Le Tour 2013

First topic message reminder :

It's nearly time for the 100th edition of the Tour de France so where is everyones money for the biggest race of the lot?

Yellow - Chris Froome. If he can stay upright then I only really see Contador as the real competition.

Green - Sagan. Would love to back Cav, but Sagan is a freak.

White - Teejay. Not really sure on this one, was a toss up between him and Quintana.

Polka dot - Rodriguez. Total guess. Could be anyone.

Team - I'll go with Sky but with no real confidence.

djlovesyou wrote:
Not sure where you get 5.8 w/kg for Contador at his best (made up?).

At his dominant best he could be up nearer 7 w/kg on a shorter climb (Verbier 2009 for example.) He would also be well over 6 on climbs much longer than yesterday's effort. Something like 6.6 up the Angliru, which is crazy stuff.

6.2 w/kg up yesterday's climb isn't really that outlandish. Froome is generally around 5.8, 5.9 for the longer climbs which, in historical terms, is pretty ordinary and no indication of doping. 6.2 up a short climb is nothing special.

I was going from memory of looking at the analysis from the last couple of years, which I have clearly got way out. Had another look and you are quite right. Stand corrected there, thanks.

A couple of things from this discussion:

As a rule of thumb, 6W/kg on a long climb (especially later in a stage) is pretty much the highest values achieved by known clean riders. Shorter, steeper climbs, and especially if these are 'one-off' efforts can see slightly higher outputs (as the riders are fresher and can go over their aerobic threshold for short periods), so up to maybe 6.2w/kg in the right circumstances.

I have my doubts about Froome, because of his rate of improvement from being a moderate climbing domestique at Barloworld to being the best climber in the peloton, but the absolute levels he has reached are not beyond the levels others have achieved without oxygen vector doping.

And now for something completely different:

Awesome

haha love that kind of stuff. what's the stage profile looking like tomorrow? Bore-fest, action or a breakaway chance for the stage?

Tomorrow is a borefest stage - one small Cat 4 climb and a high-point of only 161m. Sprint finale almost certain
Flat ITT the following day, then two more sprint stages on Thursday and Friday before a break-away type stage on Saturday and Ventoux on Sunday (long but relatively flat stage until the last 20km, which is all up hill).

Really a typical first week profile, to make up for us already having had the lumpy stages in Corsica.

Regarding this power output discussions, I am quite a newbie (something people incl sport journos barely mention over here) and since I wanted to know what yall were talking about, I found the following rather educating article (not sure how accurate it is though):
http://www.sportsscientists.com/2013/07/the-power-of-tour-de-france-performance.html?m=1

whocares

It's a good article, fits fairly well with my understanding of the situation. Of course it's worth noting that someone producing <6w/kg is not necessarily clean, but simply wasn't as powerful a rider to start with.

Be interesting if the authors tabulated some historic performances - we know for sure that Riis, Ullrich, Pantani and Armstrong were doped, and their climbing numbers back that up, but it would be interesting to see if / when during his career Indurain started to exceed the levels normally seen as reasonable (he was 78kg, and I've seen 450W quoted as his output while time trialing, which is about 5.7w/kg - haven't looked at the climbing times to verify these numbers).

Nine different stage winners in the nine stages so far (well 8 in 8 depending on whether you can the team time trial)

That's pretty unusual

Well, I am looking forward to the next two weeks slightly more after yesterday's stage outcome. Is going to be interesting now and Team Sky have come out saying that they are going to have to make tactical alterations now. It's intriguing, now Froome is alone in top 10, how Movistar are going to strategically use Valverde, Quintana and Rui Costa who are all in the top 10 of the GC. Hope Cavendish can wrap up another stage win or two this week, just to raise his morale after quite a difficult opening stretch.

Apparently Froome's time on the last climb on saturday was faster than Lance, Ulrich, Basso, Menchov, Vino & Levi in 03.
That is very troubling imo.

LuvSports! wrote:Apparently Froome's time on the last climb on saturday was faster than Lance, Ulrich, Basso, Menchov, Vino & Levi in 03.
That is very troubling imo.

I'm sure his performances have already been analysed and are under the microscope. It is worrying when you state comparison to basically every known cheat over the past 10 years or so. So far he is clean and I would be very surprised if a unit like Sky, under the leadership of Brailsford, are using performance enhancing drugs. Who knows though, nothing would surprise me in this sport.

Is there any sort of article to this allegation?

Like John I'd be very surprised if Sky were using performance enhancing drugs.

I googled it and got this among a few other things.

"On the 8 km 8% gradient ascent, Froome climbed in 21'30", 30" faster than Armstrong (2005) and 10" faster than the Contador - Andy Schleck duo (2010), with a VAM = 1786 m/h = 6.37w/kg.
An extrapolated performance, of course, that does not take account of the drafting and the wind, but that is in line with the efforts expressed in training from Froome and Porte on the climb of the Col de la Madone, a week before the start of the Tour: a reported time of "under 31min", with 6.6 w/kg."
http://forum.cyclingnews.com/showthread.php?p=1289276


its on lots of forums, saying it was the 3rd fastest ascent (faster than times posted during the early 2000's) e.g.
http://journalvelo.com/opinion/did-froome-climb-faster-than-armstrong-the-answer-at-last/
http://cyclingtips.com.au/2013/07/chasing-le-tour-froome-climbs-into-yellow/
nothing that official though, so could be wrong.

