Treefox

I believe they had a TT in the Tour of Dubai in which they had to use their normal kit...

If memory serves...

But I think it was quite flat.

seppomadness

No they are not. It is a skill. It allows you (if you wanted) to put a whole bunch of 20somethings on a team and control them from the car. Radios end careers earlier IMO i.e the value of the 'wily old cat' is diminished!


Yes but there is a physical and strategic 'cost' to acquiring the information if you take away the ear piece. Right now there is virtually none. If you want accurate information then you have to 'pay' for it by returning a chess piece to the support car and then returning the rider back to the bunch. This may well be seen a small nuance to some but its all part of the strategic element of the sport which is diminished at present by the ear piece.


And a tennis player can nail a big serve all day long at training but can he respond late in a 5th set when he is down 0-40? That is part of the reason why we watch. How does the individual respond under mental fatigue? In tennis they intrinsically understand allowing the athlete to engage a coach or advisor is a 'mental refuge'. It takes away from the purity of contest.

Spectators are fascinated by epic failures almost as much as epic victories. When building the framework of your sport you need to keep this very much at the forefront of your mind.

When our GC riders are 19 days into a GT and on a 200km stage with 4 Cat1 climbs and they are on their limit can they maintain absolute vigilance on all their rivals? Can they operate mentally under immense physical stress? Do they know their bodies inside out?

They need to take away both the ear piece and the power data from all riders in grand tours during competition.

I have tried to convince the 'big cheeses' around here (Classic1 etal) about this
and they are slowly giving ground. Its a hard slog drumming logic into a bunch of cycling geriatrics...

Voodoo76

Really have to disagree. Big difference between constant instantaneous feedback and calculation of gaps and occasional snapshots. You think so many breaks are caught with under 2K to go just because the riders are professionals?? No! Many teams have a vested interest in catching the break w/o enough time left for a counter. These are often the Teams chasing (setting up sprinters). Leave that up to just rider judgement and perhaps that break is caught at 5K and their is a regrouping or counter. Or perhaps they misjudge and don't catch at all. How often do you see either happen any more?

asgelle

Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

NotAsFat

Some of us "cycling geriatrics" still remember the "good old days", when guys like Merckx would ride the wheels off the peloton - and would like to bring them back.

Seriously, today's contenders spend most of the race wheelsucking and hoping the other guys will crack. The only thing that will get a GC contender out on a breakaway nowadays is desperation. So let's create a little desperation by creating a stage where:

1. All the contenders have to give their maximum effort or possibly lose the race.
2. The duration is long enough and the terrain varied enough that the riders can't just dial it up to their CP(race duration) and avoid crashing.
3. The duration is long enough that the riders have to watch out for fatigue-induced mistakes.
4. Is demanding enough that if a rider does cinch the race with a win, he's earned it.
5. Should be early enough in the tour that riders that lost time on the stage have some opportunities to make up the lost time.

The time trial is sometimes called "the race of truth". However, modern TT practices, such as short, flat courses and absurd aero equipment, have diluted that truth. Lose the aero crap, put in enough hills to shake out the fat boys, make it long enough that you have to pick your attacks carefully, and you can restore the TT to its proper place in the grand scheme of cycling - the best way of picking the best rider.

asgelle

And freewheels. It used to be to win a 200 mile stage, you had to pedal 200 miles. Now riders pedal less than half the distance on some stages.

MDcatV

not as fat - keep selling, eventually someone will buy your 80 mile TT over the tourmalet.

DrWJODonnell

This dilutes the truth how? It seems to me that pretty much everyone in the tour rides (roughly) the same equipment and therefore I don't see how a TT bike, a pointy helmet or disc wheels are "diluting the truth."

Please explain?

asgelle

In fact, alllowing equipment that lets each rider optimize his power to drag ratio levels the playing field. Artificial constraints on position or equipment benefits those whose ratio is better under those contraints at the expense of the riders who might perform better under a different set of rules. For example, now a rider who has a hump in his back can choose a helmet that works well when the hump is there; while one with a flat back, can use a helmet better suited for that configuration. Forcing riders to choose from a limited range of helmet shapes will unfairly penalize one or the other of these riders.

Keith99

Actually it would be a great opportunity for a rider who is not already considered a GC contender to show that he is not a team player and lose his contract for next year.

NotAsFat

According to that philosophy, why not allow recumbent low-racers with full fairings? Bike racing is supposed to be about who's the best rider, not who has the biggest budget for wind tunnel testing.

