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Are Vingegaard and Pog outliers in professional cycling? They are certainly one of a minority that win (right now) but their lead on the road is literally half a dozen km after 3000 km of racing.
Cycle sport isn’t globally accessible at all and we’ve only just started using technology to find/make champions so there’ll definitely be many more Sags, Berns n Pogs.
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What I find interesting is you take all the people that cycle in the world, and then you find all the ones that are the very best, and then even in that tiny 0.00001 percentile, there is still one guy who can blow those others away.
Its less suprising if you consider that the Tour peloton isn't a rigorous sample of the best of all the active cyclists in the world but sort of a random jumble of riders with great physiology + access to high quality coaching + access to professional pathways. Perhaps only Vingegaard would actually be in that sample if we had a way to equalise the other variables.
The progress is to be totally expected. What I find interesting is you take all the people that cycle in the world, and then you find all the ones that are the very best, and then even in that tiny 0.00001 percentile, there is still one guy who can blow those others away.
To be absolutely clear, I in no way think V-man is doping and find that chat boring. I just find it fascinating that at the very pointy end you still have these outliers.
Messi is the better example given the sheer number of people in the world that play football so I’d hypothesise it’s much harder to make it as a footballer. Yet he could still run rings round the very best athletes in the sport.
(Shit just realised the convo has moved on and I hadn’t refreshed)