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Just a tangential observation, but you know how some road riders have been mocked for lacking skills, e.g. Froome or Porte.
You don't get that with pro DH really, do you? Apart from some bell ends having a pop at the lower end of the women's field maybe.
Josh Bender?
but you know how some road riders have been mocked for lacking skills, e.g. Froome or Porte.You don’t get that with pro DH really, do you?
No, you don't, given that most roadie fans cream their knickers when their chosen ill fed walking drugs experiment pulls a wheelie across the line, and the commentators will happily eulogize the "mountain bike roots" of any tour rider who manages to navigate more than 3 consecutive bends in a bunch finish without stuffing it into the barrier, and let's be honest the only reason anyone watches the opening flat stages of the TDF is to watch them crash into each other again...and again and again...
I think it safe to say the entire DH field have better bike handling skills than most pro-roadies.
mountain bike roots” of any tour rider who manages to navigate more than 3 consecutive bends in a bunch finish without stuffing it into the barrier,
Mountain biking royalty 🙂
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q3OQAX90sFA
Most skill: Freeride, specifically Red Bull Rampage. Because anyone can 'have a go' at all the other disciplines but I don't think there many of us with the skill to face 20 meter drops and backflip 15m gaps in a desert.
Probably BMX second. The rest is just riding bikes.
sunnrider
MemberI don’t think there many of us with the skill to face 20 meter drops
I think a lot of us have the skill to do 20 meter drops or could build up to it fairly quickly- if you've got the skill to do a 2 meter drop then that scales. It's just, not in a million years could i actually do it, skill or no skill. My limit with drops is the point where I shit myself, not the point where I run out of skill. It's like gaps vs tabletops, the exact same skillset for both but one of them is scary.
There's definitely a case for bravery/getting past fear being a skill in itself. Not always, some people are just mad.
I suppose there's a case for riders like Semenuk, who combine going big with doing BMX-inspired tricks.
When I think of skilled riding I think of:
Brandon Semenuk
Chris Akrigg
Aaron Gwin
There’s lots more in their fields but those three are three different types of rider with remarkable skill. Watch Semenuk’s UnReal segment, Akrigg’s Five video and Gwin’s Mont St Anne 2017 win, and you’ll see the skill. If you can’t see it, then you’ll never understand why these riders are on another level in terms of skill vs any road cyclist.
Thanks chiefgrooveguru, I enjoyed those vids, especially Akrigg's.
I remember an interview with Alex Ferguson (bear with me) many years ago, when Ronaldo first turned up at Man United. The interviewer was talking about what a great footballer he already was at such a young age, and Ferguson replied with something like: "Well he's obviously talented, but he's like someone who can do thousands of card tricks. What we have to do now is teach him to play cards".
I guess I think of pro road cyclists as like pro poker players. It's not flash, you might not see what they're doing, and it cannot work on every occasion - it might even seem like luck. However, over time they will consistently win more than their opponents because they don't just know tricks, they know how to cycle.
Comparing - for example - Nibali riding the Giro to the videos above is daft; of course the videos look better. You're watching it so the best bits are cut together, and it has a funky soundtrack, and possible re-takes if mistakes were made, and it's 5 minutes long rather than 3 weeks. I reckon if Nibali had dedicated himself to that type of riding there isn't anything there he couldn't have done.
Just my take - if you prefer stunt riding then you'll obviously think differently.
“You’re watching it so the best bits are cut together, and it has a funky soundtrack, and possible re-takes if mistakes were made”
Akrigg’s indeed is edited together. The other two videos consist of an uncut single continuous take (using just one camera) and a race winning run where somehow Gwin managed to do a faster wet run than the leading riding who’d come down the hill earlier before the heavens opened.
Arguing that road cycling requires a similar level of skill is just silly. We all only have a finite number of hours to train at a sport. A balance has to be found between working on skill and working on fitness. The answer to this question is simply to look at their training schedule. The more time spent on skills over fitness, the more important skill is. Or ask a coach.
“The interviewer was talking about what a great footballer he already was at such a young age, and Ferguson replied with something like: “Well he’s obviously talented, but he’s like someone who can do thousands of card tricks. What we have to do now is teach him to play cards”.“
This shows a deep lack of understanding of freeride or downhill. Semenuk is so good he almost never crashes - his skill level is freakish. And Gwin managed to completely dominate the field for years. They have the depth and breadth of ability to apply their skills and win. It isn’t stunt riding. Akrigg’s is to a much greater degree but not those two.
I wasn't trying to insult anyone, and I wan't saying that Semenuk or Guin just knew 'card tricks'.
My point was that the flasher looking stuff can be easier than the mundane looking stuff, which can take years to achieve and sometimes hardly looks like a 'skill' at all.
Arguing that road cycling requires a similar level of skill is just silly.
Trying to rank different disciplines that use different skills in a single list is silly.
MTB Bog Snorkelling
Trying to rank different disciplines that use different skills in a single list is silly.
Or just a harmless bit of lockdown fun, until people start being dicks about it.
My point was that the flasher looking stuff can be easier than the mundane looking stuff,
It's probably easier to win a world cup down hill than it is to win a grand tour (I'll win neither), so I get your point. But the difference is that a grand tour is won primarily on fitness, whereas a downhill is won primarily on skill. No one ever won the tour by being the best bike handler. On the contary, froome won a couple of tours with skills I'm sure even some of the stw forum members could match.
whereas a downhill is won primarily on skill.
I dunno, look at what Aaron Gwin and the like brought to the sport, look what happened when Bryceland focused on fitness for a season. I think DH in general plays down the fitness aspect. Comparing DH to GTs is like comparing the 100/200m dash to a marathon. Both need fitness, just different types fitness.
Trying to rank different disciplines that use different skills in a single list is silly.
