I pulled this from the Ferrari diary. I found it most interesting, as
Dr. Ferrari seems to be claiming Petacchi achieved what no research study has yet to even
suggest thus far:
"It is rather unsurprising that Alessandro Petacchi, the most explosive and uncontrollable rider in
sprints so far, suffers so much as soon as the road goes uphill, even though he proudly defended
himself whenever climbing in the past racing seasons.
The great enhancement of Petacchi's sprinting abilities has come out exactly at the same time of his
worsening of climbing qualities. In fact he has been able to transform part of his 'intermediate'
muscle fibers into fast twitch ones, improving his sprint to the detriment of his aerobic power."
While it is possible to train your fast twitch fibers to be "more aerobic", I can find nothing to
support Ferrari's anecdotes; is he saying Pettachi barely rides over an hour and just does short
sprint training? Even sprint track riders don't ascribe to this method. So what kind of training
could have caused such a conversion? Maybe it was orange juice.
This reminds of Patani's physiologist/Doctor who claimed that Pantani actually increased his RBC
count when he trained making him the only known human to be able to do so.
Just thought I'd throw this out there.
Chris Harnish