Baby Puke

Anyone notice Theo Bos is a track sprinter again?

queerpunk

not only that but an Omnium rider too!

He's got aims for Rio. Should be interesting. As much as I love track specialists I like seeing some draw from road studs.

Baby Puke

I heard he is aiming to do team sprint at the Olys, and adding credence to that he just won the NL nats at match sprint beating Hoagland and running 3rd in qualifying.

gtrob

What a freak. He could probably race decent at olympics in omnium, TS, and sprint.

Wasn't that always the point of omnium though, it was for sprints and endurance riders the same? Once in a while a guy can actually do both.

sergioflorez

dis b great news, b. im a fan of theo bos

carleton

Theoretically, yes. But think about it. A world-class, podium-placing enduro will be competitive in the Omnium. A world-class, podium-placing sprinter will not. The only events in which the sprinter will excel will be the time trial (kilo/500m) and the flying lap. (S)He will be spit out of the back of the pack in every other event.

Now, if you traded one of the mass-start races for a Keirin, then it'd be more fair with 3 sprint and 3 enduro events.

queerpunk

yeah, the point about omniums being competitive events for sprinters is that they're competitive for road sprinters, not track sprinters.

SprintzNKiloz

Lee Povey noted his performance in a Facebook "rant" recently saying basically that even though he killed it at a national level, you can see where the road work hurt him and generally, at a world level he's relatively "slow."

carleton

Yeah. I don't have as much experience as some. But, from my point of view, if you are looking to be a pure sprinter, then train for 1 minute power, period. Use road rides to burn fat or stay lean if necessary, but not as a major part of your program. I'd cut out long, hard group rides.

I think that the conditioning needed can be achieved in various phases of sprint training.

(This is my armchair coach's philosophy)

EDIT:

The main reason is that there are more than 2 muscle fiber types ("slow twitch" and "fast twitch") and some of those muscle fibers can be conditioned to be either "slow" or "fast". How you train affects what those muscles do.

SprintzNKiloz

Agree. It seems like all the stuff out there that AIS ppl did is gaining traction. I recently saw a tri oriented article advocating a similar approach.

queerpunk

what was the flying 200 time that he qualified with to win the sprint at Dutch nats?

that last few tenths of a second to be truly competitive internationally takes such a greater level of focus and specification. you don't get to 9.9 the same way you get to 10.3. or whatever.

Baby Puke

I belive he rode a 10.2. Reportedly he also won the kilo with a 1:01.xx. If this is on Apeldorn it's pretty impressive as it doesn't seem like a particularly quick track. I heard he's hoping to ride man 3 in the TS for the Olympics.

sergioflorez

edit* finals too

Trackliche

Wow! Great seeing that. Thanks for posting.

And look at all those bobbed aero lids. . .

TC

carleton

Whoa. Nice. Using relatively "wide" Easton EC90 bars as well. Those bars are only available in 38 and 40cm.

He's definitely back on the scene for sure.

TrackMonkey7

Can someone tell me why we can't have similar YouTube coverage for the plethora of big track races like this? I've only seen footage of a few Six Days this season, and little to nothing of the World Cups.

Hida Yanra

It was, and from the people I talk to, Apeldorn is the slowest WC-level track around.
If you recall a few years back when the WCs were there, it changed the character of several events as laps were harder to take and sprints played out a bit differently.

yup - right there with you, first thing I noticed about that photo- can't name another high-level sprinter using anything that wide. There's gains to be made there.

1incpa

I'm with you there! My wife and I recently watched the 2013 Amsterdam 6 day in its entirety. There has been nothing of 6 days but highlights since then.
Pretty frustrating, especially after watching the highlights!

Paul

queerpunk

it's always funny to see people come back to a discipline after some gear standards have changed. Wiggins was using track drops for madisons in recent months, too.

also notable is that though Bos was on a Cervelo - consistent with his trade team sponsorship but not an ideal sprint bike for sure - during, i believe, Dutch national champs, he was back on a more sprint-appropriate national team Koga for these Revolution races.

JimiMimni

I love Carlton Kirby. He's such an absurd announcer. Also, Bos is just leagues ahead of those boys, isn't he?

carleton

I think it was Robert Förstemann (or one of the Germans) that went back to using 40-ish centimeter bars for man 1 team sprint. At least that's where I noticed them. Maybe for other events, too.

As I recall, Bos was involved in the design of that frame (after (or during) all of the BT/KOGA intellectual property drama).

I take all results and times from 6-days with a grain of salt. It's entertainment.

The crowd wanted Bos to win...Bos won. Same thing happened with Cav when he did his 6-day tour after winning the road World Championship.

It would have been pretty anti-climactic if Bos came in last wouldn't it?

Hida Yanra

a quick re-check at the footage I have from this season and his IG acct shows him on the FES bars - but I don't have many videos of their TS squad - worth a look for sure, I could see the wider bars being a touch better off the line.

Other than the "Theo helped us design this bike" marketing speak, I don't believe he actually had any role in its design, but that's just my understanding. Koga didn't design any of that bike other than the paint scheme.

carleton

Yeah, they were FES bars, but they were noticeably wider than his teammates' bars in the same photo.

It's been a year or more when I saw that. Things may be different again now. I'm sure they are all experimenting.

I went back and forth between 33, 37, and 38cm bars. My max wattage on standing starts was always like 100W higher with the 38cm EC90 bars...but I was probably less aero. There's obviously a tradoff in there somewhere between leverage for the huge deadlift type of effort and making an arrowhead shape with your arms.

So, I can see the logic being: For great starts use normal sized bars, for best top speed and speed maintenance, use narrow bars. So, if you are man 1 of team sprint, all you are doing is providing a great start for your team, then use normal bars. Any rolling start (flying 200M, keirin) would be better using narrow bars.

Maybe. But, I mean, if they are designing a bike for the Olympics, you'd think they would ask their world champion rider what he'd like from it. Just like I'd imagine that Sarah Hammer had input in the design Felt TK1.

And I guess I'm just talking about angles and tube lengths more so than materials and layup.

Hida Yanra

good point - that's true on his bar width.

you know, that's a great question and now I'm curious if Sarah H or Bobby L had input on the TK1- or Colby P, he was involved w/ Felt for a while.

I'll see if I can get an answer on the Felt side of things from Dave Koesel (Superdave) over on ST- he's pretty open about design stuff, can't think of any reason that'd need to stay secret.

carleton

I recall stories (or rumors) that Jamie Staff didn't like some parts of the TK1 for his sprinters and Felt made adjustments. That's (apparently) why there were "Sprint" and "Endurance" models of the TK1.