I'm trying not to pick sides but here are a few arguments they oppose to these key points :
- Technological advancement : Although it does play a role, they measure power in long climbs to limit that bias. Speeds are lower so aero plays less of a role. Bikes were already as light or even lighter in the 2000s. They also calibrate their power predictions against riders of the peloton who publish their power on strava.
- Nutrition has indeed changed, it helps producing near max power efforts at the end of long stages (aka durability) but doesn't play a direct role on pure max power (VO2 max related) which is what they are worried about.
- Regarding training, I'm not really sure, I think the pro peloton already had access to power meters in the 2000s.
- Regarding testing, it's indeed quite frequent but it's not bullet proof.
- I think the history of the sport is so bad it's hard to see the half full glass.
There is this french website[0] which (among other things) analyses TdF performances over the years.
They compute power metrics based on climbing times in the mountain stages. The trend these last few years is quite worrying, reaching and going above peak doping-era performances [1].
The website is maintained by a former pro-level coach of the festina era.
On debian and Ubuntu there is the podman-docker [1] package which is really convenient. It allows you to use docker commands with podman as the underlying engine.
I'm trying not to pick sides but here are a few arguments they oppose to these key points :
- Technological advancement : Although it does play a role, they measure power in long climbs to limit that bias. Speeds are lower so aero plays less of a role. Bikes were already as light or even lighter in the 2000s. They also calibrate their power predictions against riders of the peloton who publish their power on strava.
- Nutrition has indeed changed, it helps producing near max power efforts at the end of long stages (aka durability) but doesn't play a direct role on pure max power (VO2 max related) which is what they are worried about.
- Regarding training, I'm not really sure, I think the pro peloton already had access to power meters in the 2000s.
- Regarding testing, it's indeed quite frequent but it's not bullet proof.
- I think the history of the sport is so bad it's hard to see the half full glass.