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news
Chris Froome celebrates winning the 2013 Tour de France (picture copyright Simon Wilkinson:SWpix.com)Team Sky release Chris Froome's data in bid to prove he's clean
Team Sky have taken the opportunity of today’s second rest day of the Tour de France to release Chris Froome’s performance data from last Tuesday’s Stage 10 of the race in an attempt to refute insinuations that Chris Froome is cheating.
Since his victory at La Pierre St Martin last week Froome, who leads the race by 3 minutes 10 seconds as it heads into the Alps tomorrow, has faced calls to demonstrate that his victory in the Pyrenees was achieved clean.
The disclosure of the data by the team’s head of performance Tim Kerrison at the invitation of team principal Sir Dave Brailsford is designed to do just that.
– UCI should embed anti-doping experts within teams, says Brailsford
On Sunday evening, Brailsford appeared on the France Télévisions show Stade 2 to discuss Froome’s performance. Viewers saw a video featuring doctor of physiology Pierre Saller who claimed that the riders power output was 7.04 watts per kilogram, which he described as an “abnormally high level.”
The Team Sky supremo described that figure as “wildly wrong” and today Kerrison said that the true figure was 5.78 watts per kilogram, reports the Guardian.
Brailsford said: ““We’re here to race and racing’s a human endeavour. It’s not a set of numbers on a spreadsheet, it’s not a power meter. It’s about racing.
“There’s a human aspect to it. That’s why we all love bike racing. And we’re going to go out and try to win this bike race.”
Given the ‘marginal gains’ philosophy that Brailsford employed to great success while performance director of British Cycling, his downplaying of the role of performance data may surprise some, although in a road race there are many more variables in play than in the controlled atmosphere of a velodrome, say.
He added: “I’m sure if Chris feels that he can attack and he could go and leave everybody behind, it would be a travesty, I think, if he had any doubt in his mind thinking: ‘Oh, I better not’. And he knows he won’t.
“That’s what we should do: continue to race in a clean and pure fashion.”
Referring to his appearance on Stade 2 on Sunday evening and the video featuring Dr Sallet, Brailsford said: “I wasn’t aware of it. It did take me a bit by surprise.
“I asked Tim to present a bit of data today to put to bed some of the numbers that they came up with, because they were wildly wrong.
“I do think in this day and age in the sport of cycling people do have to be responsible.
“If you are going to present something on television, to a nation, then you do have an obligation to get your facts right. It was a bit disappointing.
“What France 2 did, putting out that headline – 7 watts per kilo, a picture of Lance Armstrong and a picture of [Jan] Ullrich - that was so wildly wrong on so many levels that we thought we should just correct that and give the concrete facts and give the evidence so hopefully people could judge for themselves.”
Kerrison said that during that final 15.3 kilometre climb last Tuesday, Froome produced an average power output of 414 wats for the full climb and his VAM – a measure of metres climbed per hour – was 1,602, well below the levels of around 1,800 produced by Lance Armstrong and Marco Pantani a decade and a half ago.
He added that since Froome uses an asymmetric chain ring, the power output figure needs to be adjusted to compensate for that, and the correct average figure for the entire climb would be closer to 390 watts.
Froome himself remains sceptical that it will silence all the doubters.
“I’m not sure if numbers are going to fix everything,” he said, “but certainly I feel as a team and myself, we’re definitely trying to be as open and transparent as possible.
“We’ve been asked more questions than any other team. I’ve been asked more questions than any other GC contender. I’d like to think we’re answering those questions.
“I really am focused on the racing side of things. I’ve worked too long to let anything throw me off. That’s all just happening on the side,” he added.
Racing resumes tomorrow with a 171 kilometre stage from Digne-les-Bains to Pra Loup.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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114 comments
I agree completely on full disclosure. That would remove all of the debate, as you suggest. From a viewing perspective, it would also make it a lot more interesting (though that may only be for the geeks - I include myself in that bracket, incidentally). I like the idea of watching the contenders on a hard climb with power, heart rate and the like displayed real time.
Regards,
Gordon
That's a terrible, terrible idea.
It would pretty nullify most attempts at attacking and breaking away.
I think a lot of Froome's dominance has been from the others not being where they want to be. Contador has not been up to his usual standard and maybe he's answered whether you can win the Giro and the Tour in the same year?
Quintana hasn't looked far off froome tbh. And Nibali, well he's been poor.
Hmmm... fighting belief with logic will never work. Next thing will be an offer of the the power data transmitted live to L'equipe... then there will be cries that " the power meter was doctored!"
I know I'm not there in the race but I do sometimes get the impression from watching that a fair bit of sky's dominance is phsychological. Once the other GC boys are thinking "jeeze, froome looks on form and they have the best coaches and all the other stuff" then they are f**ked. Self fulfilling prophecy then kicks in, sitting behind the strong man hoping you can stay with him is never going to win the race is it?Meanwhile Froome & co. "know" they did everything right and just boss it. Hope the next set of mountain stages are a bit more competitive...
