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Five-time Tour de France winner Bernard Hinault defended Tadej Pogacar in the face of “doubts” over his credibility as the Slovenian neared a dominant yellow-jersey triumph.
Pogacar produced some spectacular performances en route to claiming a third title in Nice on Sunday, including a fifth stage win atop the Col de la Couillole on Saturday and another win in the final time-trial.
His ride on stage 15 was particularly eye-catching, surging to the Plateau de Beille summit in record time to clinch victory on Bastille Day. It was later estimated Pogacar rode at almost 7 watts per kilogram for nearly 40 minutes, output that was unthinkable a decade ago. Pogacar himself admitted he is producing the “highest numbers I ever did in my career”.
The 25-year-old, who has never failed an anti-doping test, has been rigorously tested throughout this Tour, where the International Testing Agency has conducted what it called “one of the most comprehensive anti-doping programmes” ever implemented, collecting around 600 blood and urine samples through the race.
That hasn’t stopped unfounded rumours about Pogacar’s performance circulating on social media platforms. That talk intensified this week after an investigation by Escape Collective revealed how elite teams are using controversial carbon monoxide rebreathing equipment in altitude training camps. The equipment could be used for performance enhancement, although it is not banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency and three teams – Visma, UAE Emirates and Israel Premier Tech – insist they use it only for measuring purposes.
It also didn’t help this week when Lance Armstrong, who was stripped of his seven Tour titles for cheating, warned that Pogacar should reel in his attacking style so as to avoid speculation. “I would advise him to lay low a bit more,” Armstrong said. “Sometimes you have to think about perception and image.”
Hinault dismissed the talk around Pogacar, however, suggesting there is more scepticism in France because, unlike himself, Pogacar is not a French rider.
“I am disgusted... Why do we always express doubts?” Hinault wrote in a column for Ouest France. “Let’s stop asking these questions all the time! It’s ridiculous. Is there any proof? If I were in his place and I had these performances, would there be suspicion? No. As soon as it’s a foreigner, we always raise doubts. You have to use everything you have to win, and Pogacar is doing what it takes to win.”
Pogacar evaded questions about carbon monoxide rebreathing after stage 16, initially saying: “I heard this, I was thinking about car exhausts, I don’t know. I have no comment on it. I don’t know what it is. Maybe I am just uneducated.”
But he opened up the following day, saying: “Yesterday, I didn’t quite understand the question. It’s a test in altitude camp to see how you respond to altitude. You need to do this test, it’s like a two- or three-minute-long test. You breathe into a balloon for one minute and then you see the haemoglobin mass, and then you need to repeat it two weeks after.
“But I did just the first part of the test. I never did the second part because the girl who was supposed to come after two weeks didn’t come. It’s not like we’re breathing exhaust pipes every day in the cars. It’s just a pretty simple test to see how you respond to altitude training.”
His main rival, Jonas Vingegaard, also said that it was only used as a diagnostic tool. “It’s to measure how much haemoglobin you have in your blood,” he told Danish newspaper Politiken. “There is nothing suspicious about it. We measure how many red blood cells you have in your blood and the effect of altitude training camp. It is one thing [to presume] what training at altitude did for you. Now we actually have something that can measure it.
“They [the doctors] say that they send something into the lungs that is similar to smoking a cigarette. We measure the day we get to our high-altitude camp and then [on] the day we go back down. Then we see the difference in how much haemoglobin is built up. There is nothing more to it.”
Pogacar also dismissed questions about “Mou”, a mysterious social media figure who has gained a significant following after claiming to have inside information about Pogacar and correctly predicting the Slovenian’s improvement this season.
“I have heard in recent days the he has received a lot of attention. He is right about some of that, but most of it is wrong,” Pogacar said. “I don’t know who that guy is and what his purpose is. He is just trying to be important on Twitter and on various forums. I don’t follow it, but I’ve heard a lot about it and people ask. Maybe we can all figure it out together. It is perhaps more your job than it is mine to find out who he is”.
