With its lax approach to the topic of doping, the organizer of the ÖRM is at least doing a lot to massively damage the credibility of the event. In 2012, Jan Ullrich was hired as a brand ambassador for the ÖRM, which at that time was closed worldwide, including for amateur racing [17]! The ÖRM regulations point out in the subjunctive that there may be doping controls [18a], but concrete test reports cannot be found anywhere; the first official tests were not carried out until 2017 anyway [18b]. In the finale of the live broadcast of this year’s ÖRM you can watch how an unbridled Stefano Cecchini races up the Timmelsjoch to end up in third place. Cecchini? The older ones among us will certainly immediately, and rightly so, prick up their ears. He is in fact the son of the former dubious Dr. Luigi Cecchini, who has been helpful to many doping grandees in the professional circuit and was a student of the legendary Doctor EPO, Michele Ferrari [19].
It is therefore worth taking a closer look at the performance data analysis of this year’s two winners in the men’s and women’s rankings. The winner of the ÖRM 2022 and 2024, Jack Burke (29 years old, 1.80m, 67kg), has a very strange and dubious doping history. Allegedly contaminated drinking water led to his former positive diuretic doping result. He got away with this water contamination hypothesis without ever testing the water at the source in question [20]! But let us now turn to Burke’s performance profile [21], which has now been published, and which reveals almost unbelievable data. The Canadian completes the ÖRM in a new record time of 6h:49min (despite the additional climb in Sterzing, which was not present in previous editions), with an average power of 256W (3.82W/kg), which corresponds to a normalized power (NP, [22]) of 314W (4.69W/kg), a peak in the best 20min with 398W (5.94W/kg) at the Jaufenpass and a total caloric turnover of approx. 6300kJ – 6700kJ. His winning time is only 12 minutes better than that of the world-class professional Roman Kreuzinger, who completed the only professional edition of the ÖRM at the time (on the old, less difficult route!) in 6 hours: 37 minutes [23].
What Burke says in his podcast is also particularly insightful [24]. At the Jaufenpass, where his solo ride to victory began, he pedaled peak values of 440-450 watts, with 392 watts (Strava) and 410 watts (podcast) average power in this climb, which was an incredible 5.9 W/kg body weight over approx. 45 minutes at an average speed of 19.6km/h. He then flew up the Timmelsjoch with Ø358 watts and 5.34 W/kg body weight at 20.8 km/h in 81 minutes! He rode the Strava KOM (King of the Mountain, i.e. the best time of all ascents/descents ever registered) on the Jaufenpass (uphill and downhill) and Timmelsjoch (uphill) against all the top professional cyclists from the World Tour teams, for example during the TOTA (Tour of the Alps). In the top group he still achieves Ø322 watts at 4.8 W/kg body weight over almost 1 hour on the Kühtai, the burner is ironed out with Ø220 watts and 3.28 W/kg body weight in 1 hour:16 minutes. Burke explains all of this with the switch to a new, previously unknown, Canadian trainer and his innovative AI-based training methodology. When it comes to argumentation strategies, the athletes are at least as resourceful as they are when using other performance-enhancing ingredients. A week later he topped his values again at the Kitzbüheler Marathon (216km, 4600hm [25]), where he achieved the best 20min with 407W (6.07W/kg body weight) on the extremely steep final climb of the Kitzbüheler Horn (7.7km with Ø12.1 % incline!) mobilized after already completing a 5h:50min race and approx. 5000kJ total energy expenditure. Values that Pantani, Ullrich or Armstrong have just achieved in the ultra-difficult stages of the Tour de France and with which you can still compete in the World Tour today. All of this is done by a “hobby driver” in an open-air race, well, it must be due to “climate change”, the warmer temperatures probably provide more buoyancy.
