There is not reason to believe him more than a crazy uncle.
Remember when he was forced to issue an apology to Lance Armstrong for calling out his relationship with Dr. Ferrari(doping connoisseur)?
The LeMond is probably my favorite. Great geometry, great road feel, and a fantastic paint job. I put some new wheels on it this spring and it gives it such a rad look. Totally modern and retro at the same time. Such a bike would sell really well right now.
https://frugalaveragebicyclist.com/2022/05/15/guide-to-vinta...
Still have it. My son wanted to try it one day, his response was "that bike wants to go fast"
Edit: I also had aluminum (too stiff) and titanium frames (too flexible, or floppy as I called it). The 853 was excellent
I've been on the bench for about a year, but I spent the last 15 years as a pretty intense recreational cyclist. I was in the tier that you might describe as "the craziest you get without having a racing license."
There were very few steel bikes on those rides -- say, less than 10-15%. Carbon is by far the most common material, followed by Ti for the more well-heeled folks. Most of the steel is "modern", but there are some vintage frames, too.
I rode a boutique steel frame from Ritte for a long time, but went to a lovely carbon Giant about 2 years ago after the steel frame failed, which astonished me and everyone I knew. It's honestly better in every way -- quicker, lighter, more comfortable, etc.
The vintage steel frames these groups are generally pretty high end holdovers. You leave some stuff behind by staying on a frame from the 80s or 90s, and some of those things really WILL make you slower vs. a modern hot-rod frame, but if you're strong enough you can make the trade. Weight's one, but so is gearing. Current normal for a road bike is 11 or 12 cogs in the rear, which means you have a VERY smooth progression as you accelerate. And older frame might not accommodate electronic shifting, either, which I'd be loathe to give up now.
In non-flat places it might matter that the older frames won't allow for disc brake systems, but where I lived (Houston) that didn't matter.
My new wheels have rim brakes - I would have added disc if I could. And the rear wheel/hub has room for an extra cog on the cassette. But I feel that once I wear everything out, I’m going to have to bite the bullet and get a new bike rather than fight against the lack of new equipment that fits old bikes :(
I suspect the biggest benefit is bike makers get to sell new bikes to people who don't need new bikes.
For professional riders who don't buy their own bikes, it's probably more about areo, and maybe weight, as the rims don't need a braking surface. They have more creativity with the shape and material. They only brake for emergencies and going into a corner on a downhill. A tiny fraction of a stage. The areo benefit is for the full length of the stage.
I don't know much about physics but even if the weight of the disks is more than rims brakes, the weight being closer to the centre of the wheel might be a benefit. I suspect in terms of performance, aero is the biggest benefit, though.
even the 12 speed cassettes, from what I've read, accelerating smoothly isn't the main point. for a professional rider, they spend a lot more time at the same speed than they do accelerating. so being able to dial in the perfect gear for the speed, wind and gradient is more important than being able to accelerate smoothly.
Discs are also absolutely better at stopping the bike, especially if it's hilly and SUPER especially if it's wet (or muddy, which is why off road bikes took to disc first).
Even in a flat place like Houston where we never would've gone to disc in the absence of market forces, we all realized quickly how much nicer they were. It's a definite upgrade.
You're also right about the cassette. More cogs mean we can have a wider range AND preserve the small steps between them, which is great for finding the right cadence in a paceline just as it is for accelerating.
My bike doesn't have cables at all, since SRAM's electronic groups are wireless, and the brakes are hydraulic.
Actual gear range on a modern 11- or 12-speed bike can be FAR wider than you'd get with 7- or 8-. On gravel bikes where close ratios aren't important you can dwarf an 80s bike's range with a 1x setup. On road bikes, you can keep tight ratios that are great for faster paceline rides while still having a wider gear range.
I mean, then as now faster riders love a straight block cassette, right? In 1989 that might've meant 13-25 or so, with 7 or 8 cogs. My Giant is 10-28 with TWELVE cogs, but 10-30 and 10-33 are available, all of which preserve 1-tooth transitions at the low end of the block.
>People did big descents just fine on rim brakes for decades until they came out with disk and made it seem like an issue.
