Point in case: I'm not an LA fan, I think he was doped to the gills throughout all his TdF performances. You might be confused by the fact I am highly critical of the way the anti doping authorities have persued this case. They've managed to **** up all the evidence against him so none of it stands up in court hence why he hasn't been convicted. But anyway...
Wow. Seems as easy to provoke a massive response here by critising GL as it is by praising LA.
As I said it's just one piece of 'evidence', something that stands in contrast to the proposition that the guy didn't dope. There where thousands of professional time trials over the distance of 10k between 1989 and 2005 when the record was broken and not one of them was faster.
The downhill nature of the TT course was so small (0.3% gradient) it is negligable and can be ignored given that other factors can be. So, out of those 1000's of TT's that have taken place, hundreds will have been on a flat course and there will have been quite a few with a nice tailwind (ok, it's a fairly handwaving statistical arguement but I can't be bothered to look up course and conditions for hundreds of races just to prove my point). So replicating the conditions isn't a problem.
You then have Gred Lemond racing the fastest TT ever against riders with better equipement (work a couple of kph over his kit). That seems odd to me. Also his record stood all the way through the EPO/Blood doping era. To think that he did it without 'assistance' is hard.
If you think about it you just end up replicating the arguements used for LA. Saying Gred Lemond could win a TdF against doped up riders because he was some how magically more gifted than the rest of them is ****. Sure the dope wasn't as good then, but over a race the length of the TdF it shows.
Maybe he was just using a higher cadence though?