The Clinic

[mjr]

I think it's fair enough to wonder and be sceptical. If for no other reasons than that the history of the sport tells us to, and because UAEs boss is Mauro Gianetti who is an old school bad guy - a doper himself and manager of dopers.

Given both the history of the sport and the history of the people running UAE and other teams, I don't think anyone can be blamed for raising a substantial eyebrow or two.

Mauro Gianetti, previously manager of Saunier-Duval, where he managed such famous doping gits as Riccardo Riccò, Leonardo Piepoli and Juan José Cobo. Before that, as a rider, Gianetti was accused of experimenting with a perfluorocarbon emulsion transfusion to increase the oxygen-carrying capacity of his blood, but sued the accusing doctors.

He is now manager of UAE which used to be Lampre, the team that was the centre of the 54-person Mantova doping investigation, that hired Francesco Casagrande despite his 1998 testosterone ban and then saw him got booted from the 2004 Vuelta for EPO, and that was the team of Raimondas Rumšas when he got suspended after his wife Edite was caught with performance-enhancing drugs in her car returning from the 2002 Tour de France... yet his third place stands, despite that year now lacking a winner.

His Visma-Lease a Bike equivalent, Richard Plugge, has managed that team since it became Blanco, having previously been communications manager when it was the notoriously dopey Rabobank. Despite that whiter-than-white rebrand, his initial roster included Operación Puerto's Luis León Sanchez and he later signed former Lance teammate Jurgen Van den Broeck.

However, their only doping sanction since Puerto was Michel Hessmann for a diuretic in 2023 (which he initially successfully argued was due to contamination, which WADA overturned on appeal), although two riders (Eenkhoorn and Tolhoek) were suspended and Lobato fired for taking unauthorised sleeping medication at a 2017 training camp.

Other prize-winners' teams at the tour:

Red Bull–Bora–Hansgrohe is managed by Ralph Denk, a former regional pro racer who has been quite outspoken about over-use of exemptions. The team has had one doping case so far, in 2017, announced after the rider had left the team.

Lidl-Trek are managed by Luca Guercilena, who previously managed the last year of Mapei and the first 8 of Quick-Step. It had riders fail for EPO in 2017 and 2019. Other team managers include ex-pro and Lance teammate Yaroslav Popovych, accused by Floyd Landis, and ex-pro and former lifetime ban recipient Kim Andersen.

EF Education–EasyPost is managed by former Lance teammate and repenting doper Jonathan Vaughters, who admits he used EPO in both team-run schemes and independently. The team had one positive test in 2015 (argued to be contamination), plus some riders sanctioned for public admissions of doping with previous teams. EFE requires riders to admit past doping privately, but some admissions went public.

I mean, what is there to raise an eyebrow at there? I'm sure they'd all pass football's "fit and proper person" test. 😉

 

[Dogtrousers]

Have climbing speeds "gone through the roof"?

[...]

Would anyone like to try to substantiate the speed increase claim with evidence? Probably best done in https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/the-clinic.303618/

And here we are!

I liked those figures so much that I extended them backward a bit to cover 60 years

Some years of note:

The Mercx years were 1969-1974
The very first carbon fibre frames came in about 1986 (I think)
The Festina affair was 1998
1998 was also the last year that the race was won on a non-carbon fibre bike. (Pantani on an aluminium Bianchi)
The Armstrong years were 1999-2005
Why was 2010 so slow? That was when Dirty Bertie won but didn't, so Andy Schleck did.

2025 was the second shortest tour of all of this period at 3,301km. Shortest was 2002 at 3,278. Longest was 4,779 in 1967. These days the average is about 3,500 down from around 4,000 at the start.

Tinfoil hats on!

 

[mjr]

And here we are!

I liked those figures so much that I extended them backward a bit to cover 60 years
View attachment 782013

Blooming funny-looking hockey stick, innit?

 

[phreak]

Blooming funny-looking hockey stick, innit?

Broadly stable throughout the 2010s and then a 4kmh jump since 2020. Nothing to see here though.

You can see a similar trend in Paris Roubaix, if you want to use a race with the same route and distance

A big increase since Covid.

 

[gsk82]

Broadly stable throughout the 2010s and then a 4kmh jump since 2020. Nothing to see here though.

You can see a similar trend in Paris Roubaix, if you want to use a race with the same route and distance

View attachment 782040

A big increase since Covid.

The stress the virus puts on your lungs is obviously better than any usual on bike training.

 

[Dogtrousers]

Day off, and I was planning to nip out for a fixed ride and do some gardening. But it's bucketing down, so time for some spreadsheets.

