I'm a casual triathlete and it's an open secret that many of the top age group competitors are doping. In particular a lot of the older men are on TRT without having an approved therapeutic use exception. The race organizers do little or no testing because it's expensive and they don't want to piss off customers.
VO2 Max is the maximum amount of oxygen that someone can metabolize measured. The highest measured VO2 Max scores are about 96 ml/min/kg. No one can sustain a true VO2 Max effort for more than about 10 minutes, and there is only a loose correlation with FTP.
I agree, the reason this guy got caught was because it was anomolous performance at the end. If he had managed his cheat differently it would've been nearly impossible to detect.
I'm wondering how big a difference we would've seen if the cheater in question here had performed a more consistent w/kg above his V02Max, (but not signifcantly outside the realm of his V02Max), for the entire race.
They say he had a sudden performance of 500+W and his V02Max was in the 400s, I feel like a more smooth/consistent race in the higher 400s rather than a burst at the end would've been a lot harder to catch.
Basically... just more plausible smoothing so that no individual piece of the race would come into question.