The professional cycling thread

[S100HP]

Odds on Pogacar making it a clean sweep of the 3 grand tours this year given his form and the incident the other week taking out some big names? He's already said he'd do the Giro, and if he won both, Im sure he'd have a pop at the Vuelta...

[lauda]

Personally, I think the rider whose chances of winning the Tour have increased the most is Roglic. Whilst I'd fancy Pogacar to beat him if they were both coming to the Tour fresh, if he rides the Giro to win, I think he'll have his work cut out against Roglic and a very focused Bora.

We've seen before that whilst Pogacar is a generational talent, he's by no means unbeatable. And I think Roglic will savour the opportunity of dishing out a little payback for 2020.

[johnpsanderson]

WestyCarl said:

LM240 said:

Paris Roubaix.. probably my favourite of the one day races.

Just incredible performance from MVDP today.

The speed and aggressive style of racing is just bonkers.

Pretty much 30mph average for 160 miles!!! That’s crazy over pan flat tarmac, let alone over the cobbled sections.

Agreed and the apparent ease that MVDP just rode away from the bunch was incredible.

A French speaking friend who I watch Roubaix with most years told me that the day after plenty of French Facebook cycling groups were grumbling about VdP having a motor!

To be fair, Cancellara and Boonen both made it look easy the years they similarly jetted off the front to win solo.

[oddball1313]

johnpsanderson said:

WestyCarl said:

LM240 said:

Paris Roubaix.. probably my favourite of the one day races.

Just incredible performance from MVDP today.

The speed and aggressive style of racing is just bonkers.

Pretty much 30mph average for 160 miles!!! That’s crazy over pan flat tarmac, let alone over the cobbled sections.

Agreed and the apparent ease that MVDP just rode away from the bunch was incredible.

A French speaking friend who I watch Roubaix with most years told me that the day after plenty of French Facebook cycling groups were grumbling about VdP having a motor!

To be fair, Cancellara and Boonen both made it look easy the years they similarly jetted off the front to win solo.

There’s no way in 2024 you would get away with it - UCI would make sure that his bike was clean as whistle before and after the race.

[S100HP]

To be fair the same was said about Cancellara back in the day

[oddball1313]

S100HP said:

To be fair the same was said about Cancellara back in the day

was the possible existence of motors known about around 2010?

[Correvor]

oddball1313 said:

was the possible existence of motors known about around 2010?

100% - I remember there being videos of Cancellara

[S100HP]

oddball1313 said:

S100HP said:

To be fair the same was said about Cancellara back in the day

was the possible existence of motors known about around 2010?

Yep, quite a bit of speculation about it at the time. Just had a quick Google, couple of bits to read if interested

https://velo.outsideonline.com/road/road-racing/fo...

https://www.granfondoguide.com/Contents/Index/3323...

Feels like only yesterday, can't believe it was 14 years ago. I'm getting old.

[andyA700]

Stevie Williams, first British male winner of the Fleche Wallonne. Brilliant effort!

https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/stevie-williams...

[ArnageWRC]

S100HP said:

oddball1313 said:

S100HP said:

To be fair the same was said about Cancellara back in the day

was the possible existence of motors known about around 2010?

Yep, quite a bit of speculation about it at the time. Just had a quick Google, couple of bits to read if interested

https://velo.outsideonline.com/road/road-racing/fo...

https://www.granfondoguide.com/Contents/Index/3323...

Feels like only yesterday, can't believe it was 14 years ago. I'm getting old.

The first known motor doping case was in 2016; women's U23 CX Worlds at Zolder when the pre race favourite Femke Van den Driesche was found to have a motor in her bike - sadly, this story overshadowed the win of GB's Evie Richards; who has since been XCO World Champion.

[Talksteer]

lauda said:

Personally, I think the rider whose chances of winning the Tour have increased the most is Roglic. Whilst I'd fancy Pogacar to beat him if they were both coming to the Tour fresh, if he rides the Giro to win, I think he'll have his work cut out against Roglic and a very focused Bora.

We've seen before that whilst Pogacar is a generational talent, he's by no means unbeatable. And I think Roglic will savour the opportunity of dishing out a little payback for 2020.

Pogacar is still human, physiologically there are plenty of riders with similar FTP/kg, where he's a little unusual is that he's good at pretty much everything.

Again that's a factor of people being able to train like a pro with diet, monitors and power pretty much as soon as they've finished their growth spurt.

When riders were first getting into scientific training (and no that's not a euphemism for drugs) with power and monitoring they started applying it to specialisation and as a result we ended up with specialists being unbeatable by generalists in their domain. Gradually I suspect that they are working out that with the exception of the most specialised sprinters the physiology is pretty similar for most efforts and that you don't really loose anything by training for everything.

The second bit of it is that better bikes and wide tyres mean that the skill of riding cobbles is reduced so that again the rider with the best FTP/kg frequently wins.

Finally as the levels and professionalism in the pro peleton equalises all races and race stages are hard, the basic minimum wage domestique has an ftp/kg of about 6w/kg and thus you rarely end up with isolated team leaders. They normally go head to head and the best rider wins. Furthermore with scientific race schedules those best riders will then be pretty consistently good so they end up with incredible win/loss ratios.