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The tour on a rocky road
Photo:
Thibault Camus / AP
When Egan Bernal reached the finish on the Puy Mary, he looked resigned.
"When I look at my numbers, they are among the best values I've ever achieved," he said loudly "sporza".
And yet last year's winner of the Tour de France was left behind: On the final ascent of the 13th stage, Primoz Roglic and Tadej Pogacar wrestled 38 seconds from the Colombian.
The performances of the two Slovenes seem extraordinary.
Accordingly, Roglic has already been confronted with the doping question.
"I'm clean, you can trust me. I have nothing to hide," he said.
Whoever was the leader of the Tour de France was often viewed with skepticism in recent years.
This is a result of the sport's dark doping past.
The more interesting is the question of how the level of performance on the Tour has developed since the great scandals about the Festina team in 1998 and the doping doctor Fuentes in 2006.
Has the driver's average speed dropped?
Do they climb the highest mountains more slowly than the convicted dopers in front of them?
On paper, the Tour de France is cleaner than probably ever before.
Only five percent of the current starting field have doped before, a historic low.
But it could not stay that way.
If drivers test positive afterwards, the percentage increases.
This could be the case, for example, if Doper take an agent that is currently not yet detectable with tests.
Also among the employees are still former dopers in cycling.
For example Bjarne Riis, manager of NTT, or Alexander Vinokurow, manager of Astana.
Since the Festina affair in 1998, the number of doped drivers has been falling continuously.
At that time, the doping agent EPO was found in the hotel room of the Festina team supervisor during the Tour de France.
More than half of the tour participants in 1998 are now known to have used prohibited aids at least once.
In 2015, this only applied to eleven percent.
But the speed of the drivers has remained almost unchanged since the Fuentes scandal in 2006.
The former tour winner, Floyd Landis, who was disqualified for doping, drove the route at an average of 41 km / h - just as fast as Egan Bernal did the route in 2019. A look at the graphic:
How fast the drivers are on the road is largely influenced by the terrain.
Since 1990, mountain stages have become increasingly popular.
This year the professionals have to prove themselves eight times on such a difficult track.
The tour is shorter, but has become more mountainous.
Jörg Jaksche, doping agent and key witness in the Fuentes scandal, prompted the constant pace in 2019 to say: "It is driven almost as fast as at the doping weddings. The athletes still use it. Because it is wanted and because it is expected . "
But to speak of doping just because the average speed remains constant would be too easy.
This is not only influenced by the terrain, but also by many other factors: the weather, the quality of the roads or the teams' racing tactics.
In addition, technology has changed.
The drivers are no longer on heavy steel bikes, but on light carbon bikes.
The bikes became so light that the World Cycling Federation had to introduce a minimum weight of 6.8 kilograms.
Festival of the Doper: Alpe d'Huez
The performance of the drivers on the same mountain is easier to compare than the average speed.
And the most famous climb of the Tour de France leads to Alpe d'Huez.
With a total of 30 tours, the cyclists had to gasp up the serpentines.
The eternal best list is headed by ten dopers.
However, modern professionals on the way to Alpe d'Huez cannot keep up with their peak times.
Nairo Quintana achieved the fastest journey in the last five years when he finished 22nd on the all-time best list in 2015.
This year the tour skipped the famous peak.
The drivers showed sensational performances elsewhere: In the final time trial on Saturday, Pogacar, the new man in yellow, was 1:21 minutes faster than second-placed Tom Dumoulin.
And on the 8th stage, Pogacar climbed the Col de Peyresourde faster than any other driver before, 1:40 minutes faster than Lance Armstrong and Jan Ullrich in 2001. The convicted Doper Vinokurow has held the record for this climb since 2003.
Pogacar uploaded his stage on the Strava sports platform.
There you can see exactly what he has achieved on this mountain: During the 24 minutes of the ascent, he pedaled with an output of 430 watts.
Converted to its weight, that results in 6.5 watts per kilogram.
This is the size used by cycling professionals to measure their effective performance.
Power meters are built into their wheels that provide the numbers directly.
On the slightly shorter final climb of the mountain time trial, it is estimated that he achieved the same performance - and thus won the yellow jersey.
With the energy that Pogacar gave off there at the Planche des Belles Filles in just 16 minutes, you can run a flat screen TV for about an hour to watch the tour.
In the past, convicted dopers have also shown performances around 6.5 watts per kilogram.
Lance Armstrong drove up to Alpe d'Huez with similar force in the time trial and Alberto Contador outpaced the competition in the Giro d'Italia on the Grossglockner.
In the following graphic, the performance before 2018 is estimated based on incline, weight and time.
A value of 6.5 watts per kilogram on an increase is not automatically proof of doping.
Like the average speed, it is influenced by other factors: the duration of the performance, whether a driver was able to take it easy beforehand, whether he was able to climb the climb in a group.
Or the location of the mountain: if it has to be climbed at the end of a 200-kilometer stage, the riders probably have less energy than in a mountain time trial.
Ultimately, the performance values compared cannot prove whether the peloton is doped.
They can only give an indication of whether drivers are achieving a similar level of performance today as they were in the past.
And that in turn raises the question of how these services are possible.
One answer to this is that the teams test limits.
The Ineos team, formerly Sky, for example, worked with medical exemptions.
The four-time tour winner Christopher Froome was allowed to use an asthma drug, and at the Vuelta 2017 he even exceeded the limit value for the remedy salbutamol - without any consequences.
Another example is the use of ketone drinks as a dietary supplement.
Ketones are actually formed in the body during exertion; to put it simply, they are regarded as reserve energy.
The use of artificial ketones is not prohibited.
But the Association for Credible Cycling (MPCC) advises against the use of artificial ketone supplements because the possible health consequences are unknown.
Some teams like Jumbo-Visma - Primoz Roglic's team - still use ketones.
Doping expert Fritz Sörgel formulated it drastically in the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" in 2019: "Everything is taken that the kitchen has and has the chance to direct the metabolism towards increased performance." Sörgel also believes that the corona crisis, at the beginning of which there were fewer doping tests has been used for doping by drivers and teams.
Maximilian Schachmann from the German team Bora-hansgrohe believes that the sport has gotten cleaner.
"I can't put my hand in the fire for the whole field of drivers," said the 26-year-old before the tour.
But he thinks that the drivers and teams "have now understood".
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