Sky and David Walsh

KieranHardman

I dont see why it isnt possible to have a season long peak. What is the definition of a peak? A period of time where maximal strength or fitness can be sustained within another defined period of time. Your training dictates your peak. In theory footballers peak for an entire season where olympic athletes peak for a 1 week period every 4 years. Just because in the past couple of decades cyclists have targeted one race in July and done sod all for the rest of the year shouldnt mean that trying a different approach which yielded positive results is instantly associated with wrongdoing.

There is nothing wrong in questioning anomolies but if it can be explained adequately then that should be the end of that avenue of investigation.

smithy21

Indeed.

What about Cadel's season long peak in 2011.

He took a slightly different route as he won Tirreno rather than PN but those races overlap. Won Romandie and the Tour and second at the Dauphine.

Not a world away from Wiggins in 2012.

iainf72

So basically being the opposite of what we've typically seen from doped riders is evidence of doping?

French riders seem to be consistent without much push back. Maybe because it's consistently bad

disgruntledgoat

iainf72 wrote:

So basically being the opposite of what we've typically seen from doped riders is evidence of doping?

French riders seem to be consistent without much push back. Maybe because it's consistently bad

Doping to be consistent all season long would cost a feckin' fortune too.

bockers

micron wrote:

Nic, Pross, bockers: ...... So perhaps instead of going over the same tired old ground we need to be asking some new questions? I have a few that I'd be happy to get your thoughts on - for example, I noticed some of you engaging with veloclinic - he contends that wiggins season long peak is only achievable through doping. Not saying he's right or wrong but have similar 'season long' peaks been achieved? Or was there a season long peak at all? Veloclinic can be very persuasive :P but I'm interested in hearing your perspective.

Agreeable to all? Frank and open discussion of issues rather than demands for 'evidence' and making judgements on responses based on perceived like/dislike of poster?

Not looked at Veloclinc but interested in the season long peak bit.

My, albeit amateur, look at Wiggos season:-

He started very well in March, had a good April then did little in May. Early June was busy then nothing till the tour in late July, where he won of course. Then the Olympics, which I think he was losing his form for and may well have lost had it not been for Fabians crash. Then he effectively stopped his season. He certainly had little form for the Tour of Britain or the Worlds.

So that was March till April, then rest and then June to August Tour and Olympics, that 4 months out of an 8 month season.



Might I add that much as I loved Bradley winning the tour it was not the toughest of fields this year and think he would struggle against an in-form combination of Contador/Schlek or Evans even. Wiggo has better climbing legs than earlier in his career but as his tussles with Froome showed he does not have the kick that some of the other climbing specialist have. If there were 2-3 teams against Sky rather than the one last year it would have been far tougher. That sounds dismissive of his achievement which I don’t intend it. He had form and took advantage when the oppo was at a low ebb, which is the essence of sport. The winner is not always just the strongest guy but the one who makes the best of opportunities presented.

When I remember Lances tours he had some of the toughest opponents all on the juice and still crushed them, 7 years in a row. There was little in the way of tactics as he was primed to perfection and could attack or react easily.

I will take a look at the Veloclinic stuff this evening

Richmond Racer

smithy21 wrote:

Indeed.

What about Cadel's season long peak in 2011.

He took a slightly different route as he won Tirreno rather than PN but those races overlap. Won Romandie and the Tour and second at the Dauphine.

Not a world away from Wiggins in 2012.

Good point. Cuddles also came:

7th in the 2011 Pro Challenge - Wiggins came 3rd at Algarve last year
8th in 2011 Catalunya - Wiggins abandoned mid Stage 3 last year

dish_dash

disgruntledgoat wrote:

Doping to be consistent all season long would cost a feckin' fortune too.

Ah... but Sky have the biggest budget ;-)

mroli

I think for me, the most revealing stat that people don't look at is average power outputs AND climb speeds are significantly down on the highs reached during the height of the doping years. That's even with increased training knowledge/efficiency, nutrition thinking, kit improvements, body positioning. If doping was still rife - would these times/outputs not be higher?

r0bh

micron wrote:

I have a few that I'd be happy to get your thoughts on - for example, I noticed some of you engaging with veloclinic - he contends that wiggins season long peak is only achievable through doping. Not saying he's right or wrong but have similar 'season long' peaks been achieved? Or was there a season long peak at all? Veloclinic can be very persuasive :P but I'm interested in hearing your perspective.

