Jed19

BBC Sport - Mark Cavendish on sprinting: 'It's not like playing chess'

Interesting perspective. Hope the mods don't move this to racing, as it is technical as well as philosophical.

Campag4life

Fascinating thanks. Max speed 48 mph. Mind blowing. Average speed of the peleton the last 10 km, 30 mph.
Those guys are from another planet. The best are always astounding.

HardyWeinberg

"Bollards"; I did recently hear about "meat pylons"

Clipped_in

Thanks for posting that. Very interesting read!

popeye

The best I have read in some time. Thanks

therhodeo

I'm a big pro cycling fan and follow a huge portion of races but good lord I hate pro cycling publicity pieces.

milkbaby

Pretty good interview and read! Thanks for posting!

Antonio_V

I'm surprised Cav shared it. It's a brilliant detailed account.

bigdo13

GREAT read.... always interesting to hear what Cav has to share....

he gave a lot of proper respect to his lead out man Renshaw in this... That was classy..

Jed19

I am starting to wonder if Cavendish over-shared on his sprint approach

The Gorilla probably read the BBC piece and committed it to memory.

Athens80

They were on the same team for years.

colnago62

He was Cav's lead out man wasn't he?

Athens80

Now that you bring it up, they often went to different races because two top sprinters on one team in one race is one too many. Greipel missed getting to the Tour de France because he was on T-Mobile / High Road 2006-2010. He needed to leave because that team would rightly take Cav to the TdF.

I don't know what races they were actually at together as teammates. I just figure that Cav's secret tactics at the TdF were not so secret for the #2 sprinter on the same team.

rpenmanparker 

I have never understood why you need you own lead out man. Supposing your teammates are locked up in the back of the pack or beat or even have abandoned. So why not just get behind some other strong competitor who is being led out. Sure you are then two places behind, but that is very common anyway. And the draft is likely to be better.

Mumonkan

interesting read, but it always depresses me when i see these hugely successful athletes that are my age (sometimes younger) while im here getting amped about my rides with 19mph avg

rpenmanparker 

An appreciation of statistical distributions in the human population pretty effectively quells that emotional response. They are just on a different part of the bell curve is all. You might even call them freaks. Nothing about that to covet.

Peter2290

Pretty cool article, thanks for sharing!

GuitarBob

When you've got your own guy, there's no guessing -- he's working for you in an entirely predictable way amidst the freak-out. When guys lose their lead-out for some reason, they do just what you described -- get on someone's wheel who they know is going to the front.

Watch Sagan's recent sprints (including the one today); he's on his own and he does a damned remarkable job of it.

colnago62

He has done a great job given the circumstances. You noticed he hasn't won a stage, yet. If everything goes correctly, your lead out man has brought you close enough to the line so that you can ride accelerate to your top speed all the way to the line. It is very difficult to come around a rider who is still accelerating.

Deontologist

This only works if your competitors aren't thinking the same thing.

Jed19

I think Cav started his sprint too early on today's stage (maybe he panicked or got flustered after losing Renshaw's wheel). Watch where Greipel came from to take the stage. And Greipel also almost got pipped by Sagan at the line.

Yeah, GuitarBob, I wonder how good Sagan can be if he had his very own lead out man. He is a remarkably intelligent rider who knows where to be at in sprint finales, from what I can see.

GuitarBob

If you watched the overhead view of today's sprint, both Greipel and Sagan came around Cav like he was standing still. And Jed, I agree, with another few meters Sagan would have won.

All of these guys are superhuman, but I like Sagan because he's so well-balanced and so often in the money.

Jed19

And only 25! We often forget that.

CharlyAlfaRomeo

You're already a bike length behind the guy you're trying to beat when the sprint starts. Unless you have a significantly higher top speed than him your only hope is that he fades nearing the line and you can come around or you allow a slight gap to form and you catch him by surprise, slingshot into the draft and then past him.

The problem with allowing the gap to open is that someone else will usually try and take the wheel ahead and then you find yourself two bike lengths back before the sprint opens up.

TrojanHorse

And yet Sagan really isn't the best pure sprinter, he's not a great climber and he's not the best time trialer, but he's a fantastic all-rounder.

Interesting to hear Cavendish confess that he doesn't think he's the most powerful sprinter. In Stage 2, it looked like he just went too early - he basically provided lead out services to others. He's a hard man to beat in a straight up sprint, although obviously it happens.