One of the many things I like about Quintana is that he seldom looks at all bothered by anything - and I have a suspicion he knows he can put more pressure on Froome in the next few days... maybe not enough but you never know, would love to see it.
I can't wait for the mountains to come back, especially stage 18 and the Lacets de Montvernier... watching the whole peloton go up there should be an interesting spectacle !
me and my son are both fascinated by Quintana - he's the best young rider, but he looks about 80!
I'm glad that Sky have put these numbers out, I don't know if anyone really knows what they mean in such a narrow context, but it's a bit rich having scoundrels like Jalabert casting doubt on Froome. Matt Rendell's doorstepping of him was a masterpiece of gentle inquisition - there were hardly any answers, which said so much. When you see Froome looking mildly irked, you know he's steaming inside ...
It remains to be seen if other teams release similar data, and what would it really add to anyone's understanding if they do? The best place for this kind of data is part of the bio-passport, as Brailsford suggested. Just knowing that someone out x watts on a particular climb on a particular day tells you very little, whereas a long-term record of progress and cycles will be much more likely to indicate suspicious jumps ...
Ultimately though, as others have said, the criticisms are not coming from a logical position, so Sky are on a hiding to nothing trying to answer on an evidence based position ....
Ok then, get ride of race radios, power meters and heart rate monitors....most of Sky's riders have been trained to race by numbers, they wouldn't know what to do without them
I doubt Geraint Thomas used any numbers to get up from yesterday's crash, get back on his bike and still retain his position in the GC?
I wouldn't be so sure, G may have thought his 'number' was up!
The point is they're trained by numbers, but Froome has admitted that despite the Froome looking at stems meme, he doesn't tend to look at his PM much during racing, but goes off feel. These guys are fine tuned to know what threshold etc feels like - the numbers are there to be analysed afterwards. If you spent a race looking at your numbers, you'd last two minutes.
This is a really good point. I've started training with power, and it's been a revelation. Now I can feel when I'm pushing a wee bit too hard or a wee bit too soft. Even draft from a passing car can change the apparent power.
But in a race, what it means is that I realize ahead of time when I am running out of matches. Doing a criterium the other day, I saw I was pulling over 500 watts coming out of the corners and knew that I'd have a choice, stay in the lead group or save myself. I decided to stay up front and exploded spectacularly, but I knew it was coming.
Perhaps that's what happened with Geraint Thomas yesterday, maybe Barguil didn't actually knock him off his line but instead dislodged his earpiece and power meter causing him to just completely forget how to ride a bike?
My god, that's their secret...you've cracked it...they win everything, and I mean every single ever race ever, using power meters, radios, and HRMs....take them away from Sky and the playing field will be level because none of the other teams have access to such technology.....oh, hang on a minute....
...looked pretty much like racing to me when Froome kicked off at 6.5km to go the other day, and when he refused to let Quintana beat him to the line on the runway....and when Sky put the knife in when they the peloton split the other day...
I agree, but Sky surely know that releasing some numbers is a better option than keeping schtum. It won't stop the twitter haters and attention seekers but at least it may undermine the stupidity shown by some so-called journalists.
How many other teams will follow suit?
What rubbish! Really disappointing Keith, I thought you would know better.
For anyone interested in the data then Michael Hutchinson has taken a look at it for CW:
http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/racing/tour-de-france/what-can-we-learn-f...
If I can get my VAM over 1000 on a 5km hill I am over the moon..... (it happened once) so nearly twice as quick - nae bother ....
"Froome produced an average power output of 414 wats per kilogram" I don't know - that doesn't look natural... That's over 100x my sustainable power to weight ratio.
"Froome produced an average power output of 414 wats per kilogram"
"the entire climb would be closer to 390 watts per kilogram"
No need to fuel the doubters even more with typos like that
I assume those figures are just Watts, not W/Kg?
Was thinking exactly the same thing. Lets face it the villagers with flaming torches and pitchforks do not need any encouragement.
No need for that. The Frenchies aren't ALL upset about us Brits winning the tour for a 3rd time
Or that we staged the 'Grandest Grand Depart'. And it were reight Grand to!
...you misunderstand...the 414 whats is the number of times Chris Froome's performance is questioned per KG over the course of a climb
I don't get this 'but nobody has ever put out x watts for x time before so it can't be right' attitude. Nobody had run a 4 minute mile back in 1954, but then somebody went and did it. Surely that's how sport works, somebody is breaking a record all the time. I mean, have Froome's numbers been that ridiculously anomalous?
"his VAM – a measure of metres climbed per hour – was 1,602, well below the levels of around 1,800 produced by Lance Armstrong and Marco Pantani a decade and a half ago."
I'm sure people will never stop, but this says a lot.
Cycling nerds, geeks and trainspotters, start your engines, your opportunity to froth is at hand....
And if the stats don't match what you want them to prove, despite you being completely out of your depth at GCSE Science, just misquote them until they do.
And if you can't even be arsed doing that, just wait for some bitter former Dungeons and Dragons playing internutter off twitter do the groundwork for you and just paraphrase that to your hearts content.
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