February 1, 2007
Why Floyd was not super human at all
Interesting take here on whether Floyd really needed any super-powers to do what he did on that fateful stage, from the BikeBiz website. Of course it wasn’t super-human, plenty of riders before him have successfully broken away from a peleton and gained the types of advantages quoted, what’s more important in the Landis situation is his co-incidental drug-test positive on that same stage. I think most people now agree that the alleged drug abuse would not have given him more than just a mental kick, if indeed he knowingly took the drug, which of course he denies. Only Landis, or perhaps some conspirators somewhere, really know the truth. Anyway, here’s the quote:
“And on the CycleOps website, Dr Lim has an explanation of why the stage 17 victory by Floyd Landis in the 2006 Tour de France was not “super-human” or fuelled by testosterone but was well within typical power outputs of Landis and had a lot to do with tactical errors from the peleton and the fact Landis could take on board more water than the chasers.
Lim said: “What is very interesting about the [power] data from the climbs is that it shows that Floyd gained much of his time on the field not on the climbs but on the descents. He’s well known as the most talented descender in the pro peleton, and he definitely put on a clinic on S17.
‘Because of the direct and immediate feedback from the power meter, Floyd came to an immediate and extraordinarily important realization during his ride — that every time he poured ice cold water on his body, his power output went up.’”
