Hey, have a look at what I posted on a few posts on this thread. Given that Froome made up vs Dumoulin and moreso how much time on the descents on this stage (I think I added it up to 1:40 of the 3ish minutes he made on Dumoulin), I don't think that this performance was anymore "not normal" than the chasers. His attack on Finistre was just marginally faster than Dumoulin....so if you look at it from the doping angle, he does not appear to be any dirtier nor cleaner than Dumoulin and Pinot. Dumoulin and Pinot crested Finistre only 30+ seconds slower than Froome and that included Dumoulin waiting for Pinot's broken spoke induced wheel change. On the final climb of the day, Froome's lead was initially shrinking on the lower slopes and then he managed to get some of the shrink back. Dumoulin was gased at the end, but for this weight vs Froome's the performances of both men were largely in line given that Froome made a ton of the gap on the descents.

What's not normal is Froome rolling the dice and trying to blow things apart 80K out, but yesterday I said that he would use the gravel and technical descent to his advantage. I really think that Froome thought the tactics through well in advance and then optimized the execution on the tricky terrain.

I don't think this one is anywhere in the Floyd 2006 category, simply because Froome was not much better than the chasers on the climbs....just a touch better, but come on, he's always been a better climber than Dumoulin and Pinot. It's not like he was dropping a fully peaked Nario Quintana or full juiced Marco Pantani.

Yates should have been the escapee with Froome today, but he burnt out his legs earlier with too much too often.

Everyone looking at how "not normal" today was needs to look at how "not normal" Froome's descents and technical skills were. Almost (or maybe beyond) the category of "Il Falco" Paolo Salvodelli. In 2005 it was on the same Finistre decent to Sestriere that Salvodelli closed the gap to Simoni for the Giro win. Everyone is forgetting about how much time a good descender going solo without other riders in the way can make up on this descent. I've been waiting for this stage to see what impact this climb and descent would have and was not dissappointed.

Now having said, that, Sky could be doped to the same level or slightly more than Scott, Sunweb, Bahrain, Emirates etc. I just don't think that Froome's performance is eyebrow raising from a relative watts per kilo vs his chasers. It was barely marginally better based on rates of climb that were not that different.