…. Road Cycling?

Perhaps, specifically – Grand Tours: within a season, or from year to year?

I’m not naming names here. Apart from someone with a surname that rhymes with ‘corner’.

But, (ahem) this and other performances throughout the years, make you wonder what is going on with these athletes and why?

By way of example, an elite endurance athlete like Mo Farah wins Olympic gold by building on steady consistent performances throughout his career – and continues with this.

Grand Tour cyclists seem to come from nowhere and then disappear to equally to nowhere, sometimes in the space of a season. Why?

because the factors that determine success and failure in road cycling are so large?

Mo Farah is racing for 10 minutes or so maybe 5 or 6 times a year?

A pro cycle race might last for 100+ hours and is a team sport (albeit one that’s won by individuals).

It might be better to compare it with something like football where clubs have a run of success built on a number of key players but may then have a ‘lean’ patch even if those same players are still involved?

Well there’s the obvious answer… but sometimes you get grand tour courses that just happen to really suit certain riders. For example Wiggins and last years TdF. Also a lot of teamwork, tactics and a fair bit of luck usually come into play.

Maybe it’s due to the dedication requied to maintain that level?

I’m not saying Mo is not dedicated and that being on top of his sport doesn’t take huge dedication, but I think Grand Tour Cyclists take it to a new level, and it must be awfully hard to maintain day in day out.

If your team leader for the tour, the rest of the team sacrifices there own times for you, if your not then your the one killing yourself to drop away when your spent.

Have you ever seen Wayne Rooney when he’s having a bad game? Plays like a Sunday Leaguer with the beer sweats. Ball cannoning off his shins as he wheezes up and down the pitch.
On form he is a sublimely gifted individual – plays with great intelligence, moves fast and close to the ground.

Closer to home, what about downhill mountain biking. One year (or part of the year) you can be unbeatable and the next just mid-pack.

Obviously, post Lance, we are bound to be suspicious of a 47 year old man blowing the Giro winner away on a climb. But Road cycling is hardly the only sport where form varies.

If Mo raced 200 days a year, I’d like to see his form. I don’t see MO’s lead-out men dragging him to the finish either. It’s not all grand tours you know.

a 47 year old man blowing the Giro winner away on a climb

… pass the mind-bleach 😯 😆

Puts years on you riding grand tours does!

Better quality drugs in athletics?

Horner is 41 not 47

Closer to home, what about downhill mountain biking. One year (or part of the year) you can be unbeatable and the next just mid-pack.

The consistent winners tend to stay up there in DH, Gwin is the exception that proves the rule.

On the face of it you’d think there was more scope for random failure in DH, but the really good guys don’t crash that much (Gee, Greg, usually Stevie, Peaty a few years back).

I guess road cycling is just less uniform as a discipline. Course profiles vary hugely, teams send different strength squads, riders target certain events/stages. There’s also a massively bigger field of elite athletes.

But maybe that wasn’t the OP’s question. Yes, it’s probably the drugs in CH’s case, eh?

Making things simple, say that a GT is 100 hours of riding over 3 weeks (that equates to well over 3000 km or about 2000 miles)and a rider finishes 2 hours down hence making them a rubbish nobody (tongue very much in cheek) then they are actually only 2% down on the number one superstar over 3 weeks.

Events like GTs have to be aimed at and tapered for….. the same goes for athletics where the big names will put in a number of very average results to ensure they hit peak form for a certain event.

If you have never seen a truely elite sports person in action up close then it is worth the money, it is the only true way to gauge just how far head of the average or even very good sports person they are.

At the top end very small increments are the difference between the names we know and the ones we do not.

Luck and the volume of training required.

IIRC someone reckoned it takes 2 years solid training to get Cat.1 fit, then years to get pro fit, and that’s assuming your naturaly gifted to start with. Get a cold in the spring one year and that could throw you for the rest of the season, not find the motivation to get out riding at Christmas (Wiggins this year), bye bye summer. Other sports have far shorter trainnig cycles, e.g. boxxers seem to go from fit to flabby to fit in a matter of months.

And it’s a team sport, Richie Porte could probably podium/win the Tour, but he’ll be mid pack as he sacrifices himself for Froom/Wiggins. If he swaped teams he’d possibly go from mid pack to winning in a season. There’s good money for the good domestiques, why risk winning nothing, when you can get your share doing your bit on a winning team?

Horner is 41 not 47

Sorry, my mistake.

By the way, I’m not accusing Chris of anything. If you can’t entertain the thought that it might be real then there really is no point watching. But I’ve been watching for too long to totally suspend disbelief either.

