Olympic time trial

[confusedfan]

oh, have to say pretty impressive performance from Dwayner (aka Svein Tuft) in 7th in amongst all those top riders ... now if only Symmetrics could find new sponsors to continue or Tuft can get a contract with someone else ...

 

[Anticyclone]

This may be a silly question but why dont some of the road men have a go at the 4000 metres pursuit. I would have thought that someone like Cancellara or a short prologue specialist would have a good chance of a medal and possibly winning?

 

[Anticyclone]

Menchov came 20th, Bruseghin 22nd, and Kirchen 23rd. Slightly surprised they didn't do better. Maybe the heat got to them. The riders looked pretty hot and spent. Larson just fell off his bike.

Kirchen was coming 7th at the first two checks but then dropped off. Maybe he tried to lift his game but blew up. Coming 7th in an olypmic tt when you are aiming for a medal is nowhere i suppose. The other two seemed to be 20th at best the whole way through though.

 

[Tech72]

On a different front, what a showing for Cervelo. The P3C took the 1st and 2nd spots in the Men's ITT and the 1st and 4th spots in the Women's ITT. Expect to see a rash of Cervelo ads referencing all this in the near future. Frankly, I'm getting tired of seeing Cervelos every second page of every cycling mag I open up.

 

[Tech72]

Hey, what happened to ITT notables Schumi, Zabriskie and Millar (did he even start the ITT)? They all sucked large.

 

[Eldrack]

British cycling won't enter anyone with a past doping conviction for the olympics so no, Millar wasn't riding.

 

[thunder]

This may be a silly question but why dont some of the road men have a go at the 4000 metres pursuit. I would have thought that someone like Cancellara or a short prologue specialist would have a good chance of a medal and possibly winning?

Rogers would be the only guy with a shot. Skillset required would be a few months to develop.

Cancellara would win by a bit if he had one years experience riding world cups.


If G Thomas goes 4'17" in only his third ever individual pursuit cos there are no velodromes in Wales then Cancellara could go sub 4'10". I think Wiggins best, would be about 4'13" or 4'14" potentially. His pb in a 4'16" I think. Riding to win gold, and setting a pb, is not perfectly in accordance.

 

[Crankyfeet]

Rogers would be the only guy with a shot. Skillset required would be a few months to develop.

Cancellara would win by a bit if he had one years experience riding world cups.


If G Thomas goes 4'17" in only his third ever individual pursuit cos there are no velodromes in Wales then Cancellara could go sub 4'10". I think Wiggins best, would be about 4'13" or 4'14" potentially. His pb in a 4'16" I think. Riding to win gold, and setting a pb, is not perfectly in accordance.

Would they typically push a bigger gear on the road in a flat TT at cruise speed than they would on the track... since starting is much more important on the track...and it's fixed gear on a track bike? If the cadence on the track is higher than say Cancellara would normally ride at... can that have any effect on potential performance do you think?

 

[Runitout]

Would they typically push a bigger gear on the road in a flat TT at cruise speed than they would on the track... since starting is much more important on the track...and it's fixed gear on a track bike? If the cadence on the track is higher than say Cancellara would normally ride at... can that have any effect on potential performance do you think?

1. Cancellara runs a pretty high cadence in ITTs, not sure if it's higher than track.

2. They're running bigger gears in track now, too. I assume it's one reason why Mcgee's not doing so well - though, let's face it, he's also not as fast as he was.

 

[thunder]

1. Cancellara runs a pretty high cadence in ITTs, not sure if it's higher than track.

2. They're running bigger gears in track now, too. I assume it's one reason why Mcgee's not doing so well - though, let's face it, he's also not as fast as he was.

Mcgee got to below 70kgs to climb mtns. Mcgee forgot that he lacked one thing to make him climb like a GC rider. O2 vector drugs/techniques!

 

[thunder]

Would they typically push a bigger gear on the road in a flat TT at cruise speed than they would on the track... since starting is much more important on the track...and it's fixed gear on a track bike? If the cadence on the track is higher than say Cancellara would normally ride at... can that have any effect on potential performance do you think?

Cranktoes, they run 105-110 revs

From about 90 absolute max in the tt.

Difference is fixed gear starts. Gotta haul that gear ratio from the gun. G Thomas has to get to 60+kmph in 300 odd metres in his teams pursuit formation. That would be the biggest difficulty Cancellara faces.

Classic1 we need your wisdom (I am but a try-hard)

 

[thunder]

I didn't come back until it was over. The live feed I was looking at Bro gave me the link at the Olympics start....is our NBC network website, nbcolympics.com. Not available outside the US I think. I see Rolfrae has given a UK link.

