That’s how Jo Rowsell was picked up – talent spotted at her school in 2004 when she was 15/16.
By 2006 she was a National Champion on the track.

Bit of everything. It’s a different sport but Duncan Fletcher’s book on the Ashes 2005 was quite interesting; about selecting players who could stand up to the mental pressure of McGrath and Warne and Lee and Hayden, and who wouldn’t wilt under the pressure. Hence why Ramprakash wasn’t successful but Collingwood was. That’s what makes the difference.

I suspect there are quite a lot of kids with the right physical attributes, and identifying and selecting them can be done by the book on limb length and flexibility and VO2 max and…….

But to get up and go out before dawn on a frozen river or on a 6 hour bike ride or on a sprint session that leaves you throwing up from the effort, or wrenching all your joints into ridiculous places just so you can manage some prescribed gymnastic move – every day for years on end. To not have had a drink for 18 months, to be so tired that when you get an night off all you want to do is sleep. To give up everything that a young person would normally consider normal. Just because you want to be like Laura Trott or Kath Grainger or Max Whitlock and stand on the top step.

There’s not many like that but we’ve got pretty good at identifying them. That’s where the Germans and French should be looking, not at the contents of our piss pots but how big the bottle is.

I’m wondering why it needs massive triple crown suspension forks and big coil springs at the back for going around a smooth track?

I don’t think Team GB qualified for it.

🙂

@theotherjonv has it nailed and Jess’s tweet 😀

Elite althletes have to be special in many ways other than raw talent / speed / strength. Its an incredible pyramid from the 100,000’s at decent junior / club level to the tiny handful on the elite / Oympic squads. London 2012 had the programe to find tall women and we found the cross country runner who went on to win a gold in rowing. Katy Marchant was a track and field althelte until 2013.

Yep – Tony Minichello gave her up to BC as he felt she was suited more to that than to heptathlon.

And further to my post. To get to the olympics, or even to national squad level is a huge achievement. Whether you stand on the top step, or get knocked out in the first heat, you’re bloody amazing. Don’t let some whingeing Aussie tell you otherwise.

So how does the diminutive Laura Trott fit the mould? 5ft 4″ but just so fast and efficient on the track

because height’s an advantage in rowing (they’re all 6foot plus, even the women – means they can do long strokes)

Not so in cycling, it’s power to weight generally.

Having met one of the UK Sport Performance Directors the reasons they selected track cycling and rowing was because there are more variables that they can measure, control and drive performance i.e. they can accurately predict the performance needed to succeed and understand/model the variables that influence it – a very scientific and analytical approach. They’ve now done that with BMX by building their own track. Trouble with MTB is that there are too many other variables, so harder to guarantee performance levels and investment.

What happened to her? She just seemed to drop out. I half expected her to pop up in another sport.

Brailsford was on BBC Breakfast this am too, and as he said, identifying where you are and where you need to be and then what you need to get there is a key concept. So they’ll have had a pretty good idea what time they think they needed to win TP for example. And then the process to ‘find’ those seconds starts. And it’s not as simple as saying ‘get x seconds faster’ obviously; they’ll then split out where the gains come from and if they then approach say an engineering firm and say to them ‘can you make these bearings half a percent more efficient’ then the answer is usually yes. Of course in the end you still need someone to work incredibly hard to ride the thing faster than anyone else.

I’m not denigrating the athletes that have just done so well – I’m bursting with pride for them all – but that’s the *only* tempering factor for me. Whether it’s 0.2% better skinsuits, 0.1% more aero handlebars, 0.2% rounder wheels or whatever – in the purest sense it’s not just the athlete’s ability. I know they’ve all reflected that as well in post race interviews, but the playing field maybe isn’t quite level.

What happened to her? She just seemed to drop out. I half expected her to pop up in another sport.[/quote]

She pops in to see her mum (who lives near us) every now and again.

Don’t forget all the data analysts who will have been modelling TP finish time as a function of variables including pacing at each split. It was no coincidence that our TP teams did not just race off fast and try and hold on as their competitors tried. They started at the pace prescribed and stuck to the model to get the predicted time. Of course the fact that the predicted time was a World Record is an extra bonus.

Anyone else notice that the fastening on their shoes are outside of the wind on the bottom. Aero shoe covers aren’t allowed on the track, so make the shoes aero 8) .

But I don’t think there is anything special about the cervelo bikes, nor the wheels. It’s the coaches, trainers and analysts that we should be pleased with. Any of the other riders, if fed into the BC system would have done the same.

Except Kenny. Sprint is just different to everything else. And he is faster. Wind tunnel-tested faster, of course.

It most definitely is not level. It never has been. Hence we were nowhere before funding and Olympic Medal grants for performance.

Actually the only way was really to execute our pacing and hope that under the same conditions, their riders were stronger. That may actually have been true for the US team based on the World Championship results. Instead they decided to go off fast and hold on. Which they could not do. A result for my kind (paid up geek/analyst) 😆

Team Pursuit tactics have changed massively in the last 4 Olympic cycles as well. It used to be a measure of success and pride that you finished with all 4 riders. Now they use up one in the first 2750m and bin him/her off.
It’s no longer a race against the other team, it’s a race against the clock – there just happens to be another team on the track as well which is more entertaining for the crowd and introduces another little tactical variable.

Catches are very rare now though since both teams are absolutely on the limit, really riding the edge of what is possible.
You look at Athens where the winning Men’s TP time was 3.58. Beijing was 3.53 due to the tactic of using up Man 4.

Since then the timnes have been closer. London was 3.51, Rio was 3.50.

(Women’s one is more difficult to gauge since they changed from 3 riders / 3km to 4 riders / 4km over that period as well.)

All of this ‘marginal gains’ stuff is bobbins.
It’s the kind of science quackery that Derren Brown uses to sell his illusions.

There will already have been some performance modelling done in BC regarding the chainset. If there’s any benefit, we’ll see it widely adopted (until the UCI ban it). I expect there are other asymmetry aspects worth exploring too.

They did it 10 years ago. Just didn’t tell anyone (and obviously social media wasn’t what it is now for pictures to be shared instantly). No benefit found.[/quote]Aye, but even performance modelling has developed in the last 10 years. 😆

Just be slightly wary of how her word might have been reported. The press love stuff like this.
Look at what they suggested Anna Mears said and then see what she actually said and what she restated this morning. All just hype.

With a continuous endpoint (seconds for 4000m), it’s called multivariate analysis. 8)

It’s just daft. It’s an appealing Sherlock Holmes style fantasy.

The size of pillows, hand washing techniques, the roundness of wheels, the fuzziness of gloves – none of these things explain how good athletes become unbeatable world beating athletes on a four-year cycle.