Weight Weenies

Agree with you to a certain extent. You can't hang Froome based on one performance on the first day in the mountains.

Look at his power figures over the course of the Tour in the context of other riders power figures then do some more analysis.

Looking back at Froome's performances last year, Plateau de Belles Filles, La Toussuire, Pyrenees he was obviously the best climber then as well.

aerozy wrote:

Conspiracy theory: Sky ordered Porte to play dead..

Funny same thing crossed my mind. Porte performance reflected two completely diferent riders from one stage to another. I mean even on tired legs you dont go from dominating a stage to losing 20minutes. Either he got sick, forgot to take his pills or like you said is playing dead.

Tripe.

If, as the early power predictions would indicate, Porte really pushed his limits on the previous day it would highly expected for his performance to be blunted today. I would be more suspicious if he did keep within a similar performance level (within a couple of minutes), that's how it used to go with "help". Add to that the above-mentioned tactical reasons make the performance unsurprising in and of itself.

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Not sure if this been posted before, but some numbers on the final climb saturday

Froome: 435W , 24'41"
Contador: 361W

Analysis done by Energy Lab.
According to Paul Van Den Bosch (coach of Sven Nys), these are realistic numbers for this kind of duration.
Contador was too low according to him.

That number sounds more realistic than the 450W I saw bounded about.

Also, as many of you will know, David Walsh had full access to follow the Sky team, not only during races, but also training camps etc..
There was a interview with him done by Sporza yesterday. He seems 'reasonably' convinced they are doing everything correctly. And by reasonably he meant you can never know for 100%.

Guys like Mollema and Ten Dam are keeping up with the top guys on the clinbs. (ten dam was around in the tour even during the 'old' days with Rabobank). Now i know some will say maybe they are doing something fishy. I was with the Belkin guys (still Blanco at that time) on a training camp in Spain last january. Talking to the coaches was interesting and I am pretty convinced they are going the right path.

strobbekoen wrote:Not sure if this been posted before, but some numbers on the final climb saturday

Froome: 435W , 24'41"
Contador: 361W

Yes. If he was at 6.5W/Kg for 24 minutes. That would seem pretty consistent with an ftp of around 6.1/6.2W/Kg

Not sure why that's surprising.

If he rides Ventoux or the d'Huez double at 6.5, then we have a problem.

He was at 6.3 W/kg for 24 min
Contador 5.91

Praise indeed from Prudhomme!

"He's a kind of Paula Radcliffe [world record holder in the marathon] on a bike! The Brits love her, don't they? However, I find Froome very elegant in his way of speaking with a sweet voice and his eyes are very expressive.""

i agree Froome's single performance isn't enough to crucify the man. but given the historical context and the aura of suspicions revolving around any outstanding performance (that sometimes produces a positive result) i find it justified to raise doubts

now Porte - if he'd lost few minutes instead of 20, that would've been a lot more fishy. the possibility of him 'playing dead' also crossed my mind (especially when i saw him smiling at the finish line) but then as someone said a couple posts ago, that would be an unearthly stupid move from DS to bury an almost certain podium spot for the sake of... what? fewer comments on Froome's suspicious performance? not likely

Agree: I got a 6.14 W/kg FTP for Chris Horner on Sierra Road. FTP is around 5% lower than 23 min peak power, so Froome comes out close to this. Froome is relative fresh and had only one climb before this one. It's not like ripping out the same power on a 2000-meter climb in week 3 of the race. Can't compare his effort to Armstrong's without context of where it was within the 3-weeks, or within the stage.

WRT to Porte losing 20 minutes: He made a monster effort to get back on [I think] the 2nd last climb. He got to within 30s of the front group, and then Movistar put all their guys* on the front to make sure he didn't make it. After the gap went out again it was game over for Porte, he had no chance of making it back on the valley roads so I'm guessing the DS told him to give it up and save his energies for future days helping Froome.

* I've not seen many comments about the relative strength of Movistar yet. 2 days ago Sky's strength was concrete proof of team-wide doping. By extension, surely any team that can have 6 riders up the road when the entire Sky team have been dropped must be doing something even better. AMIRITE?

Except for the fact they did relatively nothing the day before.....

Ah right. SO what you're saying is that Sky weren't strong the day before, it was just because all the other guys did nothing.

(btw, this is all snark on my part)

Tinea Pedis wrote:

Simon Clarke says, roll with it

Fantastic

Just saying they didn't gut the entire team like Sky did....if Sky controlled the race yesterday like they did Saturday then the suspicions would be very high.

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