I know you dismiss Lemond- but he said riders and himself (with his own power data)- are about 10-15% weaker as the tour progresses (for CLEAN riders)- b/c of fatigue, reduced recovery, and reduced Hematacrit levels- and research backs this up, too-\\

I don't know about the resarch on this, and Lemond's statements are from a time when power meters were in the dark ages, so I would not trust any of that data as accurate. Hell, there was probably a +/- on those things of 10% to 15 %.

What I do know is that a lot of riders go into the tour at a level they call fresh. They are not shaved and tapered for day one. They plan to ride into shape at some point, and become stronger as the tour progresses. I have only done an 8 day stage race, but I can attest that I did some of my best climbing late in that race, climbing I could not do in a one day race. Secondly, even if those numbers have some validity, they are not across the board. There will be a bell curve, so riders going worse, and some going better, with outlyers on both ends. I would expect that the biggest possibility of an outlyer on the positve end, would be the guy that is not only the strongest, but has done the least amount of work comparitivly. I think we all know who is the strongest rider is, and has only had to break his own wind at the end of one stage, and the tt's. So one could assume that Contador has the best possibility of being that outlyer at the positive end since he has done the least amount of work as compared to most of the others. He is the only guy in the race who has not been dropped, so we can assume he has not gone to the well too often, if at all. (besides the tt's)

So trying to pin this formula of yours on a paticular guy I think is just nonsense....