canyoneagle

Good point.

I think my point is that the delta for most climbs is measured in seconds, not minutes.
To be fair, this may well make the difference between first and second place for the elites.

I also think that total rider+bike weight is probably a better context rather than isolating the bike alone. A 130 pound rider on a 15 pound bike vs a 170 pound rider on a 20 pound bike, so 145 pounds vs 190 pounds up the grade. Or, conversely, switch bikes - 150 vs 185 lbs. My guess is that the difference would be more apparent with the smaller rider because the weight difference is a bigger percentage than it is for the larger rider.

I agree that overall, less weight will show a difference - just that the bike portion is a small piece of the whole.

Something like that.

canyoneagle

Great tool. clever thing.
This is exactly what I was hoping to see, and it clearly shows that my assumption is wrong.
Everything I'd seen in the past was isolated to parameters that probably skewed the results (excluding or improperly accounting for wattage, average gradient, etc) - hence the confirmation bias comment earlier. Everything else I'd seen basically left me with the impression that the difference was trivial.

I stand corrected. Thanks for posting this!!!!

Now back to the original post - the Alp d'Huez table - it seems that there is no noticeable difference in the "classic" vs "modern" speeds. Might be more informative to compare the time up the route and see what that difference is.

Plugging the Alpe d'Huez stats (13.8 km @8.1% average grade) with a difference of 2.2 KG (about 5 lbs) and 300w output yields a difference of 76 seconds and about 350 yards. So, a touch over a minute and about a quarter of a mile difference. Close enough for noise within the average speed info, but actual times would help see any delta, I think.

Campag4life

Studies have been done where they send riderless bicycles up the mountain at the same wattage and a 1 lb difference in weight can account up to 3 minutes in arrival. This isn't much if meeting friends for lunch but matters in a race.
In case you question this study its called the headless horseman study which was done on E-bikes with computer gyros for balance and paper mache riders in full kit.

canyoneagle

Did they also have paper Tifosi running along?

Sounds like a cool study - the delta seems pretty big, unless it was over a much longer distance - I'll look it up.

HTupolev

It's important to be clear about the total masses and overall speeds being discussed, not to mention the length of the climb. The amount of time penalty that could be paid for a 1lb weight is unbounded; the weaker the motor, the longer it'll take to lift that weight through a given amount of gravitational field.

3 minutes for a 1 pound addition would require something ridiculous like a 6000-foot climb and a rider pedaling at only around 50W.

Campag4life

A further wrinkle is...they installed sound systems inside the riders and yes they were wearing polarized Tifosi's and the riders were heard to be singing opera as they ascended the mountain.
It gets even more bizarre on the way down. Word is, the riders were radio controlled and operators raced full monty down the mountain at over 1000 watts each.
Only one bike survived. Many of them went over cliffs and several ended up out at sea. No survivors.

Campag4life

Sorry to disagree but it is always a 3 minute difference.

canyoneagle

Now THAT would've been fun to watch.

vinfix

Historic TdF times are often cited when questioning the merits of technical improvements. I wonder if there'd be a more pronounced, or at least conclusive difference if you looked at results for low-level amateurs, say for a race that's always the same. I'm guessing training techniques might not be as sophisticated, and doping not a factor. I do think that modern equipment is faster than C&V, but it's not a huge difference, maybe 1/2 mph for a recreational B-level rider. In a group ride where everybody's downshifting and accelerating, and you're on a heavier steel bike and reaching for a downtube shifter, you're might fall back a bit. On hilly terrain it definitely helps to have STI shifters and tighter gears, but on flatter terrain I might be just as fast on my fixed gear.

Campag4life

This dynamic has been discussed before. Even though the data doesn't support it, its widely believed that a solid B amateur rider could win the Tour de France if racing 30 years ago on a modern carbon bike with Di2 and disc brakes of course...especially if the race is held in a lot of rain. It is mostly due to the superiority of descending the mountain. Discs make that big of difference and of course much less hand fatigue if riding Di2.

exmechanic89

^This is primarily the answer, imo.

merlinextraligh

No doubt, riders have sought an advantage anyway they can since the Tour started, from hoping on a train in the middle of the night, to some really stupid doping ( i.e. arsenic).

However, until the EPO era, the advantage to doping was marginal at best.

EPO with no effective test was a game changer. You could compete in the 70's not taking amphetimines; You really couldn't in the 90's not taking EPO.

merlinextraligh

Widely believed by whom?

In the world of bike riders, i'm faster than most; certainly better than a "B" recreational rider. As a bike racer, I'm a mediocre Cat 3. I've ridden stage routes of the TDF.
I've raced in P 1.2.3 races against people who have raced in the TDF.

And there is no f'ng way I'd begin to be competitive in a top tier pro bike race, let alone the TDF.

Put me on the most awesome current technology, and the rest of the peleton on 1970 Schwinn Varsity's and I still don't even make the time cuts.

