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Originally Posted by gntlmn

No, I don't think that it should go faster every year. A lot of that has to do with rider attitude and whether they want to reel in various attacks.

It's kind of hard to support the contention that the peloton is going faster because it is doping. All you have to do, as I stated before, is to imagine how the race would change if the objective were not for one rider to win, but for the peloton to reach the finish line at a faster pace. Then this argument, that the peloton is going faster because it is doping, becomes moot. The peloton can go faster in any given year by shifting riders around within itself. It has no motivation to finish at a greater average speed except to influence the lead gc people's standings. This can result in completely different tactics depending on how the race unfolds. Thus the peloton can change speed.

What they were complaining about in this year's Tour was that the peloton was moving too slowly. Remember those first several stages when the riders kept crashing and crashing and crashing. If you didn't get in a crash, it was almost a miracle. When speeds picked up, and riders thus spread out more, then there were fewer crashes.

If we are going to analyze the average speed of the peloton, then we need to look at the average speed of the peloton. We have not done that. We have looked at the average speed of the 1st place riders in each tour. The speed of each first place rider has a lot to do with both the peloton and the riders on that person's team. So what I am saying is that we don't know yet about the average speed of the peloton because we don't have these numbers. Put them up, and then we can analyze them.

When you put up the average speed of the winner, and then I refute that to say that that is influenced by speed of the peloton, you cannot refute me by asking why the speed of the peloton keeps increasing. How do you know? You have not provided me with the data to confirm that the speed of the peloton is increasing. You have only provided the winning times, not the peloton times. There's a big difference.

It's not at all easy to see this. You can't even look at the final gc every year and know what power outputs each rider put out. Some made far better use of the draft during the race. Others were better domestiques but faded quite a bit when they were "resting" before their next helper session. Others didn't finish at all. How do you conclude faster peloton speeds? I don't see any concrete conclusions on this here.

Originally Posted by gntlmn

When a rider gets caught doping, he is guilty when he got caught. The rest is speculation (ie, when did he start, who else is doping, etc). Someone else from Phonak was caught doping this year too. In fact, an entire team could get caught doping, and it still wouldn't budge the 1% number.

Originally Posted by sportzgurl

I have a question for you. Its a bit off topic but im not sure where else to say it!!

One of our NZ cyclists has just been caught with a high testosterone level. They officials say that there are two possible explanations for this: 1 he took it to dope or 2 He has a medical condition. They mentioned testicular cancer.

We all know that LA had testicular cancer. In his first book LA says that he had funny symptoms for a long long time before he told anybody about them. These included a swollen testicle. To me this means he had the cancer for a while before he did anything about it. Why wasn't he picked up as having a high testosterone level during the time he was 'unwell'? I just thought thats all. Im sure there is some explaination for it. They did test for testosterone then didn't they or is that just a new invention? So if anybody can tell me why he wasn't found with a high level then that would be great . Of course there is always the fact that he didn't have the cancer when he was tested but he did race with symptoms, so that would mean he was tested with symptoms. Shed some light on this for me if you can! Thanks

Originally Posted by philoakley

This is complete nonsense. A doped rider is guilty of doping whether he is caught or not. Don't you think that if a whole team got caught (ie 100%) that your 1% figure is obviously wrong and that your assertions are also wrong. You seem to misunderstand the percentages caught with the underlying doping problem.

Answer me this. If you are the team leader and you are doping. If I am your domestique, how am I supposed to keep up with you if I am clean? If all the Phonak team is doping to keep up with their leader, how do the other teams keep up with Phonak? This is oversimplified I know but I think it illustrates my argument.

Originally Posted by philoakley

I seem to think that you said in an earlier submission that the speed of the winner had increased because the speed of the peloton (flat stages particualrly) had gone up?

Originally Posted by gntlmn

I'm not at all an expert with testicular cancer. But I do know that testosterone level in the body is regulated not by the testicles but by a gland in the brain, I believe in the pituitary gland or the hypothalamus. Therefore, if a guy loses one, the other one works more to make up for it. If one starts to generate more, and the level increases, the level is picked up by the brain gland, and it slows down the production from the healthy one.

If a guy does steroids, then the brain senses that the testosterone is too high. It sends a message to the testicals to slow down. Over time, they shrivel up. Long term abuse of steroids might lead to failure or to permanent impairment of the testicles and to resultant rebound effects after stopping their use, among other things to include more body fat and less muscle than he had to begin with.

Originally Posted by gntlmn

The speed of the winner is influenced greatly by the peloton. This doesn't mean that the average speed of the peloton went up. I know this is pretty hard to conceptualize, but it is not a given that because the peloton influences the lead rider to greater advantage one year as compared to the other, that that results in a faster peloton. That's not necessarily the case.

