abhirama

I definitely didn't intend it to sound like I'm whining. I'm fat and big and I'm not complaining. Just trying to understand the sport better.

I just should have used the word disadvantageous instead of unfair. That's what I actually meant.

Thanks for responding, everyone. I learnt something new from this thread.

Jandro 

TL;DR for this thread: No, it's not unfair to big guys. Sometimes.

gregf83 

It's a bit of a trick question as the 'weight' in power/weight ratio is the riders weight not including the bike. When you include bike, shoes & clothes the heavier, more powerful rider will end up with a higher power/'total weight' ratio.

SempreCycling

You're always going to get a certain crowd who jumps in the thread and yells HTFU!

curbtender

Big guys just enjoy downhill more and are fun to draft behind. Not fair? We just live by different rules...

waterrockets 

The aero difference is real too though.

I've won two races by attacking a short downhill 800m from the finish. Seems like not too many people were ready to start that descent at 1500W

Will Goes Boing

Thank you for clearing that up and sorry if I sounded confrontational in my post but I mistook it as whining. I would say anything where power to weight ratio plays a factor (ie. horse racing, motorcycle/car racing, bicycle racing).... having the operator be light is most advantageous.

However, as a lot of people already mentioned there are plenty of "bigger guys" who are really fast. There's a difference between having a large frame yet be fit and muscular as oppose to a guy who's big and out of shape.

hamster

Correct.

However, the assumption of "equal power to weight" is flawed. We use power/weight ratio because it's convenient and easy to calculate and it seems to have some relevance (it tells us how fast the person would climb hills in the absence of air resistance).

But in the real world, power does not scale perfectly linearly with weight. (Or even with lean body weight.) It seems to scale slower, with the exponent somewhere around 0.66 to 0.75.

And then aerodynamic drag scales even slower, with the exponent around 0.32.

What it means is that, if you take two equally fit, proportionally built cyclists with equal body fat percentages and different heights, the taller guy will be slightly faster in the flats, and the shorter guy should be slightly faster on hills. Here "slightly" is about a 4-5% difference in average speed between a 5'6"/140 lb guy and a 6'3"/180 lb guy.

svtmike

In horse racing and motorcycle/car racing the engine is separate from the operator. In bicycle racing, they are one and the same and the analogy breaks down. We know from watching actual races that sometimes the bigger guys have the advantage and sometimes the smaller guys have the advantage and it doesn't always come down to pure power/weight (and completely ignoring operator skills in all of the different disciplines mentioned).

krobinson103

Also the difference in speed can come down to condition on the day. I know for a fact that certain days I'm faster - uphill or downhill. Others I feel like I'm lagging. With so many factors in the equation I think that size would be difficult to pin down as the cause of winnning or losing.

Carbonfiberboy 

I could be wrong, but training and VO2 talent aside, I always thought climbing performance came down to heart mass/body weight and lung volume/body weight. My guess is that small people have better ratios than large people. OTOH as others have pointed out, large people can have better power to swept area ratios and a big advantage in ability to get into a better aero position.

The problem in bike racing is the drafting thing. It's really hard to ride someone off your wheel, no matter how aero and talented you are. OTOH, it's much easier to drop someone on a climb when the speeds are much lower. Because of the cube power to speed relationship, it's very hard to win a TT by the same amount a climber can win a mountain top finish stage. So climbers have quite an advantage in stage races. In crits, not so much, not at all. In road races, it depends on the terrain, as other posters have pointed out.

36Oly_Rider

Pfft, I wish I were big...being 5' 7" and weighing in at a buck fifty, a good stiff wind make riding the flats feel like a big ol' hill and have me wishing I had a V8...

rkwaki

Agreed...

and there's enough of ole rk for punk and robo-wookie

Jseis 

It would appear that big guys are well suited as pullers and slightly smaller more efficient guys are best suited to take advantage of the big guys draft (on the flats) and squirt by to advance (before a hill) and here's the catch..don't get caught by the now PO'd big guys chasing you down on the other side (now If this was NASCAR & horse racing...smaller guys would wear bulkier clothing & pull extra weight).

Beneficial Ear

This is very interesting to consider.

MetalPedaler

Let it be unfair.....gives us more of a reason to get smaller! I never really worried about my weight until I started cycling.....now I'll take pains to lose it/not gain it back!