Contador faded in the second half. He had passed his 90 second man who was in front of him, Steff Clement.... then Clement passed him again a few hundred metres from the end.

nah, the parcours was up, down, up, down. Perfect stratregy from Contador to catch Clement then ride a race against one.

Clement is 5'10 and only 65 kgs, but a great tter, so they were always gonna go head to head when Contador caught him, never saw Contador putting 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 or even 2 + even on the flat/downhill + 2 + even on the flat/downhill.

Liggett stuffed up, thinking Cancellara was konking when Canc's win was built on the downhill like he showed in the rr. Misread the splits did Liggett.

See Larsson in the Giro uphill tt. Great performance. That was instructive.

Now Levi does not ride a great hill tt, so did very well, Levi's tt expertise is on dead flat tt parcours, curiously enough. Liggett and Turtur the Aus commentary team, again, screwed up.

 

[thunder]

Contador's fallen behind Larson on the next time check. Just in case someone out there isn't getting a live feed.

It's over

1. Cancellara
2. Larson
3. Leipheimer
4. Contador
5. Evans


Schumacher crosses in 13th place.

Schumacher rides best on the dead flat, like Levi.

 

[Crankyfeet]

Schumacher rides best on the dead flat, like Levi.

I don't know if I was missing it somewhere... but there was no description of the course... or profile.... anywhere... on any website before the race. Others couldn't find anything either. The profile was very important to understanding the race and who would be advantaged or disadvantaged.

 

[thunder]

I don't know if I was missing it somewhere... but there was no description of the course... or profile.... anywhere... on any website before the race. Others couldn't find anything either. The profile was very important to understanding the race and who would be advantaged or disadvantaged.

it was two laps of the rr circuit Crank.

 

[Crankyfeet]

it was two laps of the rr circuit Crank.

Yeah... I had worked that out by about a third the way through... and WBT confirmed it in this thread. I was talking about before the race.

 

[Anticyclone]

Yeah... I had worked that out by about a third the way through... and WBT confirmed it in this thread. I was talking about before the race.

Yeah, it was only in the opening post

 

[Crankyfeet]

Yeah, it was only in the opening post

Duh... I missed that. Apologies. I should do more reading and less writing...

 

[limerickman]

I was away in London yesterday - but I taped our national television stations coverage of the ITT.
We got over 1 hours live coverage of the ITT - which was pretty good.

Just watched the tape.
Contador was blasted away on the first circuit of the course - he was up considerably on the entire field and he had the guts of 30secs on Canc/Larsson/Evans etc.
His cadence looked really smooth over the first circuit.
On the second circuit however, his cadence was less smooth and he seemed to be struggling somewhat.

Larssons ride was something else : to be honest I wasn't aware that he could TT.
Great performance.

As for Canc - what can one say.
He's been the strongest rider throughout this season in my opinion.
He had a great early season - worked superbly at the TDF and now has an Olympic bronze and gold medal.
Rider of the season in my opinion.
In interview after the race, Canc said that he was at a training camp in the US earlier in the season with Larsson and that Larsson had put the Olympic ITT race as his seasons objective.
Interesting.

 

[classic1]

Cranktoes, they run 105-110 revs

From about 90 absolute max in the tt.

Difference is fixed gear starts. Gotta haul that gear ratio from the gun. G Thomas has to get to 60+kmph in 300 odd metres in his teams pursuit formation. That would be the biggest difficulty Cancellara faces.

Classic1 we need your wisdom (I am but a try-hard)

Pursuits and TT's are stupid. Only poms and abos ride them.

Cancellara was talking about riding IP but ruled it out with some lame excuse about not having time to ride one world cup to qualify. I suspect he tested and didn't do well.

I know fark all about all the little techniques they use. I do know that in the last 6-7 years in the IP that the gearing has gone up, I think 98-103". I don't think anyone rides below 100" in the teams pursuit. You need to be smooth too so you don't lose time wobbling up and down the track.

FWIW, O'Bree was riding some huge gear in 1993, 118" IIRC. Strong man. He'd get flogged at the start, get into that tuck and wind the ****er up. Impressive, stupid tuck position or superman position or not. Even a Collinelli doped to the eyeballs wasn't really beating him by much.

Road does not always translate to track. Armand De la Cuevas was good on the road (only man to get within 3 minutes of Big Mig in the 'extraterrestrial' TT in the 92 Tour) but in the pursuit couldn't win an IP at the worlds. Thierry Marie was an awesome prologue rider but IIRC no good at the IP. Hinault too, his pursuit times weren't that great. The track has become extremely specialised.

Personally, I don't think there would be many harder events than an individual pursuit, except maybe for a mountain TT. The kilo sucks but its only a minute and a bit. Reminds me of how tough rowing must be, or a 1500m athletics.race.