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Former Tour champion Greg LeMond has recently challenged yellow jersey holder Alberto Contador to prove he is clean after data published by the Festina Performace guru, Antoine Vayer, showed that he would need a VO2 max of 99.5 ml / min / kg to sustain the speed at which he recently climbed the Verbier mountain on Stage 17 of this years edition of Le Tour de France. In answering, Contador would not be drawn to the subject, giving the banale: “No comment” response.
Pantani winning the epic 17th Stage at Les Deux Alpes in 1998
To compare, let’s look at Marco Pantani, which involves the tragic downfall of El Pirata (The Pirate) due to horrific drugs abuse in the later stages of his career. I had the pleasure of visiting Pantani’s hometown, Cesenatico and visited his grave a number of years ago. I also caught a glimpse of the man’s first bicycle in one of the local bars.
The following graph gives an interesting view over power output over the last few years:
Graph showing winners and their respective power outputs
Here we can see compare the disgraced winners (Riis, Pantani and Ullrich) against the ‘Clean’ riders (Indurain, Armstrong). Note that I am utilising the principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ in the above statement!
Considering Contador’s calculated VO2 max of 99.5 ml / min / kg against Armstrong’s widely reported max of 85 ml / min / kg, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that LeMond is right to be suspicious. If we plot his performance on the above graph, Contador’s Wattage comes in at the level of the disgraced riders. The physiology cannot lie!!!
Taking off my ‘innocent until proven guilty’ hat, surely it’s onlly a matter of time before this Champion-elect is found guilty, especially considering his gargantuan exploits the day after beating allcomers in the Stage 18 Time Trial.
Drugged?
-Brian
brian.c at lifescience.ie
4 Responses to “Le Tour: using Pantani and VO2 max / power output to speculate if Contador is clean”
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Using the ‘facts’ presented by Lemond and repeated here I disagree that Contador has about 99 VO2max and that he might/must be drugged.
He beat Armstrong on that climb by about 1m 30s. He achieved this difference over about 20min of riding.
Let’s say the estimate of 99.5 VO2max is correct and that Armstrong was this year at 85 again. That means almost 15% difference in VO2max.
The thing is tough, that such a big difference wasn’t translated into the time gap. 15% over a 20min ride means 3min but the difference was only 1m 30sec.
So according to my logic Contador was only 7.5% better. Therefore, if Armstrong was at 85 Contador might have been at around 92 VO2max, and that is a way more possible number.
If fact I doubt Lance was at 85, he was maybe only 83, the Alberto needed only about 89 VO2max to win the Tour, and not 99.5.
Great to see some Irish people promoting the sport. However to gain any credibility its probably best if articles promoting the dark side of cycling, (especially on a science blog) are researched properly, nothing worse than making statements based on inaccurate information.
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/contadors-climbing-credibility-questioned
Hi CycleFan,
Thanks for your comment. Thank you for the link, I was not aware of it until now. We are an opinion-based blog and although not proven conclusively (and may never be), I think the majority of cycling fans I’m aware of will tell you that they are suspicious of his achievements.
Brian (brian.c@lifescience.ie)
Most of these calculations require assumptions about variables. Further, it is an athlete’s capacity to sustain effort that counts. This is the percentage of the V02 max which they can hold for an endurance effort. That said, if one compares riders of similar mass, height, build and presumably preparation, it becomes apparent that there are those capable of amazing bursts of sustained effort, rapid recovery and repeat the next day and those that have markedly less power in their top efforts, cycle consistently and tire predictably. It seems obvious that the former are boosting their rbc count and the latter are not. And I would suggest that most of the recent past winners of the big tours are from the former group. History and this bit of basic bio-energetics observation are in agreement.