he’s just throwing stones.

But then Greg LeMond told me that was not humanly possible, so I guess I didn’t.

to things he’s been saying for a while – the physiological profile, that is.

Well, he’s hardly the only one who has remarked on the climbing speed of Contador at Verbier.

As if people have lots of trust in riders anyway. Gah.

I wasn’t aware that LeMond was writing these “chroniques” – I just read this one and a few of the others, he seems to be writing them on a fairly regular basis? Here’s a really lovely one on, well, I guess the specifically French nature of the Tour, and here’s one on the Hincapie/yellow jersey controversy, specifically as it concerns Armstrong.

Anyways we’ve debated LeMond here a fair bit so I won’t go into that, but I think the least that can be said about this article is that it’s a serious piece, and I think it would be wrong to dismiss it just because of what someone might think of LeMond. And, as Gavia notes above, it doesn’t contradict anything he’s said before about the “physiological profile,” it’s simply an application of that idea to a particular case (Contador). Finally, I think this article forces us to reject the notion that LeMond is solely motivated by his dislike for Armstrong, since it effectively takes Armstrong’s biggest rival to task, and seeks in some way to throw at least temporary suspicion on his performance.

I think anyone who can bracket his/her personal feelings about the author of the piece will have to admit that a serious question is raised here: how can we explain Contador’s performance? LeMond says (I wasn’t aware of this) that Contador established a record for the ascension of the Verbier. Then, quoting another newspaper (Libération), he says that Contador would have needed a VO2max of 99.5 ml/mn/kg to produce this effort. This, however, would be far and away the highest VO2max ever recorded. (I think Bjorn Daehlie’s 96 is still the highest ever.) Hence LeMond’s demand to Contador, reflected in the title of the piece: Alberto, prove to me that we can believe in you.

I don’t have enough scientific knowledge to really engage in this debate on a scientific level – I know that many people argue that VO2max alone is insufficient to judge these issues – but I will say that, based on this argument alone, LeMond’s questions, concerns and doubts seem entirely justified to me. The one place where he seems a bit disingenuous, or at the very least lazy, is when he asks about the “meteorological conditions (notably the wind)” on the day in question, then says he “will not pass judgment here without more information” – it would be easy enough to find this stuff out before publishing the article.

Anyways, I’ve written here before that I think LeMond’s suggestion – a “physiological passport” – is impractical and problematic for many reasons. However, I do think that he poses reasonable questions here and that this is a reasonable piece. I’m sure LeMond, like all of us, has been blown away by Contador’s performance this Tour, and I think he just wants to make sure that he’s not being duped, for his own love of the sport and for the good of cycling as a whole.

but why stir the pot on this when we are talking about a guy who has a true climber’s physique. This is not Big Mig we’re talking about here. What does Bert weigh? I’d guess somewhere between 130-140 lbs. Was there a tailwind? Jeez Greg, you might want to check out that little detail before you start throwing stones. Maybe Bert does have the highest VO2 max in recorded Tour history. If so, it’s not out of the question that he could climb as fast as he did by holding something in the neighborhood of 400 watts, which is not that out of line.

Unless I really got my wires crossed, I remembered hearing somewhere (Phil or Paul?) that Armstrong was producing around 450 watts on Verbier, based on his weight. So, who’s performance then is more suspect? For that matter, what do these numbers mean for all the guys who finished in the top 10 or so on that day?

Now, Alberto’s ability in the TT does leaves me a little cold. How the hell does a little guy like that generate those massive watts on the flat? I really am keeping my fingers crossed that Bert is one of the most physiologically gifted athletes that’s ever thrown his leg over a bike. Based on his TT performance, I’d say we could be looking at a combination of pure climbing ability and chrono skills never before seen. I hope it’s all not a farce.

…is made by one of the commenters on the article at the lemonde.fr site:

If performance is proportional to VO2max, let’s measure the VO2max of each rider and establish the GC according to these measurements! That way, there’s no need to trouble ourselves with the race, and no need to dope…tomorrow’s champions will no longer need to do sports at all! They’ll be ranked at their birth…and if we put a bit of genetics into the mix, we’ll be able to program super-babies with a huge VO2max and become the fathers of tomorrow’s champions! Awesome!

This obviously leads into a lot of debates around the intersections of politics, genetics, biology…

a number of 92.5 though Indurain had a test that showed unofficially with numbers around 94. Lemond seems to think that this is THE factor in those who are champions and not even including how much one can suffer or anything else. ANybody who doesn’t have the highest numbers must be on dope and should be banned is his philosophy.

It would be nice to start the physiological passport young, but you can train your VO2Max to an extent and therefore if some kid has decent numbers and trains for years and his numbers come up to professional levels. There are so many other factors that Lemond looks over.

It was a +2k effort? to the top, and when he crossed the line he had snot and drool coming uncontrollably out of his body. If he isn’t clean, at least he didn’t come across the line not even out of breath.

source

Asked after his TT victory about Greg LeMond’s doubts, he avoided the question [“il a botté en touche,” literally, he kicked the ball out of bounds]: “we don’t answer questions on that subject,” said his translator while Contador looked away. “Next question,” retorted the Spaniard when the question was asked again.

won by what, 40 seconds? How is that anything special? Old Lance was within 1:30 on him. The TT today didn’t surprise me either, if you look at the results over the last year, you can see he has been getting better and better each TT, plus he probably had the freshest legs after the climbs seeing he’s the best climber. Fabian gained 27 seconds on him the last 12km, that’s nothing un-real. Of course, I’m not saying there is no doubt he’s clean, I am realistic and know all these guys could be beating the system, but as Millar said, AC is a special talent, is anyone questioning why LeBron James is so good? Every sport has its greats, AC may very well be one of the greatest cycling has ever seen.

Just to add another two cents to the entire Lemond question, I think he’s fine when he talks about the rise of EPO and its effects in the early 90’s. Clearly the EPO users got fast and there was indeed a peloton at two speeds, at least until everyone started using. When Lemond and others bemoan this I think they’re justified, because what they’re talking about is a change in ability across the entire peloton. The average rider got a lot faster, and while technology, training, and team support also improved I don’t think there’s any question that pharmaceuticals were the primary cause.

However, this is much different than looking at the performance of a single rider and calling them dirty, especially if that rider is the best in the peloton. Like everything else, rider ability is spread across a distribution and you can rarely say anything about the extremes of a distribution even if you can characterize the average. By definition, extreme cases like Contador are unlike anyone else in the population. They are literally in a class by themselves, so even if everyone they’re beating is doping it is impossible to know if they are as well (e.g. Armstrong in his prime). Unless they fail a test, of course.

If we really did understand physiology to the extent Lemond thinks he does, then we could move past these statistical arguments. But the fact that statistics-based methods (epidemiology, statistical genetics) are still the source of most biomedical knowledge suggests otherwise.

So when Lemond rants about the general use of drugs in cycling he’s got a point, but when he demands that a specific rider justify their results he’s just being a nut.

Here.

I really do believe that Greg Lemond is onto a very important aspect of performance analysis. There are upper limits to what can be achieved physiologically, there are without doubt physiological “impossibilities”. Unfortunately, in this case, I think the calculation of the key parameters is too fraught with error to be truly meaningful.