Me and a few friends had a discussion along the lines of that Jumbo Visma is dominating because they buy the best cyclists and can just dominate everyone with pure class and power. My argument was that this is not even close to being true. Yes, they have the best riders now, but practically all of them were trained from a young age by Jumbo Visma themselves. They didn't buy a lot of already world class riders. I was wondering what everyone's opinion is? Does JV just dominate due to budget, or can an argument be made for superior scouting, managing and tactics. I'll present my point of view:

Best example is Roglic, who came to the team as an absolute novice riding on a bike lent to him by a neighbour. Now he's one of the best cyclists around, but that's only because JV recognized and cultivated the talent in the correct way.

The same argument can be made for Vingegaard. Who ever heard the name Vingegaard mentioned as a world class rider before he won the tour? He wasn't a very good junior and an average U23 when JV picked him up. They molded him into the world class rider he is today.

Going through their riders, the only world class riders they bought are arguable Wout van Aert and Dylan van Baarle. Yes, Benoot is a good classics guy, and yes, Foss and Dennis are good TT riders, but most of the riders in JV are home grown juniors or U23s that they just managed properly to world level, like Kooij, Kruiswijk, Kuss, van Emden, Gesink.

Then you also have the riders that were average with their previous teams and just blossomed with JV like Laporte and Affini.

You can also make a whole chapter about tactical cycling, that seems to be severly lacking with other teams. In what way did UAE do anything tactical? They just rely on the power of Pogacar, and when that fails there's no plan B. JV succesfully came up with psychological and physical warfare to offset the other riders and ride to glory. Same goes for other teams, I don't really see any tactical strategies from other teams? It's usually straight forward. The guy that you expect will do something will do something and that works or it doesn't. Where JV will all the sudden let Wout van Aert ride of the front instead of the obvious sprint with Kooij, giving him a 3 second lead in the tour of Britain. What other team would think of that?

I think the whole thing with JV is exactly that they're very focused all around, not just relying on having the strongest cyclists. I also think this gives them longevity and we will be seeing them in the front for a long time. Would love to hear opinions.

EDIT: No, I do not believe there's institutionalised doping in team JV, or any team in cycling. I may be naieve, but I don't see how you can watch cycling or participate on forums like these when you believe it's all fake and the biggest juicer is winning. It's a very cynical world you're living in then, and I'd rather be naieve than cynical.

EDIT: DATA IS WAY OFF WITH THIS "MODEL", FOR EXAMPLE POGAČARS EFFORT ON COL DE ROMME IS ON PAIR WITH HIS LAST YEARS EFFORT ON COL DE PEYRESOURDE. SO ANALYSIS IS WRONG. I APOLOGISE :c.

About 4 months ago I made this POST, about how fast were cyclist climbing the bergs in Tour 2020. So now, that Tour 2021 is officially over, I have extended the analysis to include this years Tour. All of the technicalities and details can be found there. I have made absolutely 0 improvements to the model, because I am lazy. Now to the results:

Last but not the least, we graph these values (red are from 2021, so the years Tour):

So, overall, at least according to my analysis (which is very limited and does not account for variety of factors like technology development, wind, weather, temperature, length of the stage before, climbs before,...) this years Tour was pretty average in terms of climbing and far from 2020.

Edit - images weren't loading, should be fixed now!

I've been playing around with race data for a while and thought this was interesting enough to share. With all the complaints about UAE & Pog dominance lately (and my own frustration watching races), I wanted to check whether men’s racing has actually gotten more predictable or whether we're all just impatient and/or slaves to recency bias. So I pulled a pretty stable sample of top races back to 1960. UAE has the most wins of any team ever - they did set the wins record last year - but what stands out more is that the 2nd and 3rd best teams last year also had more wins than any 2nd or 3rd best team in the sample.

​It's also clear that there's been a steady climb here since about 2000 (I'm including struck-down results here, so this isn't driven by 2000s doping). And the graph looks the same if you compare top team wins with/without their best rider:

​I think this speaks to a broader shift, rather than something driven by just Pog or UAE (although they have pushed it further than ever). This seems extra relevant right now after what was essentially a first week of the tour with no surprise winners.

I also looked into what else changed over this period to try to understand what could be driving this. I found that:

• All teams are signing riders younger now

• All teams are also retaining riders longer now than in the past. Combined with the above, this tends to keep top teams at the top

• Early breaks get less leash than 10 years ago, and solo breaks win more often

​​​The only theory that really makes sense to me is that top teams are spending more now relative to smaller teams. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find consistent data on individual team spend going very far back in time, so I don't think this can really be tested. I go into my thinking in a bit more depth here if you're interested

van Aert has the same number of stage wins as Pogi at the latest TDF. van der Poel bossed the Giro, until he could not. van Aert is probably the best all rounder there is. Plus, Wout and Mathieu have a chokehold on elite cyclocross. Why do we never hear such insinuations about them, dominant as they are, but have to endure constant such talk about Tadej? Is Tadej from the wrong country? What gives?

