Pro Cycling 2023

RobinLFC

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Pogacar clearly underperformed today, he was visibly struggling on the final climb. If he had been on par with Vingegaard, as he probably would have been on a great day, no-one would be accusing Vingegaard. It would feel like a natural gap between the two best and the rest based on what we've seen previously. It's a bit of a sad tendency that every great performance must be met with skepticism and insinuations. Understandable of course, but if you feel that way I don't really understand why you'd keep following the sport.
Not surprised to see you still haven’t got the first clue about this sport.

But please, go on to follow this sport through the Worlds, San Sebastian, Vuelta, Lombardia into next year and you might actually learn something, hopefully.
 

RobinLFC

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I mean, obviously it was tongue in cheek. The gap and the overall time relative to the predictions, are both really suspicious, there's no denying that. One of the first texts I got from a mate said something like: "It's kind of a shame you can't really enjoy this", and I agree with that. What happened in the 90's and 00's will always hang over this sport, whenever something like this happens - whether current riders are clean or not.

If I were to rationalize this, I'd say that it could at least be possible that the follwing factors added up to the time difference between Vingegaard and Pogacar:
1. Vingegaard doing a technically much better TT. Just following it live, it looked like he was attacking the corners a lot harder.
2. Pogacar switching bikes was a net loss. I might have this wrong, but I think I heard the majority of the top 10 didn't do it.
3. Vingegaard having the better legs on the day. He's well known for being strong in the third week, and stages after a rest day can always throw up something unexpected.

But like you say, will be interesting to take a closer look. Would I be surprised if Vingegaard is not clean? Not really. But would I be surprised if Vingegaard is doing something Pogacar is not doing? Yes, very.
For the record I don’t necessarily think Vingegaard is on something. I do think if you switch Pogacar and him in teams that this Tour was done with already. UAE is League One whilst TJV is City (without the financial doping).
 

Jev

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Not surprised to see you still haven’t got the first clue about this sport.

But please, go on to follow this sport through the Worlds, San Sebastian, Vuelta, Lombardia into next year and you might actually learn something, hopefully.
He said himself that he underperformed and it was clear to anyone watching that he wasn't feeling great on and after the climb. Leave me alone like we agreed and go on with your life, please.
 

Maagge

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Yeah, UCI or WADA needs to do something. The sport was never completely clean but it was at least in spheres of semi-believable and clean guys (Pinot etc.) could kinda compete. This winning margin is insane and a complete mockery in an indurance sport. He's 5% quicker than Pogacar (who has clearly been on the juice for years) and basically 10% than the rest of the GC contenders.
Imagine someone winning the 10km by 2 minutes in the Olympics, completely unimaginable.

Other teams actually should kick up a fuss, this isn't "just" questionable TUE stuff or tramadol (poor Nairo lol), just look at this graph:



:lol: :lol: :lol:
Did anyone else actually go full pelt though?
 

Kasper

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Did anyone else actually go full pelt though?
What do you mean? Do you think the GC guys just decided to take it easy for today for no reason?
 

F-Red

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Colour me sceptical, can’t wait to see some data about this performance. Either UAE needs to fire their entire performance team and Colnago, or Vingegaard was riding on a regular S5 with a TT handlebar, or maybe both are true. You can’t make up that much time on a bike 2kg heavier against a rider of the same quality when Pogacar changed and Vingegaard didn’t.

I think it’s just Jumbo being the best tactical and performance team, and prepared this perfectly. UAE just… didn’t at all.
Vingegaard was on a P5 today.
 

Maagge

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What do you mean? Do you think the GC guys just decided to take it easy for today for no reason?
From what I can glean only two riders are in with a chance of winning. So whoever is going for third might think they're better off saving themselves a bit for one of the remaining days and try to pull away there.
 

Kasper

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From what I can glean only two riders are in with a chance of winning. So whoever is going for third might think they're better off saving themselves a bit for one of the remaining days and try to pull away there.
Haha that is definitely the most creative way of trying to rationalize what happened today. No one in Top 10 GC will ever try to "save" themselves in an ITT just in order to be able pull away another day. Effort wise it's the most efficient and easiest way to gain on your opponents, barely any value to speculate that the saved energy will translate to more gains later on.
Even if you discount this ITT, Vingegaard and Pog are performing way to high compared to their opponents on other mountain stages as well. Today was just the icing on the cake.
 

