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Good thought but I can't see it somehow!
We don't even have that kind of thing for CTT events. Some people want privacy, don't all want to share everything.
Plus how would you define something as off the scale, by time or by Watts?
Some guy riding across europe at c 120W when he trained at 200W is hardly going to raise an alarm is he?
Or, if you look at time, you find someone like skinny didn't ride more than 6 hours in training, then he rides 18 hours a day for 8-9 days!
frank9755-
Yeah, I can't say I have it figured out :). Of course, all you wrote are valid obstacles. But...
What I meant was that there would be no official checking. Just official requirement to share data. So there would be no definition for off-the-scale. However, data pool would grow over time. You wouldn't be able to do much at the start. But a few years in, you could see if someone's performance, given their training, was a 10% outlier among all racers, or it was an 80% outlier. You could consider many dimensions, HR, power, volume (in time, in distance), intensity, type of rides (mtb, road, etc.), cross training, etc. You would have access to people's previous races, so if training didn't change but performance jumped, you could be suspicious.
Sophistication of the analysis would grow over time. For instance, I'd be keen to contribute to such software! It'd be kept open source for transparency -- so the analyses can be trusted.
Of course, I see the problem with equipment like power meters costing hundreds of euros, heart rate sensors being off on the wrist, etc. But, no data is always worse than a bit of data. And to be fair, the front runners all have fancy gadgets.
Or, if you look at time, you find someone like skinny didn't ride more than 6 hours in training, then he rides 18 hours a day for 8-9 days!
Yeah, that's a good example. So one half-baked thought would be to consider it off the scale if others couldn't come close to such performance with such training. Then you could also consider it off the scale only if he was training that way before but his performance was rubbish until this last race. Nothing changed in training, but race performance jumped? Hmm.
I'm not saying I have answers, but seems like incrementally, community could build software tools for analysing data for irregularities if the data existed.
Also, there need to be no bans or DQs. It's enough if an analysis is published. Just consider Lael's performance at TABR (was it?) where she paired up with Evan. She wasn't DQed, but there's a permanent (fictional) asterisk next to her win. That would be enough for now :).
plentyfatty
Yeah, as @hippy wrote. I suspect people are exploiting this shit already. I don't like it and might end up doing only longer races where this becomes unsustainable. However, then another "performance-enhancing" drug comes to play: pain killers.
I guess this sport is between a rock and a hard place. Either regulation comes in and then I'm unsure how they'll take responsibility for safety on open roads etc., or it remains deregulated and people will simply "cheat" (if we can call pill-taking cheating).
One thing that could be implementable would be complete transparency. That is: you must make all your training data public if you want to start in a race. Strava data would do to begin with. Later, this could be improved on. The idea being that of a biological passport (except more basic & cheaper). Then enthusiasts could crunch data and see how off-the-scales crazy a performance was given the stuff a person does in training. If someone consistently races "above his/her" abilities, then suspicion would exist. If that's good or bad, I'm not sure. What to do with it, I'm also not sure :).