Some numbers from the 2006 tour

There was some discussion in yesterday's roundup whether or not Landis' Stage 17 was out-of-line with his other stages, and thereby itself suggesting something untoward. A columnist said it was so, we said it wasn't and gave some numbers.
A comment here said we were calling "black" "white", and we have some more numbers now.

[MORE]


Yesterday, we challenged a Sydney Morning Herald columnist who wrote

It's funny how we viewers can now pick the drug cheats - just look at the ones that suddenly produce an unbelievable stage effort totally out of sync with their previous form: hello Floyd Landis.

We said then,

Funny, we seem to recall Landis in Yellow not two days before, having dragged the first group up the Alpe d'Huez. I don't remember Evans being at the head of any final climb in a mountain stage this year. And like Landis, Evans was second in the first time trial. Out of sync with previous form? More misinformation. Over at the CycleOps site, Allen Lim put up a table of Landis' climb data in 2006, which shows what he did on S17 consistent with earlier climbs, particularly Alpe d'Huez.

Make no mistake, S17 was a big day, but not the biggest KJ of the tour -- Stages 11 and 16 were more work. What is tactically notable is how the big climb was the first one. I also find S15 and S17 have normalized w/kgs of 5.47 and 5.69, which are solid, but not out-of-this-world.

Out of sync? The data says the columnist is making it up.

A comment said,

The stage 17 thing seems to be one of those TBV arguments that White is Black.

Amusingly the normalized W/kg was apparently computed but not given.
Maybe because it does make appear that stage 17 was out of the ordinary after all. Here is the actual data:
* S10: 5.15
* S11: 5.12
* S14: 4.90
* S15: 5.44
* S16: 4.75
* S17: 5.69
The two best stages are S15 and S17, by are margin. So it is a little more than the peloton was slow in S17, and Landis performed as usual. The averages obvious the dramatic let down in S16, maybe because S15 took a toll, or other reason.
But then, the next day, Landis was born again, since he had its best performance of the data set. Not only that but if you look at the full table, S17 is the only stage where he consistently performed above 5.5 (S15 comes close though).
And he did it with a 125km solo breakaway (not in the comfort of the peloton or small group), catching back the racers of the previous initial break, who then dropped like flies as time went.

So yes, his performance in stage 17 was extraordinary. The media emphazied it rightly so, if you are not convinced, you are deep in denial, please google the press articles of the time.

Well, I didn't want to bore people with spreadsheet data in the roundup, but the point the commenter missed was the total energy output of the stage vs. the effort placed into climbs. I've collected and collated the relevant data three ways, to show what points one can reasonably argue, as follows.

Here's the raw data:

sorted by
stage	kj	w/kg	kj/w/kj
10	1848	5.15	358.79
11	3531	5.04	701.06
14	1840	5.32	345.94
15	2351	5.47	429.46
16	4638	4.75	976.54
17	2989	5.69	525.22

The expended kilo-joules on a route is about the same for all riders of the same weight. When sorted by total energy output, we see S17 was the third hardest day of the tour. Stages 11 and 16 were harder, and S16 was by far the most work. It's clear from all this data that S16 was the "killer" stage of the 2006 tour, which probably wasted the riders who rode it all out to the end. This had its effects the next day on S17.

	Sorted by
stage	kj	w/kg	kj/w/kg
15	2351	5.47	429.46
14	1840	5.32	345.94
10	1848	5.15	358.79
17	2989	5.69	525.22
11	3531	5.04	701.06
16	4638	4.75	976.54

Now, sorted by weighted average w/kg total, we have the numbers mentioned yesterday. These are the worst-case looking numbers for Landis, which is why I used them. They are the rate of energy output per stage by weight; this is where S17 appears to be the "out of line" value.

		Sorted by
stage	kj	w/kg	kj/w/kg
16	4638	4.75	976.54
11	3531	5.04	701.06
10	1848	5.15	358.79
14	1840	5.32	345.94
15	2351	5.47	429.46
17	2989	5.69	525.22

Note that 5.49 to 5.69 is a 3.96% difference. Whether that difference is an indication of doping is pretty debatable.

What is more interesting is when you factor out the intensity of the total stage, and look at the last column, total work / rate of work, which is kj / (w/kg):

			Sorted by
stage	kj	wkj	kj/w/kg	% diff
14	1840	5.32	345.94
10	1848	5.15	358.79	3.72%
15	2351	5.47	429.46	19.70%
17	2989	5.69	525.22	22.30%
11	3531	5.04	701.06	33.48%
16	4638	4.75	976.54	39.29%

Considering the stage difficulty, Stage 17's rate of output was mid-pack. Stage 16 was by far the hardest, followed by Stage 11 -- consistent with the amount of work required for each stage. This also show how brutal S16 was.

The other argument not addressed is that 5.69 is not an earth-shattering number -- the border line of "extraterrestrial-land" seems to be over 6.0 and higher.