C’est un thème très à la mode en ce moment. De plus en plus de scientifiques pensent que puisque les contrôles anti-dopages sont facilement détournés. Tous les grands ténors du cyclisme qui se sont fait attraper comme Vinokourov, Basso, Valverde, ne se sont jamais fait contrôler positifs, mais ont à trouvé du matériel pour se doper dans leur entourage. Alors de plus en plus la solution semble être dans la mesure des performances. Les scientifiques semblent être en accord pour dire qu’a un certain niveau de puissance/kg tout cela n’est plus humain. Comme par exemple, les fameuses ascensions de Marco Pantani.
Le problème de tout cela, est comment est-il possible de fixer une valeur de puissance/kg maximale pour l’humain? Les scientifiques ne pensaient pas que l’ont pouvait courir le 100m en moins de 9,80… et pourtant Usan Bolt est largement en dessous… Certains vous diront que l’on s’entraine mieux, mais cela reste une incertitude.
Voici des extraits de l’article de New York Times de ce matin, à lire absolument.
Though the exact starting point of the Alpe d’Huez climb has changed slightly over the years, the Italian rider Marco Pantani still holds the record at 37 minutes 35 seconds, set in 1997, as well as three of the unofficial top five times. He made those climbs before a test for the blood booster EPO was available. At that time, some riders have said, top cyclists often used EPO to increase endurance.
Riders with at least 7 of the unofficial top 16 times up L’Alpe d’Huez have tested positive, like Floyd Landis and Iban Mayo; have admitted to doping, like Bjarne Riis, Richard Virenque and Alex Zülle; or have been implicated in a doping scandal, like Jan Ullrich.
Ullrich, the 1997 Tour winner, retired from the sport after being tied to a Spanish doping ring. His former coach, Rudy Pévenage, was quoted by the French sports newspaper L’Équipe last week saying that he had organized Ullrich’s visits to a blood-doping doctor in Spain.
“The speeds are lower in the climbs because there is no doping now, or less doping, in my opinion,” Sassi said. “If you look at Pantani’s times, the power he produced was very close to 6.8 watts per kilo, and that is something no one can explain if you have physiological normal conditions for any athlete.”
Sassi, like nearly every top coach now, uses computers affixed to riders’ bikes to determine how much power those riders are producing. Sassi said he could also calculate those numbers the old-fashioned way, with math.
Over his decades in the sport, he has concluded that no rider can produce more than an average of 6.0 to 6.2 watts per kilogram of his weight over a ride of 30 to 40 minutes. In the power numbers he calculated from the 2009 Giro d’Italia, Sassi found that only one top rider — Denis Menchov of Rabobank — produced more than 6.0 watts per kilogram on a climb, kicking out a 6.1. Yet a rider who was later suspended for doping at that race, Danilo DiLuca of Italy, was producing power on another climb at a rate much less than 6.0, Sassi said.