Horner targets Vuelta

[Hont]

i don't know if he was doping though was he?

Well you should do. Consider the following facts

1) He was the first man in his forties to win a Grand Tour. The previous eldest was 36 (and that was in 1922). The previous oldest Vuelta winner was 34. There's a reason for this.
2) He dropped an in-form Nibali (one of only six men to have won all 3 Grand Tours) on the steepest climbs
3) After the Peña Cabarga climb Nibali was quoted thus “I can’t climb at 500 watts. I was going at 430 watts and that guy accelerated. What could I do?”
4) La Gazzetta dello Sport estimated Horner's power output on that stage at 6.83 watts/kg. Whilst that was a shorter stage, that figure equates to Marco Pantani's best performance up Alpe D'Huez.
5) His VAM (metres climbing per hour) was 2,034. This compares to Chris Froome's on Ventoux, during his Tour winning performance, at 1,722.
6) During most of the season Horner had been unable to train, due to a knee injury.

If you want more, go here...

http://velocast.cc/the-problem-with-chris-horner

surely he'd be caught?

You have more faith in the drug testing program than it merits. It's often said that it's only the stupid who get caught. With the right money paid to the right doctor you could fly close to the blood passport red zone without going far enough for a full investigation. Lots of dopers never get caught.

 

[JBGooner]

Interesting reading, thanks.

Assuming he was cheating I still want to know how he did it, how come doping didn't seem to do great things for him when he was younger and how come nobody else is on a similar program (assuming they aren't).

 

[Hont]

Interesting reading, thanks.

Assuming he was cheating I still want to know how he did it, how come doping didn't seem to do great things for him when he was younger and how come nobody else is on a similar program (assuming they aren't).

Well I'd be speculating, because we obviously don't know what he or anyone else is doing. But that never stopped me before so....

In his early career everyone would have been doping, so to gain an advantage you either had to have a better program or a physiology that reacted well to doping. Since the blood passport came in, the effects of doping have been significantly reduced so that many riders no longer see it as a risk worth taking. Horner, at his age on the other hand, has no career to lose, so is likely far less risk averse.

 

[fimm]

This:
http://nyvelocity.com/content/interviews/2012/behind-scenes-contador-cas-hearing-michael-ashenden
(quoted from the last page of the Johnathan Tiernan-Locke thread, which has some other interesting links) gives a very detailed explanation of how someone might get round the blood passport (or attempt to do so). Until reading that, I was under the impression that the blood passport would catch all dopers.