That's why I brought up the fact that the speed of the peloton can be increased if the average speed of the peloton were the objective. It is not. Placing riders on the podium is what teams try to do, not to increase the average speed of the peloton.

Do we know what the average speed of the peloton is? NO! So we cannot compare the speeds of the lead riders and conclude that the peloton rode faster. Even if it did ride faster, unless you have rules whereby the peloton is actually a race unit (ie, is measured against a standard for a prize), then it is not really even in a race. If it goes faster one year and not the next, then you don't know what the motives were for the faster speed unless you analyze all the elements. And then it becomes very complicated. First you have to have a race where the average speed of the peloton is the objective. We don't have that. Therefore analyzing it's constituents to determine the whole makes no sense.

The Tour is much more complex than that. If they had another element like I suggested, like a prize for the average speed of the peloton with appropriate penalties for riders DNFing beating a certain standard, then you might be able to see changes year to year in peloton speed. But we are not analyzing a RACING peloton. It doesn't race, only it's individual riders--not the group as a whole.

Originally Posted by philoakley

This is a simple issue which is being over complicated.

If, as you acknowledge, that the speed of the winner is influenced by the speed of the peloton, then if the average speed of the winner is increasing (which it has beyond all doubt, i provided the data for this yesterday) the peloton must be getting faster. Or are you saying that the increase of the average speed of the winner is attributable to speeds in the mountains? If so, then this is an even more questionable performance.

If you look at average speeds of flat stages (partculalrly in the first week) they are faster. I can show the data on this but it will take some time and will involve a large spreadsheet.

As for the structure of the peloton and moving riders within it as a reason for increased pace. The pattern of racing in the peloton has been pretty much unchanged for the last 15 years.

The average speed of the winner has undoubtedly benefitted from the pace of the flat stages and also increased speed in the mountains. Just having watched the pattern of the racing over the years and the average speed of the winner demonstrates this beyond doubt. You do not need to over complicate this.

Originally Posted by gntlmn

Lance Armstrong's team in 1999 was said to be very weak, and yet that tour was the fastest ever up to that point, I believe. Now his team is very strong. Wouldn't we expect his time to have improved as his teammates have gradually been improving due to having better riders in the mix? This can happen even though the peloton's average speed stays roughly the same. It sure blew away the other teams in the mountains this year. The "peloton", if you want to call it that, was pretty withered and fragmented through the Pyrenees and Alps. I'm not so sure it was going faster.

Originally Posted by philoakley

Here's the average speed for the main stages in the Alps and Pyrenees in the 2004 Tour:

La Mongie (197.5 km) 39 kmh
Plateau de Beille (205.5km) 33.8kmh
Villard de Lans (180.5km) 38.61 kmh
Grand Bornand (204.5km) 33.0 kmh

33.8 kmh for the Plateau de Beille stage is very fast. I made the point yesterday that the pace of the big mountain stages has increased by around 1kmh since the early 1990's. I think the front of the bunch was going very fast in the 2004 Tour.

In 2002 , the Palteau de Beille stage was 199.5 km won at an average speed of 33.3kmh. In 1998, 170 km at 32.3kmh (won by Pantani)

Originally Posted by antoineg

You'd think it would be a simple thing to rule out mosaicism or chimaerism by doing DNA testing or an equivalent flow cytometry test on the parents' blood/tissue. Not to mention that these conditions usually are marked by terrible problems in the adult human, not what you'd expect in a world-ranked cyclist.

I do not see how a normal gene mutation could result in a postive using this flow cytometry process.

Originally Posted by gntlmn

That can be explained by the attitude of the peloton. When it decides to react is not a function so much of how much energy it has as how it fits with the tactics of the race. This means, as I said earlier, that it is not the limitation of the peloton's long distance capability that dictates the race but how it decides to ride.

Now if each stage every day were a time trial over the entire course of the race, every stage included, then it would be easy to compare differences year by year. But with the peloton and the fact that its objective is not to race but to influence the placing's of the top gc contenders or to reel in daily stages to allow other riders besides breakaways to sprint for the stage win, the comparison is meaningless.

Originally Posted by philoakley

You are having a laugh now surely? You can't be serious.

This is not a question of mindset but about the physical abilities of the riders. The speed is detrmined by the physical capabilities of the riders such as oxygen uptake, power and recovery. It is not as easy as saying I am right on my limit here at 50 kmh but my mind wants to do 52 kmh so i will.

You don't seem to understand that the racing style of the peloton has changed over the last ten years because riders are recovering better. The riders have always wanted to go faster that why they race so mindset has nothing to do with speed in my view. However, if you can recover faster (perhaps because you dope) your body will follow what your mind wants to do more easily than before.