When Chris Froome video data from Team Sky found its way into the public domain two weeks ago, that information was published by Antoine Vayer, who says the information was leaked.
The French journalist is a former coach for the Festina cycling team during the '90s, who has long railed against doping and has scrutinized Froome's extra-ordinary performances.
He has worked on Not Normal? An insight into doping and the 21 biggest riders from LeMond to Armstrong to Evans which breaks down some of the performances of 21 high profile riders, old and new, and also looks to set parameters for the possibilities of purely human performance.
The man himself joined us on Off The Ball tonight to talk about his work and he also touched on the magic number when it comes to the limits a non-doped rider can reach when it comes to power output.
Listen to the full interview via the podcast:
On his view of the current situation in the sport, he also had interesting things to say.
"We saw in the past year many [signs of] progress because performances were decreased. Then some guys like Chris Froome appear and it is the same performances. So that makes a lot of questions," said Vayer, before explaining his motivation for publishing the video data.
Last night in Ger's interview with The Sunday Times sportswriter and anti-doping journalist David Walsh, the Seven Deadly Sin author said he "wouldn't have a clue about power wattage" and that the evidence used to build the picture about Lance Armstrong came from the key witnesses rather than being data-based.
But Vayer says he and Walsh did converse about power output back in 1999, replying "of course" when asked.
"I spoke to him about [former rider Christophe] Bassons about his numbers compared to Lance Armstrong's numbers," he said.
Vayer also feels that the likes of Lance Armstrong should be drafted in to help catch future drug cheats.
"The best hackers are the best people to defend people from hacking. I think Lance and [Johan] Bruyneel hacked the system and we should have employed them to see who are again the cycling hackers," he said.
He also says he is getting "more and more" riders are giving him insider information about what is going on in the Tour, and suggests there "is a change of mentality" among some cyclists when it comes to caving into doping practices.
However, he did make the point that "there are plenty of ways to cheat and plenty of ways to lie" when it comes to the current cycling scene.
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