Tour de France: Too Fast To Be Clean?

Denmark's Jonas Vingegaard claimed his second Tour de France victory on Sunday, completing the grueling 3-week, 3,401 kilometer competition with an average speed of 41.12 km/h (25.55 mph). Even before officially getting his hands on the famous maillot jaune mascot though, Vingegaard was facing tough questions regarding his pace. How was he going so fast? How was it possible to be over seven minutes ahead of a cyclist of Pogačar's caliber? Some reporters even explicitly asking: "Are you cheating?".

Vingegaard's response? In a post-stage 17 press conference, the Dane proclaimed: "For me, it’s hard to tell what more you can say. I guess, I understand that it’s hard to trust in cycling with the past there has been. But I think nowadays everyone is different than they were 20 years ago. And I can tell from my heart that I don’t take anything. I don’t take anything I would not give to my daughter, and I would definitely not give her any drugs.”

Assuming he is indeed clean, it is unfortunate for this year's victor that it has become the norm, given cycling's deservedly bad reputation, for exceptional performances to raise suspicions. As this chart shows, the Tour de France has not slowed down since the doping-infested years of the early 2000s. Whether that's due to super-fast carbon bikes, favorable routing or the use of performance-enhancing substances is a question the sport is not yet fully able to answer.