**** Breaking News: Hamilton Tested Positive? ***

Originally Posted by gntlmn

Yes, you do mention a few riders, and it seems that the topic has now changed from all riders, which was my focus, to top riders, which is now your focus. Well, if some riders are doping and that's the reason why they are top riders, perhaps that would be true, that top riders are more likely to be dopers than other riders. But then you have to try to define what a top rider is.

I, frankly, have not considered Tyler to be anywhere near the level of cyclist that Lance Armstrong is. He seems to do very well on one day, and then the next day might fall flat on his face. Take the Vuelta TT that he won as a result. The very next day, he lost more than 10 minutes to the stage winner on the mountain stage. And Tyler is not supposed to be a bad climber. Something was amiss. His performance in the Tour de France was poor too, and then he goes on to win the TT at the Olympics. I wouldn't be too surprised if this turns out to be a true positive for him (ie, really did blood dope). But Tyler is one rider. There are many.

It seems like riders who dope often turn out to have done so when they are on the verge of retirement. They are faced with either retiring due to continued sub par performance, or they resort to drugs/doping. Tyler is one. Riis is another, Pantani, the list goes on. These riders may not have doped during their primes, but turn to it as a last resort.

And yes, I think EPO was getting used a lot more in the late 90's than it is now that the testing has improved. But there really are a lot of riders out there. I'd like to know exactly how many pro riders there are in the world now. That would be an interesting number. I think it's pretty high.

Why Tour gets faster? I think the Tour speeds are largely a function of the speed of the peloton where the effort level per rider is not very high. Review the heart rate data that was collected this year for the Tour, and you will see that it is very low for the peloton on the flats. Back in the olden days (Merckx and before), the size of the peloton was smaller. Therefore, I would expect their average heart rates to have been higher at the same speed. Now if it is true that speed was lower back then, as you suggest and I have no reason to doubt, then this can largely be explained by a bigger peloton requiring less effort per rider to maintain its speed. We're talking about heartbeats in the 90's per minute on the flats. The other reason might be that riders are getting reeled in better by the peloton now than they used to. If heartrates are not maxing out, it is simply a matter of motivating the riders in the peloton to dog an aggressor on a mostly flat course. Let's face it, even the best cyclist by himself stands no chance of beating the peloton on the flats if the riders want to reel him in. In the mountains, that's a different story.

And that brings me to why I think training has improved so much. Well, we have heart rate monitors now and have for what, about 15 years or more? That led to a great improvement. But Lance Armstrong says that the best training tool in the last 10 years is the power meter. If you have ever used one of these, you may agree that it is much easier to up the bar, so to speak, and make improvements in riding when the uncertainty or fudge factor/delay/heat variation of a heart monitor is improved by looking at power. I believe it has resulted in huge gains in training effect, perhaps 5%.

Another tool which has been around perhaps since the beginning of the 1990's is the hypoxic tent. This can result in something like a 5% increase in VO2 uptake due to increases in red blood cells and other blood adaptations to simulated altitude. Many of the top cyclists use these tents. Armstrong is one.

And then you have the effects of better bicycles and better aerodynamics. Take the skin suit for example. When you have a company that can shave one minute of a one hour time trial by providing a high tech riding apparel, that's a dramatic improvement and over the very best of just a year or two ago. And we have more carbon fiber now and more wind tunnel testing. The bike weights would be a factor on the climbs.

I think the biggest gains on the climbs come from the power meter and the hypoxic tents combined with more and more experience in using these new technologies to their optimum. After all, if you have the fanciest jet in the world, it doesn't do you much good until you know how to make the best use of all it's flying controls.

Well, when you add up a few % here, and a few % there, you end up getting a very large improvement all combined. I don't think the current race averages is all that much greater than it used to be considering the improvements in methodology.

Don't get me wrong. I am not suggesting that all these improvements in cycling do not come at the expense of a decline in vigilance. I think the price of having a clean sport is continuing to find better and better methods of testing for cheaters. I wholeheartedly agree that we cannot let down our guard at all. I am merely suggesting that the problem is not as big as the sport. We still have great riders who do not dope, and I think that the dopers are a very small minority which is I hope shrinking to an increasingly smaller percentage of the pros.

Originally Posted by philoakley

To think that cycling is 95% clean is not credible. The doping problem is like an arms race. If the competition is taking it then others also have to dope just to keep up. The trick is not getting caught, which up until recently was very easy.

Originally Posted by philoakley

To think that cycling is 95% clean is not credible. The doping problem is like an arms race. If the competition is taking it then others also have to dope just to keep up. The trick is not getting caught, which up until recently was very easy. Paul Kimmage's book (A Rough Ride) is an excellent overview on this although he was derided at the time. If Tyler Hamilton is doping (yet to be conclusively proven) then it is difficult to see why others are not or else they would probably be miles behind.

Originally Posted by philoakley

Your answer regarding the speed of the tour does not adequately address the issue of higher speeds in the mountains. I just do not buy the view that tremendous athletes such as Merckx and Hinault are 2-3kmh slower in the hills than today's riders. Yes training can explain some of the improvement but doping also has a role in my view.

