haha, yeah, I want to believe, but that's the problem with doping culture. to be fair, the conditions were quite abysmal, and Dygert did race about 20~30 mins earlier than the favorites, even a small shift in wind direction/speed could have a big effect.

Biggest margin since Cancellara...VROOM VROOM!

eloy said:

Dygert could not even get off her bicycle once she crossed the line!! 


(caveats for doping)

Please elaborate how an amazing performance is immediately considered doping? Isn't the reason we watch athletics and sports for these kind of one time performances? 

Imagine you had a breakthrough performance, something clicked one the day, your training block is taking full affect, you put out an insane amount of power, win by a landslide, all because you felt good on the day. Someone from the crowd immediately nulls your performance as "oh he is on the sauce." I think it is an unfair argument to say we have seen people like Lance & co. win by these large margins before. 

I am mainly jut stoked to see a young American win, and I have bias there.

The reason why i made the comment was to basically highlight the bias 

cpulvidente said:

eloy said:

Dygert could not even get off her bicycle once she crossed the line!! 


(caveats for doping)

Please elaborate how an amazing performance is immediately considered doping? Isn't the reason we watch athletics and sports for these kind of one time performances? 

Imagine you had a breakthrough performance, something clicked one the day, your training block is taking full affect, you put out an insane amount of power, win by a landslide, all because you felt good on the day. Someone from the crowd immediately nulls your performance as "oh he is on the sauce." I think it is an unfair argument to say we have seen people like Lance & co. win by these large margins before. 

I am mainly jut stoked to see a young American win, and I have bias there.

When every other “incredible*” performance over the past oh I dunno - 30 years? - has been drug fueled it takes a special kind of observation to look past the dope.

having your training block take you to the next level is nothing like putting 90 seconds (over a 30 minute course) into the best field in the world on everyone’s big day.

undoped contest are characterized by relatively close margins and infrequent breaking of records.

you may feel it’s unfair but I would highlight that’s a feeling. A rational observer would not concur. You may feel it spoils something of the spectacle but again... you are kind of comparing apples and oranges. The evidence is clear - and it has little to do with the emotive spectrum.

*
Basso’s “Alien” year
Armstong’s “Look”
Landis Stage 17
Pantani Oropa
Ben Johnston (or all of track & field)
Vinokutov
most >6.6 w/kg climbs over 30 minutes long
the list is long and distinguished
... 

peace

That's the gist. I've been a fan of cycling and endurance sports for about 35 years, by now I had my heart broken enough that I know to take certain performances with a grain of salt. That is one of the consequences of doping, it takes a portion of everyone's magic away.

I want to believe in today's performance, what an awesome ride, what strength, what sharp focus, what ability to believe in one self, coming back from injury. Extraordinary. What awesome inspiration. I want to admire Dygert forever. That's what I want to believe. I want to oh so hard. 

If you read my posts, you'll see I'm trying to explain the performance... and yet, just in case, caveats for doping (that is, the previous paragraph only works if clean)

Just catching up on all of the awesomeness that's taken place at the world championships so far and re Chloe Dygert's slaughtering of the TT field, I think this article sheds a bit of light on her performance. She really hasn't raced much this year, is being coached by Kristin Armstrong (who did similar things before winning gold in the TT at the Olympics) and instead focused her training almost exclusively for the TT. Van Vleuten also said she had a bad day and that her power numbers were way down from Dutch nationals (maybe a confluence of events led to the size of the margin of victory?).

https://cyclingtips.com/2019/09/dygert-owens-dominance-is-the-continuation-of-a-dynasty/

All together, it kind of reminds of me Greg Lemond- his early season was typically all together unimpressive (usually a bit overweight and typically under performing) but then would train specifically for the Tour and would come into it in full fighting form. Granted, no performances where he absolutely destroyed everyone in the bunch come to mind, but it is more evidence that focusing your training for one specific race does have its advantages.

@cpulvidente

I understand your desire.  

For me, Dygert-Owen's domination of the Colorado Classic was super suspect, but within the realm of possible for a few reasons, namely a field that wasn't stacked with Women's World Tour riders and the altitude, which if someone is totally acclimated, can be a big advantage, and perhaps freshness.

The Worlds TT ride was way beyond what happened in Colorado.  Perhaps she was fresh, though just about everyone was peaking for the event.  Perhaps she was acclimated to England, but then her Colorado altitude edge was probably gone.  Perhaps she had a more aero position, but I don't think it could have mattered much on a course that was as varied as this. Perhaps she's a better rain rider than the others.  Perhaps she dug deeper, but I find the 'falling off the bike' thing almost about theatrics--even for the rider, it's a mental release as much or more as physical.  

So, the question becomes where did she get 92 seconds in 30.4km?  That's 3.02 seconds per kilometer over the second place finisher.  That kind of gap is roughly the difference between riding with aero bars versus standard road bike drop bars over that distance.  Or a custom skin suit  vs. regular jersey and short.

Time trials are pretty quantifiable.  It's hard to model weather conditions and lines taken and how people feel, and wattage, but when quantifying, knowing these things would help.  Considering how aero drag exponentially increases, she must have been putting out much, much more power.  

Vis-a-vis the LeMond TT back at the 1989 Tour.  58 seconds in 20-25km was astonishing.  However, the aero bars and aero helmet, made up most of the gap.  Fignon abandoned the bars because he wasn't comfortable on them, and his aero helmet which he also left off, didn't look terribly aero.  

@mugwump I see how it is hard to justify quantifiably (not a word but you get it) the result that happened, but sometimes numbers just cannot explain everything that happens in the world. We may never know exactly what was going in her mind that day, maybe she was just burying herself I may be young and naive but I believe that the system in place today makes for a more honest competition. 

