In Reply To:
You're not alone. Lemond doubts the credibility of Contador, too and in today's interview- he refused to answer plenty pertinent questions.
http://www.cyclingnews.com/...nning-time-trial-win LeMond, who writes an opinion piece in France's
Le Monde newspaper during the Tour, questioned Contador's performance on the final climb to Verbier on stage 15, which the Spaniard won ahead of Andy Schleck by 43 seconds and took over the race lead. The climb came at the end of a 207.5-kilometre stage that also held five other categorised climbs.
"Alberto Contador established a speed record: he went up the 8.5 km climb in 20:55. How to explain such a performance?" wrote LeMond. "He would have required a VO2 max [maximal oxygen consumption] of 99.5 ml / min / kg to produce the effort. To my knowledge, this is a figure that has never been achieved by any athlete in any sport.
"It is like a Mercedes sedan winning a on a Formula 1 circuit. There is something wrong. It would be interesting to know what's under the hood." Two journalists, one from
Le Monde newspaper, asked Contador his VO2 max. Contador refused to answer the questions.
LeMond based his article on data from former Festina trainer and specialist in performance, Antoine Vayer.
He said the burden is on Contador to prove he is capable of his performance without the use of drugs. "Given the recent history of our sport, doubt is required. It should lead us to ask ourselves about performances."
LeMond believes that cycling can use performance tests such as VO2 max to create rider profiles and detected if a rider has doped. He said it would be similar to how the International Cycling Union's tracks blood values in its biological passport it introduced at the beginning of 2008.
Comments about the two parts in bold:
1) An extraordinarily poor analogy, it may be like Force India winning races. His analogy would be more along the lines of one of us winning the Tour
2) Two comments about the second one:
a) How sad is it that our society has come to this, guilty before proven innocent and never truly proven innocent in some peoples minds...an this is for all sports, just ask Beke.
b) If Greg is dead on then shouldn't he have to he was capable of his performances without the use of PED's?
Greg was the person who got me to start riding and racing back in the 80's but he really needs to step back gracefully.