People had big families just fine for hundreds of years until they came out with vaccines and made it seem like an issue.
I mean, I kid, but in hilly or wet places disc brakes are a giant boon.
Electronic shifting I see as a con. Di2 at least is not serviceable and reaches an end of life. I am not as familiar with sram but I assume its the same. Either way just yet another old thing (index shifting) served to you in a new way that needs yet another battery to charge and eventually replace. Shifting is plenty fast on a mechanical brifter.
I have no interest in hydraulics and bleeding brakes. Brake cables stay in spec basically forever if they are stainless steel for the most part. By the time you’ve fouled up a mechanical system you are talking years of neglect exposure to the elements type wear that would do a number to any other bike system all the same.
Wet no issue the rim calipers squeegie off the water in the first rotation. The real limit of the reaction here isn’t the braking system. It is the tires. Even cheap ancient rim brakes are sufficiently overpowered to lock up a bike wheel even on new tires in dry conditions. Let alone wet.
Imo a lot of this tech is marketing vs true innovations. I mean brifter designs that shear off the end of the shift cable just because of rider ocd wanting it under the wraps, come on. Just that one marketing driven change has lead to diminished shifting experience and more difficult servicing for the end user. And basically all newish paradigms over the last 10-15 years of road bikes fall into this where its a dual edged sword that really only benefits the people racing professionally who have a justification to demand each and every legal free watt from a system, while hurting you the consumer with more expensive bikes, components, more expensive and complicated service, more forced obsolescence and eliminating old oem patterns of spare parts. We really did peak at 10spd side exit mechanical imo. Although 8 speed is more reliable and stronger components with wider tolerance to derailleur adjustment.
You have a very narrow view of cycling, I think. Plenty of amateurs do fast paceline riding. It's a huge part of the hobby.
I expect PART of that is the fact that where I lived until recently was pancake flat, so there was no real disadvantage to staying with rim braking, but still.
Just sold it this summer. The geometry is just too tight for me now and couldn't support tires wider than a 28.
Lemond was beating a lot of superstars in the 1980s that were blood doping (Hinault was probably blood doping - that's where you freeze your blood in the offseason or between races and then superinfuse yourself for "big days" - it went to the wayside because EPO was so much more effective and convenient) which is suspicious as well.
Lemond was also not exactly the best trainer compared to people like Lance Armstrong. He was teased by magazines for starting some TdFs overweight with a slight potbelly.
Doping in cycling, heck doping in all sports has been around a long long time, well before Lemond. Stimulants and a wide array of other drugs have been used in top sports for a long time. So it gets very suspicious whenever someone is beating the top end performers at any point in the last 50 years.
That said, I think he was pretty clean, or at least cleaner than the EPO guys that knocked him from the peloton.
If it's silly then why are they trying to counter it for over a decade?
Example: there is no antidoping in amateur races. Amateurs dope themselves to win those races.
Were there any instances where people cheated in spite of testing, and were undetected for years?
But otherwise that's probably correct, whatever they could find, they used.
I'll never pour a single cent worth of money into that activity, nor a nanosecond of my attention to avoid anyhow supporting it even by accident, voting with my wallet and all that. It almost seems like if there is enough money in the sport it becomes cut throat business and stops being what it was intended to be, in fact exactly the opposite.
That's how I raise my kids, there are tons of sports on the bike and off it to enjoy and even watch and admire if one is in passive mode. But as always doing sports > watching them and I really don't have enough time to do both.
I love a good bashing, but are you aware doping runs rampant in amateur levels of any sport or even physical activity? Why do you presume that competitions would be different?
I don't think you understand. Some amateur athletes purposely resort to doping even if they are not particpating in major competitions. Hell, check out steroid abuse in bodybuilding circles. Is taking ADHD drugs also a kind of doping?
I'm not sure you get the "performance enhancing" part of performance enhancing drugs. The pull is not from the competition, but the way they enhance performance. Capitalism has zero to do with this.
And yet we have the major sports who don't test in any meaningful way.
Maybe the mistake cycling made was testing for real. If they tested like the major sports do, nobody would ever be caught.