That being said Dennis won by 1:09 seconds today, a similar margin to Dygert's. Does this mean that he is doping? Second and third place were more than 45 seconds apart, and that second was Evenepoel, 19 years old. I feel that there is something else to the large margins in the past two days other than these two slipped through the testing cracks and won by large margins.(I have not watched any highlights but looked at the results for the men today.)

gonna keep adding to this discussion, because, at the end of the day is not black and white, there's so much even we low cat amateurs could learn from...

(again, assuming it is all clean)

There's a thread I'm noticing over the last few weeks..., if you check the post race interviews of Maghalie Rochette after winning Iowa, both weekends post race interviews of standout Clara Honsinger, and Chloe Dygert's interviews -- they all mentioned believing in one self, and being exactly where they belong. Dygert literally got the question 2 or 3 times "Can you believe it?" she didn't even allow the question, the tacit answer being "yes, motherf**ckr, this is exactly where I am supposed to be"

Doesn't include HR or power, but Dygert posted the ride in Strava
https://www.strava.com/activities/2739036231/

^ Those inferred w numbers aren't right—suggest a big tailwind—but she's def a power monster and suited to that course. I feel like she's just a natural talent (Junior World's TT and RR champ).

https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/racing/chloe-dygert-biggest-advantage-didnt-ride-power-meter-438541

She actually did not want to race with a power meter.

Maybe this shows that we, cycling as a whole, is limited by what we think we can do and our predetermined limits.

I find the list of "maybe's" kind of beside the point. For every long-shot hypothetical there are dozens of proven counterfactuals - all doping. So yes, you can search really really hard for ambiguous clean story clues or take the evidence that is piled in heaps all around us. Ockham's Razor.

As for Denis' win today - it was 2/3rds of the margin over double the distance where his competition was fresh off one or two grand tours.

I'm not saying the gun isn't smoking - perhaps the smoke is a little thinner.

None of this keeps me from refreshing my cycling news website but this is Sport and we should remember there are hundreds of dollars and dozens of fans at stake....

eloy said:

Richard Sachs posted today about this amazing looking Amazon Prime series called "Italian Masters" if you are into bicycles, frame making, and the romance of it all, it looks amazing:

25 minute episodes on all the names -- Masi, Pinarello, Sidi, Selle Italia, Vittoria, etc...

https://smile.amazon.com/Olmo/dp/B07Y8CFW2S

I watched the 1st & 2nd shows in the series, pretty disappointing, great stories , but it's pretty much talking heads the whole show , nice to see a few De Rosa bikes or some Selle Italia saddles etc, that said , ill probably watch some more 

Just for fun, was there a performance in 2019 that we can agree was done legitimately/ cleanly? And if so, what makes us think that? 

RobertMullen said:

Just for fun, was there a performance in 2019 that we can agree was done legitimately/ cleanly? And if so, what makes us think that? 

Nope.

Jules said:

RobertMullen said:

Just for fun, was there a performance in 2019 that we can agree was done legitimately/ cleanly? And if so, what makes us think that? 

Nope.

I realize that's glib but the truth is there is no way to know. We all have various hunches, intuitions and of course dreams, but ... that ain't enough, as we've all learned.

There is certainly a spectrum of confidence that various athletes live on, but that's all. It's just confidence, not something you can agree on or really debate.

The light race schedule is something to contemplate.

Mario Cipollini 'innovated' taking off much of the season, in the guise of a possible retirement, to win the worlds.  Back then, being retired meant he wasn't tested, and, well, yes, he turned to doping, because there was no oversight of retired riders.  This is why pros need to be unretired and available for testing for at least six months before returning to competition.  

I don't know if pro's today are able to evade testing during training by living/training in certain places, like Tenerife or living in a camper and driving it around were two means for doing this in the aughts.  Problem is the people who know aren't saying.  

I'm not suggesting it's proof of doping, but pointing out it was a means of evading testing in the past.  

@RobertMullen,

I'm hoping that Pinot is riding clean.  He has released several years of training data, which could be analyzed by anyone, but his brother, who is a coach on FDJ, used it for a PhD thesis.  

But as Jules said, it's speculation.

FWIW, I'm really hating on Velo News for a bizarre claim about how better training methods, better nutrition are like jet fuel for clean younger riders.  The claim makes no sense.  I don't even see how they could speculate, or where they decided to base such speculation on.  

FWIW I think the consensus opinion in pro circles is that Carlos Sastre was the last clean GT winner

Beard power.

eloy said:

regardless, American, Quinn Simmons destroyed the Junior race and is now world champion!!!!

https://twitter.com/UCI_cycling/status/1177258310074011649

He just signed with Trek

"it's just stupid bike racing but it means everything"


as a junior, he'll soon find other races, but moments like this are oh so easy reminders of myerson's interview and svein's tattoo "we will never be here again"

Why did he make no attempt to remount the tub?

Mark Taylor said:

Why did he make no attempt to remount the tub?

I wondered the same thing

USA USA USA

the United States is destroying worlds
https://www.cyclingnews.com/races/uci-road-world-championships-2019/women-junior-road-race/results/


OMG I wanna love all these kids so very much. 

I want want to believe

https://youtu.be/4vKc9r0OLFw

It’s ok to believe 
my mantra when mountain biking is 
believe , commit and you know what it’s ok if you get it wrong
i Realized that how you should approach most things in life
Sport is beautiful
and thats why almost all sports movies suck  , because “ you can’t make this shot up”
happens every second everyday 

love this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHaz8iPCJOY