You can't have a season long peak, that would be a contradiction in terms. However, it is perfectly reasonable to operate at a high level for long periods with a small peak above this for a specific event. I am much more suspicious of riders who do nothing then have a massive peak for one event, see for example Cobo Vuelta 2011 and Valverde Vuelta 2012.

blazing_saddles

r0bh wrote:

Micron - you said in one of your tweets that anyone who cared to Google could find information published in 2008 that implicated Leinders in doping at Rabo. Could you share this link please as I've not been able to find anything earlier than the Theo de Rooy stuff from 2012

Same thing happened to me. Couldn't find diddly squat.
Had a link supplied via a bloke from Raboland.
Turns out that the info was only available on Dutch sites,
where Google isn't exactly your friend. (especially in the field of translation :oops: )

On a completely unrelated subject.
Rabo have now morphed into Blanco.
Why not just drop the "l" for the sake of it? :P

RichN95.

The idea that Wiggins was in peak form for six months is a complete myth. From February to June it was a series of monthly cycles in each of which he really only had to properly race a couple of mountain stages and a TT. And then he only had to beat the likes of Westra and Talansky by a few handful of seconds.

Now if you really want genuine six months of form then go and look at some of the pre-EPO guys. For example, in 1986, prior to the Tour Lemond did the Giro, Paris-Nice, Suisse, Criterium International, ALL the classics and then did the Worlds and Coors Classic afterwards. He was top five in almost all of them.

Richmond Racer

RichN95 wrote:

The idea that Wiggins was in peak form for six months is a complete myth. From February to June it was a series of monthly cycles in each of which he really only had to properly race a couple of mountain stages and a TT. And then he only had to beat the likes of Westra and Talansky by a few handful of seconds.

Now if you really want genuine six months of form then go and look at some of the pre-EPO guys. For example, in 1986, prior to the Tour Lemond did the Giro, Paris-Nice, Suisse, Criterium International, ALL the classics and then did the Worlds and Coors Classic afterwards. He was top five in almost all of them.

Bleeding 'eck, didnt know that, Rich. Now THAT'S prolonged rich form.

ddraver

With Rich here - I think people have confused Human performance with Doped Human Performance, particularly in cycling where as much as we want to the last 20 years have been exactly that. If we are to compare current performances with "clean" performances then we need to be looking 20/30 years ago not at what Armstrong did!

Cleat Eastwood

His season long 'peak' was a parcours that suited him - getting a slight advantage in the TT's and holding it - if you remember paris nice from last year the heavens opened on wiggins - the others didnt fancy it and brad finished second to larsson - had the weather or the parcours been different it might have been a different tale.

And to what do you compare his peak - the year before it was the dauphine, crash out in the tour, RR champ, podium in the vuelta and a silver in world TT's - not bad by any measure.

Richmond Racer

Cleat Eastwood wrote:

His season long 'peak' was a parcours that suited him - getting a slight advantage in the TT's and holding it - if you remember paris nice from last year the heavens opened on wiggins - the others didnt fancy it and brad finished second to larsson - had the weather or the parcours been different it might have been a different tale.

And to what do you compare his peak - the year before it was the dauphine, crash out in the tour, RR champ, podium in the vuelta and a silver in world TT's - not bad by any measure.

Also 3rd at P-N

RichN95.

Richmond Racer wrote:

RichN95 wrote:

The idea that Wiggins was in peak form for six months is a complete myth. From February to June it was a series of monthly cycles in each of which he really only had to properly race a couple of mountain stages and a TT. And then he only had to beat the likes of Westra and Talansky by a few handful of seconds.

Now if you really want genuine six months of form then go and look at some of the pre-EPO guys. For example, in 1986, prior to the Tour Lemond did the Giro, Paris-Nice, Suisse, Criterium International, ALL the classics and then did the Worlds and Coors Classic afterwards. He was top five in almost all of them.

Bleeding 'eck, didnt know that, Rich. Now THAT'S prolonged rich form.

Here's LeMond's 1986 season (in chronological order)

7th Etoile de Besseges
6th Tour of Valencia (1 stage win)
3rd Paris-Nice
2nd Milan San Remo
3rd Criterium Internationl
11th Tour of Flanders
19th Gent Wevelgem
30th Paris Roubaix
4th Fleche Walloone
14th Liege Bastogne Liege
4th Championnat of Zurich
4th Giro d'Italia (1 stage win)
3rd Tour of Switzerland
1st Tour de France (1 stage win)]
7th World Champs (in August back then)
2nd Coors Classic (1 stage win)

Now that's a season long peak.

ratsbeyfus

First I wanted to say a warm welcome back to micron.

Second, and connected to the first, the discussion about peaks and what not is really interesting. As usual, I don't have any interesting facts to add, but I'll try and follow the pros and cons as closely as possible.

Was I the only one last year who was only slightly disappointed that Wiggins didn't try to finish off the season with the worlds TT? I know he went on a massive bender post olympics and who can blame him, and he'd already had an historically amazing year... so I don't wanna sound greedy, but I do think with Canc out, the worlds were there for the taking (no dissing of TM intended). Naturally, it would have the Wiggo-Moon-walk-conspiracy-theorists blowing a gasket...

