How good was Lance Armstrong REALLY ?

let's talk about how good lance armstrong really was and try to answer a question what would happen if he joined professional cycling before advent of epo or even today well i am quite old man and i might be a bit biased to old school cycling so keep in mind it is just my subjective way of thinking let's take a look first at recent tour de france winners and briefly compare them to tour de france winners from lance armstrong era here in upper row we have boys like chris froome grind thomas egan bralal and tadi pogachar down below we have real villains bjorn ruiz januri panthani and finally darth vader of cycling lance armstrong himself first of all all athletes in upper row looks like juniors in comparison to gunk of four down below of course it doesn't take away anything from them as they are great in terms of performance work ethics and achievements but i doubt they could survive realities of cycling back in the 90s dealing with teams where you just got one-way ticket dope or lose injecting e-po and over-using performance enhancing drugs in a regular way in secret even before family and sponsors having to perform blood transfusion in cover somewhere in a hotel room then right to the maximum and finally with cold blood answer questions at press conference i just think it would be too much for them from psychological point of view this kind of stuff required different mindset turning off moral side of yourself and do what you had to do accept dirty rules and play this world tour game together with your crime partners back in the late 80s lance armstrong was in top of elite athletes in us winning many triathlon competitions he was ranked the number one triathlete in the under age of 19 group and became national sprint course triathlon champion in 1989 and 1990. he definitely was talented in endurance sports like running or cycling in early 90s when he turned professional with the motorola cycling team he collected meaningful trophies like world road championship held in norway armstrong was also high ranked in races like tour du pont or lish boston league he was able to win stages of the tour de france in both 1993 and 1995 although he withdrew from tours he attempted admitting he was not ready to compete with the same performance through all stages of tour de france but it's known that at this time top euro teams were fueled by epo already although there were no effective tests against epo most of the accusations were based on hematocrit measure in case the density of red blood cells exceeded 50 percent it was considered supernatural the thing is that detections rate was poor as a team doctors were able to accommodate micro dosing and schedule to frequency of expected anti-doping controls armstrong stated he began doping in late spring of 1995 when he was introduced to infamous dr michael ferrari by eddie marks the relationship between ferrari and marx is a bit puzzling but this is a different story according to many professional cyclists epo was an absolute game changer in endurance sports the impact of this hormone was quickly noticed by experienced riders in early 90s they started to feel kind of performance gap between them and the rest of the peloton jonathan voters in his book one-way ticket short conversation with greg lamont during classic dual race in 1994 were they both trying to catch up with main group he asked lamont whether he is going to win the race but le mans response was shocking no way i'm going to win racing is different this time i am just trying to survive anyway we can assume armstrong was not using epo till the end of 1995 but still was able to compete during one day races or single stages of tour de france of course there were other types of performance enhancing drugs used like testosterone or clambular but none of them could compare to epo and direct red blood cell stimulation epo was doping standards in europe years before armstrong joined confidence or u.s postal team after recovering from testicular cancer armstrong focused mainland to de france and in my opinion he used doping to align his chances with other dopplers like rhys pantani or ulri there was simply no other option to win and he was not the author of the situation of course in upcoming years armstrong with his doctor michael ferrari mastered epo usage with connect opening program in 2018 dr dave martin compared cadil evans and lance armstrong fitness levels at age 22. he based his work on data from coils university in texas where armstrong was tested five times between the ages of 21 and 28. lens produced highest vo2 max values in 1993. based on level authority testing data when cable and lens were both 22. for a one hour time trial kedal might have sustained 370 watts whereas lens might have been able to maintain 425 watts despite of huge difference in power both raiders had similar power to weight ratio at age 22 which was about 6 watts per kilogram power data taken from another rider supposedly clean might in the rain in 1995 were 500 watts generated by 81 kilogram body resulting also in 6 watts per kilogram raw numbers definitely say lance armstrong had potential long before joining epo training knowing his early achievements laboratory data and mindset there is no point believing that in clean cycling he wouldn't be successful but still one question remains would he be able to win tour de france so many times without epo personally i doubt according to research mentioned in matt's randall book death of marco pantani epo was the type of drug which would malform final results as performance gain might differ amongst athletes this is because body response to epo is not the same for everyone so even most of top riders from lense era doped we cannot assume exactly same results without epo even if they all have trained as hard as they did thanks for watching and please leave your thoughts regarding lens performance in a comment you

Channel: Road Bikers Poznan

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Keywords: Lance Armstrong, Doping in cycling, EPO doping, Lance Armstrong TDF, Lance Armstrong performance, Jan Ullrich, Marco Pantani, Lance Armstrong tour de France wins, What is Lance Armstrong doing now, lance armstrong cancer, How good Lance Armstrong was, Performance Enhancing drugs, What is doping is sports, doping EPO, Michele Ferrari, doping Michele Ferrari, Lance Armstrong wiki, Lance Armstrong career, Lance Armstrong and Michele Ferrari, road cycling, Armstrong doping

Id: Y-JeM2Vv4aw

Length: 8min 36sec (516 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 29 2021