Tour de France 2013 stage 8 DpVAM: AX3 The Warning Shot

veloclinic is the reincarnation of one of our favorite Twitter friends, @captaintbag1, whose tumblr blog posts were a kind of blank verse, Tecate-soaked haiku of truthiness that cut through the slick bullshit and to the very core of what is gloriously fucked up about the sport of cycling. Although the Cap may be gone (sort of), his Doctor tbag/Captain Hyde alter ego lives on, and we’re glad to share his pithy analysis here. 

Lest you think these are the idiot ramblings of a madman, we’d like you to know that the doc is a legitimate professional in the science of sports medicine, and a savant when it comes to doping analysis. You have been warned.

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lets jus get straight to it:

Froome just put two DpVAM bars solidly up

on AX3 going

4.5% faster than the 2008-2013 GT baseline

and

1.9% faster than the 2002-2007 dopers

(based on the Scott Richards regressions)

time wise

our 2008-2013 model predicted a time of

24:16

our 2002-2007 model predicted a time of

23:41

Froome went

23:14

(3rd fastest of all time)

this would have put have put him

elbow to elbow with

2001 Armstrong 23:07

and

AHEAD uv

2003 Jan Ulrich 23:18

2005 Ivan Basso 23:20

before the headwind in the final flat stretch

vetooo

(the guy @vaughters uses for power estimates)

“@ammattipyoraily: #TDF, Stage 8. Ax-3-Domaines (first 7.85 km). Chris Froome [“67 kg”]: 21:41. I think that ‘CPL [6.51 W/kg]’ is the most accurate formula.”

puts Froomes power well into the range only documented in dopers

for comparison

@vaughters canaries in the dope mine

Talansky and Martin

“@ammattipyoraily: @Vaughters #TDF, Stage 8. Ax-3-Domaines (8.90 km, 7.46 %, 664 m). Martin, Talansky: 25 min 48 sec. More likely 5.7 – 5.8 W/kg.”

put up respectable numbers

and get

utterly shelled

apparently when brailsford said:

“At some point in time, clean performances will surpass the doped performances in the past.”

they didn’t think he meant

this year

and when Froome put his threshold at

440-460 watts depending on form

http://veloclinic.tumblr.com/post/54494562669/expert-analysis-froome#_=_

and everyone

(doc included)

thought

bullshit …

well aparently he wasn’t far off

…

now it’s important to tap the breaks

just a touch

and remeber this was just one climb

preceeded by a modest effort

Quintana did animate things

on the Pailheres

@veloclinic: “@Scienceofsport: @veloclinic I got approx 15:30 for final 5km after Quintana attacked. Not sure of the Vclimb over that section”

“@veloclinic: @Scienceofsport that just got me out of bed and turning on the laptop!”

“@veloclinic: @Scienceofsport @veloclinic residual -1.79 % Dresidual -5.4% so actualy quite fast for the lead up climb”

but

as predicted by the DpVAM

“@veloclinic: @veloclinic @scienceofsport Quintana will crack based on that”

cracked on AX3

as you can’t go @ pVAM

2 climbs in a row

still a solid tactic

giving 3rd on the stage Valverde

a free SKY-tow to the line

at least until Richie Porte

gave it some stick

launching Froome for

the SKY 1-2

and dragging himself across

24:05

+0.8% on this pVAM

-1.7% on the DpVAM

or the ONLY other guy to go positive

on the pVAM

this

with

Team SKY 2012 TDF champ wiggins

not

even

at

the

race

so looking ahead

there is still a whole lot uv climbing ahead

but

even on a bad day

the super Froome that road today

(who finaly went to a wind tunnel for the first time this year)

will need to do nothing more

than defend

to paris