Colnago Mixte

What about steroids? Pedro Delgado was busted in the '88 Tour for using Probenicid, a drug used to treat gout, but also useful as a masking agent for steroids. So we can pretty safely assume Delgado was roided up, at least while training for the Tour.

Steroids have been around since the 1930's, and had to have been used by athletes since at least the 1940's. Which ones, we will never know since no one tested for them. But I would be shocked if many of the great names in cycling were NOT using them for probably their entire careers.

merlinextraligh

EPO. particularly when you could dose with no worry of detection, was the game changer, The rest of this stuff is working at the margins. A gifted clean athlete could compete with dopers before EPO. EPO create enough advantage you really coudn't win at the top level cleam.

Spoonrobot 

You almost had me for a minute. Last little bit 'bout hand fatigue gave you away.

Campag4life

Was poking some fun. Hard to separate rider performance from bike tech improvement. Probably a little of each.
Also, the grand race itself has likely evolved in format as well a bit.
But as stated, even training to old methods, I believe the greats of yesterday would still make the tour and be top riders today. My opinion only.
Cheers.

79pmooney

Plus you couldn't do amphetamines regularly in any real amounts of a long career. Now, looking a premier races and stages is just asking to single out the events the riders were most likely to do juiced. Still, amphetamines don't get you past the limitations of the human body. You could push it harder but at greater cost. EPO was a game changer.

Ben

Voodoo76

Pretty interesting. One way to look at that could be that for the most talented riders, the top of the genetic food chain, the gains are marginal compared to their natural or enhanced talent. As long as they put in the bike time they were going to adapt and be fit, regardless of training program specifics. Looking at the UCI Hour record (the std bike one) from Merckx to Boardman kind of reinforces this.

Another data point. Indoors the 4K pursuit has dropped 10% from '86 (Ekimov) to now. That might be a better indicator of technology improvements, at least in Aero.

Campag4life

Agree. I believe its born out in personal experience on the amateur level every day out on the road. I know that many of the guys I ride with there is a peeking order of sorts, fast guys, middle of the pack riders and slowish older riders. Many bring different bikes to the group A ride and some of course are even old school steelies from decades past. Order doesn't change. A fast guy on an old steelie is gonna drop a mid packer on a carbon wunderbike.
I learned a long time ago on the road, the rider by far trumps the bike in terms of speed contribution. Of course part of how good a rider is, is his/her position on the bike independent of bike vintage. Rider is 80% of the drag.

Campag4life

You are of course correct. I thought my sarcastic hyperbole about the bike mattering much was obvious. I was making a joke about common Joe 6 pack buying game which is common. Can't buy game or rather pay a lot and get very little in return. Of course and as Voodoo wrote, accounts for why TdF times haven't changed dramatically in the last 10 years in spite of bikes becoming more aero, better handling, more gears, more compliance etc.

FlashBazbo

Gee, with all this high-level theoretical calculation going on, I almost hate to post this . . . but I must.

There's a factor that makes a bigger difference than all of the other differences discussed, combined. And it's extremely obvious to anyone who has watched the Tour over the last 30 years. The biggest factor relating to average speed up The Climb is race tactics. Some years, (especially in the pre-race radio years) the riders may have all been giving their all as they made The Climb. Those years, using those tactics, the average speeds of the top few riders would have been telling. But even in those years, some of the riders in the sample probably had an agenda which was inconsistent with giving their all. Those guys may be saving something for a TT later in the Tour, or a climb on the next day, a helper who self-destructed along the way, or maybe they were just mailing it in because their team leader wasn't cutting it and they weren't going to win the stage. A few would have been fast, but by no means all would have been giving it 100%. It made no sense for them to.

Other years, race tactics had racers playing cat-and-mouse up The Climb. I can even remember one year when a team attacked with their GC leader at the bottom of The Climb only to have the other contenders stick to him. He backed way off and let his team mate rocket into the distance to win the stage by a large margin . . . the team mate who, if I remember correctly, used that stage as the launch pad to eventually win that year's Tour. His time would have been blazing fast. The next four would have been slow.

Tactics make the biggest difference. If you can't control for race tactics . . . and you can't . . . none of these statistical micro-differrences mean anything.

merlinextraligh

Campag4life

I should have used an emoticon winky. Haven't seen you on the forum much.
Hope all is well.

Campag4life

You are right. Average speed is a bit of a trap. At the end of the day, in sum, modern TdF racers today may 'tour' at even a lower pace speed but race at a higher speed due to bike advancements and improved training. Of course to make into the TdF requires superior genetics and over the expanse of 50 years, humans haven't evolved much.

So would be more interesting if the data could be further dissected. Possible and likely probably that the physical racing is faster. Many taking TT effort in isolation past versus present would showcase changes in tech and rider fitness.