Stas87

Well said. In road racing, most race directors don't put up with non sense or dangerous actions by racers. I think getting flicked last night was more of a scare tactic than something malicious. I'm of the opinion that if it's dangerous, I won't do it. Like you said, it's not worth it. I will mention it to the race director, hopefully next time it's called out and dealt with appropriately.

bitingduck

It doesn't actually matter if you're in the sprinters lane-- if the sprint is "engaged" (fuzzily defined) moves of more than 90 cm to the side can be treated as departures from the sprinters lane and get called. It's less likely, but not unheard of.

alfa111

Last weekend Jon Fraley came out to the Marymoor Velodrome to teach his Form of Sprinting clinic. It was a two day class and we had about 13 people show up. He went over everything from technique on the bike to match sprint & Keirin tactics to training advice.

Jon's great and it was a really good class. If he's making the trip out to your local track I wouldn't want to miss it!

Jon's out of Wisconsin so I'm sure if he made the trip out to Seattle to teach us, he would come out to any track if the interest was there.

carleton

Yeah, Jon is a really smart and technical guy. He thinks "outside of the box" and isn't afraid to try new things.

carleton

Watch Baranoski follow the German train around the field (OVER the stayer's line) and win 3rd place.


(Thanks, @queerpunk, for the video link)

SprintzNKiloz

Men's Sprint Gold Final - Track Cycling World Cup - Cambridge, New Zealand

This was my favorite.

carleton

Glaetzer was simply faster and/or fresher.

In the first race, he rode much further than 250m in the final lap as he was outside of Neiderlag the entire time. He even lost speed when he rode high into turn 2 at the beginning of the final lap.

The second race shows what typically happens when when a rider rides on the outside for the entire final lap.

queerpunk

he lost speed by going uptrack in turn 2, but he gained it right back - and he also gained a gap to neiderlag that he could run into. that tactic doesn't always work - but sometimes it does.

theblackbullet

That's how I like to ride my Keirins lol Follow the fast guys!

carleton

I don't think he gained all of his speed back. That's an old tactic that may have worked when RPMs were higher (in the 90s) but doesn't really work today. I think he simply tried to ride it like a flying 200 and overtake Neiderlag coming out of turn 2, but wasn't able to dive into the sweet spot because Neiderlag was there and moving upwards. I don't think Neiderlag flicked him. I think Neiderlag instinctually followed him uptrack when watching him (notice his head).

The end result was Neiderlag pinning Glaetzer on his hip for a full half-lap. The slingshot didn't really happen.

Glaetzer knew he had won when he was shoulder-to-shoulder with Neiderlag in the turn. He knew then that their wheels were even and he was going faster, so when they straightened out, he'd go ahead by an inch or two for the win.

Glaetzer basically pedaled his way out of a bad situation. If they were equal in power and energy levels, Neiderlag would have won having the benefit of the inside lane the entire sprint.

queerpunk

I agree that Glaetzer pedaled his way out of a bad situation and that he won that race based on power. And it's certainly impossible to say if he would have lost had he not implemented the break-and-run, so I'm not going to bother to assert that.

But, how could he NOT get all of his speed back? When MG went uptrack, he converted kinetic energy into potential energy (speed -> height) and you get it right back when you trade it in

here's how i read that sprint. Neiderlag tried to hold Glaetzer at his hip at the bell; Glaetzer tried to come over the top early and Neiderlag went downtrack to block that.

Glaetzer broke and run, and he did get a run into Neiderlag's draft for a bit of the backstraight - the result being that when they hit turn 3, Glaetzer had enough speed to match Neiderlag through the turns. Again - would he have won without doing that? Impossible to say.

You're right that Neiderlag followed Glaetzer uptrack, which is a smart move that I didn't notice earlier. I would guess that it was an attempt to keep Glaetzer close so that he had less room to run at Neiderlag.

carleton

I don't think you ever get it all back. Otherwise, you would see this tactic more often when the outside rider is stuck on the inside rider's hip.

It works for team pursuits because you are in a headwind then peel up then down into a draft, so you feel like you get all of your energy right back...but you are also giving up a few meters as you drift behind your teammates. So, it's a net-loss of distance even if you maintain the same speed.

I've tried it in training and sprint races, and it never worked for me.

When gears were smaller (i.e. 88" was normal and 92"-94 was pro) then that may have worked to get people into the right cadence to tap into their power band. But, with those guys riding 100-106" gears, going up and down track in the turns doesn't change cadence that much.

I have a rule (for my internet, youtube, armchair coaching): Never go uptrack in the turns. Ever.

Why? Because, to maintain the same speed, you either have to burn glycogen as you climb the turn to build energy or burn glycogen as you descend and reaccelerate...or both. Either way, you are burning a "match", which will affect how much you have for the final push.

Here's the thing, if you can get your opponent to go uptrack in a turn, you've burned one of his matches for him and given yourself an advantage that you didn't have before.

I'm reminded of a sprint I saw on youtube/vimeo of Becky James and Jess Varnish. I think it was British National Championships of 2010 or 2011. With 1.5 laps to go and riding at a good pace at the stayer's line down the back straight...when entering turn 3 (before the transition). The lead rider feigned going up track just a sec...like a head fake with the front wheel. The trailing rider, instinctually went uptrack and climbed into turn 3 just a few inches (front wheel was pointed upwards), and the lead rider dove and turned on the afterburners. Game. Over. The trailing rider was gapped off so hard that there was no recovering.

So, even though all of the potential energy was still there, and the gap to run into was there, it didn't work.

I really wish I could find that video. I'll search around my hard drives.

queerpunk

All that makes sense.

