is it fair to consider Eddy Merckx, who was caught doping three times in his career

[ddtn]

Supposedly, it was Merckx who introduced Michele Ferrari to LA. I find that connection super intriguing but it gets lost in the grand scheme of things.

[choke]

Originally Posted by Charles M

ONLY IF YOU ALSO CONSIDER LANCE THE GREATEST TDF RIDER IN HISTORY AS WELL...

They both did EXACTLY the same thing relative to their compatriots AND were both as ruthless.

[benb]

Compared to the memoirs of Pro cyclists it seems like this thread is downplaying the PE effects of Testosterone and Steroids.

Guys like Tyler Hamilton made a pretty strong case for the recovery benefits being a huge big deal.

Recovery lets you ride more & harder and you get gains from that.

Drugs don't have to make you improve without work.. if they let you work harder you get the gains.

I don't see it as that different from the body building guys.. the recovery & injury prevention they get from their drug regimes lets them train at ridiculous volume compared to guys who are clean. It's a huge joke if you look at the muscle magazines.. they constantly recommend these ridiculous workouts that will massively overtrain any lifter who isn't doing drugs, and they have a guy who is doped to the moon telling you the workout is the secret.

[William]

~And~, he did it without race radios!! Imagine that...






W.

[cgates66]

Originally Posted by benb

Compared to the memoirs of Pro cyclists it seems like this thread is downplaying the PE effects of Testosterone and Steroids.

Guys like Tyler Hamilton made a pretty strong case for the recovery benefits being a huge big deal.

Recovery lets you ride more & harder and you get gains from that.

Drugs don't have to make you improve without work.. if they let you work harder you get the gains.

I don't see it as that different from the body building guys.. the recovery & injury prevention they get from their drug regimes lets them train at ridiculous volume compared to guys who are clean. It's a huge joke if you look at the muscle magazines.. they constantly recommend these ridiculous workouts that will massively overtrain any lifter who isn't doing drugs, and they have a guy who is doped to the moon telling you the workout is the secret.

Hormones (e.g., steroids, HGH etc.) are serious business and are alleged to make a huge difference - even in cycling. Fun fact: you can gain more muscle just taking steroids and sitting around than you will lifting religiously without steroids, at least according to some studies (assuming same diet). Supra-normal doses of anabolic hormones *work*. Those big guys lifting competitively have one and only one secret, and it's the cocktail of stuff they are taking. The workouts yield about the same effects and the rest is genetics. There are a lot of huge scams in bodybuilding and the idea that an IBF pro gets huge with a special training program is just laughably stupid. Pros workout pretty hard, but plenty of natties chasing gains workout harder. The dangers of the amount of hormones required for those body types, however, are not inconsiderable.

BTW, it is worth considering that Lance's dominance was due not so much to an exceptional doping regimen, but genetic predisposition to respond to doping. That's my belief, anyway. Plenty of guys were taking the same stuff and not getting the same results. The order of the peloton without drugs during that era may well have been radically different, with Lance as a super-domestique and some natural talent that didn't respond to drugs a super-star. It's interesting to think about! Genetics matter in more way than one!

What the early-'70s and earlier guys were doing in cycling - uppers I guess mostly - are in a totally different category.

[Clancy]

And not to mention today’s top pros are treated like the true athletes that they are with the most advanced training techniques available. Just in terms of coaching, physiologists, team doctors, nutritionist, etc. they receive 24/7 support in every aspect of their training. Add to this the advancement in equipment, wind tunnel testing, rider specific aero clothing, luxury team buses, and modern travel all handled by staff.

There really is no discussion, Merckx was the greatest by any measure.

Far more fascinating discussion would be how dominant would he be if he were riding today with today’s training, equipment, and technology?

Frightening

[FlashUNC]

Originally Posted by Clancy

And not to mention today’s top pros are treated like the true athletes that they are with the most advanced training techniques available. Just in terms of coaching, physiologists, team doctors, nutritionist, etc. they receive 24/7 support in every aspect of their training. Add to this the advancement in equipment, wind tunnel testing, rider specific aero clothing, luxury team buses, and modern travel all handled by staff.

There really is no discussion, Merckx was the greatest by any measure.

Far more fascinating discussion would be how dominant would he be if he were riding today with today’s training, equipment, and technology?

Frightening

I think the discussion changes a bit if Coppi doesn't lose some prime years of his career to the war. I also think Coppi on his best day rides circles around Merckx on his best day.

But that's just hot stove chatter more than anything.

[jamesdak]

Originally Posted by Charles M

ONLY IF YOU ALSO CONSIDER LANCE THE GREATEST TDF RIDER IN HISTORY AS WELL...

They both did EXACTLY the same thing relative to their compatriots AND were both as ruthless.

Not even

[gibbo]

If Lance was not American history would remember him much differently....


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[e-RICHIE]

Originally Posted by Charles M

ONLY IF YOU ALSO CONSIDER LANCE THE GREATEST TDF RIDER IN HISTORY AS WELL...

