wattage' reports from Cyclismag.

http://cyclismag.com/article.php?sid=5950

Difficulties in doing comparisons, the article notes, but nothing special at this stage in terms of big wattage figures.

More analysis from these folks to come, hopefully.

...but wait!

Science of Sport posts their first analysis:
http://www.sportsscientists.com/2010/07/po...-de-france.html

Some good stuff, and they see a change this year, particularly from earlier in the decade.

"Even yesterday on the Col du Tormalet, the climbing time was 56:30 for the Yellow Jersey, compared to that huge day in 2003, when Armstrong and Ullrich did it in 44:30. And yes, the race situation was different, but 12 minutes? That's too big to be accounted for by strategy alone, even weather conditions (yesterday may well have been more favourable anyway)."

Not really ground-shaking conclusions, but interesting to see the numbers nonetheless.

...and another wattage report from Cyclismag, too:
http://cyclismag.com/article.php?sid=5967

And in another related comment ( http://cyclismag.com/article.php?sid=5964#ancre9 ) FDJ's doctor suggests that anti-doping efforts are helping French riders: "La lutte antidopage porte ses fruits."

Not buying that. Of course the time differential can be accounted for in the difference in tempo.

But here's some food for thought ...

A couple months ago Petter Janssen came out with a new book. (If you don't know him, he's a scientist and training doc who wrote the first the seminal book on lactate threshold training way back in the days when Conconi was first changing the face of aerobic endurance sports). In this new book he talked candidly about EPO and other doping methods. That earned him a near-immediate dismissal as team doctor from the team he was serving.

When giving interviews following release of the book, he was asked "if he thought the peloton was cleaner now than ten years ago.'

His response: "The riders know who's doing it. They tell me that cycling has never been as clean as now, but according to them there are still about 20 riders in the bunch that are especially 'prepared'."

FWIW and all that.

...more from Science of Sport:

http://www.sportsscientists.com/2010/07/po...wkg-anyone.html

Takeaway:
"Nobody has managed to achieve even 6.2W/kg for any length of time in this Tour de France, let alone 6.7W/kg. Unless I am missing something. 6.6W/kg for 11 minutes, yes, but that rider then dropped to 5W/kg for the rest. In days gone by, that was the tempo the whole way (Incidentally, you can play around with this and work out how far ahead a guy would be if he did ride at 6.7W/kg - I estimate close to 3:00 on the climb. Contador and Schleck, dropped by 3 minutes....?)"

Some criticism of their previous post:

http://cyclocosm.com/2010/07/rest-day-nerd-fights/

In their latest blog, science of sport http://www.sportsscientists.com/ claims that on the Tourmalet Bert and Andy averaged about 5.9 watts/kg. This is considerably lower than Michele Ferrari’s estimate:



To resolve this discrepancy, SOS looked at Chris Horner’s SRM data for the final 9.3 km. of this climb. They found the power estimated in this manner to be close to, though not exactly the same as, the power estimated from VAM on this portion of the climb:



However, the overestimate is very slight, and certainly does not account for the discrepancy with Ferrari. They then calculate the Contador-Schleck VAM and power on this portion of the climb:



To summarize, they validate their estimate of the vertical meters of the final 9.3 km. portion of the climb using Horner's SRM data. Using this VAM estimate, they find that Schleck/Contador's power was what they had estimated before, and definitely less than what Ferrari was claiming.

Is this evidence for a cleaner peloton? In previous posts in this thread, and in a link furnished by Kiwi, it's noted that race tactics can result in very large time differences on climbs, making it difficult to draw any conclusions by comparing a climb one year with a climb in a previous Tour. However, I think at a minimum we can conclude that Schleck and Contador were going all out on the final 9 km (at least Schleck for sure was; whether Contador could have dropped him if he had really felt the need to is arguable). So the only question is whether they might have put out more power if the race up to that point had been different, i.e., a little more relaxed pace. But on the whole, considering this was the most important stretch of the entire Tour for both riders, that they apparently topped out at slightly below 6 watts/kg. seems promising.

Greg Lemond thinks so: http://www.cyclingnews.com/blogs/greg-lemo...ata-of-optimism. He also suggests other observations of the race that he finds consistent with a cleaner peloton:



I'm thinking the passport, while not preventing doping, may narrow the range that rider's can work within. They can still raise their HT, but not as much as when 50% was the only practical limit. On the other hand, since the biggest benefit of doping is to prevent the normal HT decrease during a three week tour, this may not matter too much. IOW, while a HT at the same level at the end of the Tour as it was at the start is suspicious, there exists no mechanism at present for flagging a rider on this basis. It won't trigger any problems with the passport.

Perhaps the passport, or possibly the passport in conjunction with French Law, dual testing with AFLD & UCI, the investigation in the US all probably contribute to a 'cleaner' situation. Perhaps a bit like the post-Festina situation where increased scrutiny resulted in less activity generally, though perhaps not specifically.

Bert and Andy (thx, had to laugh at that) were very evenly matched this year. It made for a very interesting race. Last year, Bert blew the doors off Andy in the final TT. Was Andy really that much worse last year and did he really improve that much this year? Did he have any help in his improvement, or did Bert's help get watered down?

And then you have the huge gap in the last TT - and again a huge difference year-over-year in Bert's relative performance. Presumably there was no motor in anyone's bike, but the results present a huge statistical anomoly where there is a non-linear relationship between incremental improved performance and the additional effort required.

We have seen that those coming close to Fabian in important TTs often find themselves suspended (Schumi for example).