Was that Cav's mistake or not? He doesn't seem 100% to me. Slight bore-fest today that stage.

I must admit that was a bit naughty from Cav imo. Will do well to get away with that. And I think you're right, he isn't at 100% at all. I think doing the Giro fully has probably taken it out of him. It's simply not possible for anybody to do the Giro and follow it with a successful Tour campaign anymore imo.

How on earth did Greipel not win that stage.

I blame veelers as much as cavendish. You just dont stop in the middle of a sprint without first going on the side.

Meh the more I watch it, the more I think it's just one of those racing incidents. I mean in the Giro there was much rougher stuff going on in the sprints

Yeah, racing incident. More importantly, I don't think Cavendish is on top of his game after suffering from Bronchitis earlier in the tour. Also, seeing Sagan dominate the green points jersey seems to have taken the hunger out of his game in attempting to even win intermediate sprints.

Hope he can pick up maybe two more stage wins, including the Champs Elysees stage.

A spectator has thrown urine over Mark Cavendish whilst he was doing his TT today. Disgraceful

Didn't see much wrong with the sprint yesterday I have to say. A bit of argy-bargy but come on... Agree that Cavendish didn't look on top form. Kittel with good pace to take the win.

Yeah, just heard about this. Shocking behaviour, disappointing. Obviously to do with yesterday`s stage incident and Cav`s post race actions and stealing that journalists dictaphone. Sure this wasn't the yellow jersey Cav was hoping to be wearing this year.

I haven't tuned in yet today, but that is disgraceful, utterly disgraceful. I hope the culprit is caught and dealt with suitably.

Looks like Omega are trying to sign Mark Renshaw for Cav`s benefit. Could be signed by August. Certainly the lead out just has not been good enough during this tour

Disgusting behaviour indeed and embarassing for the tour. Like to see the guy dealt with but doubt there is a camera every kms to check whats going on. Again there was no real race incident yesterday...

Froome with a 3 & half minutes lead, utter domination so far and looking ominous. The battle for the podium is anybody's really and should be interesting. Great win for Martin today, shame about the Cavendish incident but there's always an idiot waiting around the corner.

Tomorrow's stage should be a sprint.

Ok, a wee bit off the beaten track, but......I'd like the final stage to be a time trial. Now, I know its tradition and all that, but the last stage in 1989 was a TT and that had an epic finish.

Yes, I know the second last stage is TT and its the last "live" stage, but the procession to the Champs-Elysees always seemed a bit of a downer to end on. Perhaps switch them round and do a TT around Paris?

I know it almost certainly wouldn't happen, mind.

EDIT - just thought on the flip side, it there was a runaway GC leader and then a TT final stage, I can see that being an anti-climax too. It's just when the GC was really close, and then you're told "they don't race on the final day", and that sounded odd to me.

The whole etiquette thing on the final stage is pretty much irrelevant anyway given that no GC man could ever do anything that would improve their position besides someone up there having a disaster.

The speed on the Champs Elysees is simply too quick for anyone to get away and every move a leader makes would be chased down immediately by rivals and sprinter teams.

A lot of stage races have flat final stages and not many have this unwritten rule to stop attacking. Very rarely does anything actually happen, so they don't generally try.

Well, well done to Kittel on his 3rd stage win, that was an excellent sprint at the end there.

it's not often we see Cavendish beaten when he's in the right position at the right time liek today. perfect sprint by Kittel.

hearing EBH caught a shoulder injury and is uncertain.

Cav not 100% as we been saying. Take nothing away from Kittel, superb talent

John wrote:Cav not 100% as we been saying. Take nothing away from Kittel, superb talent

That's a bit like saying "I don't mean this to sound insulting..." and then say something incredibly insulting.

By saying Cav not at his best takes everything away from Kittel. You're essentially saying he would have won nothing had Cav been on form.

If Cav is at 100% he wins that sprint. No doubt about it in my mind. Good win and Tour for Kittel so far nonetheless

Sky lost EBH to injury in that crash today. Dropping like flies

djlovesyou wrote:

John wrote:Cav not 100% as we been saying. Take nothing away from Kittel, superb talent

That's a bit like saying "I don't mean this to sound insulting..." and then say something incredibly insulting.

By saying Cav not at his best takes everything away from Kittel. You're essentially saying he would have won nothing had Cav been on form.

Read it however u want mate, should keep u entertained for a few hours

Froome has 6 teammates left, of which 1 is riding with a fractured pelvis.

The Alps are gonna be fun

Regarding the w/kg discussion - I don't think it's correct to judge whether a rider is doping or not based on these numbers (unless of course they're ridiculous high ala verbier 2009). I do think they're quite useful i gauging overall trends in the peloton, but since everyone now does "achievable" power levels it makes it harder to know who is and isn't clean (though all top riders are likely doping to an "acceptable" amount).

