Sounds like we know what his FTP is!eloy said:
Today in the Tourmalet..., how does 51 minutes @ 370 Watts sounds?
makes you wonder what Brailsford or Ellingworth saw in him when he signed for Sky.twoyacks said:best part:
Then Froome, on the verge of being discarded, having not even stood out as exceptional in our SA cycling circuit (good, but not “let’s blow away the best” exceptional), transformed into the greatest ever cyclist after the age of 25, with VO2max values that would have made a physiologist’s eyeballs explode (and hey, we’re in Africa, but we aren’t that backward here), riding away from people who WERE earmarked for greatness from a young age. It’s the most remarkable transformation of a mature athlete ever. Late emergence is one thing, transformation when you’re already in the ‘window’ quite another.
https://youtu.be/hIlmtQKLMUg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyqpDWl19v4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpBOQg_7DIY
the doping process was overseen by Max Testa, an Italian doctor who is still working in the sport and running a sports medicine clinic in Utah. In 2006, Testa told me that he gave his riders the instructions to use EPO but never administered drugs to those riders. In 2014, he said he didn’t want to discuss anything about the cyclists he had worked with, to protect the privacy of his patients. Still, if drug use was not mandated by the team, it appeared to be at least quasi-official. Hendershot trusted Testa to make sure the riders were staying safe, believing that Testa — unlike other doctors in cycling — actually cared for the riders’ health, and cared less about winning or money.
Hendershot, however, put it this way: A doctor who refused to give riders drugs wouldn’t last in the sport.
Armstrong liked Testa so much that he moved to Italy to be near the doctor’s office in Como, north of Milan. Not long after joining Motorola, Armstrong began living in Como during the racing season. He brought along his close friend Frankie Andreu, and in time several other riders joined them, including George Hincapie, a New Yorker, and Kevin Livingston, a Midwesterner. All became patients of Testa. All later became riders on Armstrong’s Tour de France-winning United States Postal Service teams.