If you had the opposite idea of "doping is okay in sports" and applied the categorical imperative to it, we'd have a bunch of roided superman doing insane sports and it would be awesome. Daniel Tosh of all people proposed this jokingly in some standup years ago but why not just admit that everyone is doping and accept it?
Rant aside - The sport of cycling is quite cool. I feel bad for those athletes because they have to dope. It's simple game theory, if enough of a critical mass of people are doing it, you have to as well to be competitive. It really shouldn't have been as big of a scandal as it was. At least, making Lance Armstrong the face of the scandal wasn't really fair since, IIRC, almost all the front runners did that. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I think the way they do it now is reasonable. They test and ban so that people likely severely limit cheating. If they simply made it allowed, or had very limited protocols, it would be a total arms race similar to the Armstrong era where riders would have to run tons of gear and chemicals to even attempt to compete and it would have tons of knock on health effects.
So what about baseball, basketball, football, hockey, soccer, swimming, wrestling, boxing, mma, golf, etc?
Cycling got "exposed" by french media because they wanted to go after soccer, but it was a world cup year being held by france, so they went after cycling.
You need to understand something about pro sports: everyone is on stuff. If you can make a million or more a year, most if not certainly all of the athletes are on something:
steroids - vastly increase strength by 10-30% or more (and endurance even)
stimulants - sustain attention and increase endurance and power
EPO - increase endurance and sustained power output by 20% or more. Think that's only cycling? If you breath hard doing something, EPO can help, because it will keep you in Zone 2 and more mentally clear.
Attention drugs - Think that lots of athletes don't want more ability to concentrate? Hello ADD drugs!
Relaxation drugs - Want to keep an even keel for that big tee-off, or for shooting targets? Beta blockers aren't just for heart disease!
Testosterone - Increases strength, but also can critically help in recovery from hard workouts or performances, Floyd Landis got busted for this.
Human Growth Hormone - heal quicker? get taller? recover faster?
Pro sports is a fantasy pageant. These people are supposed to be superhuman, and the pro sports all WANT their athletes on this stuff. Especially the stars, once a star gets big, they get a lot more hall passes.
They just don't want it to be TOO much, and don't want it getting too much press.
Psychologically, there is a bottomless pit of athletes willing to dope.
In a self-reported anonymous poll at a European Ironman (so not even top-end athletes, a range of "good" endurance athletes) more than half admitted to taking performance enhancing drugs.
An article I once read said in Cat 1 amateur cycling races there was tons of doping. Dude, that is so far below the pro ranks it is laughable. No one in Cat 1 amateur cycling will SNIFF european protour.
Cycling is peanuts in terms of money. Tadej makes 8 million euros. He is a legendary superstar of the sport. Now look at what the top quarterbacks, basketball players, soccer players, baseball players make. HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS. You think there isn't worse doping in those sports than cycling?
I mean maybe Michael Jordan, the most ruthlessly competitive person in NBA history, doubled his muscle (while going bald) right after joining the NBA naturally. Maybe Lebron james (also went bald) is 280 lbs naturally. Maybe Tom Brady got a stronger arm and kept healthy as he aged with yoga. Maybe Katie Ledecky just "tries really hard in practice". Maybe Tiger Woods with his popping muscles in mid career was just hitting the bench press.
Lance Armstrong and Barry Bonds aren't anomalies or outliers or rogues. Really, they didn't treat the media well and were too big of a-holes to hide, so the media busted them, but other athletes play the game and don't get busted. Is cycling really that bad, or is it sufficiently a "small player" that the dirt-mucking sports reporters are allowed to expose it. Do you think the NFL would let something like that happen? MLB already found out. FIFA sure as hell won't, neither will the NBA.
We are well past the point where the best of the best of previous generations that were shown to be doping have been passed comprehensively by modern athletes and are told that it's just better coaching, science, training and effort.
Enjoy the show.
"How I became a drug cheat athlete to test the system"
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-32983932
Outside Magazine in 2004 tries all the drugs
https://velo.outsideonline.com/road/road-training/drugs-a-ca...
Amateur doping