Maagge

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Haha that is definitely the most creative way of trying to rationalize what happened today. No one in Top 10 GC will ever try to "save" themselves in an ITT just in order to be able pull away another day. Effort wise it's the most efficient and easiest way to gain on your opponents, barely any value to speculate that the saved energy will translate to more gains later on.
Even if you discount this ITT, Vingegaard and Pog are performing way to high compared to their opponents on other mountain stages as well. Today was just the icing on the cake.
Possibly, I don't really follow cycling I simply don't get why this isn't talked about as doping if it's that unusual for the best two riders to outperform everyone like that.
 

Jev

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Haha that is definitely the most creative way of trying to rationalize what happened today. No one in Top 10 GC will ever try to "save" themselves in an ITT just in order to be able pull away another day. Effort wise it's the most efficient and easiest way to gain on your opponents, barely any value to speculate that the saved energy will translate to more gains later on.
Even if you discount this ITT, Vingegaard and Pog are performing way to high compared to their opponents on other mountain stages as well. Today was just the icing on the cake.
The result today is ... extreme, and I can understand why some would raise eyebrows. But as for their shared dominance, you've got two generational talents against a very, very weak field. I mean, if you remove Pogacar and Vingegaard, Sepp Kuss is almost winning the Tour after riding a super domestique on a lower level than last year. And Adam Yates is actually winning after riding as a super domestique. The rest of the GC guys have been crap. I don't think it's surprising that there's a big gap.
 

RobinLFC

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Even if you discount this ITT, Vingegaard and Pog are performing way to high compared to their opponents on other mountain stages as well. Today was just the icing on the cake.
The rest of the field sucks in this Tour. Put 2019 Bernal, Evenepoel, Ayuso, even Thomas in here and you’d have less of a gap between the big two and the rest of the pack.
 

RobinLFC

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He said himself that he underperformed and it was clear to anyone watching that he wasn't feeling great on and after the climb. Leave me alone like we agreed and go on with your life, please.
Sure, I’ll be tagging you after the Tour to check how you’ll analyze other races then, as someone following the sport. Would be very interested to hear them.
 

Jev

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Sure, I’ll be tagging you after the Tour to check how you’ll analyze other races then, as someone following the sport. Would be very interested to hear them.
Cool, unfortunately I'm not interested in anything you have to say about anything.
 

Kasper

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The result today is ... extreme, and I can understand why some would raise eyebrows. But as for their shared dominance, you've got two generational talents against a very, very weak field. I mean, if you remove Pogacar and Vingegaard, Sepp Kuss is almost winning the Tour after riding a super domestique on a lower level than last year. And Adam Yates is actually winning after riding as a super domestique. The rest of the GC guys have been crap. I don't think it's surprising that there's a big gap.
The rest of the field sucks in this Tour. Put 2019 Bernal, Evenepoel, Ayuso, even Thomas in here and you’d have less of a gap between the big two and the rest of the pack.
The "generational talent" was working in a fish factory 4 years ago.
"Rest of the field is weak" is a total arbitrary argument. It's only convenient because we got so used to Pogacar and Jumbo beating everything up, it's comparable to claiming the PL is weak because City has won it 5/6 times. Bernal 2019 would stand no chance whatsoever, the W/kg they pushed that Tour were nothing. We saw how "competitive" peak Thomas was last year. The field isn't shit, Rodriguez is riding incredile, Simon Yates and Hindley have both won GTs before and the fact that Kuss and A.Yates are so far up is actually more suspicious than the other way round. Kuss was a monster domestique in the Giro and now he does the same again as if there's no fatigue whatsoever.

Even if you ignore the field, the numbers on the climbs that are being estimated (which is pretty accurate these days) from the alien duo are second to only pre Epo test Pantani, Indurain, Riis and Ullrich. Above Armstrong (!!!), Contador, Froome etc...
 

Mike Smalling

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For the record I don’t necessarily think Vingegaard is on something. I do think if you switch Pogacar and him in teams that this Tour was done with already. UAE is League One whilst TJV is City (without the financial doping).
How so? Before this TT I heard a lot about how UAE had improved their set-up for this season, and that they had been a lot more successful on TT's this year compared to last year - they also had more TT wins than TJV. And if we look beyond the TT, I think UAE have actually looked slightly better than TJV in terms of overall team strength and tactics, in particular with Yates and Majka in the mountains. Before today, Pogacar was only behind Vingegaard because of that bad day on Stage 5 early in Tour, where his bad preparation might have been showing.
 

Rams

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There’s a lot of accusations going and a lot is also based upon misunderstandings. I’m not going to put any blind faith in any athlete not doping anymore. But there are things that can be explained. For example, it’s not being mentioned on here how much time Vingegaard was gaining from his cornering and descending on the rest of the field in today’s TT. Vingegaard had already gained 3 seconds on Pogacar just in the first few corners of the parcours.
 