Carbonfiberboy 

I'm 66.5" and 160 and I'm frequently the designated leader when we're pulling into it. If only there were such a thing as a downhill, upwind TT, I'd slaughter. One of the most fun times I ever had on a bike was the last 25 miles of RAMROD, slight downhill trend, upwind, with 3 racer boys in a rolling paceline. We covered it in an hour flat, pulling about 30 bikes behind us to start with, but all gone 20 miles later. I don't know why that is, but I seem to have a very high power to area ratio and descend faster than the big guys. OTOH, I can't climb worth doodly. I suppose around here, they'd call me fat. So there are a lot of variables.

slowride454

us fat guys do have the advantage on the downhills. Last summer my riding partner and I were approaching the end of a 90 mile race where the finish is all downhill with a very steep section. Don is 5'10 and well over 300 (but bike commutes 1000miles a month, weather permitting). I am 5'11" and about 250. At one point we were going 45mph and coasted for a very long way at over 20 passing all of the skinny folks who passed us going up the hills. Just a point of reference from us fat asses.

hamster

Heights of the last 10 King of the Mountain classification winners at Tour de France, in ascending order:
5'8"
5'9"
5'9"
5'9"
5'9"
5'9"
5'10"
5'10"
5'11"
6'3"

Heights of the last 10 time trial medalists at the Olympics (2000-2012, one guy won twice, one guy was stripped of his medal):
5'6"
5'11"
6'0"
6'0"
6'1"
6'1"
6'1"
6'1"
6'3"
6'4"

Heights of the last 11 road race medalists at the Olympics (2000-2012, one guy won twice):
5'7"
5'8"
5'8"
5'9"
5'9"
5'11"
5'11"
6'0"
6'0"
6'1"
6'3"

Burnette

When I first started doing group road rides at the end of '05, and serious riding in '06, the learning curve was steep for me. But with time and fitness I gained knowledge and lost weight. Well, I wasn't fat to begin with. Or tall.
I'm 5' 3" tall and at the beginning of '05, very fit (gym rat) and 148 lbs. By the end of '06 I weighed 129 lbs and can/could climb very well. It's still fun to blow by a paceline uphill, but ofcourse they will catch me if the hill is short or the flats are long enough. I'm not strong enough to break away alone. Love hills, hate the wind!
What I have noticed about bigs guys are that some do descend well, they make great taxis to the front too. They can burn me on the flats, but I can tug on them if I get their wheel.
On a ride years ago, there was a big guy on an old Trek Tri Y bike(it rattled and crackled the whole ride) that gave me hell. We were practicing pacelining, I got stuck behind him. Great right? Nope, he wanted to make my day go bad, and did. He would soft pedal and let the rider in front of him get a gap, then he would sprint back up to him. Me, being behind this chump, was getting whip sawed and worn down and unable to take his spot away from him. I recover better now, can sprint better and can now handle that situation. I can take a pull longer and take a spot if I time it right.
There are routes were the big guys have adavantages, some were I do, so your head is your best weapon. Know when to go and when not to.
One more advantage I seem to have other than climbing is heat dissapation. Heat doesn't phase me in the least. I worry about too much sun and sometimes wear a long sleeve base layer when temps reach the high ninties (fahrenheit). As long as I'm hydrated and have enough fluids while riding, high temps pose no threat, I thrive in it.
It kills some of the big guys later in the ride. Why? I don't know. A friend of mine who is also a Hobbit like me (ha!) said we have a smaller core, we retain less heat, our core is closer to the surface, cools more quickly. Two piles of hot coles, one big, one small, the smaller one cools first. I just know that the heat never stopped me from riding.
Only notice an advantage sometimes if the climb is very steep, long and slow paced on a real hot day, or if we get stuck at a stop lights/signs in the sun too long, no wind.
Hammering in a pack it's moot until the miles add up.
But agree with most here, fat is bad for anybody, short or tall. I got lighter, I got faster too. (Damn! I weigh as much as Contador?)

NMBuff

Don't worry about "big" vs "small." Worry about your own fitness level and focus on what it can be good at. I'm awful at ascents as well as the flats (5'6" at 151lbs), but my friends are scared ****less of hitting 35+ mph downhill. I'm at a high cadence in a high gear and have caught up to my timid buddies on numerous rides.

AdelaaR

If they both have exactly the same power to weight ratio and their bikes weigh the same ... then the one with the best aero profile is more likely to win.
Aero in climbing is generally less important than weight, but it isn't completely unimportant.

Bob Dopolina 

Like.

Bob Dopolina 

Seriously?










I'm still shaking my head and chuckling to myself.

RT

I am assuming by ascending you mean by year, earliest at the top. This makes a great point, as it does in all other sports. NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA. Players are so much larger and faster, and this causes more injury, allows for records not only to be broken, but shattered (PED's help too) among other things. In cycling, it just means that the science behind the training is allowing larger bodies to make better use of their power, as these numbers would seem to indicate.

TBS, I think if weight accompanied these height stats, it would be even more complete.