Official Cycling Thread

[jeepers]

Pog won again, by the way. Took off on La Redoute and soloed 35km to win. Even Armstrong at least pretended to make things look a battle.

 

[Bwana_Dik]

Pog won again, by the way. Took off on La Redoute and soloed 35km to win. Even Armstrong at least pretended to make things look a battle.

A generational talent of something like that they are calling him.
Hmm, we've seen a few generational talents, they didn't all survive long-term scrutiny.
He's head and shoulders above everyone else at the moment.

Fair play to Ben.

 

[BlackpoolTerrier]

A generational talent of something like that they are calling him.
Hmm, we've seen a few generational talents, they didn't all survive long-term scrutiny.
He's head and shoulders above everyone else at the moment.

Fair play to Ben.

Reasons to "believe" POG:
1. He's always been world-class. Most dopers undergo a step-change as they get on the juice
2. He is always up for the racing - through the whole season and in tours as well as one-day races. Proven dopers tend to pick and choose their events and don't deliver consistent performances across a season
3. Jumbo Visma proved he is human in TdF 2023
4. He regularly flakes off on attacks on his own hours from the end of the race / stage - "suicidal" attacks as the commentators usually call them. Again, proven dopers have tended to take more calculated risks and to have their team carry a lot of the load

Mercx and Hinault were very similar - Mercx for his voracious appetite for victories across all formats through the season and both of them for their lone attacks while still hours from home.

Indeed, fair play to Ben Healy

 

[Thistlecrack]

Reasons to "believe" POG:
1. He's always been world-class. Most dopers undergo a step-change as they get on the juice
2. He is always up for the racing - through the whole season and in tours as well as one-day races. Proven dopers tend to pick and choose their events and don't deliver consistent performances across a season
3. Jumbo Visma proved he is human in TdF 2023
4. He regularly flakes off on attacks on his own hours from the end of the race / stage - "suicidal" attacks as the commentators usually call them. Again, proven dopers have tended to take more calculated risks and to have their team carry a lot of the load

Mercx and Hinault were very similar - Mercx for his voracious appetite for victories across all formats through the season and both of them for their lone attacks while still hours from home.

Indeed, fair play to Ben Healy

Reasons not to believe Pog.
1. The vast majority of pro cyclists dope, past and present. Chuck in all athletes with that statement too.
2. Dopers are always several steps ahead of testers, even more so in modern times with better methods whole doping testing methods have stagnated and haven't kept up.

Pog is still a genetic freak, a terrific strategist and above all a fantastically entertaining and daring cyclist. Couldn't care less if he's on the premium unleaded, because if he is, then so is MVDP, Remco, Vingegaard etc. etc. as well as your Ben Healys and Eddie Dunbars too.

 

[jeepers]

Reasons to "believe" POG:
1. He's always been world-class. Most dopers undergo a step-change as they get on the juice
2. He is always up for the racing - through the whole season and in tours as well as one-day races. Proven dopers tend to pick and choose their events and don't deliver consistent performances across a season
3. Jumbo Visma proved he is human in TdF 2023
4. He regularly flakes off on attacks on his own hours from the end of the race / stage - "suicidal" attacks as the commentators usually call them. Again, proven dopers have tended to take more calculated risks and to have their team carry a lot of the load

Mercx and Hinault were very similar - Mercx for his voracious appetite for victories across all formats through the season and both of them for their lone attacks while still hours from home.

Indeed, fair play to Ben Healy

All fair points. I just find it very hard not to be cynical. Whether he's clean or not, he's a racer, in a way that very few others are.

 

[Carmona]

I've enjoyed watching Pog for the last few years same as most here and across the cycling fanbases. He seems like a decent bloke too, but as Terrier mentioned above, it's the willingness to race here, there and everywhere that most of us love. Contrast that with the stars from Indurain up to the white Kenyan. Some of those buggers seemed to do three or four races a year. Pog does that in a month.

However, for all his talent, there is the history of the sport and his domination in some of those races. In fact, the accelerations in a few recent ones have had me wondering anew. I mean the Fleche Wallone and LBL looked like he was 'mvoing up a gear' as he took off. All that said, I do love his style and the fact that he gives so much across the season. Again, as someone posted above, this isn't a guy who finished 48th and 36th in his first two Tours, only to win handsomely in his next few. He hasn't made incredible progress any one year, unlike Wiggo, Froome and Lance himself.

Be nice if the bollix left poor ole Ben H win a classic some day though.

 

[Bwana_Dik]

Another thought...

Cycling, and maybe athletics, is the only sport I know of where a good few fans look on with a jaundiced eye.
Borne out of bitter experience, but still.

It's amazing that cycling and athletics, where pros earn what is, in the great scheme of things a pittance, are the only "dirty" sports.
So, high level of cheating for low returns.

I'd say a workhorse defender in a team at the bottom of the English Championship earns more in a month that your typical domestique earns in a year.
And the top guys, no comparison. Would Pog be on 10 million a year? I'd say Ronny wouldn't get out of bed for that, and him playing in a laughingstock league.

But there's no doping in football, no sirree.
Or tennis (aw FFS).
Or horse racing (the horse, not - necessarily the jockey, although making the weight...).
Etc.

And I know there will be an argument that drugs don't work in these sports the same way that they do in cycling/athletics.

We're very hard on ourselves betimes.


Pog is a likeable bloke, nice personality, gives is a lash, I sincerely hope he is doing it straight.
He took off on la Redoute like an aul diesel, all torque.

 

[jeepers]

And I know there will be an argument that drugs don't work in these sports the same way that they do in cycling/athletics.

Which is a canard that has been debunked time and again, but is swallowed whole by the more deficient fans of the mainstream field sports.

 

[El Guapo]

I heard a very good pod last week about advances in Fuelling. Carbs like.

Anyone remotely involved in endurance sport knows about it in an abstract way.

Yer man was saying how it has revolutionised how teams are training. Even as recently as the Froome Sky years the accepted wisdom was about optimising Fat burning..Fellas would eat 2 eggs for breakfast and go on a 5 hour training spin and feel absolutely fucked. Nowadays it's all about fuelling for the job and training your guts to take in 140-160g of carbs per hour.

This fella was saying if you correctly fuel you can pretty much hold zone 2 ad infinitum.

it started in the Peloton because so much sports science is easier when you remove the variable that is running economy but is now bleeding into marathons, ultramarathons and Ironman.

God knows this may be a smokescreen. Like Gluten free diets, high cadence and scraping shit off your shoe at the top of the pedal stroke, and it does not explain Pog, Vingegard or Van der Poel but is the first coherent explanation I've heard for the apparently inhuman jump In average speed of the peloton

 

[Bwana_Dik]

I heard a very good pod last week about advances in Fuelling. Carbs like.

Anyone remotely involved in endurance sport knows about it in an abstract way.

Yer man was saying how it has revolutionised how teams are training. Even as recently as the Froome Sky years the accepted wisdom was about optimising Fat burning..Fellas would eat 2 eggs for breakfast and go on a 5 hour training spin and feel absolutely fucked. Nowadays it's all about fuelling for the job and training your guts to take in 140-160g of carbs per hour.

This fella was saying if you correctly fuel you can pretty much hold zone 2 ad infinitum.

I'd be prepared to believe that fuelling has made a major difference. Kinda makes sense.