start your stopwatch at the foot of L’Alpe d’Huez

dave_1

andyp wrote:

Dave_1 wrote:

well...you have a guess at who is doping and who isnºt based on times and performance. At least I will state an opinion...you gives us your impression of the TDF doping situation mr guru

I have no idea who is doping in the Tour. I think it's safe to assume that some riders are though. We can all speculate until we're blue in the face but it doesn't actually prove anything.

But do you not think we can take the Pantani record as the absolute record so to speak rather than the athletes record...Pantani's was done with EPO..so it is fair to try and compare...Sastre was very slow compared to Pantani but as people say...so many variables and nothing to do with Pantani's wel know use of EPO

dave_1

Blazing Saddles wrote:

iainf72 wrote:

Blazing Saddles - Are you really Paul Sherwen or Phil Liggett? You can't go 5 minutes without mentioning Lance :P

Lance, there, I've done it again.
I see what DavyL is on about. fair enough.
In that case, it's been answered
Must depend on the circumstances, as others have said. Length and degree of difficulty of the day's parcours. Also, whether the Alps are first, as in 2001, or last, like this year.
There's no magical 40 minute clean/dirty cut off point.

the tour stages are shorter wit more rest days..so theyshould be faster now Wel...I am waiting for the 32 minute ascent of the Alpe as it should happen...after all if 40 minutes was broken then 36 wll be...but Pantani is a bench mark for doping...sastre I think was clean and the jersey group clean

DaveyL

Dave I posted several 40+ min ascents of the Alpe. You may have missed that. Do you thnik they were clean?

Michuel

Surely the point about Sastre, Schlecks, Evans,VdV... is that they're all second-rate riders compared to the major Tour champions, When Armstrong rode they basically made up the numbers in the breaks and were there one day and gone the next. This is an exciting Tour but a Tour of second-raters. People were bored with Anquetil, Indurain, Armstrong because they dominated so much. What is the VO2 Maxes of the current Tour pretender.. are they published?

RichN95.

Michuel wrote:

Surely the point about Sastre, Schlecks, Evans,VdV... is that they're all second-rate riders compared to the major Tour champions, When Armstrong rode they basically made up the numbers in the breaks and were there one day and gone the next. This is an exciting Tour but a Tour of second-raters. People were bored with Anquetil, Indurain, Armstrong because they dominated so much. What is the VO2 Maxes of the current Tour pretender.. are they published?

The VO2 figures generally quoted are 92 for Evans and 82 for Armstrong

andyp

Dave_1 wrote:

But do you not think we can take the Pantani record as the absolute record so to speak rather than the athletes record...Pantani's was done with EPO..so it is fair to try and compare...Sastre was very slow compared to Pantani but as people say...so many variables and nothing to do with Pantani's wel know use of EPO

Didn't Pantani's record time come in a stage where the only climb was Alpe d'Huez? (It was a stage where Boardman abandoned I think). So even taking EPO into account his ascent would have been pretty fast as it would have been a flat easy stage until they hit the Alpe.

I think my point is that you can't tell who's doping or not from this one reference point.

thamacdaddy

Its such a stupid and almost childish way to compare things though. You can't simply quote times, say yep thats the doping bench mark etc and make statements that deal in no absolutes whasoever to support what is frankly a silly arguement.

Like people said how about the course pre climb, the pace riden pre climb, where the stage is in the tour, the temperature on the day, how much you have tired from a stage before, injuries carried into the stage, falls on or before the climb and as we can all testify as people who do a lot of cycling whether or not you are on it that day.

If you honestly can't watch any of this without thinking automatically drugs then perhaps its best you don't watch. For me I enjoy it for the stage it is and should they turn out drug positive post stage then you just have to accept that and take it on board however disappointing.

Only time will tell us whether or not the bold statements made are true or not but it was a pretty decent stage all in all. Tactically at least, also the fact that really there is still a big, can sastre make the time in the TT, will cadel perform as we know he can etc and win. Still holds some interest.

dave_1

andyp wrote:

Dave_1 wrote:

But do you not think we can take the Pantani record as the absolute record so to speak rather than the athletes record...Pantani's was done with EPO..so it is fair to try and compare...Sastre was very slow compared to Pantani but as people say...so many variables and nothing to do with Pantani's wel know use of EPO

Didn't Pantani's record time come in a stage where the only climb was Alpe d'Huez? (It was a stage where Boardman abandoned I think). So even taking EPO into account his ascent would have been pretty fast as it would have been a flat easy stage until they hit the Alpe.

I think my point is that you can't tell who's doping or not from this one reference point.

That is the annoying thing about doping, it seems hard to tell what we are seeing...hence the use of the Pantani times by me.... Who is doping and how do we know...by the winning margin or something else...

Cumulonimbus

DaveyL wrote:

I thought it noteworthy as the guy is always held up as an absolutely clean rider. I saw him at the start of the Alpe, in fact I think he may even have put in an acceleration or two, but then didn't see him on the coverage after that. It was good to see he had a relatively (natural) high finish.

Looking back at the 2004 tour, Moncoutie climbed the Alpe in almost exactly 40 minutes. The thing about that stage though was that it was just a time trial up the Alpe so the times should have been fast.

To enable it to be a perfect test then every time it is climbed the tour would have had to have been equally hard beforehand, both in terms of previous stages and the current stage. This is not going to happen as the l'alpe stage varies in position in the tour. The stage itself is not going to be the same in most races - see the 2004 time trial for that. Someone above said that the Alps coming second had an effect - in 2003 there was a relatively slow ascent of the Alpe yet they later went on to set a record time up the Tourmalet. The previous stage would have tired people out (although there was a rest day the day before that) but then would it being the last chance in the mountains cause some people to ride harder than if there was another tough day the day after? So you can argue that the time should have been slower or quicker than normal. The state of the race also has an effect.

Therefore you cannot pinpoint one time as being the 'clean' one. I think that the relatively slow ascent this year suggests that people are doping less though

Michuel

RichN95 wrote:

Michuel wrote:

Surely the point about Sastre, Schlecks, Evans,VdV... is that they're all second-rate riders compared to the major Tour champions, When Armstrong rode they basically made up the numbers in the breaks and were there one day and gone the next. This is an exciting Tour but a Tour of second-raters. People were bored with Anquetil, Indurain, Armstrong because they dominated so much. What is the VO2 Maxes of the current Tour pretender.. are they published?

The VO2 figures generally quoted are 92 for Evans and 82 for Armstrong

Obviously he need's to learn to put it into practice.