Pog is not doping. What people are missing is that there are a lot of factors involved in his performance: (1) better training methods today, (2) better nutrition today, (3) electronic shifting, (4) hydraulic braking systems, (5) lighter bikes made of better alloys- his daily Tour bike runs around $20,000, (6) he has one hell of a team to ride with (and Vingo dearly misses Sepp Kuss), (7) Pog uses a smaller crankset than most professional riders do. His is at 165 mm, while the usual size is 175. This provides him more power faster on climbs than for the other top GC contenders. I am surprised this has not caught on.
Pog and Vingo are worlds better than other riders, but according to this thread, they are all doping anyway. P and V must have better chemists according to this logic, or why would there not be others just as good?
I was having these conversations 20 years ago online. I can find those posts today even.
You're just taking the same story and changing details. Did you know Lance Armstrong fanboys, 20 years ago, would say 1) Cancer made him change his body morphology to be more of a climber/GC than sprinter 2) Wind Tunnels and all the aero improvements 3) Focused on one race instead of season 4) Had never been "caught" 5) Bikes were also the 20k equivalent, 6) USPS was the best team and best run team in the world then 7) Armstrong Foundation...Lance is just too good a guy to cheat.
The two top riders today are blatent about it. I do remember Basso smoking everyone at the Giro...right before Operation Puerto happened. Even his competitors called him "Extra terrestrial"
Interviews I've read on Cycling News seems to have similar comments from other riders that were passed on the mountain.
I don't even watch road cycling anymore, all I do is check the results, so I have a pulse for what is going on. Same with running actually, all dirty.
There is clearly something new that hasn't been found out yet. Genetic modification maybe. Its coming, if not here.
Let's say he is cheating, that others are as well. It's not like he has surgeries to create bionic legs or lungs etc.
He's using the body he was born with (and maybe chemicals none of us know) so why not just enjoy seeing these guys race and push how fast the body and technology is capable of?
Watching Ben Johnson was exciting.
Watching Lance and Landis and Basso was exciting.
NFL guys making huge hits and using HGH/steroids is exciting.
Watching a bunch of mid-distance and distance track stars that are probably using PEDs is exciting.
It's not like these guys are curing cancer or winning Peace Prizes, but many are actually donating money to charities that help people.
If you are a sports cheat but donate millions of dollars to charities that truly help improve other people's lives, is that worse than being a good person and not donating anything?
It's more than most of us average people do, and no one watches us for entertainment. No one will remember us, just live the one life you get. Who cares,
You don't need to admire them, just be impressed with the single physical thing they are extraordinary at and go on with your life.
They're just gladiators in the Coliseum. There will be more like them after they retire and on and on and on.
It's not the doping but the lies. And the story that it's all just business as usual. I would rather watch a slow clean race rather than the a bunch of pharmaceutical experiments creating faux history.
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Tadej Pogacar is obviously doping tons to be destroying everyone without even trying. He wins 6 stages and the overall of the 2024 Giro by 10 minutes and it didn't even look like he breathed hard at any point. This is in addition to all those ride everyone off his wheel attacks all season where even groups of other racers can't bring him back. This is so similar to Ivan Basso who did the same thing just before he got caught for doping, didn't even have to open his mouth to drop everyone going uphill.
It's not the doping but the lies. And the story that it's all just business as usual. I would rather watch a slow clean race rather than the a bunch of pharmaceutical experiments creating faux history.
lolz, my favorite are the claims about these athlete's natural ability to train that much harder than everyone else and recover that much faster also. Any explanation except for drugs, lol.
It's not the doping but the lies. And the story that it's all just business as usual. I would rather watch a slow clean race rather than the a bunch of pharmaceutical experiments creating faux history.
What are you talking about. I'd rather watch paint dry than cycling these days. The 90s and 2000s were amazing in terms of entertainment, but cycling is dead now. How can you watch the attack by Riccardo Ricco below, and say you don't miss this.
Tour de France 2008.A 30 kilomètres de l'arrivée de la 9 étape Toulouse-Bagnères de Bigorre, alors que Sebastian LANG est en tête, Ricardo RICCO accélère sou...
It's not the doping but the lies. And the story that it's all just business as usual. I would rather watch a slow clean race rather than the a bunch of pharmaceutical experiments creating faux history.
but i bet you hated the slow Centro gold medal race in 2016... (where he beat a bunch of the pharmaceutical experiment runners)
I’m looking forward to the Enhanced Games. It’s much more sophisticated than I had anticipated after hearing the details (PEDs must be legally available with prescription, team doctors will be public, regimen will be documented, etc.)
I’m still assuming the top guys won’t participate, but take sprinter number 50 (or even #20) in the world juiced and see if he can run faster than Lyles best. Interesting note that I did not realize is everyone in the top 5 all time for the 100M was popped for something, except Bolt. $1M prize to beat the world record is pretty enticing.
All that to say, I don’t see how Pogacar is clean. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, but watching the Lance documentaries and knowing all of his close competitors were also doping make it hard to believe that these guys going faster are not doping.
I don't know what they are on, but it is 100% obvious that they are destroying all the records of the famous dopers from the late 90s and early 2000s. Nobody really cares anyway, same as professional NFL football, almost all of those guys are on HGH, Steroids, and who knows what else.
Remember this is entertainment for the masses, they don't care.
To watch others succeed is painful to some. It is and unwanted measuring stick to their own live. Does anybody have a shred of evidence or any fact that shows that Pogacar is cheating?
Another EPO fueled performance today by Pogacar on the Isola 2000, pretty much replicating his extraterrestrial performance the other day:
"After Pogačar attacked, he did 7.00 ᵉW/Kg for 20:38 min. Evenepoel and Vingegaard slowed down with 6.22 ᵉW/Kg and 6.03 ᵉW/Kg in the second part of the climb, showing how much better the Slovenian superstar was, pushing almost 1 ᵉW/Kg more than Vingegaard in the final part."
Tadej Pogačar again showed off his incredible legs, pushing all-time great watts on the popular Isola 2000 climb, winning his 15th Tour de France stage.
I don't know what they are on, but it is 100% obvious that they are destroying all the records of the famous dopers from the late 90s and early 2000s. Nobody really cares anyway, same as professional NFL football, almost all of those guys are on HGH, Steroids, and who knows what else.
Remember this is entertainment for the masses, they don't care.
It's evolution of the sport, everything from training diversity, nutrition, knowledge, faster tires, more aero bikes....I would be disappointed if a rider 20 years from now isn't riding faster than today's elites like Tadej and Jonas V.
To watch others succeed is painful to some. It is and unwanted measuring stick to their own live. Does anybody have a shred of evidence or any fact that shows that Pogacar is cheating?
I would say just the fact that he destroyed a climbing record by Marco Pantani by more than 4 minutes is a pretty big indicator.
This being the same Pantani that doped so hard that it killed him.
Pantani was riding a very old bike with different gearing, used different training methodologies, and back then, the idea that a rider could absorb 120-140g of carbs an hour was a pipe dream.