Translation: I want it so much to be the roadies, but it's plain that they really don't have much in the way of skills on a bike*
* don't get me wrong, I stand in slack jawed admiration of anyone who can subject themselves to the sort of regimes that in another time and place would look very much like torture, in order to win a Grand Tour.
When thinking about what makes somebody skillful on a bike, I'm not sure that fitness falls into three main criteria. Unless you're only going to focus on people who ride bikes forwards over exceptionally long distances.
I'd list balance, coordination and strength above fitness. Racecraft is an altogether separate skill that some members of the peloton posess more of than others, but it's not a cycling skill.
Gwinn is imo past his prime, but this footage alone shows how someone using pure skill can win a WC without pedaling.
tomhoward
I dunno, look at what Aaron Gwin and the like brought to the sport, look what happened when Bryceland focused on fitness for a season.
Not sure the likes of Atherton and Minnaar were lacking in fitness and strength training pre-Gwin.
And Steve Peat did a massive amount of elbow bend training.
Having given it some more thought. The thing I think excludes the road riders from the top of the list about skill for me anyway, is the perhaps somewhat formulaic/scientific approach to modern road riding. Organisations like Sky and now Ineos have worked out that such and such a power output over such and such a time, and your more than likely as not to be in a winning position. Control the rest as much as you can, and likely as not one of your team will win. It's a perfect approach if your goal is multi-stage road racing, It's how they've won so much over the last couple of years. It's the F1 approach to cycling.
"All" you have to do is identify who the rider is who can follow a regime and hit the output/weight points on the programme. That is a skill, but bike handling is never going to be at the top of the list of requirements.
,It’s how they’ve won so much over the last couple of years.
Which outside of GTs and stage racing isn’t that much.
"I dunno, look at what Aaron Gwin and the like brought to the sport, look what happened when Bryceland focused on fitness for a season. I think DH in general plays down the fitness aspect."
In DH you need enough fitness to be able to apply your skill as you progress down the track. In road cycling you need enough skill to be able to apply your fitness as you progress along the course. They're opposites when it comes to training focus.
I know that Gwin has said that his fitness always holds him back somewhat and he's one of the strongest and fittest riders in DH - it's an impossible puzzle to solve because you need a lot of strength and you need a lot of endurance and training one tends to counter the other, plus if you're training hard in the gym or on the road bike you still have to leave enough in the tank to also be able to ride your DH bike hard and keep your skills sharp.
As a fully fledged roadie I’m in NickC and the Chiefs camp on this. Road racing isn’t defunct of skill, but if you were to say what needed the most skill to compete, then I’d go with DH and even modern XC.
But there are really skilled riders in the pro peloton, and it’s especially prominent in the early season classic and monuments. Also I think an aspect of road racing here that has been overlooked is the fact that on fast 60mph descents we only see a handful of the guys on TV. What we don’t see is the peloton descending the same speed but in extremely close proximity of the other riders. Cavendish made this point a few years ago, along the lines of Nibali is a good descender but he rarely has to descend with the main group, that’s where the top descenders are (paraphrased by me). But I do think the majority of DH riders would pick up most road skills incredibly easily, whilst it is unlikely to be so transferable from road skills to DH.
In DH you need enough fitness to be able to apply your skill as you progress down the track. In road cycling you need enough skill to be able to apply your fitness as you progress along the course. They’re opposites when it comes to training focus.
I made a similar point a page or so ago, but people aren't interested in engaging with nuances.
They'll just read it as "there's no skill in road riding" and go off on one.
Which outside of GTs and stage racing isn’t that much.
What's your point Contrary Mary?
What’s your point Contrary Mary?
The idea that sky’s tactics ensures success is a canard, they’ve been spectacularly unsuccessful in classics and one day races, even when they’ve targeted them. Their gt and larger stage race victories have also been dependent on them having the best rider in the peleton as their team leader (or second in command) not just turning up and riding to numbers. Race craft, tactics - skills can still defeat dominating trains (conversely a superb example being Stannard v quick step 2015 het nieuwsblad)
That's an accurate analysis of Sky's performance in the Classics.
And it reinforces the position that fitness is the predominant factor in determining most pro road race results.
With fitness and wily Belgian tactics combining for a few which take place in the spring?
Are we still on topic here?
As skill is often defined as the ability to something well, all sports at the top level could be considered equal in skill as they are the best human kind has at doing that particular task.
This thread would make more sense if it was defined as bike handling skills, rather than skill per se.
Don't you come in here being all sensible.
Translation: I want it so much to be the roadies, but it’s plain that they really don’t have much in the way of skills on a bike*
To repeat myself again, I don't think road cycling is the "most skilful" cycling discipline. I think every cycling discipline requires a different set of specific skills, so you can't rank them in any meaningful way (and I'm basing that on my experience of riding MTB, road and track competitively). If you read this thread, you'll see that people can't even agree what a skill is, let alone rank them!
Some people are proposing a very narrow definition of "skills" as bike handling. I'd suggest that ignores a whole chunk of skills that make successful DH riders special. Good DHers have some form of eidetic memory for a course, and an elevated ability to analyse their surroundings and the route possibilities at higher speed than the average person. They have the ability to exclude distractions and attain an extreme level of "flow" that is way beyond what most of us can achieve. There's a heck of a lot more going on than just body position and the finesse with which they move the bars or use the brakes.
Now you might argue, like fitness, good DHers are just born with this mental ability, so it is not a skill. I would argue that the top riders have improved and honed their natural abilities with a lot of hard work, which clearly makes what they do an acquired proficiency, or what I would call a "skill".
Alternatively, just carry on punting the supremacy of your favourite cycling discipline by ignoring the skills present in the other ones...
Freeride
Trials
DH.