Ha, you've got really low standards!

Agree.
I made it through about a third of the movie, then it became too much Blair Witch Hunt type of filming, pretending to run from KGB, etc. Dumb.

Where is this documented? Numbers? Athletes can get cancer too. Is there any evidence that athletes are getting cancer at a higher rate than the general population?
Given that most athletes in all pro sports use, or have used, PED's at some point, shouldn't we see mass amounts of pro athletes getting cancer???

Id suggest you watch the whole movie before you judge. RT score is 93/96% now.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/icarus_2017/

Definitely blew me away, especially since I randomly picked it not knowing the entire plot twist. You just don't see documentaries scripted like this, they did a great job documenting the storyline and allowing WADA to allow camera in that debrief...I expect to see a documentary Oscar nomination for this, not a winner but a nomination.

I loved the look on the faces of the WADA folks - kind of a "Oh f$ck..." The movie really is two docs in one, with the latter being quite intriguing. Not knowing the story of the Russian, my jaw dropped as the events played out in real time during the shooting of the movie.

Its awesome.....

Plot for funding

"Going to take drugs to see if it improves personal performance"

Precis for Cannes

"Drop a list of every russian doper on WADA committee on film whilst they say they have never done more to ensure sports are clean"

Its amazing.........as is the haute route which is where this started

I can understand not thinking it's Oscar worthy. But it's pretty amazing what this guy stumbled into. He tried to make a documentary that only people on a site like this would prossibly ever pay attention to, then accidentally walked into a situation where he assisted in nearly getting a major country completely kicked out of the Olympics! All because of some goofy Russian guy he was talking to on Skype! That's pretty interesting if you ask me.

And to say it was pretending to run from the KGB is brushing over some major things. I don't think he had assassins assigned to chase him through dark alleys. But if you don't think there was some foul play in his associate who had a heart attack shortly after being forced into retirement.....

I'd have been slightly concerned for my safety. Even if it wasn't from the government, you have an entire country who takes pride in their sports putting blame on you.

I did HR Rockies this year, ~350 ftp and 69kg. Wasn't even in top 10, which were nearly all pros. Unless he weighs 45kgs, I can't imagine finishing 14th in an EU event @250.

Yes, not sure about those wattage numbers. For the average viewer, they barely understand anyways, but it seems strange to go from a pretty average 250w FTP. Assuming that is what he was measuring and his weight - maybe it was a 2 hour test instead of 20 min. I was amazed that he went to 350w, that's quite a jump, but I guess you can't dope electronic shifting. Seemed like he just lost it after that, but looks like he was about to drop anyways.

My wife really liked the film as well. Probably b/c I just said it was about cycling doping, but the Russian twist really caught us off guard. Wonder when someone will document the "activity" in China leading up to '08 Beijing Olympics...looks like they were making the "best stuff" at scale during that time.

China is a country with a huge population that can be scoured for talent but with all that latent talent plus whatever doping they were up to they still came in behind the U.S. in total medals. It looks like the best stuff was being made right in the good ol' U.S. of A. If you want to check out a grade A program then check out the Brits in 2012. That was so blatant it was ridiculous.

I've got no idea on the power numbers, etc. but he is being a bit misleading when he says he was 14th. I think many people hear that and think he might have been relatively close to the winner. However, looking at the results he was 2 hours and 22 minutes down.

http://www.timing4you.com/...BAL%20SOLO%20Men.pdf

I was in that race (Haute Route Alpes 2014). My Quarq died on the second stage, so I don't have good data, but my FTP was probably around 300W for 76kg. I finished outside of the top 100.

There's no way he finished 14th on a FTP of 250W.

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Goodness ... haute route is a mass start event? 300+ rolling off the line at the same time?

He's 61.3 kg, according to Strava profile.

I have no doubt that the 250W was at a detrained level.. Something over 300W might be realistic for undoped trained level.

Yes, sort of. They separated us in batches of 50 or so and released those at 1 or 2 minutes intervals. There was a neutralized section at the beginning of each stage and the race only started once you crossed a map a few kilometers later.

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Certain sections of each stage are timed and ranked. Sorta like road bike enduro

Dear Arnaud, with 76kg and 300w FTP you are really not a climber, you are just "not so bad" in the mountains with 3.94w/kg.
I know because I'm like you.

