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Chris Froome on Mont Ventoux (copyright John Pierce)L'Equipe analyses Froome's climbing data, finds it 'normal' and 'consistent'
French sports newspaper l’Equipe has this morning published an analysis of Chris Froome’s power data from 18 climbs over the last two years.
The headline finding from l’Equipe’s expert, Fred Grappe is that Froome’s power data for the last two years is consistent, and that he has an exceptionally high five-minute maximum power output, which gives him an advantage over other riders.
Grappe draws four other conclusions from the data, which covers the period from the 2011 Tour of Spain to Sunday's Tour de France stage on Mont Vontoux: Froome’s power curve, his ability to generate power versus time, is normal and his rides in this Tour are consistent with the data; his VO2 max must be close to the known physiological limits, though Team Sky say it has never been measured; his weight has been stable for the las two years; and he mus have excellent powers of recovery.
L’Equipe, which is owned by Amaury Sports Organisation, the same company that owns and runs the Tour de France, approached Sky after team principal Sir Dave Brailsford suggested on Monday that the team would be willing to submit its data to the World Anti-Doping Agency.
Fred Grappe, L’Equipe’s expert is a doctor of biomechanics and physiology, and sports coach to the FdJ.fr team. He has long been one of the French sport press’s go-to guys for physiological commentary but is seen by some as too much of a cycling insider to be fully impartial.
Submitting data to anti-doping agencies
On Twitter this morning Team Sky Head of Business Operations Fran Millar, said that the World Anti-Doping Agency has told the team that it can’t help with analysing their riders’ data. The squad is hoping UK Anti-Doping will get involved.
According to The Guardian, UK Anti-Doping will welcome Team Sky’s offer to share their performance data but is likely to tell Sky that it can’t award a “kite mark” or definitively rule that any team or rider is clean. “It’s not what we’re there to do,” said the paper’s source.
As a UK-registered team, Sky comes under UK Anti-Doping's jurisdiction and is therefore already required to share with the agency anything that might help in the fight against doping.
However, it seems this has not previously included detailed rider performance data.
UK Anti-Doping’s chief executive Andy Parkinson told The Guardian it was inevitable that this year’s Tour would be the subject of intense focus in the wake of the United States Anti-Doping Agency stripping Lance Armstrong of his seven Tour wins.
“There are many tools available to anti-doping authorities, including the use and analysis of all types of data,” Parkinson said.
“UKAD has regularly communicated the need for those in sport to share all relevant intelligence with those working to protect clean sport. Being the first Tour since the Usada decision there is an obvious need for teams to be as transparent as possible.”
The agency would have to analyse Sky’s performance data before deciding how relevant it is. If all teams and sports were to submit performance and physiological data for all their athletes it would create what the paper drily calls a “resource issue”.
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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In case some fans of Froome think Grappe and L'Equipe cannot be wrong, well L'Equipe have a vested interest in the Le Tour and well Grappe thought Armstrong was clean in 2001
http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/results/2001/feb01/feb09news.shtml
Well done Brailsford for finding a guy who would get it wrong again.
As for Brailsford suggesting WADA, he would know that WADA would never ever do such as thing as look at figures and pass a rider as clean. UKAD have come out said similar saying they do not issue 'Kite marks' for riders.
For those that can see, Sky have failed to prove anything but create more doubts about their team and riders.
Oh that's an excellent find, Decster. Chapeau.
anyone care to explain the 'huge gains' for Alpe D'huez from.
2008 | Chris Froome: 51 min 13 sec.
2013 | Chris Froome: 40 min 56 sec.
Grappe specifically tweeted that he doesn't pass judgment on whether Froome is clean or not. He certainly does NOT say he thinks Froome is clean
Well he was 22, in a pants team, not in yellow, probably not going full gas and lots of other unknowable stuff.
It's not a worthy comparison.
So lets not try hard becuase the team are rank amateurs and Froome didn't want to show his talents on the biggest stage and a famous mountain to boot.
He was 22, most who were great GT talents showed early. Froome has destroyed everyone. He wasn't showing that at 22.
oh well that proves it then. that's not woolly at all.
You can add Bilharzia to that list only diagnosed and treated when he joined SKY
Any proof that Big Mig ever doped? (genuine question, not seen anything on it personally)
Indurain tested positive at the 1994 Tour de l'Oise. Salbutamol was banned in France at the time but had not yet found its way onto the UCI's banned list. Indurain was not sanctioned.
Dutch broadcaster NOS quoted Italian investigator Sandro Donati who claimed that Banesto riders including Indurain were involved with Dr Conconi and another source corroborated the story.
Thank you.
Actually I have it on good authority that Sky gave Fred Grappe some of their Rapha team kit. (Bibshorts and cap).
He had turned down the film subscription as he is awaiting Decsters novel on doping being published.
that sky are happy to share so much data suggests to me they are clean. Would you want to be in the **** storm in 5-10 years time when tests have evolved and the drugs are found?
Look at the law suits flyinh round lance now, do you think Murdoch wouldn't sue for his money if Sky are found to have been cheating?
The tests may not be there now, but they will be. Look at the LA era, it is tests now that are highlighting how bad the problem was.