NotAsFat

Why would a team fire a rider for doing well in a stage? Most TdF stages aren't won by GC contenders. If the rider didn't actually beat his team leader, he hasn't hurt the team. And if he did beat his team leader, he wouldn't have much trouble finding a team leader slot. He might end up replacing the team leader. Lemond replaced Hinault.

asgelle

I have no idea what that means.

classic1

You blockhead. I've always said they should get rid of the earpieces. They ruin racing. It was more exciting in the 80's without them and long breakaways were more often successful pre-earpieces.

asgelle

Earpieces had nothing to do with that. It was all due to introduction of Powerbars.

seppomadness

Well that makes three of us. You, me and Rochie.

NotAsFat

They dilute the truth - who's the best rider, by making it a competition of technology - who has the biggest budget for wind tunnel testing. Furthermore, TT bikes are optimized for flat, short courses. Would you want to ride a TT bike 80 miles on hilly roads working up to a cat 1 or 2 climb? And you might have to do a couple of descents, too. Requiring an honest road bike might be doing the riders a favor.

Edit:
Upon further reflection, it occurred to me that as TT bikes became more specialized, the courses they were ridden on have also became more specialized. TT bikes are pi$$-poor climbing bikes, so TT courses usually avoid hills like the plague. Cat 4 climbs are the exception, not the rule on TT courses, and I can't remember any Cat 3 on a non-mountain TdF TT. At least not since Lemond started that aero crap.

Frunkin

Pure entertainment (youtube)

NotAsFat

Doesn't have to go over the Tourmalet. A mere cat 1 or 2 would suffice to shake out the fat boys who can't climb. Heck, 100k with 3 or 4 cat 3s back to back would be an improvement over current TT practice.

NotAsFat

I define it as the guy who can climb with the best climbers, descend with the best descenders, and time trial with the best time trialists. I'm not as impressed by sprinting ability, because the top sprinters usually aren't good for anything else. If they didn't have the peloton to drag their butts to the finish line, they'd never get close enough to the lead for their sprinting ability to matter.

The GC usually ends up with someone like this, but I'd like to see a stage that plays more directly to the GC contenders' strengths. While it's true that top GC men generally do well in the time trials, most time trials don't showcase their climbing ability.

asgelle

I define it as the one who can eat the most eggs (50 minimum). At least mine doesn't rely on subjective judgements so we have to throw out the score from the East German judge. I don't know how to define "with"

NotAsFat

He doesn't get dropped by the specialists when he's riding in their area of specialty, and he can drop them like a bad habit anywhere else.

If you need an actual example from history to get it, consider Armstrong v Pantani at Ventoux in 2000. Armstrong finished about 1 1/2 bike lengths behind Pantani, and could beat him like a stepchild in a time trial.

asgelle

That's a kind of perverse example, but be that as it may, what if the gap had been 3 1/2 bike lengths? 5 1/2? 1/2 mile? How big a gap would Pantani have had to open to be the "best" given Armstrong's advantage in the TT?

roadgator

So you are somehow implying that TT bike makers have paid off the tour organizers? How else would you explain a bike dictating course design.

IF ANYTHING, its the other way around. a specific course is laid out and then a specific bike is developed to give the rider the best advantage over that course. Remember that the course is announced about 9 months in advance. Saying "oh they picked the perfect route for my favorite bike" and then not adjusting anything is not how to win a race. That is what you are describing.

I also don't think it is fair to say aero equipment "diluted" TT's. Regardless of what they are riding on, a long flat TT will play to the advantage of a big roller who can ride hunched over the whole time. An uphill TT will alway play to the advantage of a tiny climber who can sustain a good power/weight ratio.

The equipment does not change those fundamental truths. Also consider that about 75% (or more) of the drag force during a TT is produced solely by the rider's body and position. The bike is a very small part of the picture, but it's where pro tour teams dump the money because, well you can only shrink the rider so much.

Honestly, you could say that modern TT equipment makes it MORE about the rider because the bike is becoming a smaller fraction of the total drag compared to body+position.

some guys are just naturally good too. Dave Z is said never to have set foot in a wind tunnel, and we all know how he can ride a TT.

NotAsFat

My point was that Armstrong was the best, not Pantani. In those days, Pantani was generally considered to be the world's best climber. Armstrong finished one of the toughest climbs (arguably the toughest) in all of cycling within seconds of Pantani's time. In the one time trial they both rode that year, the 16.5 km Stage 1, Armstrong beat Pantani by just over two minutes (yeah, two minutes in 16.5k). Pantani abandoned before the final time trial, but Armstrong would have probably put 9-10 minutes into Pantani, had he raced.

To answer your question as to what it would take to reverse Pantani and Armstrong's relative positions, I would have expected their relative performances to be reversed in their specialties. I would have expected Pantani to hold his losses in the time trials to no more than 1 min. in a short TT and 2 min in a long one. I would have expected him to consistently gain 1-2 min. on mountain stages.

The most Pantani ganed on Armstrong on any mountain stage that year was 50 seconds.