Quote Originally Posted by betagirl
What makes me think he's guilty is his incredible surge in performance from last year. He won FOUR tours this year. Four. That's incredible don't ya think? It was chalked up to intense training. Did he hold back until Lance retired? I doubt that. The two really don't like each other all that much. Or did he win Le Tour because the big name contenders were out from the Spanish investigation? I guess that could be the case too. I don't know, the whole thing just smells to me.
Especially at the pro level, cycling is a multi-year sport. Floyd began working with Allen Lim last year (one of the rockstars of power-training and exercise physiology, and in my opinion one of the best coaches out there). I worked with Allen earlier this year and we discussed Floyd's training. He's focused his training for many seasons on 2006, meaning that he's trained through all these other races with the intention of peaking this year (when Lance had retired). That's not completely unusual (to have a multi-year cycle). Consider Olympic athletes. They may have smaller goal competitions, but their full training cycle is focused on one competition that's held every four years.

Until last year, Floyd wasn't a team leader either. He was a domestique for Lance on USPS and was expected to lieutenant for Tyler Hamilton on Phonak last year (until Tyler got the boot). Once Tyler was out, Floyd was moved into a team leader position.

It's not unusual for pro athletes to spend many years (a decade in Floyd's case) developing their potential. In cycling, an athlete gains experience, skills, works his way up the domestic and then international team structure, gains experience in different classics and stage races, serves as a domestique, points winner or stage winner in the TdF, and as the race leader in smaller tours before he'd even consider a goal such as winning TdF. Think about it. There are almost 200 racers in TdF, but in reality, only a handful of them are truly contenders to win the race in any given year.