I happen to agree with much of what you say, apart from the Murdoch bit. Neither father or son have an scruples whatsoever. Ask Lord Leveson.
I'm not sure the suggestion was that the Murdoch clan are whiter than white
Maybe more like they are vindictive b*st*rds who would not take kindly to being screwed over
This, not just Murdoch either, rather the whole of News International etc. They have put a lot of money into cycling, think about the BC team as well as Sky, i believe that if the publicity turned bad they would screw everyone they could to get their money back.
People come along every decade or so who are more freakishly physiologically able than other physiological freaks in every sport. They had the cream of the genes. The 1 in 10 milion best of everything.
Great cyclists require amazing natural abilities, plus the supernatural ability to train hard, eat better and make more sacrifices than anyone else.
It makes for a very very rare form of perfection indeed. But all natural. People talk about his data being in 'normal' parameters. But was is normal? Who decides it? Surely amazing natural performances require beyond-normal?
Froome looks likes the Ultimate Freak. The Best Freak.
Look at Usain Bolt, he doesn't train 'really' hard and is easily the fastest sprinter, why because of his freakishly long legs. Whatever those little snails did to Froome is hasn't harmed him. Fingers crossed for posterity.
Hopefully Murdoch will be in jail where he deserves to be and/or dead in ten years time.
I don't believe in Bolt. As much as I find his public persona charming and engaging I wouldn't trust a Jamaican sprinter any further than I could throw him. The long legs and different body type suggests a new way of doping, not that he is genetic outlier. Isn't it interesting that the only other person to run anywhere near as fast as him is also his training partner? I don't think that is a coincidence.
The reason the UCI put the limit on hematocrit at 50 back in the 90s was that no human being has ever had a hematocrit that high. It was an arbitrary limit set to allow for an outlier. What happened is that people boosted their bloods to that level to ensure they maximised their performances. We exist in a time when pharmaceuticals are creating hormones (such as EPO) which mirror our exist hormones, and there are new chemicals being produced all the time which the testers have not developed a test for. It's very difficult for the anti-dopers to detect these, except to say that the hormones (or the product of hormones in the case of EPO) exceed certain levels, or that other markers are unrealistic. The problem is defining what is normal, as I think someone else said, and so can it be proven without doubt - this was effectively LA argument - there was no evidence that could show, without doubt, that he did dope and therefore was able to boss the show.
Cycling has not changed markedly since then and the only dopers they seem to catch are also rans.....if you dope, it's not to finish 'well', but to place. I think that the world of sport is closing ranks at the moment to save cycling and I can understand that. Froome does not appear to be an egotist, not arrogant and I appreciate his effort. I don't think that if he is doping he is the only one. It's just a minefield of the science being ahead of the anti-doping - and until one matches the other you'll always have it.
This isn't a particularly great understanding of genetics. People talk about genetic outliers. They are possible, but the variance (when it comes to elite athletes) is not particularly great. Unfortunately, because we humans are pretty good at gene swapping (especially in the modern age) we don't really create extremes, which you might otherwise do it you were a cut off community.
Another way of looking at it, is that in order to get an extreme being you need generations of iterations which lead to body adaptations. Good genes when it comes to sport is a bit of an anathema.
A cynic might point out that Froome's beneficial abilities are consistent with steroid abuse.
Personally WADA and UKADA are not saying anything here which is not politically structured. Basically, they are saying Froome and Sky are an 'open book' when it comes to doping. The final chapter has yet to be written.....I'm not sure the good doctor at L'Equipe is saying much either.
Watch this space.......
"Edgar Motoman McDopenstein" - top marks!
'Excellent powers of recovery' like the Wolverine!
Froome seems to have got a bit better whilst a whole lot of others have gone backwards.
Says more about them than him.
What a surprise that WADA does not want to get involved with declaring a rider 'clean'. They are in business, and it is a big business with big money, for them to find cheats. They do not want clean riders everywhere as that would put them out of business! No jobs, no blazers, no fat paychecks. Conflict of interest or what?
Not doing anything to make it better just keeping things the way they are.
"maybe Sky gave Fred Grappe a lifetime subscription to the movie channel to pay him off?"
top marks, enjoyed that a lot!
Give him a break, afterall he must be exhausted after his overnight move to the other side of the world plus huge bike upgrades - well, according to his profile.
I wouldn't bother guys. Evidence points to a troll.
Where's Decster to accuse everyone of a cover up? C'mon Decster, there's got to be a conspiracy here somewhere - maybe Sky gave Fred Grappe a lifetime subscription to the movie channel to pay him off?
What bollocks are you going to come up with now?
l'Equipe is actually a very good article.
Well, EVERYONE knows that it was Fred Grappe on the grassy knoll, shooting Lord Lucan at the 1977 Grand National, in the days before power meters.
AND his middle names are probably Edgar Motoman McDopenstein. Coincidence? I THINK NOT
By the way, everyone who disagrees with me is a hopelessly naive idiot, and probably also part of the conspiracy.
Shame WADA wont get involved it would shut up all the doubters, well at least for a while.
Good piece by L'Equippe though.
I thought it was odd that Sky wouldn't have measured his vo2 max, but apparently not. JV said on twitter it's not something he's bothered about for his riders either; "all a bit 1985" we're his words I think.
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