Doping

What, like the advent of blood vector doping?

You only need to have watched racing over the past 30 years to notice changes. Climbing speeds went off the scale in the early 1990s, and previously unheralded riders, hello Claudio, Greuzie Tony, suddenly became world beaters.

In recent years, speeds have definitely slowed. **Vayer is trying to quantify that but his methods, which he doesn't publish, which makes it unscientific in my book, are a bit suspect. **But his ratings are in line with anecdotal evidence.

I agree, but you say it so much better. But comparing thirty year old times to present day times, which have slowed, and saying one is clean and one is suspect, ignores all the advances in technology, training, nutrition etc that has occurred.

Also comparing speeds of individual climbs takes out climatic variables: wind direction, precipitation, air density. Also things like road surface, which will change over time.

The other factor which may render this largely moot is that given people are aware of physiological performance limits, so riders can use their power meters and soft pedal up climbs to avoid setting off any alarms. Instead modern doping is less about turbo charging and more about recovery, consistency and weight loss while maintaining power, which means someone can fly completely under the radar when it comes to climbing speeds but can still be doped to the gills.