Pross

As Iain has said, previously very little serious racing with peaks for big events such as the Tour was very much seen to be a sign of doping (it was the post cancer Armstrong model for a start but very few, if any, of the big boys in the 'peak' EPO / blood doping era rode at top level for more than a few weeks). This was mainly attributed to the cycles of withdrawing blood and putting it back in. If we are now saying that riding consistently throughout the season is also a sign of doping then basically we are saying that however a rider copes with the season he looks like a doper. Does anyone out there offer an insight into what a clean rider's season looks like?

If you look at the number of racing days Wiggins did last season it is about the same as, for example, Contador has done every year from 2007 to 2011 but was 50% lower than his own number of race days in the previous 2 seasons. I'd have been suspicious if Froome hadn't faded so much in the final week of the Vuelta. If you are looking at consistency over the season as a red flag then I would suggest Gilbert in 2011 should set off alarm bells as should Bertie who as Frenchie likes to remind us races all season and only ever races to win. Why no big investigation into them and their teams (even more so given Saxo and Bertie's history).

Before the big surge in blood doping / EPO use in the 90s it was perfectly normal for riders to ride and win from the spring Classics, through the Tours to Lombardy and the Worlds. Take a look at Greg LeMond's palmares, I assume you are happy that he is clean or as likely to have been clean as any rider? In 1985 he was 4th at Roubaix, 3rd in the Giro, 2nd in the Tour and 2nd at the Worlds. That's placings throughout a whole season including podiums at two Grand Tours within about 6 weeks of each other.

EDIT I note others have cited similar with LeMond at yet he is widely regarded as the most likely clean winner of the Tour other than possibly Evans and is the candidate of choice to head the UCI with the anti-doping brigade.

VerwoodAsh

Contador in 2008. Perfect example of clean performance over the year winning in March through to September.

micron

Pross, I believe the argument is that the changes in pattern of racing are attributable to the changes of patterns in doping - blood bags are so last year

Rich, that really was a hell of a season? Now, are you saying that the 'clean' poster Lemond doped his way to that? Or that riding 'clean' enabled him to do that during the pre-mega-doping era?

Sorry, lost who said it but yes, the information is in Dutch - not user friendly but the information is available and Google translate is your friend It would perhaps be more interesting to know who in the sport recommended Leinders to Sky resulting in the ensuing PR disaster. One of the problems with zero tolerance is that it enforces omerta and encourages people to lie about their past as Leinders apparently did.

DG apologies if you felt I 'ignored' you and your questions - was rather a bombardment yesterday Takes a little while to get back into the rhythm of forums when you get used to a different way of communicating information.

Richmond Racer

No, micron, Rich is saying that if one looks back at a rider who is generally deemed clean, pre-EPO and blood doping, he had a heck of a season over a longer period, and with many more races - and a hell of a lot more race days - than Wiggins.

I really cannot understand how you can take his post as inferring that Lemond was doping. That's not only difficult to understand how you interprete it as such but also something of a red herring in your response. And adding a little emoticon at the end doesnt make it any less of a red herring.

Jez mon

micron wrote:

Pross, I believe the argument is that the changes in pattern of racing are attributable to the changes of patterns in doping - blood bags are so last year

Basically, the argument boils down to, if you win a bike race, you're doping. Which is fine, but why claim that the length of the peak has relevance.

Pross

So are you basically saying any rider who has a successful season whether from start to finish or in short bursts is doping but using different doping strategies? Also, why no big backlash against Gilbert for his dominance of 2011?

I won't speak for Rich but by inference is that he is using the results as circumstantial evidence that in a cleaner era riders regularly rode strongly for the whole season. That was certainly the point I was making with his '85 results. Are you also implying that you have serious doubts about LeMond being clean? If so I am surprised given his association with CCN.

Of course, if we go down the line that everyone was doping then every possible scenario of winning is covered and we can argue the case that any of them prove doping. Do any of the experts out there offer an opinion on how the profile of a clean riders season looks?

Maybe it is because I'm from an engineering background and therefore like to see things backed up with numbers but to me the most compelling information is the power and ascent data. As mroli has said, you would expect these to improve as technology and sports science help to develop the full potential of an athlete without resorting to darker means but they are going backwards.

Turfle

micron wrote:

Sorry, lost who said it but yes, the information is in Dutch - not user friendly but the information is available and Google translate is your friend It would perhaps be more interesting to know who in the sport recommended Leinders to Sky resulting in the ensuing PR disaster. One of the problems with zero tolerance is that it enforces omerta and encourages people to lie about their past as Leinders apparently did.

