Originally Posted by
CafeRacer
Id say track standing is only usefull now at traffic lights. The real skill is doing it on a regular bike
When match sprints were a kilo long (3 laps of a 333m track) track standing made perfect sence, once they changed the rules and switched to shorter tracks it became useless. Whenever you see it in a pro level race its been staged.
88' Olympics Soel Korea
Cafe Racer, first of all. That photo is not from the Seoul Olympics in 1988. That is a picture of French cyclist Daniel Morelon and I believe it was taken at the Munich track during the 1972 Olympics, where Morelon went on to take gold.
Secondly, match sprints are still held over 1km and are often still held on 333m tracks, as well as 250m tracks and even 500m tracks - in fact a wide array of track lengths from 160m to 560m. And track stands still occur in top level sprinting. Track stands are 'staged' at fun events, but not the Worlds, World Cups or Olympics. Of course, they're limited to 30 seconds now - but that's longer than many standstills used to last for anyway.
Great photo by the way.
http://www.britishcycling.org.uk/fea...standstill.jpg