Talking of Chris Horner, when was the last time that two grand tours were won in the same year by different guys with the same first name?

Making things simple, say that a GT is 100 hours of riding over 3 weeks (that equates to well over 3000 km or about 2000 miles)and a rider finishes 2 hours down hence making them a rubbish nobody (tongue very much in cheek) then they are actually only 2% down on the number one superstar over 3 weeks.

There’s also the realisation that the GC is unreachable (maybe a mechanical during the first week, blew up on a climb or whatever) at which point the potential GC contender slows down with the idea of getting a stage win at some point.

Well it’s drugs isn’t it. If you were coming to the end of your season without a contract for the following year wouldn’t you sprinkle a bit of sugar on your cornflakes in the morning?

If you were coming to the end of your season without a contract and a knee injury, and a bike that was too big for you, with handlebars too high, and an inability to pedal with efficient cadence..

😉

Haha and handlebars twice the width of your shoulders

no_eyed_deer – Member
If you were coming to the end of your season without a contract and a knee injury, and a bike that was too big for you, with handlebars too high, and an inability to pedal with efficient cadence..

He is nearly 42, that’s MAMIL territory so of course he is on a sportive bike 🙂

Look at Paula Radcliffe’s record – Has set world records & won many races,yet never managed to win a medal at any of the 4 Olympics she entered…..

Horner has always been good on steep climbs when he is on form. this race is full of them.

Nibali admitted he is 20 watts down relaitve to the Giro. (A huge amount at their level)

I’m more suprised by how well Nibali is doing if that figure is true

I think the ‘beauty’ of the grand tours (compared to a lot of other sporting events) is that they are about more than the individual who gets a coloured jumper at the end of each day…

A GC contender is reliant on so many other “Cogs in the machine” both during the course of the race and in the preparation for it, a lot of attention focuses on lead rider, but he is not super human he is supported, a great rider with a crap team around him will not shine on their own merit alone…

Not that other athletes get less support, but it’s not like Mo can draft various team mates for 95% of a race, its straight forwards, direct competition the only real “tactic” is “be faster than all the others…

Tours are won by teams, but only one individual gets to wear the jersey, hence it’s not just the rider’s physical condition that matters, good working relationships with the team, clearly defined roles within the team and incentives/rewards for basically putting someone else’s “success” ahead of your own.

you might see a “Loss of form” but it could well be changes in a team, or one member throwing a hissy fit…

DH and Grand tours are a bit of a a silly comparison, Yes both have riders on teams “Teams” and of course they use bicycles, but in DH they all compete as individuals in a sport where a major part of the attraction comes from “risk taking” and finding a balance between taking the fastest lines and binning the run…

I think you guys are looking at it the wrong way around. Chris Horner is not coming to fruition now because he’s doping- he’s hitting his peak now because the rest of the field are NOT doping 😉

He was someone who rode through the bad years and admitted he struggled to even hang with the back of the peloton.

All of Cam Wurf’s blog from the Vuelta is a good read : Link here

Today’s conversation was an interesting one. We were chatting about how different the peloton felt without Fabian in the bunch. It was really strange up at the head of the field. First we had to get use to the fact the familiar green Cannondale man Ivan Basso was no longer perched at the pointy end and now with Cancellara gone it just looked odd up there. We got chatting about how hard the 20km usually is and how tired everyone’s getting! This stuff that always makes you feel better to know your not the only one suffering in the group! We then got talking about how back in the late 1990?s he never even saw this part of the field. He said he would be riding full gas just to stay at the back of the bunch, never mind riding comfortably in the first 20 positions of the bunch like now days. He said the pace was often that extremely fast that he was riding at his limit just to make it to the feed zone in time before all the masseurs had packed up and headed to the finish. The main field would have long since past with their feed bags dispatched while Chris and many others were still on their way there. He told me their would be fights within teams about who got to pull out of the race early as there was only limited seats in the car to take them back to the hotel! Such was the era and for guys like Chris it was just a case of being battered from pillar to post on a daily basis.

The best part about his story as he does not regret or resent having to race through these times. He certainly suffered and at times all seemed hopeless but he persevered. Now north of 40 years old we are seeing where his true ability has him on the world stage of cycling. He truly has an interesting story.

^ Fair play..

Crosshair – a brilliant story, if it’s true (as I hope). I think I’ll choose to believe it.

(For those who didn’t click the link, that is a clip from Cam Wurf’s daily blog from the Vuelta) 🙂