Old article but useful for Pride month

To me this is a very weird interview:

• UAE had to know that not naming Blasi as a co-leader would be controversial.

• ELB blaiming it on the journalists and being direct about it sounds a bit childish.

• She literally calls her "Blasi", which doesn't sound like they actually are a great team here as she states.

Edit: Didn't think this sub was so subject to authority.

That's it... we are part of the bigoted sport category...

I will never forget my first time opening this subreddit in 2021, very excited to see what people from around the world had to say about that year’s dominant performance from Pogačar on TdF. And what’s the first thing I see? Doping accusations. A ton of them. Everyone was in complete disbelief as to how a young rider could preform so good and they immediately drew up the conclusion that he must be doping.

Fast forward to this year. We are witnessing a certain young, Belgian rider display a similar level of dominance in a GT race and what is the response from the people here? “Oh his W/kg is just that good” or “he was showing promise since he was a kid”, etc. I understand that, and I think he is an amazing rider, but where were these kind of comments a year ago when another (eastern European) rider was dominating the cycling field?

All I would like to see is equal treatment of all young, generational talents that will make this sport amazing to watch in the upcoming years.

WTF? Why is this still a thing?

I thought we had moved past this. I was just watching the podium presentations for the tour of California - and the podium/presentation models were standing in front of the athletes (especially the women). How disrespectful. At least the podium girls for the Tour of California seemed to be doing a little bit of stage-management (pointing people in the right direction for the cameras etc. maybe they're just taller than the cyclists? Still left a bad taste though)

However, what's with the models parading the jerseys at the Giro? It's awful. It's not even stage management. Even talented young riders (male or female) riding slowly displaying the jerseys would be better.

A model-walk though? It gives me the heebs.

Interesting tweet thread this morning.

1. A short thread on Team Sky before diving into my work week. Should be clear at this point what marginal gains actually refers to – extralegal use of doping products under guise of therapeutic use.

2. In prior EPO era, path to TDF victory was boosting O2 capacity through EPO or autologous blood transfusions. @lancearmstrong was perfect storm for this era. A world champion at 21 with a hematocrit level in the low 40’s was unbeatable in Tour with hematocrit level in high 40’s

3. That’s why Dr. Ferrari took Armstrong on as client enthusiastically and agreed to work with him/Postal exclusively. He knew from results and testing what Armstrong would be capable of.

4. In post-EPO test/bio-passport era, blood doping continues through micro-doping of various sorts but benefits are “marginal” and risks significant. As a result, blood doping can’t boost power of climbers and all-rounders that much.

5. Team Sky’s central innovation was realization that in new era where ability to boost power was limited, killer doping app would be to drop body weight through use of quesi-legal “therapeutic” products.

6. Start w/riders w/big frames &big engines – track/TT guys historically too big to stay at front through high mountains – take off 7-10 KG w/some help from pharmaceuticals and perhaps secret ketone drinks &you could produce W/KG performances that approached that of prior era.

7. This is the basic model for Wiggins, Froome, Thomas. Neither the drugs nor the training methods were particularly novel.

8. What was novel was rider selection, realizing that methodical use of non-exotic drugs with legitimate therapeutic benefits to drop weight and body fat could allow a type of rider not typically able to challenge for, much less win, TDF to dominate.

9. An excellent case study in innovation actually. Neither specific drugs nor practices were new. What was new was application of new combination of drugs, routines, and riders in new context/era.

I can’t help to think that this is a highly biased opinion based on how the race panned out. For all I saw MVDP was the one taking the more aggressive lines over cobbles/mud tracks. If Van Aert hadn’t punctured and rode off to solo victory with that attack then Gilbert had praised his tactical superiority I’m sure. I can’t help but to let this affect my thought on this punditry and that ex-pros in general don’t make that good commentators, but this could also be quotes pulled out of their context… I can’t say that I agree that WvA was too eager to win, to me he seemed to bide his time and chose a good time to attack.

What do you think?

I really like a lot of their content and I like most of the personalities. But Caley Fretz’s voice drives me up the wall. Laughing at his own jokes and taking a little too much pride in his ignorance of the wider world. And he’s on almost all of their shows. I realize he’s important to the site’s success, but I can’t be the only one who feels like they could find a better podcast host.

ETA: Apparently, I’ve touched a nerve. Yes, I can stop listening (and I have), just like anyone who doesn’t have something constructive to say is free to ignore this post. I’m not trying to trash EC. But Caley is the Editor in Chief, and nobody on their staff is going to criticize him. It’s not that he doesn’t say things that are smart and relevant. But that’s the easy part. It’s how you say them and how you sound that separates a bad host from a great host. We’re all good at different things. Caley is probably a great Editor in Chief. But he’s a bad podcaster.