I figure, though, that the rules are a little bit different when we're talking about a bunch of guys who go under 10.0. The power requirements to pass at those speeds are so much higher than us 11.5+ mortals that different things matter.

carleton

Yup. That's why it's impressive that Glaetzer was able to do it despite being at a tactical disadvantage.

taras0000

https://youtu.be/J_StdyXdhjs

Some good old fashioned mid-90's sprinting. Gary Neiwand can be seen using this tactic inthe backstraights to great effectiveness. I know carleton said this may be more effective in the nineties era, with lighter gears and such, but I have to disagree on why I think it works. I'm not so sure that it's about getting into a cadence/powerband. To me, physics is physics, and I think it has to do with generating speed/momentum. I do believe it's easier to hold speed while ascending the track in a smaller gear, but how Gleatzer used the banking seems to combine the TP trade-off with charging a rider's slipstream.

Brian Ratliff

Going up track to gain a gap and accelerating into it still works. It's a risky strategy though. I'm pretty sure most of the big gears and top-end dragster racing at the upper levels are just due to the high stakes of the modern sprint format. It's less risky to reel out a win using drag racing tactics when a loss (say, from miss-timing your slingshot and getting caught on the hip) is so damaging. Physics are physics and the physics of using the draft to accelerate past an opponent hasn't changed in the last 20 years. You do need lighter gears to get the full advantage though, which is where the high stakes drag racing tactics mitigates this racing tactic.

Back in the day, the successful riders were riding smaller gears because they were racing a whole lot more rides than the elites do now. Formats now only require three races if you are top seed. Formats then had you racing 6 or 8 times in a day. Try turning a 113 inch gear for six or eight races... I train with a guy who was a national level racer in the 90s. It's not like they didn't experiment with big gears and there were racers back then who rode big gears. They were all f-ing strong. They all knew you could get to higher top end speeds with big gears. They also all knew that surviving a 6-12 effort race day meant starting your day in a 90. The repechage actually meant something back in those days and some racers would intentionally keep themselves fresh by opening their 200m qualifying in a short gear and just run up through the reps.

Murakami

This is a really interesting observation Carleton. I've spent most of the last three years concentrating on Team Pursuit and the change over is the trickiest part to get right. When you're finished your half lap on the front that acceleration up the embankment can be a killer, it hurts the legs, which stretches you pyschologically in that you're at peak suffering after your turn, then it gets tougher and then it distracts you so it's even harder to take your position at the back again. It takes another lap for the recovery to kick in at all and your last memory of your turn is that extra pain it took to turn up the embankment.

But if you do the change over anywhere else onthe track it's very difficult to time it right if your crew are passing at approx 55km/h?

SprintzNKiloz

And I guess that was why the match sprint finals were my favorite. Ride 1 taught us that you can ride a tactically great race ands still loose. Race 2, well, sometimes you spent all your currency in the first match.

carleton

Doing it in the turns is the right place to do it. Maybe try to float or keep the same torque on the pedals and see if it works out better.

I'm not much of a TP guy. All I know, I learned from pacelines Maybe some enduros here can chime in on the proper way to apply torque (or not) during exchanges.

Yeah, when you are out-gunned, there's really not much you can do.

queerpunk

It really depends on what level you're at (how fast you're going). If you're going pretty well (like, turning sub-17s laps on a 250), then you can come off the gas and let your momentum carry you up. I don't make a habit of putting down power to pull off, because, as Murakami says, you're doing it at the most unpleasant time.

There are a lot of other variables, too - what track, what banking, etc. I'm not sure how to do exchanges on a 333, since I've never done 'em.

As they say - Speed is the best tactic.

Brian Ratliff

I think you are going too high on the bank. You need to be just high enough so you can float and get back to the end of the line by the end of the turn. You shouldn't be accelerating up the bank. That's expending energy for no other reason than to expend it. You should keep that energy in the bank for use at the front of the paceline.

taras0000

This. Although I wasn't a true enduro, I wasn't pure speed as a sprinter either. I was more of a Kilo/Man 3 kind of guy. My favourite enduro event was the TP and I rode it a lot. The track you are on will definitely make a huge difference in how much you can float the transition. Shallower tracks don't afford you much float. You can maybe lay off the gas about 5% as you drift back, and use the slide into the slipstream to get back on 100% before you settle in. On tight tracks, the transition give you quite a bit of a break. You will gain your speed back on a 250 or smaller track. I find that on tight tracks, it's easy to give too much gas on the dive back down, and that makes for a really awkward transition. You end up halfwheeling your teammate as you come around onto the straight, and then you have to slow down to get back on, but then gas it as you slide in.

It will also depend on your muscular make-up as well. I find that the enduros like to try and keep their "throttle" as consistent as possible when they make a transition as this seems favourable for the slow twitch muscles. Guys who are a little speedier will try to vary their throttle as it affords the muscles little micro breaks and variations in output.

The line I would take for tighter tracks is laid out below. A little exaggerated, but not much. I would just ride straight up the banking, and "toilet bowl" my way back onto the train. Made for a good break.

Murakami

Ok, so the track is 460, so the banking not as extreme. At 40km/h or under, your green line works, you come down aiming for the BB of last rider, buuuut as the team gets faster that sharp V motion doesn't work and you gotta go to the red line on the illustration, otherwise you can't get back on. What you can try is to make the V shorter and not go as high, but if it goes wrong you're totally screwed. The red line doesn't allow as much rest but decreases the risk of leaving a gap.

queerpunk

Yeah, on a 460 with what I imagine is extremely gentle banking (maybe 12, 15 degrees?) then I think you'd have to treat it a lot more like a road paceline - you ease off, get over (no need to swing up the banking, since for all intents and purposes there is none), and then you just have to jump in order to get back on the line.

Impreza_aL

Speaking of going up track peep this Swiss rider on the bell lap.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=...&v=cEI1jp2zQsE