They both did EXACTLY the same thing relative to their compatriots AND were both as ruthless.

Are you for real?
You get paid to write about cycling?!!

Lance bullied Simeoni.
Lance screwed Lemond’s deal with TREK.
Lance fukced over Landis.
Lance hung Hamilton out to dry.
Lance screwed Contador while on ASTANA.
Lance publicly humiliated Kimmage at the TOC press conference.
Lance spent years in court trying to minimize his losses.
And Lance kinda sorta mislead his cancer followers with the Livestrong crap.
And Lance has spent the last decade rewriting his own narrative.

Merckx has done nothing to be “...as ruthless as Lance” except dominate in the era he was born into.

[Toddykins]

I am voting for Marianne Vos

[carpediemracing]

Originally Posted by bikinchris

Everyone Lemond beat was caught doping. Everyone. His claim that (pre admitting) Lance had to be doping because everyone Lance beat was doping so Lance had to be doping. What does that say about Lemond.

As for the general doping. Recovery wins stage races. It doesn't do much good to be great one day, then down the next for the GC battle. Steroids can help you maintain performance levels. I'm sure testosterone still is being used today along with low levels of blood doping.

Lemond was racing at a top level before the oxygen boosting drugs came into effect, and before blood boosting was a thing. It was when those things started coming into play, especially EPO, that he started getting beaten, and quite badly. I think the 84-85-86 Tours were clear of EPO as the hierarchy didn't change much. Even 1989 didn't seem crazy - the riders were well matched, the team leaders rode away at times (that one stage where the top 6 in GC rode away from everyone else), etc. There were selections made on the road, and the same riders were in the mix over and over. 1990 saw probably the first signs of EPO, as some otherwise unknown riders were making an impression, and some previous non-contenders were suddenly contenders. And 1991 those previous non-contenders were suddenly at the front of the action.

I suspect that if Lemond had raced just a half decade earlier he'd have had a more consistent career. The fact that he declined so rapidly indicates to me that he wasn't willing to dope. Yes, he wasn't as fit as he was in the early years, but he could still make moves and such, but then he'd get absolutely annihilated when it came to the mountains. In prior races even a less-fit Lemond wouldn't get shelled that badly.

The riders he beat were typically testing positive for the drugs of those days, steroids, cortisone, amphetamines, which aren't the game changing drugs like EPO or blood boosting. Even his own teammate got banned for a while (unusual in those days) for testing positive I think 3 times in one year (for amphetemines I think - Kim Andersen, who was probably too loyal to his duty to work for his teammates). I concede that Lemond benefited from at least one doped teammate, although the La Vie Claire team was an incredibly strong set of individuals, who were relatively consistent throughout their careers. His later teams, like his 1989 team, were "normal" in that they were pretty weak and in that year most of them dropped out before Paris.

The thing was that Lemond had an aerobic capacity that exceeded most (all?) riders and that capacity really didn't change over the years. His performances were consistent as he rose through the ranks.

As far as steroids/test being good for recovery, that's true, in terms of muscle fatigue. But in road racing you need to maintain red blood cell levels, and steroids don't help in the same way that oxygen boosting drugs help in this respect. In the course of a stage race especially your red blood cells drop so your performance starts to lag.

I have to admit that much of my "education" in effects of doping are from reading various articles, the first big one being the Outside Magazine one titled "Drug Test". In it the author describes how the blood boosting EPO is the key to performance (but also the scariest).

Tyler Hamilton, in "Secret Race", describes how when he first got a blood boost that that was the key for recovery. The testosterone helped but the blood was key.

Likewise, in the era before EPO, Joe Parkin describes in "Dog in a Hat" how taking just amphetamines really didn't help him recover or even race better for a single day race. He talked about one block of racing where he came back totally emanciated, weakened from all the racing he did. Instead of doping it was much more helpful to actually cheat, like to hang onto team cars and such. He has a kind of sad/funny story about how he killed it in a time trial but ended up one of the slowest on his team. Later someone gestured as if they were hanging onto a car - most of his teammates got towed while out of sight, so his 30 mph efforts were for naught.

[bikinchris]

@carepdiemracing
Really! You think blood doping wasn't a thing during the Lemond era? The 84 Olympics had bunches of riders blood doping and it was well established already; Eastern Block countries had been doing it long before that.

[rain dogs]

LA himself said there are two distinct levels or doping - 1. Low octane and 2. High octane (EPO, blood transfusions, etc)

Merckx never once oxygen vector doped (High Octane Doping)

/thread over.

You're welcome. Now we can stop this ridiculousness.

[gibbo]

Originally Posted by rain dogs

LA himself said there are two distinct levels or doping - 1. Low octane and 2. High octane (EPO, blood transfusions, etc)

Merckx never once oxygen vector doped (High Octane Doping)

/thread over.

You're welcome. Now we can stop this ridiculousness.

Was anyone high octane doping in Mercks’s days??? Don’t think so....


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