18y old, VO2max 97,5, now world champ in TT
Oskar Svendsen became world junior champion in TT today.
http://www.cyclingnews.com/races/uci-road-world-championships-2012/junior-men-time-trial/results
Two weeks ago he broke Bjorn Daehli’s record on VO2 Max. Oskar has 97,5. I know VO2 is not everything but 97,5 is a lot.
From his test, you will need a translator.
http://www.dn.no/dnaktiv/article2465743.ece
They probably did the VO2max test wrong.
97.5!?!?!?! wtf. Call me a cynic but I need to see more proof.
The equipment and protocol has been checked by the manufacturer and Norwegian Olympic Center. Oscar has tested high before when he was younger.
You see lots of crazy high vo2max values come out of scandinavia. Maybe their scales round down to the nearest 10kg or something
nice troll!!!
97.5 Hmmmmm!
With 17 other riders less than a minute behind him, it makes you wonder the following… Is cycling clean at this level, if so you would think he would win by a larger margin. Is his position far inferior to all his other competitors, given his potentially superior engine? Is he clean?
A high VO2 max is no guarantee for high performance. You can be a great cyclist and test around 80 – 85.
A good example of high VO2 is Anders Fostervold, a former soccer player who started cycling after he got injured and could not continue with soccer on high level. As a cyclist he tested 92.
he would have won by a lot more but he obviously stopped to change bikes and helmets in preparation for his victory!! (look at the photos)
highly unlikely his vo2 max was that high.
His mom was human, but his dad was a pronghorn. (an antelope like animal that has a VO2Max of 300)
or he’s Chuck Norris’s son
.
A high VO2 max is no guarantee for high performance. You can be a great cyclist and test around 80 – 85.
A good example of high VO2 is Anders Fostervold, a former soccer player who started cycling after he got injured and could not continue with soccer on high level. As a cyclist he tested 92.
In 2020 we will be mailing our Vo2max, hematocrit, lactate curve, and two power files (20min hill climb and a 75km TT) which will be composted into an A-Score. Certificates e-mailed to those with the highest scores.
Here is an article in English about the test.
Whether it has any significance or not, cross-country skiing can no longer lay claim to the best V02max in existence, a fact that was not lost on the Norwegian press. At least one journalist took the opportunity to wonder if a bigger trend was afoot: are the country’s most naturally gifted athletes feeding into cycling over other athletic pursuits, and if so, does Norway have a new national sport on its hands?
Both are interesting questions, but they make the incorrect implication that V02max test results are the predictors of performance in cycling, skiing or any other endurance activity. Svedsen himself acknowledged that lab numbers aren’t everything. “The figures are not what’s important. I’ve been beaten by many with lower O2 uptake than me throughout the years,” he said to Procycling.no.
Svedsen proved on Monday that he could perform on the road, too, winning the junior time trial at UCI World Championships in Valkenburg, Holland. His unparalleled engine undoubtedly helped him along, but a high max VO2 alone is not a guarantee of performance. To use an example from nordic skiing, Espen Harald Bjerke (NOR) once recorded a 96 max VO2 but never came close to matching Dæhlie’s results. Bjerke’s best World Cup finish was a fourth place in Otepää, Estonia, in 2005; Dæhlie is still considered the best cross-country skier in history.
**
The discrepancy between Bjerke’s and Dæhlie’s results underlines Svedsen’s dismissal of test results as overly important. Aerobic capacity is only just that — capacity. It demonstrates an athlete’s potential if he or she can get other aspects of the sport to fall into place.
For instance, a 2010 study by a group of Swedish and Norwegian sports scientists sought to determine the relationship between “energy delivery and mechanical efficiency” and performance. To do so it collected a handful of physiological data points from Swedish and Norwegian skiers at the world-class and national-levels as they rollerskied on a treadmill. Not surprisingly, the study found that the world-class group was more efficient overall than the national-level athletes and suggested this was likely due to better technique and power transfer. Aerobic capacity wasn’t the only part of the skiers’ physiology affecting results.
http://fasterskier.com/2012/09/aerobic-capacity-bjorn-daehlie-and-predictors-of-endurance-greatness/
In light of certain major headlines, I was having a discussion with some coworkers who seemed to suggest that cycling was perhaps the worst offender in terms of sports and the usage of PEDs. While cycling undoubtedly has issues, it would be incredibly naive to think that there mere absence of detection and/or publicity of PED usage in other sports with far more lax controls is somehow evidence of superior moral integrity on the behalf of other athletes versus professional cyclists.
In the context of this discussion, I mentioned the history of EPO usage among XS skiers and then stumbled upon the VO2 Max records page more out of curiosity rather than evidence that the record holders all had to be doping. Regardless, I was incredibly surprised and equally skeptical to see Oskar Svendsen at the top of the list with 97.5… at 18 years old.
I definitely don’t want to derail this and suggest that this kid is doping, because that seems incredibly unlikely to me. I am sort of surprised to see that this was the only discussion of this news. Perhaps everyone else found it as hard to believe as I did.
…I definitely don’t want to derail this and suggest that this kid is doping, because that seems incredibly unlikely to me. I am sort of surprised to see that this was the only discussion of this news. Perhaps everyone else found it as hard to believe as I did.
On the flip side, I doubt that there’s a pee test scheduled at the VO2max competition. 
I thought the correlation between Hct and VO2max wasn’t that strong? I.e. maximal uptake of oxygen isn’t NECESSARILY tied to the amount of heme groups, much in the same way that VO2max doesn’t necessarily predict athletic performance.
Don’t quote me though, as I haven’t carefully looked through literature to back up my assertion–just lingering memory corroborated with a very basic google search.
I’m under the same impression, I didn’t really stumble onto the topic of VO2 Max because I thought it was clear evidence of PED usage. My thought process was more so, “XC skiers-- I seem to recall those dudes use to hit the EPO pretty hard too”, then that sparked an entirely separate conversation about the rivalry between XC skiiers and cyclists in terms of who has the highest VO2 Max on record, and thus came across http://www.topendsports.com/testing/records/vo2max.htm
So just to clarify, I’m not skeptical of a 97.5 VO2 Max reading on the basis of PED usage, I’m just skeptical in general about the protocol used and accuracy of the test. That really just seems impossibly high, but what do I know.
Anyway though, could be a huge future ahead of this kid if it’s true, guess we’ll wait and see.
A VO2 max over 90 is not that unique, especially not in cross country skiing. Using VO2 testing is also very common. In my club we start testing in 1987 when I was 16. Of course the highest VO2 will not always win, but it is a really useful tool.
By the way, few countries are testing so much as Norway. The culture is really anti-doping and everybody can be tested no matter level or age.
Did cross country skiing have problems, yes thanks to Finland, Austria, Spain, Russia and Italy.