These numbers are jumping all over the place because of tons of factors affecting each race. But thanks to the lovely bikeraceinfo website there is tons of data.

So I took the average of the winners' average speeds (I know, you shouldn't take an average of an average. But I did ) for the tour and all 5 monuments from 1965 onwards. I could have added in the Giro but I didn't. The Vuelta is all over the place so I stuck with the tour and the monuments.

Note that there was no P-R in 2000 and Lombardia 2025 hasn't happened yet. I just averaged the events that have actually happened.

And this is what we end up with.

Oooer missus. Time for a double-layer tinfoil hat with a coat-hanger aerial.

 

[orraloon]

Or one could just say that the increases are a natural result of better selection of individual riders for pro contracts, technology improvements and better nutrition management?

Nah, off down the rabbithole...

 

[Dogtrousers]

Or one could just say that the increases are a natural result of better selection of individual riders for pro contracts, technology improvements and better nutrition management?

Nah, off down the rabbithole...

Now, I'm not saying it's aliens, but ...

 

[mjr]

Now, I'm not saying it's aliens, but ...

Well, can you prove it isn't? The newspapers calling them 'extraterrestials' is hiding it in plain sight! 😉

 

[matticus]

The Festina affair was 1998
1998 was also the last year that the race was won on a non-carbon fibre bike. (Pantani on an aluminium Bianchi)

That's doubly bizarre; that Tour appears anomalously fast compared to the one-day races that year, and was just as fast as 1999 (the first Armstrong victory) whereas 2000 was a much slower year (across all your races). Several teams withdrew from the Tour - one stage was a "go slow" protest, but was cancelled, so maybe that actually increased the average race speed?!? Probably just noise in the signal, but I'm curious!

 

[phreak]

Or one could just say that the increases are a natural result of better selection of individual riders for pro contracts, technology improvements and better nutrition management?

Nah, off down the rabbithole...

This is what I find strange though, as you talk as though the sport wasn't doing any of those things before. Sky's thing was marginal gains, and they brought a lot of tech from the track, yet they barely made a dent in average speeds and were winning Tours while climbing much slower than the EPO era. Now, in the space of 4 years, we're seeing otherwordly performances, with not only quicker average speeds, but climbing times that often surpass those from the EPO era by huge chunks.

As you say, no one really knows what's going on, and let's be honest, you don't really know if any of those things you mention contribute, or to what degree they contribute. Given that there hasn't been a single clean era in the history of the sport, it just seems miraculous that we suddenly have a completely clean sport AND times are going up so rapidly and by so much. If you accuse people of conspiracy theories, one could easily accuse you of naivety.

 

[mjr]

This is what I find strange though, as you talk as though the sport wasn't doing any of those things before. Sky's thing was marginal gains, and they brought a lot of tech from the track, yet they barely made a dent in average speeds and were winning Tours while climbing much slower than the EPO era. Now, in the space of 4 years, we're seeing otherwordly performances, with not only quicker average speeds, but climbing times that often surpass those from the EPO era by huge chunks.

As you say, no one really knows what's going on, and let's be honest, you don't really know if any of those things you mention contribute, or to what degree they contribute. Given that there hasn't been a single clean era in the history of the sport, it just seems miraculous that we suddenly have a completely clean sport AND times are going up so rapidly and by so much. If you accuse people of conspiracy theories, one could easily accuse you of naivety.

Sky brought a lot of go-faster tech, but also fell down a low-carb rabbit hole, taking it into races as well as training, which won't have helped overall average speeds. The tech has spread, the recovery methods and nutrition persist, and now riders are pumped full of sugars during races again... whoosh!

 

[matticus]

Can we have a graph of team budgets since 1965? Oh, and sunspot activity, while you're there!

 

[N0bodyOfTheGoat]

How does UK population correlate with TDF speeds?🤣

 

[phreak]

Sky brought a lot of go-faster tech, but also fell down a low-carb rabbit hole, taking it into races as well as training, which won't have helped overall average speeds. The tech has spread, the recovery methods and nutrition persist, and now riders are pumped full of sugars during races again... whoosh!

I've seen various studies on how much carbs people can ingest, but I haven't seen one on how this actually makes anyone any quicker. For instance, while accepting that the data is probably not all that accurate, on the Hautacam stage, if Pogacar consumed 120g of carbs an hour of a typical energy bar/gel, he'd have got his entire calories burned on the ride on the bike.

As a point of contrast, when Froome won the Giro in 2018, he was widely cited as consuming 90g of carbs an hour on the Finestre stage (where the feeding strategy was widely lauded as a factor). I haven't seen any evidence that 120g is more effective than 90g, but I'd love to see anything to the contrary.