Doping Accusations At The Tour de France?

In my opinion it is naive to think they are not doping. The science will always be ahead of the testing. Cycling gets a lot of stick for it however I think it is similar in most professional sports. There is so much money, advertising etc as an incentive.

I give him the benefit of the doubt but the Dutch cycle team and Danish riders have a history

Wout van Aert's comment after the TT - "I am the best of the normal people" - is telling. WVA and Jonas Vongegaard are in the same team so presumably they have the same tech and nutrition plans. Granted that JV has an advantage on a TT with a difficult climb but to beat WVA, one of the best time trialists in the world, by about 3 minutes is simply unbelievable. To put it in context, had JV started immediately after WVA he would have overtaken him and left him out of sight. Also, JV's time in the first 4K - a flat sector where WVA has an advantage - was 20 seconds faster than WVA's, 5 seconds per km faster! Finally, JV's TT performances until about 4 years ago were pretty unremarkable.

The technology advancement argument falls down on the basis that everyone has access to it. There is still plenty of ‘gear’ used in cycling, the extent to which a particular rider makes use of it depends on the balance of risk and reward-win The Tour versus not win The Tour.

I think the main problem cycling actually has with this is multifaceted. Ultimately, its an individual sport based on physical output and has a history of huge doping. I think fans have a right to question this shit and really should because of that history. It wasn't a sprinkling of doping, it was a good chunk of the Peloton. In other sports you run into a different set of problems. Tennis seems to have an enormous amount of Asthma sufferers. In Football, the problem is quantity of players to regularly check. Physical output is super important in elite football, but there are 25 First Team Pros in the roughly 200 Pro teams just in the UK, that doesnt include the U23 squads, the U18 squads etc.. That's a ton of dope tests and you can probably whack testosterone all summer and never get tested. We saw in Icarus what that does to performance numbers. Other sports do have these problems too. Athletics in a massive way, rugby, MMA, boxing, anything endurance based or Olympic based. Doping is always gonna be a fight, but I don't think in professional sport they should be given leeway because it's been proven that where money or glory is involved someone will cheat to get it. I also think that when an athlete goes from very good to destroying everyone in places that are surprising, it should be questioned. Physical gains of 5% or 10% when you're already close to the very top are supremely difficult and with the history of cycling teams, riders and defenders of them kinda have to accept that for a good while yet that reputation deserves to stick around. After all, the brown envelope wasn't that long ago...

Brilliant video and discussion. I absolutely agree with your colleague Francis, the salient point is in what Vingegard said "I haven't used anything Illegal". As Armstrong said years ago it was a level playing field regrading doping, they all did it. Nowadays, as you rightly say, the top level cyclists will take all the 'legal' stuff to get an edge, beetroot juice, asthma inhalers (Wiggins) and new stuff that hasn't been classified illegal yet. However,, let's not forget the unbelievable effort that these riders put in all year round even with the 'extras'. 😎🚴‍♂️ Frank Miele, Benissa Spain.

So how does one rider LEGALLY perform so much better (about 90 seconds better over such a short TT distance) than the ten or fifteen other hugely talented riders who the talent to win that stage? Some possibilities: 1. (Chris Horner idea) Jonas Cumulates a number of seconds from various legal advantages that add up to those 90 seconds: e.g. 20 seconds from better legal equipment design and fitting, 25 seconds from just being more fit and better trained, 15 seconds from rare natural physiological advantages from freak VO2 max etc) 20 seconds from the gift of significantly better body shape for better aero, 20 seconds from having been gifted with and developed better bike balance to take turns safely/conservatively yet losing less speed, a mere 15 seconds from being lighter and leaner than Pogocar and Van Aert etc, , 10 seconds from happening to have better psychological condition at the moment (having just a little more confidence from prior stages' results), other? 2. New chemical PED method that has not been known well enough yet to be known and added to the list of illegal substances. 3. New method of using illegal drugs or drug masking that can beat the tests.

Armstrong flat out stated that he never got caught because the testing sucked. Greg LeMond would be one of the best people to ask about performance levels. He knew about watts per kilo back in the 80's. He's even pointed out the mechanical doping going on where someone would swap 5 different bikes during a stage. Now either Shimano was producing junk or there was something nefarious about the bike that they were hiding. And we can all attest that Shimano doesn't make junk.

Tapentadol is not specifically listed as a banned substance by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). However, as an opioid analgesic, its use by athletes is subject to strict regulations. WADA's Prohibited List includes certain classes of substances that are banned in competition, including narcotics, but not all opioids are explicitly mentioned. Athletes who need to use medications like Tapentadol for legitimate medical reasons must obtain a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) to avoid potential violations. It's essential for athletes to check the current WADA Prohibited List and consult with their medical professionals and sports authorities to ensure they comply with all regulations.

Jonus wasn't primed as a child to be a cyclist. He was working in a fish factory two years ago. He was a part time rider. One thing he did have is a brand new blank Blood Passport which they good wangle to have an extremely doped base level. New riders don't have a past passport history so they can dope then get tested to have a high base level. Older riders have longer blood histories so struggle to dope more as it'll show up on their blood history. Head of uci isn't interested in chasing dopers too.

Had Pogi won the TdF with 4-6 minutes this year nobody would raise an eyebrow.. "cause he´s just the best rider in the world and he´s a nice guy as well".. Pogi fanboys are crying doping everywhere because their boy lost .. Pogi needs to come better prepared next year and we´ll see what the difference will be..

People have completely misunderstood doping if they believe that a cyclist can be doped for one stage, have a missive spiky effect and not get tested positive. EPO takes weeks to affect and the biological passports is designed to trigger big changes in red blood cell levels. And thereby detecting blood doping. The point is that if Vingegaard was doped you should not view the stage 16 in isolation but look at the 15 stages before it as well. Here Pogacar was just as strong eventhough he weights 6 kilos more. Vingegaard made the perfect TT lets celebrate it.

A few ex pros have stated that Vingegaard's TT was more the result of Pogacar's more cautious descending and a time consuming bike change. Also, Pogacar's disastrous performance on the following mountain stage, where he lost several minutes, suggests that his relatively poor TT was also a hint that he was seriously running out of steam after some aggressive attacking on earlier stages. His remarkable recovery so soon afterwards, winning a tough mountain stage would, in a different era, have raised eyebrows.

I feel all of what you talk about, and the only other tour winner we had in Denmark ended up being doped, so I don't want vingegaard to be doped, BUT, I also feel like with all the advances made in technology, being doped and then beating the opposition like that would be monumentally stupid.

The pros are basically on a level like in the old EPO days because the use the pressure chambers! The can get up to the max hematocrit level that is allowed and i think this level is still at 50

Unfortunately we saw this stories, exceptional bla bla bla. If it is out of the charts then what's the doubt regarding "exogenous" assistance? The main point is how did they do it?

I have absolutely no issues with doping. The question that should be asked is, is it healthier for elite athletes to dope? What these athletes put themselves through is nuts.

Doping isn’t just chemical it’s also mechanical. Cycling is riddled with doping look at all the winners of the tour and how many have been stripped. The testing simply can’t keep up with the advances.

Really good speculations, boys.. Eyes on a sore subject.

We love attacks on every stage. We love people performing 60 days a year full gas. We love back to back mountains at 9% and more Then... We expect athletes to be clean as child. Come on, we are the first to need doped athletes. No one would look at bodybuilding if they wouldn't dope. No one will watch cycling if cyclist didn't have small help from the doctor to perform