Originally Posted by
vane171
'Best' can well be misleading here. These riders often sacrifice safety to highest speed. Like they sit on the top tube, which is now against race regulations I understand. Here she obviously didn't keep the saddle stabilized between her thighs, else it couldn't oscillate like it does in the video.
“Best” meaning they have top end bike handling skills. Ever see the time Peter Sagan bunny hopped his bike over a rider that fell on the cobbles in Paris Roubaix? That = best.
So if you think Chloe Dygert doesn’t have “best in class” bike handling skills, then I’m not quite sure what to say. When you get into a resonance state, if she can’t get out of it, then pretty much the rest of the cycling population
couldn’t either. From the slo-mo I looked at, it’s pretty clear she was approaching resonance or certainly under damped. Most of the issue here was equipment, IMO.
It’s pretty clear what happened from the video. You can see it directly. She’s in a sweeping right hand curve, her front tire hits a pavement imperfection that starts an oscillation in the frame and pops her even more forward. She has to straighten out because of the oscillation and runs out of road when she hits the guard rail as the curve cuts her off.
Arguably, the frame should not have oscillated from a normal road imperfection yet that’s what happened. If she couldn’t get it back under control, I’m sure I couldn't have. She was waaaaay ahead on the clock at that time, I doubt she was past the edge of control for her on that bike.
It’s interesting that she’s switches bike sponsors. Maybe they couldn’t satisfy her that they’d found the problem. Then again, maybe it’s just a better financial deal. All I know, from an engineering perspective, if I were her I’d have to have a pretty compelling case made for me that they found the root cause before I’d get back on that frame design again in a race.