Drugs in other sports and the media.

Problem with this line of thought is that at 18, you can sign up for the armed forced and go and get blown to pieces for "King and Country" (or drink / smoke to oblivion) if that's what you want to do. Set against this, protecting adults from themselves with regards to PEDs feels hard to justify.

The flip side is that defining an adult as someone who is 18 is somewhat arbitrary. Some people never develop to the point where they should be allowed to take any meaningful decisions, whereas some 16 year olds are wise beyond their years. And I think choosing 18 predates research as to how long it takes male brains to fully develop.

So the best course of action is to justify banning PEDs simply because they are unfair. This then avoids debates as to when people are actually old enough to make their own decisions. (*) But the regime needs to be taken seriously by those in charge and applied consistently.

(*) As an aside, I found it quite hard to accept that once the offspring hit 18, I could only advise and if necessary, try motivate via (negative) financial incentives. But such is life.

Not to mention who would bother watching once the freak show nature of it stops?

Good point. However, sport science has moved on with altitude training, recovery etc. I hope that is the explanation. Shorter stages definitely helps

Lest we forget, there was a long history, especially in "state-sponsored doping regimes" of children getting on the wagon. This would often involve not only coercion to take what was offered but often what was given was not openly told to them or their guardian. So the notion that doping is only something consenting adults engage in seems far fetched. Heck, even someone like Ullrich you suspect wouldn't have been as up on precisely what he was taking as someone like Armstrong.

I mean, Boonen ran box wheels with a 36 spoke lace for pretty much all his PRs apart from the final two; now they're running 50mm carbon rims. The kit has moved on a fair bit.

I think for PR specifically, the move to wider rims with wider beds and the associated bigger tyres has had a huge impact on the speed of the race, both over the cobbles but also how much extra speed they can carry on the tarmac.

So it shouldn't impact stage time as much as the bikes evolved aerodynamics suggest.

They could put more effort in, but rotate quicker. Also, how often are they going full gas?

Normally though we hear the Peloton aren't going full gas because they don't want to reel the break in too early. We also hear the break don't ride too hard because they know the Peloton will respond making extra effort a waste of energy.

Yep, I think I'm discovering a bit of stupidity in my post, but it sounded right in my head at the time and that's the main thing.

I think the "talent pool" is considerably wider now than 10-20 years ago. e.g. not so long ago, a native English-speaker in the Tour was quite rare, whereas IIRC, there were 15 or so Brits racing this year. (And obviously, plenty of Aussies etc.) Globally, there are simply more folk able to pursue a career in pro sport than in the past for a variety of reasons. (Mainly more money in the sport as more MAMiLs spend increasingly greater amounts on bikes they don't really need. Guilty as charged here, obviously!)

Also, riders stay in the sport longer, which also helps widen the talent pool.

So the average standard of riders in the major races is higher which helps boost average speeds.