I don't understand that last point. People who have cheated tend to keep it quiet, it's not specific to the omerta of the cycling world. He kept it quiet not because Sky's policy forced it, but because he wanted a job rather than being banned from the sport.

The likes of de Jongh and Julich admitted their past due to Sky's zero tolerance policy, not in spite of them. Meanwhile the Omerta-less world of Garmin didn't see open, heartfelt, unprompted confessions, it saw riders keep quiet and confess only when forced to.

If Leinders had approached Garmin for a job, what would they have said and done?

Turfle

Wiggins' 2012 was based on TTs.

2011 Tony Martin won big TTs in Feb, March, 9th of April and 30th of April, June, July, August, October.

Great time trialists tend to be great at time trials all year long.

RichN95.

micron wrote:

Pross, I believe the argument is that the changes in pattern of racing are attributable to the changes of patterns in doping - blood bags are so last year

Rich, that really was a hell of a season? Now, are you saying that the 'clean' poster Lemond doped his way to that? Or that riding 'clean' enabled him to do that during the pre-mega-doping era?

I'm not saying LeMond doped at all. I specifically picked him as he is universally considered clean. I could have picked Kelly or Merckx or Roche or many others, but in most cases you could point to some doping link.

So if the Ullrich/Armstrong model of only peaking in June/July is that of known dopers and the Evans/Wiggins model of one race a month is also that of dopers, what the hell does a clean rider's season look like? Back in 2005 the inability to be in form for a long period was meant to be a sign of doping. Now it seems it's the opposite.

It's like when they were doing 6.7W/kg people said that a clean rider could only do 6.0W/kg. Now they're winning the Tour doing 5.8W/kg and apparently it's still a sign they're doping.

You can't keep moving the goalposts.

Richmond Racer

Turfle wrote:

micron wrote:

Sorry, lost who said it but yes, the information is in Dutch - not user friendly but the information is available and Google translate is your friend It would perhaps be more interesting to know who in the sport recommended Leinders to Sky resulting in the ensuing PR disaster. One of the problems with zero tolerance is that it enforces omerta and encourages people to lie about their past as Leinders apparently did.

I don't understand that last point. People who have cheated tend to keep it quiet, it's not specific to the omerta of the cycling world. He kept it quiet not because Sky's policy forced it, but because he wanted a job rather than being banned from the sport.

The likes of de Jongh and Julich admitted their past due to Sky's zero tolerance policy, not in spite of them. Meanwhile the Omerta-less world of Garmin didn't see open, heartfelt, unprompted confessions, it saw riders keep quiet and confess only when forced to.

If Leinders had approached Garmin for a job, what would they have said and done?

Also worth pointing out that there is something of a feeling amongst some circles including current US pros, that certainly at the very least Garmin's Tom Danielson, and also Leipheimer, didnt confess to everything in their testimonies to USADA.

As one current pro put it re Danielson after the latter gave that very ill-advised interview a few weeks ago in which he said he wanted to be an ambassador for the sport. 'Real ambassadors of our sport have never done blood transfusions, and tell more then 30% of the truth when they speak'. A number of other pros echoed what he said there.

As a number of us keep on saying, the inherent instinct for the majority of people is to confess to the minimum they have to - and a TRC would be no different, as people try to reduce their 'offending window', save certain race results / titles etc.

iainf72

VerwoodAsh wrote:

Contador in 2008. Perfect example of clean performance over the year winning in March through to September.

Outstanding.

I like the Wiggins is doping thing. Create straw man, base all arguments on own straw man

RichN95.

On the subject of peaking, let's look at the Paris-Nice course announced today. That race will be decided by the prologue, a category 1 MTF and a 10k mountain TT. In all about 2 hours of really full out racing. To win Paris-Nice you do not have to peak for the whole of March, you just need to be good for those two hours. And being good for two hours once a month isn't exactly superhuman.

micron

Jez mon wrote:

micron wrote:

Pross, I believe the argument is that the changes in pattern of racing are attributable to the changes of patterns in doping - blood bags are so last year

Basically, the argument boils down to, if you win a bike race, you're doping. Which is fine, but why claim that the length of the peak has relevance.

As has been pointed out, the old pattern of autologous blood doping was to tailor your season to the pattern of withdrawals and deposits, so to speak. The argument goes, as I understand it, that new doping methods facilitate riders to be able to sustain a higher level of performance - if not extraterrestrial - throughout the season. As I said to begin with, this is veloclinic's theory not mine but I noted some posters here in a pretty one sided debate with him and was interested in your views.

RR, you don't really believe Lemond rode in a 'cleaner' era do you? You do know both EPO and blood doping were in use in the peloton long before then (cf US Olympic cycling team)?