Who knows.

From an entertainment viewpoint, this Tour was epic.

Dave.

If Greg Lemond thinks so then it must be.

How anyone can think that these guys are racing clean is mindz bottling. Just ask the cozybeehive it seems he is the expert on all things dope.

Yikes! Ferrari responds to certain statements made in the Lemond blog, adding this:



http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/open-lette...michele-ferrari

Oh, this is SO on!
Seriously, what is Ferrari on about? Will we find out that Lemond took caffeine tablets at some point, and thus "doped"? As if that has anything at all to do with the full program used over past dozen years or so?

Interesting, but this is more than Greg's (or Mentheour's) word against Ferrari's. By chance, I have just finished the translation of Laurent Fignon's autobiography, "When We Were Young And Carefree" (which, by the way, I thoroughly recommend). Towards the end Fignon also specifically refers to:

1. "Solcinella" (a drug used by cyclists before trialled - think this is the turtle blood one)

2. Doctors charging a percentage of salary

...though to be fair to Ferrari (never thought I would say that), he doesn't name him specifically.

Good to see Ferrari getting pulled back into it - another chance to go over Donati's dossier and all those coded training plans...

A shame that Ferrari didn't respond to the watts/kilogram brouhaha going on over at Science of Sport:
http://www.sportsscientists.com/2010/07/po...-resolving.html

I've got just a moment to look it up and got really surprised by the response.

Ferrari is very selective.He had the perfect opportunity to address many issues in the letter including his exclusive deal with Armstrong and the most recent direct accusations by Floyd Landis regarding blood transfusions.

Regrettably, I found none.

Agreed. Denies anything but 'training programs'. Yet, don't we have court testimony of EPO prescriptions?

As RH, says, the response is surprising.

Dave.

Jesus, I see you guys, backs arched, delivering blows at a tunnel face which leads nowhere. You concentrate on what he doesn't say and ignore what he does say. Enjoy your speculation. I hope it leads you somewhere ... eventually.

Sorry, Ali, you are right. I am hopelessly naive.

Here I thought that Ferrari would just come out and admit what others have already testified and attested to.

Silly me.

Dave.

I really do not know why yall would be looking for the “great doctor fergie” to make any comment’s directly related to LA. He has to cover his 6 like the rest of the rats.
Maybe after the tour the 3 heads of the Shack got together and decided a new plan of attack. It seems like the Greg Lemond doping talk has been thrown into the mix @ more places than one. According to some this would be a “pubic strategies” ploy. If that is the situation then hold on tight for the next great message board blast.

Paging Doctor Ferrari:

http://books.google.com/books?id=M8UDAAAAM...ari&f=false

Makes it pretty clear who Mentheour was talking about when he mentioned 'il dottore'.

Great link. This quote from Simeoni sounds like it could have come from Floyd:



Armstrong-Bruyneel-Ferrari: what a triumvirate.

Dave,

Speculation on what he may probably have done is kind of fruitless. It's been round the block so many times, it's certainly not innovative. I just think when guys like that do give information, maybe looking at that may lead you to the truth far quicker than the usual "Well, anyway ... as I was saying" approach. He said stuff which I found interesting but was not addressed here. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. We all need to be tested.

Ali

Ali, these are the Doping Forums. I am doing my best to stick with the program. I understand that the good Doctor has perfected quite a program.

Yes, Ferrari did say some interesting stuff. What he didn't say and how he avoided saying it, though, seemed far more interesting. At least it did to me.

Ok, so maybe he didn't have 50 clients as LeMond suggested. He claims he only had 20 or so.

Can he name a few names?

Also, would he please reveal how much they paid him?

If he could prove that his compensation is different than we understand (e.g. ~20% of salary) that would have been far more revealing. If his clients were the best in cycling, and they all made $1m or so, then 20 clients at 20% is about $4m/yr by my calculator. Pretty good for someone that describes themselves as merely an athletic trainer.

And, if he was earning multi-millions, then how much would someone have to pay to him in order to have an exclusive relationship?

Dave.

Transformation?

One of the most heavily discussed topics vis a vis Armstrong was his "transformation" from a classics type rider to the top of the grand tour GC types.

Why is it that those folks aren't asking the same questions about others? Like, say, Samuel Sanchez?

In 2003 as the Tour hit the famed Plateau de Beille (and Armstrong went flying up the mountain), Sanchez was left in the dust so far off the back he was eliminated from the race and sent home for being outside the time limit. In 2004, the same thing happened on L'Alpe d'Huez.

Does this mean Sammy "discovered" something that would transform him? Or is it evidence of just what a difference doping makes, that he was and is clean, and that the peloton is now clean, enabling him to ride at the front where once he was dropped like a stone? Or neither? Or that Sanchez is such a fair weather competitor that he'll ride to his full maximum potential when he's in contention and otherwise would tank it so badly he'd get sent home from the race early?

It's one thing to not be able to hang with the top guys, or even the splinter groups and main pack behind. It's another thing to be all the way back in the sprinters groupetto, and it's even another thing to be so weak you get dropped out the back of the sprinter's groupetto. How exactly does a guy go from getting blown out the back of the sprinter's groupetto, not just once (possible fluke), but twice, and then wind up consistently at the very front of the elite climbers group? How does that happen?

sanchez was a very young man in 2003. seems likely he could improve, doping or not. sanchez announced himself as a serious talent at liege one year when he held his own in a small group with armstrong and bartoli. i actually thought it took him awhile to reach his potential. i think you may have a valid point generally, but i don't think sanchez is the best example.