Former Tour de France winner Cadel Evans believes reigning champion Chris Froome is capable of retaining his crown in 2016. Double Tour de France winner Chris Froome’s success is due to weight loss rather than doping, according to data released on the rider.
Froome trimmed down from 75.6kg in 2007 to 67kg by last year without suffering a loss in fitness and power.
The Kenyan-born Brit faced daily attacks on his legitimacy as a rider throughout the race and even had urine thrown at him.
He and Team Sky did provide date during the Tour and Froome himself agreed to independent physiological testing to prove his innocence.
The data from tests carried out on Froome in August at the GSK Human Performance laboratory in London have been published today in an interview with Esquire magazine, the same time as results of physiological tests that Froome underwent in 2007 at the Swiss Olympic Medical Centre in Lausanne, providing a direct comparison between the 22-year-old Froome and the winner of the Tour de France eight years later.
Froome increased his power to weight ratio by 10% and generated six watts per kilo of body weight during the 2015 Tour.
This is a big increase on his 2007 wattage rate of 5.56 and well short of the figure of seven French TV were claiming last year.
The GSK tests also revealed Froome’s VO2 Max – his ability to absorb oxygen through his lungs – was high but similar to world class track riders 15 years ago.
Froome is only one of a number of top cyclists to release data from Grand Tours this year and did so to quash the doubting voices – primarily in French media but also across the internet – who have questioned the ethics of his two Tour de France victories, this year and in 2013.
The pressure on Froome to release his data has come off the back of years of institutionalised doping which culminated in the 7-time Tour winner Lance Armstrong being stripped of his titles. The decades of lies and now confirmed blood doping have installed an inbuilt suspicion with cycling fans about the veracity of performances of leading riders in the Peloton.
"The figures make one thing very clear to me, if I ever needed any reminder," Froome said in a statement. "Natural ability is only one piece of the puzzle of what it takes to win an event like the Tour de France. I have always prided myself on my work ethic, dedication and perseverance."
No comments:
Post a Comment