LeMond, Doping Scourge, Questions Contador's performance

Read the column in French. (if you can read french, translate it for us)

Here's the Sydney Morning Herald reporting on the dust-up the column caused.

A nugget from the story:

"LeMond, referring to the 8.5km climb at an average gradient of 7.5 per cent, wrote: 'Never has a rider in the Tour climbed so fast. How do you explain such a performance? According to the last information published by former Festina trainer and specialist in performance Antoine Vayer in [the French newspaper] Liberation, the Spanish rider would have needed a VO2 max (consummation of oxygen) of 99.5 ml/mn/kg to produce such an effort.

''To my knowledge this figure has never been achieved by any athlete in any sport. It is a bit like if you took a nice Mercedes out of the car showroom, lined it up on a Formula 1 circuit and won the race. There is something that is wrong. It would be interesting to know what is under the bonnet.'"

LeMond is fixated on VO2 max, possibly for good reason. He was alleged to ahve a VO2 max in the 90s, I think 94, when he was at the peak of his powers. And yet at the end of his career, he was getting dropped on climbs by much heavier riders. He has long postulated that for them to climb that fast, they would have needed a VO2 max in the 100s. (VO2 is based on weight, so if you lose weight, your lung capacity relative to weight goes up and thus a higher VO2)

I don't think VO2 max is everything, nor is hematocrit. It is an interesting question, though.

I think it's possible that Contador has a higher VO2 than Lemond, could it be 99? Even if it isn't, maybe Antoine Vayer figured things out wrong, maybe there was a tailwind, maybe the wheels roll better than the model predicts. I wonder if the biggest problem is rider weight. When teams publish weight data, I think it's often wishful thinking. The only way weight data can be reliable is if a neutral party is weighing all the riders. At the Tour, it might be possible, as there at least used to be a show physical before the race.

They should ask Allen Lim, the garmin-slipstream physiologist, about Contador's climbing skills. After Riccardo Ricco was busted at the 2008 Tour, Lim said that Ricco's w/kg was something nlike 6.5 for 20 minutes at the top of the last climb on the stage he soloed to victory, and that to do that, he either needed drugs or was a greyhound-human hybrid. (though the notorious Dr. Michele Ferrari seemed to think 6.7 w/kg was the magic number for climbing to victory in the tour)

It is also interesting to note that when Carlos Sastre rode to victory at L'Alpe d'Huez last year, he put in a time that was significantly lower than Pantani and Armstrong at their best. Lim speculated a much lower w/kg for Carlos than Pantani in 1998, and Contador's climb was faster, according to the various models, than Pantani in 1998.

If the expert Cyclingnews quoted, Dr. Andrew Coggan, is right about his speculation on Contador's power (450w) and weight (62kg) for that climb, then he managed 7.26 w/kg. He seems to estimate a far more earth-bound 80 VO2 max. I have a power profiling chart from Coggan. he puts the best 5m effort in the world at 7.6w/kg-- 471w for Contador. He puts the best hour effort in the world at 6.4 w/kg or 396.8w for Contador. From what I've read, it seems that for 20m, 7.26 w/kg is pretty much off the charts, in that a 60m effort should be minimally higher than a 20m effort.

Here's a story on Allen Lim discussing what kind of power Christian Vande Velde would need in order to win the Tour. "He has been riding with the GC contenders and that is great, about 5.5 to 5.9 w/kg on climbs longer than 10 minutes. That's right where he needs to be. If he can sustain that, I think he has a good chance (at winning the the tour)."

The le grimpeur blog has Sastre climbing the Alpe last year at 5.3 w/kg.

Of course, these numbers could be off. And they're really just elegant speculations turned into calculations. If we get the rider weight wrong by a kilogram or two, misjudged the length or pitch of the climb by a little, that could have a major impact. And maybe a tailwind on a climb could change things enough as well.

Don't think I'm ready to call someone a doper with so many unknowns or finicky numbers.