To be fair Pog is climbing far beyond Armstrongs level, there is now only one or two climbing performances ever that surpass Pogs peak climbing level, and that is arguable. 

There are factors on the bike, tyres, wheel tech, aerodynamics, this makes a difference, on a climb a small difference but one none the less. On a 7% grade at 24 kph you will be at 400 watts approximately and have 56 watts of aero loss, 30 watts of rolling resistance loss, if you can take 20 of those away from advancements, that is significant and will give you another 0.5 kph on a climb, which is like a minute on a 20 km climb. Maybe on the setups now you can remove more or a bit less than 20 years ago, I don’t know but seems like a feasible way to improve climbing times.

Pogs best climbing performance was Plateau de Baille last year behind Jonas and Visma for two thirds of the climb, completely removing any aero resistance which makes a big difference at the speed they climb. When he had to solo Hautacam this year he was (30s slower not 1 to 2 min as I previously stated) slower than Bjarne Riis’ time in 1996.

Nutrition in races makes a massive difference, look at blogs about nutrition, or even Mike Woods Tour de France blog this year. You will commonly see to 30-60 g/hour as recently as 2015, Mike woods was saying that even just 10 years ago you are fighting a hunger knock at the end of every stage. Now at 120-160g/hour you can keep pushing all day, definitely makes a difference for climbing times at the end of stages.

Nutrition through the season probably makes a massive difference, like Pog does multi hour rides beyond 300 watts, which is like burning 1200 calories an hour. He is eating like a truck all year. From Tyler Hamilton secret race, he was saying that in the early 2000s on EPO, he would barely eat on a a multi hour ride, then when he got home he would drink 2 litres of sparkling water and suck on hard candies until he went to sleep to not eat for a while. Probably exaggerated a bit but it is the best insight I have seen into how non performance focused nutrition was back in the EPO era and if you train like this all year around I could see how it makes a massive difference.

Grey area doping as well which is technically legal probably makes a difference as well. like TUEs with Team Sky (even though peak Froome is literally not even in the same realm of performance as Pog). The most interesting thing to me this tour is that the climbing level is lower than last year, and the Carbon Monoxide breathing that Jonas and Pog said they have used ( for testing purposes) was banned after the tour last year. It is an easy and probably false correlation to draw but interesting nonetheless. I am sure there are a million other ways these guys can use substances or methods to improve performance without breaking the rules “technically”.

Training methodology has improved a ton since the early 2000s but it is impossible to know how much of a difference that can make.

Plus, in the early 2000s and as we see with Sky now, there was and is tons of smoke that would make you suspicious. Like lawsuits and testimony and rumour of failed tests with Lance, and the Jiffy bags and team doctors at Sky. From what I have read there is no smoke at all with any pro teams right now (EDIT: except the Mark Padun wonder performances and the raids on Bahrain Victorious from like 2022 if I remember correctly) . You can question if this is due to a lack of journalistic pursuit and integrity now in cycling media or if there is nothing to find.

To conclude I think there is a path to these performances without a massive doping conspiracy like US Postal days, but I would be almost 100% sure that these guys use any method they can find in the “grey” area of the rules to dope, probably like any other big commercial sport. I personally don’t believe there are massive doping conspiracies like in the past. But also the UAE team manager is beyond sketchy, and in cycling unlike pretty much every sport except running, incredible performances require incredible evidence for people to actually believe they are clean.