TdF 1996, stage 7 - the day everything happened

No.

Quite the opposite, it selects for certain physical abilities.

Compare the mountain stages of the late 80s to this one. From small wiry climbers to huge muscular guys like Zulle, Indurain, Ullrich, Armstrong even. Good luck finding mountain stage winners weighing 75+kg before EPO.

In fact, after world war 2 and before EPO, there was 1 Tour de France winners 1,80m or taller. Eddy Merckx. Since EPO came into the sport, there have been too many to count.

Lucho Herrera retired and specifically said he retired because "riders with big asses are climbing like aeroplanes"

If you have a large amount of muscle to propel you, you're not going to be able to get enough oxygen into it to use it to ride at tempo. You can do some short efforts, but that's about it. With EPO you can use that bigger muscle mass for aerobic long range efforts. So bigger riders with more muscle can climb.

Or, as Aldo Sassi, Cancellara's trainer once said, "If Fabian rode in the 90s he and Tony Martin would be fighting for the Tour de France"

If you don't have that muscle? You're screwed.

But wait, that's not all. EPO increases your hematocrit (and therefore your oxygen carrying ability) that's how it increases performance.

Let's say for the sake of argument that the increase is 1% for every 1% extra hematocrit. Now, some team doctors would allow riders to go only up to 54% like Festina. Pantani was famously clocked at 60% and so was Ugrumov.

Riis was accused by his soigneur of going up to 64%. The higher you go, the more likely it is you'll die because your blood has so many red blood cells it's no longer liquid, it's sludge that won't go around your veins.

So whatever arbitrary limit you want to set, there is a limit. So let's say it's 54%.

Now, if you have a natural hematocrit of 48%, you can get a 6% increase. Nice, huh! 6% is huge!...

Oh wait, Giorgio Furlan's natural hematocrit is around 37.5%. He can get a 16.5% increase.

So he can do the record ascent of the Poggio, still unbeaten to this day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2cHn3DMDok So yeah, screwed.

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