Regarding Froome, I was very suspicious of him last year (due to barloworld past, fast recovery from bilharzia re-emergence etc.) but now he's just at a ridiculous level imo (kind of reminding me of rasmussen). Still unsure as to what level the team know of/support/facilitate any doping though

LastDamnation wrote:Regarding the w/kg discussion - I don't think it's correct to judge whether a rider is doping or not based on these numbers (unless of course they're ridiculous high ala verbier 2009). I do think they're quite useful i gauging overall trends in the peloton, but since everyone now does "achievable" power levels it makes it harder to know who is and isn't clean (though all top riders are likely doping to an "acceptable" amount).

Regarding Froome, I was very suspicious of him last year (due to barloworld past, fast recovery from bilharzia re-emergence etc.)  but now he's just at a ridiculous level imo (kind of reminding me of rasmussen). Still unsure as to what level the team know of/support/facilitate any doping though

LD - actual w/kg numbers on a climb are a pretty good first indicator of whether a performance is plausible or not. The problems are that we don't actually have the output numbers from the power meters but have an estimate derived from climbing times and VAM calculation which can be influenced by wind conditions and how the race was run prior to the climb.

Froome's time on Ax 3 was very fast compared with the few other times the climb has been used in the TdF, but it was the only significant climb of the stage and first major climb of the tour, plus it is relatively speaking a short and steep climb and doesn't reach the elevations where altitude effects are significant, so higher numbers are slightly more plausible than for longer, higher and shallower climbs.

As for the doping of the top riders, I have a suspicion that Contador is now riding clean on return from his ban - as you said, the field is riding at a level that is physiologically plausible and AC is not able to dominate, so is way below the levels he was at 5 years ago.

Froome? well, I said up thread that I have significant doubts because his career evolution is classic for a doper - nothing much until a sudden breakthrough at the Vuelta a couple of years ago and since then he's been a feature at the top of the GT classifications. The only thing in his defence is that this year he's had results through the season rather than only one or two patches of form (the latter occurs for blood doping because of the schedule of extraction and reinjection).

Moving back to todays stage...

It will be interesting to see how OPQS and the other sprint teams react to Kittel's win yesterday. Will they sit back in the peloton and let Argos Shimano do the hard work chasing down the breakaway as HTC were doing a couple of years back? If the sprints so far are anything to go by it's hard to see anyone beating Kittel unless his lead in has gone horrendously wrong or he comes off. And, if Cav has little chance of beating him in a straight sprint would OPQS be better served conserving themselves today - with the hope of protecting Kwiatkowski's white jersey. Whether Cav is at less than 100% or Kittel has got better - I don't know and arguably it really doesn't matter either way the white jersey may be a more realistic goal than more stage wins.

If I was them Big, I'd do what HTC did a few years back and just let Cav/Steegmans go into the sprint and latch onto a train and go from there.

Obviously in writing the above I wasn't expecting a split peloton with Kittel not in the lead group... go opqs, sky and belkin!!

Valverde was in the front group then punctured - no team cars in the gap between the echelons, so he took a wheel from his teammate. Cue absolute chaos as Belkin put the hammer down to try and exploit an opening in the GC.

Good for Cav (and Greipel, Sagan) because it means they can save some teammates for the final an dstill keep the pressure on Kittel and Argos Shimano.

Fantastic stage.... whoever said flat stages were boring?! Let's see how this pans out, but it's one of the best stages so far.

Are you watching or just following online commentary?

Group of about 15 attacking off the front, dominated by Saxo-Tinkoff and including Contador (plus Cav and Sagan, but not Greipel). Froome's group distanced by about 40s with 15km to go. Valverde and Kittel's groups long gone and given up the chase.

So a boringly flat stage is causing some serious shake-ups of the GC

Sky really shedding men.  
Not looking particularly strong, bit worrying. Contador and Saxo just start to look stronger and stronger! Very, very interesting.

Wonder what Alberto had for dinner last night?? Not a good day for Sky, plagued by crashes in the preceding stages and now it's getting really hard for them.

Wind plus aggressive riding has blown this wide open. Sky dropping like flies. Can't believe Valverde has lost 8 minutes along with Kittel.

1 minute gap currently between leading Contador group and Froome`s chasing group. Surely Cavendish can take this.

What a stage, brilliant from Omega Pharma. Worrying times for Sky long term in this tour.

Cav. Most road race wins in TdF history.  

1m 08 lost by Froome.

Good effort from Cav; not such a happy day for Chris Froome - interesting times!

Smart riding from Cav - kept himself in the right place in the peloton to cover the aggressive moves (with only a couple of team mates) and then was always going to be favourite out of a group that size especially with a guy as quick as Chavanel to lead him out.

Slight downer for Froome in losing over a minute to Contador and Mollema (acutally to all the 5 guys now closest to him in the GC) - not disasterous out of a near 4 minute lead, but further evidence that Sky are not quite the super team of last year.

Looks like Valverde was the only serious GC guy not at least up with the Froome group. England's finest Irishman Dan Martin up to 10th overall