Mike Smalling

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There’s a lot of accusations going and a lot is also based upon misunderstandings. I’m not going to put any blind faith in any athlete not doping anymore. But there are things that can be explained. For example, it’s not being mentioned on here how much time Vingegaard was gaining from his cornering and descending on the rest of the field in today’s TT. Vingegaard had already gained 3 seconds on Pogacar just in the first few corners of the parcours.
I'd really love to see some side-by-side shots of their cornering and descending on that first part. Watching it live, Jonas looked on another level with the lines he was taking.
 

RobinLFC

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The "generational talent" was working in a fish factory 4 years ago.
"Rest of the field is weak" is a total arbitrary argument. It's only convenient because we got so used to Pogacar and Jumbo beating everything up, it's comparable to claiming the PL is weak because City has won it 5/6 times. Bernal 2019 would stand no chance whatsoever, the W/kg they pushed that Tour were nothing. We saw how "competitive" peak Thomas was last year. The field isn't shit, Rodriguez is riding incredile, Simon Yates and Hindley have both won GTs before and the fact that Kuss and A.Yates are so far up is actually more suspicious than the other way round. Kuss was a monster domestique in the Giro and now he does the same again as if there's no fatigue whatsoever.

Even if you ignore the field, the numbers on the climbs that are being estimated (which is pretty accurate these days) from the alien duo are second to only pre Epo test Pantani, Indurain, Riis and Ullrich. Above Armstrong (!!!), Contador, Froome etc...
I believe in Pogacar. He was always a huge talent so I don’t get the fish factory comment, or I do get it if it’s aimed at Vingegaard. Jumbo, unsure. Van Aert’s rise has been steady and nothing out of the extraordinary. Vingegaard, yes, but apparently he has the second highest ever VO2 max for example. I’m not gonna jump to conclusions, but 7.6 W/Kg seems absurd yeah.
 

Suedesi

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Can some data scientists crunch the numbers and tell us the power numbers in Watts/Kilo that Jonas put out today? Maybe someone can compare and contrast those numbers with those from say 2005? Just curious
 

Maagge

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I believe in Pogacar. He was always a huge talent so I don’t get the fish factory comment, or I do get it if it’s aimed at Vingegaard. Jumbo, unsure. Van Aert’s rise has been steady and nothing out of the extraordinary. Vingegaard, yes, but apparently he has the second highest ever VO2 max for example. I’m not gonna jump to conclusions, but 7.6 W/Kg seems absurd yeah.
Vingegaard worked in a fish factory while riding for ColoQuick-Cult. Apparently their sports director got him the job so he could work in the morning and train after lunch.
 

Giggs' right foot

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Jonas will have 6-7 minutes on Pogi after today. I was certain Pogi would win the tour with +2,5 minutes. Colour me shocked.
 

Mike Smalling

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Pogacar just completely done. Bad lead up to the TDF really showing now? Or was the crash earlier in the stage bad?
 

Maagge

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Did the crash affect Pogacar that much? Or just accumulated fatigue?

Also what the feck was that shit show where Vingegaard and his teammate was completely blocked by a combination of a motorcycle, a car and the fans?
 

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Great result for AG2R. Pogacar looked broken by the end of the stage, probably emptied the tank yesterday.

Trying to think of a tour where we had as much of a gap as we do now? Nothing to memory comes to mind.
 

Ainu

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Not a complete surprise, Pogacar had a poor preparation so the third week was a big question mark. He couldn't even follow his team mates. Just completely done.
 

Jev

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Vingegaard wasn't an alien today at all. Visibly tired and barely gained on Gall on the last climb. Just Pogacar cracked completely. A shame, this looked like a race for the ages 26 hours ago.
 

F-Red

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Vingegaard has had four blood tests in the last 48hrs according to Jumbo-Visma :lol:
 

Mike Smalling

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Vingegaard has had four blood tests in the last 48hrs according to Jumbo-Visma :lol:
Amazing he has enough blood left to ride the stage today.

Next year we need proper Pogacar lead up to the TDF, and hopefully Remco also joins. No one wants to see the GC won by this much.
 

JuriM

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Next Tour maybe Evenepoel, actually healthy Van de Poel, one more year better Rodriguez/Piddock duo and maybe either Vingegaard or Roglic in Jumbo. This year's overall lineup was already thin at start.
 

whitbyviking

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Rodriguez leaving Ineos so no duo with Pidcock. Allegedly going to Movistar, so he’ll be a leader but on probably the daftest team.

Pidcock will be all in on the Olympics I suspect, so don’t see him doing the tour.

I’d heard Pogacar wanted to do the Giro, but that might change after this defeat? Can imagine he’ll want to avenge this.