And just when you think the maximum capacity has been reached, the Veloturbos ignite another rocket stage. On the 20th stage, at the end of a three-week ordeal covering 3,400km and 52,000m of elevation [6], incidentally another 10,000m more elevation than the 2024 Giro, the organizers have packed a monster climb into the finale. At 18.5km in length, with an average gradient of 9.2%, ramps of around 14%, and gravel sections in the upper section, it’s a pure “nightmare.” A drama already unfolded on this Colle delle Finestre in 2018, which was even overshadowed by the 2025 edition. Back then, an unleashed Chris Froome attacked the overall leader Simon Yates in an 80km solo (yes, that also existed before the Pogacar era). Yates completely collapsed on that very same climb and had to concede the Tour victory to Froome. Yates’s 2018 festival of attacks, which he had celebrated on numerous previous stages, proved his undoing. Incidentally, this makes Pogacar’s 2024 Giro show all the more unbelievable in its absurd dominance, as he never showed any signs of fatigue like Yates did in 2018. Any normal person would surely capitulate at the start of a stage after such a trauma in 2018, but the extraordinary mental strength possessed by these exceptional talents is demonstrated in an inimitable way by Yates during the spectacle of this 20th stage of 2025. The fateful Yates and a strategically brilliant Visma team inflict a tactical debacle of the finest kind on the rivals UAE (del Toro) and EF (Carapaz) [7]. What Yates does, apart from his unparalleled willpower – he ultimately needs four nerve-wracking, hard attacks of his own to break away from the del Toro/Carapaz duo – leaves the expert observer in awe. Yates rides the Finestre five minutes faster than Froome did in his 2018 tour, producing approximately 6.1W/kg body weight over an hour – at the end of the three-week tour and at altitudes of over 2000m above sea level! His rival Gee delivers similarly visible performance data, averaging 408 watts at a heart rate of around 170 beats per minute [8].
With the help of the super-squad domestique van Aert, Visma also placed the perfect relay station, who of course had to get into the leading group of the day and over the Finestre; that alone was a brilliant performance by the Belgian. The way he then pulled Yates to the overall victory on the descent from the Finestre and the final climb to Sestriere is quite unique in cycling history. According to calculations, van Aert must have exerted power levels of between 450 and 500 watts for over 12 minutes to literally suck team captain Yates away from the competition [10]. A 2-minute lead quickly became 5 minutes, and his frustrated teammates subsequently surrendered, completely demoralized. With stony faces, the defeated del Toro and Carapaz reached the finish line, knowing full well that the overall victory they thought they had secured had been snatched from them on the penultimate day [11]. Incidentally, Van Aert was weakened by a viral infection when he started the Giro, but then naturally recovered after three weeks of extreme stress therapy [12], so one should definitely reconsider the relevant guidelines for relevant illnesses (irony off).
This abnormal regenerative capacity and apparent fatigue resistance of the peloton is a highly significant phenomenon in modern professional cycling that warrants critical examination. Not only in one-day races, but also in tours, the riders ride at full throttle from the start (“ready, set, coma”). This virtually only remaining tactical option, even with peak intervals during attacks at the already permanently maximum endurance level, is also mercilessly implemented over three weeks in the Grand Tours. Furthermore, this fatigue resistance is specifically optimized through high-intensity training units, meaning the training load has also increased significantly compared to previous decades. Here, too, it becomes clear what an enormous impact modern doping methods must have on the ability to regenerate. The only visible indicator of the resulting physical wear and tear is the enormous frequency of crashes.
Of course, fatigue is inevitable for all riders due to metabolic energy expenditure. In 2021, there was a very interesting graphic at the Giro d’Italia that hardly anyone noticed. Incidentally, this data analysis was never shown again in a cycling broadcast. In the stage results, the less fatigued Bernal, Martinez, Bardet, and Almeida actually finished in the lead group, while Martin lost over 3 minutes [13]. The calculation was likely based on HRV (heart rate variability) analysis via Velon [14].
In the search for the ingredients in the team pharmacies, which still play a significant role in enabling the modern performance profiles outlined above, one finds them, among other things, in a recent article by our long-serving colleague Hajo Seppelt [16]. The documentation completely revisits the prosecutor’s documents from “Operation Aderlass” [17a] that were leaked to the Seppelt editorial team. The explosive nature of the contents is far greater than all the already revealed highly criminal details about the sports mafia network exposed there. The fact that the evidence and circumstantial evidence secured during the trial were neither used for criminal purposes (due to the five-year statute of limitations) nor punished under sports law (which would have been possible with a ten-year statute of limitations), due to the complete inaction of the UCI and WADA, is a scandal in itself. It sheds a telling light on the cycling circus, which continues to engage in highly criminal sports activities and, among other things, continues to shamelessly employ personnel named and implicated in the criminal proceedings [17b]. Furthermore, a popular podcast, “Besenwagen,” apparently caused gasps when chat transcripts from Operation Aderlass were quoted from the court documents, referring to the “stuff Milram took…” This refers to the former professional cycling team Milram, and the “stuff” probably doesn’t refer to the yogurt of the eponymous main sponsor. Several protagonists would have had the opportunity to speak out as whistleblowers about the medical manipulation practices and drug applications at the time.
What “stuff” was involved becomes clear in the further investigations of the Seppelt report. It concerns the substance AICAR and its derivatives [18]. Of the 166 possible different active ingredient variants, only four compounds are tested for in routine doping analysis, and these are only detectable within a time window of a few hours; the rest can be used to manipulate performance with virtually no risk of detection [19]. A related interview [20] with the head of the Institute for Biochemistry (and Doping Analysis) at the German Sports Academy (DSHS) Cologne [21], Prof. Thevis, amounts to a confession of the control system and a capitulation to clandestine performance medicine. A closer look at the biochemical potential of AICAR suddenly reveals how this metabolic activator has become a game changer in modern professional cycling. The metabolic profile of the substance is schematically illustrated in the following illustration.
The main biosynthetic mechanisms of action and signaling cascades of AICAR are mediated by AMPK (adenosine monophosphate activated protein kinase). Of particular note is the stimulation of lipolysis (fat burning) and the significant increase in glucose utilization through increased membrane immobilization of the GLUT4 transporters, an indirect antidiabetic effect incidentally. Does the latter ring a bell? What about the sudden, significantly increased carbohydrate intake of the current generation of riders, which supposedly wasn’t possible back then? Previously, this was attempted with glucose infusions (intravenously), but this couldn’t manipulate the naturally limited metabolism rates in the substrate chains.
