The performances of Jonas Vingegaard and especially Tadej Pogacar, engaged in an exclusive duel on the Tour de France, bring back, as last year, a wind of suspicion in a sport long plagued by doping scandals.
In 2023, it was Vingegaard’s supersonic time trial in Combloux that rekindled the subject when the Dane, on his way to his second title, stuck 1:38 to his great rival in just 22 kilometers.
The Tour ended in a whiff of sulphur and with daily denials from the Dane, who assured that he would “not take anything that I would not give to my own daughter”.
Pogacar, victim of a spectacular failure in the Col de la Loze, had been spared.
But this year, the Slovenian’s dominance in the Pyrenees puts him in the spotlight as the peloton prepares to enter the Alps for the denouement of this 111e editing.
It was above all his performance on Sunday in the Plateau de Beille which attracted attention when, like Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel, he broke Marco Pantani’s ascent time record in 1998 at a time when EPO was king in the peloton.
“It’s as if we weren’t playing the same sport,” commented Norwegian Tobias Johannessen, without however putting this observation down to cheating.
In other passes, new records were also set with speeds far superior to those achieved by Lance Armstrong, whose seven victories in the Tour de France were removed from the list of winners after his late confession about doping.
“We swept in front of our door”
The Tour de France magnifying glass highlights a reality present year-round in all races. “It’s going faster and faster,” reports Frenchman Axel Laurance, the U21 world champion who says he’s “not surprised” by the performances of the best.
“All year long it’s a big pace, the speeds increase, the watts too. In the passes, when there are still 70 guys left, and you’re going all out, you raise your head and you say to yourself: damn I’m not that good,” adds the teammate of world champion Mathieu van der Poel at Alpecin.
Sceptics denounce a two-speed cycling, basing their arguments on the dizzying gaps between the top three and the rest of the field.
“Pantani… I don’t understand anything about cycling anymore,” ex-sprinter Nasser Bouhanni grumbled on social media.
Others prefer to highlight the intrinsic qualities of “exceptional champions” like Julien Jurdie, sports director of the Décathlon-AG2R team.
“Pogacar is a phenomenon like there are in every sport,” he said. “It’s impressive and I understand that it can be a challenge because the paces on the passes are pretty crazy. But we find ourselves with a champion like there is every 15 years. We’ve been cleaning up our own backyard for many years and cycling is one of the cleanest sports at the moment.”
In reality, and in the absence of evidence, the debate has not progressed much.
” Everything changed “
All the players agree in describing the enormous progress in terms of equipment, training and nutrition, and point out that a football match in the 1990s is nothing like those of today.
“When I arrived in this team (UAE) six years ago, we were really amateurs. Since then, everything has changed,” Pogacar insisted on Monday.
Enough to explain the performances and especially the differences?
A doping specialist, Dr. Jean-Pierre de Mondenard has for years denounced the “masquerade” of anti-doping controls in cycling and other sports, deploring the fact that many products, such as caffeine, are not banned and therefore not tested.
“The riders are all very medically well-treated, but Pogacar and Vingegaard are no more so than the others,” he told AFP.
Last Friday, the specialist website Escape Collective revealed that at least three Tour de France teams (UAE, Visma and Israel PT) were using a carbon monoxide rebreather to measure the benefits of altitude training.
Vingegaard confirmed on Monday that he was appealing the decision, seeing “nothing suspicious” in it.
Pogacar imitated him on Wednesday after the 17e step by also minimizing the range. “It’s a device to test how your body reacts to altitude,” he said. “You blow into a balloon for a minute for a test that you have to do every two weeks. I only did the first part because for the second part, the girl who was supposed to do it never showed up. It’s not like you breathe that every day.”