But I have a friend, with 260w FTP and he is 61kg, so 4.26w/kg. On short hills I'm stronger than him, because I can manage to put big numbers but only for short time (3-4 min max).

On the passes there is no way I can stay with him, he's just another category. On 7-8 km climb with 8-10% i just get 6-7 min, just because of physics.
What would it be if there are 30 or even 50km climbing like in such a race?

So 61.3 kg..

He stated that he almost had a 20% improvement. So his previously FTP could have been 291.

That sums up to a 4,75 W/kg which is a very good score -> cat. 1. Not sure if it is enough for a 14th place, but more plausible than getting a 14th place with 4,07 W/kg

It wasn't mechanical doping. He used a replacement bike that was 600 grams too light.

Care to expand that little nugget of info?

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Dont complain about the results you did n't get from the training you did n't do.

There is just one point to pinpoint on this categories: they are based on the performance of athletes regardless of doping or not.
And in general those numbers are based on the results (watt/kg) of the last, say, 20 years?
But in the '90 EPO was "practically" legal, and today faster athletes show the same numbers. There is no way the the categories reflect "clean" athletes potentials.
There a different researches (irish tri, bbc), that shows that about 10-15% of amateur athletes take forbidden complements. About them you can average about 3-4% taking serious help, like EPO or GH. Over a field of 300 there is then about 10 people taking such substance.
(sure those a simple statistics, there are other factors that can influence those numbers, but there is no way, I repeat, NO WAY, that everybody is clean. Just remember that with EPO microdoses any control is useless, France2).

So, in the end, if you are a gifted rider, with a watt/kg > 4.1 or 4.2 you can expect finish no more than a 5-15 place on a race such in the Icarus movie.

What's a bit funny is that he then seems to find out that they actually don't test. I guess his whole narrative about being able to dope and still test clean kind of goes down the drain at that moment.


Amateur/Age-Group testing is only going to be hit or miss at best. It's too expensive and the logistics involved are significant. I agree that from what we have seen, it's needed, but sports officials in various sports are struggling to keep up with the needs for testing at the pro/elite level. To test more thoroughly at the amateur/age-group level would require probably 10X the tests and 10X the costs!

Another thing worth mentioning is that most or all athletes at the highest level (athletes on the whereabouts system) would not be able to dope like this guy as you would get popped the very first time someone showed up at your door in an out-of-competition test.

Again testing of pros/elites is border-line doable/workable because it's a relatively small homogeneous group in each sport. They know there is Out of Competition testing and they know that they need to conform to the Whereabouts protocol. Try doing that and putting those sorts of rules and protocols on the masses of amateur/age-group athletes? Good luck!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Goodness ... haute route is a mass start event? 300+ rolling off the line at the same time?


They do this all the time at many gran fondo races. It's not a big deal. People self-seed. It tends to be a VERY hard pace at the front for the first 5 - 10km or longer to weed out the wanna-be's and then it settles down.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Funny Haute Route story.

My wife signs up to do Haute Route Pyrenees last year. They send the booklet to us with detailed information about the parcours. I read it through carefully stage, by stage. I tell her that, when the Pros in the Tour de FRance go into the Pyrenees each year it's two maybe three stages followed by a rest day. At Haute Route, they find EVERY major climb in the Pyranees and you ride up and down all of those climbs in 7 days of riding/racing.. In short . . it's insane!

Because of all of my Race/Event Announcing work, I could not go. My wife, who's raced professionally as a triathlete in the past, finishing in the top-5 of several IRONMAN races around the world, and has bike raced at the Elite 1-2 level for a number of years with some top finishes nationally in Canada, said that Haute Route Pyreenes was the hardest thing she has ever done in her life! For the record she finished 7th overall among the women and was the 3nd Master's Woman finisher winning a $500 Mavic Gift Certificate . . woohoo!! The only women that were ahead of her were former, Pros and Olympic/National Team Members from various countries.

It is and is not a, "race". My wife described it as a, "competitive tour". She said that every day you had to turn yourself completely inside out, and were in total survival mode for much of each days stage! There were some teary, and emotional post-stage skype calls on most days!

Despite all that, she's talking with a group that is considering doing the Haute Route Dolomites in 2018! :)

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

I didn't like it as much as everyone else apparently. The first half seemed like a narcissistic AGer that wanted to dope, so figured he'd cheat and mask it as a documentary. Seriously doubt it would have gotten picked up had he not fallen ass backwards into the Russian doping thing