79pmooney

Average Tour speeds are very driven by how hard the race is ridden. Long ago, the flat long stages were rolling club rides. Riders stopped in villages to raid stores for food and drinks, then catch up to the field and share them. The Tour has grown up. Far more money, prestige and expectations. Yes, the rolling rest days still happen, but far less. (The Tour itself plays a part here. They keep shortening and concentrating the stages to boost speeds and excitement. Well the riders are still human. Too many hard stages and the riders tire out. And they are working stiffs, despite all the fancy gear. Boss lays on them too often and they go on strike, only in theTour, they are rolling strikes.)

So average speeds? Shorter, more intense stages boost those speeds. A slow long one in protest (or just tired legs) slows that average quite a bit. Just look at the actual finish times vs what the organizers planned based on fastest and slowest expected speeds. I think they missed both this year by a half hour or so!

And there are the game changers. Aero equipment, far lighter bikes. Pavement. (That one works both ways. Think gravel and cobbles.) The courses, the weather. Note that all this stuff happens without (edit: where's my proofreader?) any drugs involved at all.

And to the original topic - Pogacar - read my post #7. First two paragraghs I outline what must be done to win the Tour and then, what the other key teams failed to do last year. Well Pogacar and team should have read my post and taken it seriously. This year they screwed up as badly as J-V did last year and J-V got it, well not perfect, but pretty close. I won't for a second claim the peloton is clean but I do not see evidence from the past several Tours that drugs are having a driving influence.