Danish physiologist believes Pogacar and Vingegaard are not doping: "Armstrong and Pantani with EPO would blow them away on long passes"

Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar are currently in the midst of the fight to win the Tour de France. On the Danish website Feltet, sports physiologist Nikolai Baastrup, head of the Department of Nutrition at the University of Copenhagen, has conducted an investigation on both cyclists and concluded that they are not doping. In fact, he wanted to compare their performance with that of Lance Armstrong and Marco Pantani, giving a curious opinion.

"I have analyzed his training data, stress tests, medical analysis and much more data from the last few years and there is something that allows me to give enormous credibility to his performances and that is that he has had a stable sporting development, his achievements have not been something that comes out of the blue, overnight as happened in the times of the free epo bar and blood transfusions," commented the Dane about Vingegaard in statements translated by the Diario del Triatlón.

The Nordic physiologist explained why he believes Vingegaard does not dope: "I have noticed that his performances seem to be stable and that is positive. It substantiates the story that it happens naturally. What we saw in the old days with doping was some obvious fluctuations in performance. One day people were flying over mountain tops and the next day they couldn't keep up. We don't really see that anymore. On the surface it looks reliable."

Putting Armstrong and Pantani on the same level, something that has not been proven, Baastrup said that the doped American and Italian would destroy Pogacar and Vingegaard on long climbs:

"Vingegaard and Pogacar are very powerful on short climbs but Armstrong and Pantani with EPO or transfusions would blow them away on long passes, and more so with today's training, because that doping allowed them to delay fatigue and hold on longer in terms of high power. That doesn't happen now when the climbs are very long."

The Dane concludes by stating that if there is doping today it would be less aggressive than two or three decades ago: "If there is anyone doing something illegal today it would be at a much lower level than 20 or 30 years ago. What Pogacar and Vingegaard are achieving is within the parameters that human beings can achieve in a natural way even if you see very high levels of watts/kilo."