Official 2023 Tour de France Thread

I asked Armstronglivs to stop doing it on every thread, with the exact same phrases again and again. I think it's fine once in a while to notice it when we see something really out of line. I'm not doing it for every race, let alone every thread.

Not everybody is doping as the same level. There are grey zone stuffs, TUEs, PEDs and full protocol with everything available + probably mechanical doping in cycling.

It was really untertaining until now. Now it's over.

I wonder how much time Pog's bike change cost him? Not sure a bike change has ever worked out well, and after some of the early riders switched and lost a lot of time, I'm surprised UAE stuck to that plan. Of course it wouldn't have changed the outcome, but I think it hurt him.

I really thought this was going to be a close day and could have gone either way. But in retrospect, Vgo has shown himself to be extremely strong is his low VI output (beneficial to TT) and Pog has been a high VI attacker (no benefit to TT). Those cards have been shown in earlier mountain stages of this tour where Pog attacks HARD and Vgo can slowly reel him back in - also why Pog is generally waiting until the end to claw back seconds, rather than going for the long attack where Vgo would prevail.

Also, to the prior poster, I think mechanical doping in the pro peloton is a myth. Zero evidence at these levels (there was that weird Belgian woman situation, but that was lower level CX, which is much less policed).

It was a good, fast change. TV said 9-10 seconds. I wonder if they knew JV was a lot stronger and were just grasping at straws to maybe find any little advantage they could.

It looked like a desparate move from the manager to reverse the trend

UAE had announced they were doing the bike change well ahead of time. They thought it was going to be faster. The switch may have been less than 10 seconds, but then getting back into a rhythm probably added a little more.

Again, wouldn't have changed anything - just surprised they did it.

Being 1:38 ahead of 2nd and 2:51 ahead of 3rd is like beating second place by 500 meters in a 10000 and lapping the 3rd place twice.

Insane performance. I don’t want to be that guy at all. But it was a little suspicious to me. Beating wout van aert by almost 3 minutes and Tadej by over 90 seconds in 22km is crazy.

Ok, I didn't follow that. I think it made pretty much no difference on Pog's performance, let alone the final ranking of the stage.

No clear evidence yes but suspicious performances already with Cancellara. When you see that they are ready to make whatever it takes to win, why would they not at least give it a try? I would be surprised if nobody tried.

Indeed, even beyond 3rd place the gaps were the biggest we have ever seen? No? I mean 1st to 3rd. 3 min gap between 1-3, then a couple sec per gap from there through last place! Ive never seen TT gaps like this. 3rd in the gc is like 9 min back now. It wasnt just a JVin day. It seems both guys are riding a different race..

1991 is my estimation of when EPO really took off in the TdF. It is around this time that LeMond at only age 30 went from best-in-the-world to being suddenly unable to stay with the top riders on climbs.

Vinny seemed to be most aggressive in taking the turns. Pog looked to be a tad more conservative. Don’t know if that’s worth more than a minute time difference but certainly a couple dozen

^This. The key: IN 22 KM😮

To revisit an earlier discussion in this thread, Kuss can TT! Looks like he was given the go-ahead for today and he put up a solid time compared to everyone outside the top 2. Maybe a GC run IS in his future.

What's the simpler explanation here, that Vingegaard only took a box load of EPO or that he used an electric motor for the TT in order to be able to do over 500 watts? There's a limit to what EPO can do until it turns your blood to the consistency of peanut butter and kills you. I think it's far more likely that Vingegaard used an electric motor today in addition to having been doped up on EPO to the eyeballs all this Tour.

Some of the more interesting points if you don’t want to talk doping ….

Jonas was hot out of the gate on that first turn and continued taking more risks on the turns and downhills than Pog. Pog is not as precise of a descender as we have seen a couple days ago on the Rodriguez stage when he almost didn’t make a turn and Jonas actually crossed his wheel safely.

Also - apparently the Colnago tt bikes are significantly heavier than the cervelo tt bikes which might have warranted the change. They said pog’s bike change was 9-10 seconds and then you give 3-5 seconds to get back into rhythm so it wasn’t the deal breaker. Worth noting every tt bike seemed to perform better than the road bikes between summit and finish which was a question mark before the stage. Yates did not change bikes which makes me think it was pog’s personal preference maybe cause of how he climbs/his wrist.

A. Yates underperformed today so maybe UAE set up was inferior.

Real surprise was Bilbao coming in fourth! He hasn’t been good at time trials in YEARS. Also AG2R basically said Gall was gonna sh*t the bed on this tt and he well exceeded expectations. The entire top ten behind the first 3 was not predictable. Says something about the profile of this course and how it suits the different style riders.

And we probably won’t ever know about the doping. Jonas has one of the highest vo2 max ever recorded when he was a teenager. We know Pogi is an all-arounder and has the skill set for monuments and gt’s. We know the history of cycling so imo let them race.

But I’m most excited for Kuss’ potential top 5! The fact he did the giro and is hanging around now is wild. Love that the media loves to get his interviews after.