If the impact of training has been so dramatic why is it that the althletes' hour record is only about 10 metres further than the distance achieved by Eddy Merckx? Surely around 40 or 50 top pros could demolish this record if hypoxic tents and power monitors work the wonders you say they do. Yet I don't see many riders attempting what is arguably the most prestigous cycling record in the book. Altitude training and interval training existed in the era of Merckx but he couldn't easily measure power as riders can today.

Originally Posted by sportzgurl

Im not sure if you lot all no or not but I just read on cyclingnews that Tyler Hamilton has been suspended from Phonak "pending further notice" said boss Andy Rihs.

He also said "For the moment, we have to concentrate on the facts. These seem to be against Tyler. But so long as we're not 100% certain that he is guilty of manipulation, we will belive him".

The head of the IOC medical commision (a long name i cant be bothered typing!!) said the delay in reporting the results was "a regular feature of excercising the proper care before reporting a case. (Great timing though wasn't it!)

It makes me think that if the IOC results were released at the same time as the Veulta ones, then perhaps the IOC wern't 100% confident with their tests and wanted to wait untill they had extra proof.

I also would have thought that if Phonak were as they say beliving Tyler, why would they suspend him??? I mean Tyler has said he is innocent and is going to fight it all the way. (Untill he hasn't a cent left i believe) Why aren't Phonak staying close to him on this one and showing him thier FULL support. Perhaps they only have Tylers word to go on and no proof that he did or did not have a BT for any reason.

P.S I hope none of you knew all that other wise its just rehashing what you know - sorry. Also i am a bit of a dummy when it comes to computers and i havn't worked out how to put a link in lol. So thats why there isn't one. But it was on cyclingnews.com if that helps.

Originally Posted by mareblu

[COLOR=DarkOrange]WELCOME TO THE CLUB sportzgurl!
I don't know why Phonak suspended him, I am going to guess that they do it to maybe follow some type of ruling...not sure! I, wouldn't have done that. I'd like to see all the results before taking a determination to suspend him. What if this is all a mistake? would that have been fair to Tyler? don't know.....my heart goes out to him and I do hope as a cyclist and cyclist fan that he is not guilty.

GOsh! this thread has started some kind of arguments here isn't it?[/COLOR]

Originally Posted by sportzgurl

Im not sure if you lot all no or not but I just read on cyclingnews that Tyler Hamilton has been suspended from Phonak "pending further notice" said boss Andy Rihs.

He also said "For the moment, we have to concentrate on the facts. These seem to be against Tyler. But so long as we're not 100% certain that he is guilty of manipulation, we will belive him".

The head of the IOC medical commision (a long name i cant be bothered typing!!) said the delay in reporting the results was "a regular feature of excercising the proper care before reporting a case. (Great timing though wasn't it!)

It makes me think that if the IOC results were released at the same time as the Veulta ones, then perhaps the IOC wern't 100% confident with their tests and wanted to wait untill they had extra proof.

I also would have thought that if Phonak were as they say beliving Tyler, why would they suspend him??? I mean Tyler has said he is innocent and is going to fight it all the way. (Untill he hasn't a cent left i believe) Why aren't Phonak staying close to him on this one and showing him thier FULL support. Perhaps they only have Tylers word to go on and no proof that he did or did not have a BT for any reason.

P.S I hope none of you knew all that other wise its just rehashing what you know - sorry. Also i am a bit of a dummy when it comes to computers and i havn't worked out how to put a link in lol. So thats why there isn't one. But it was on cyclingnews.com if that helps.

Originally Posted by gntlmn

I agree with you that the IOC was not too confident until they saw the Vuelta results. If you look at one of the links mentioned above on page , you will see that the results give a graph. If the red blood cells are from one person, you see one hump, but if the red blood cells are from 2, you see two humps on the graph--a big one and a little one. The little one will degrade and disappear over time when the injected red blood cells gradually die out, unless the subject gets another transfusion. What I'm thinking is that they wanted to see if the small hump was getting smaller or if it got bigger or what was happening. My guess is that if he was doping, he might have done it before the Olympic TT and before the Vuelta TT. So the small hump might be bigger that day. If they kept taking these tests for all the other stages that he did before Vuelta stage 8, and then they observed a spike in the small hump on victory day, I'd say I would have a really hard time believing Tyler that he had an infusion sometime earlier in the year after a surgery.

Tyler's already lost a few sponsors, and Phonak is not going to be caught holding the bag. They give him lip service out of respect for Tyler, but they are definitely in CYA mode. As soon as the results come in positive, if they do, his contract will be terminated.

Originally Posted by sportzgurl

I had to read that about 5 times!! I think i got what you were saying! It just gets more suspect every minute. I feel for him if he is innocent!

Originally Posted by gntlmn

Oops! You read it before I had a chance to edit it and put in the link. If you made sense out of it before I did that, you must be pretty smart.