Sy Reene

Seems too simplistic. It suggests Usain Bolt would win flat or downhill running marathons, since sprinters can win flat stages.

Random question.. take Stage 3 of this year's tour, how would results look if instead that same course was an ITT ?

Drew Eckhardt 

With lungs the limiting factor and lung size a function of height, sprinter chunkiness gives them a bad aerobic power to weight ratio. They also have a suboptimal fast versus slow twitch muscle fiber combination.

Peter Sagan is a ponderous 172 pounds - 28 pounds past the two pounds per inch cutoff for good climbing morphology.

At 148 pounds but only 5'5", Caleb Ewan is carrying around at least 18 pounds too many.

Marco Pantani won at 5'8" and 126 pounds.

Alberto Contador won at 5'9" and 137 pounds, yielding a 7W/kg FTP.

Romain Bardet took the 2019 polka dot jersey at 6'0" and 143 pounds.

big john

If a sprinter can hide in the pack for most of the stage and conserve energy and then get a good leadout that could be a winning combination.

big john

Usain Bolt was said to hit 28mph at some point in his 100m sprint. No marathoners can do that. Marathoners can do 12+mph for 2 hours. Bolt could never do that.

seypat

Did you watch the video? Maybe you missed the part about fast twitch muscles losing their power quickly and slow twitch muscles being able to go on for hours. The cycling sprinter also has a team helping him get to the sprint as fresh as possible. Which makes those 2 mountain stages that Thor Hushovd won some years back even more incredible. People talk about his descending during those wins. He climbed the mountains by himself without a team pulling him along like the GC contenders have. Unbelievable!

seypat

The video of the roadie and the track cyclist is spot on. They are extremes and the numbers could be off some, but it hits the nail on the head. I would be the 55 year old version of the track sprinter.(except he is in a lot better shape and the closest track to me is 300 miles north or south) Similar backgrounds and similar size. Look how quickly the sprinter is caught on the climb. More importantly, look how tired he is after 6 miles of climbing! I know exactly how he feels. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.

ofajen

Yes. Put slightly more mathematically, VO2 max scales roughly with body mass to the 2/3rds power, so contests where this factor is critical favor lighter athletes. Cycle climbing on steep inclines is dominated by the work against gravity that scales linearly with mass, so it is precisely this kind of task.

And by the way, I’m 6’2” and 172 pounds and I don’t regard that as ponderous, but then I’m not a pro rider, eh?

Otto

Sy Reene

yeah, but I still don't understand why, using the Stage 3 example, why a GC non-sprinter type rider, after a 123 mile stage doesn't win. It's not like those guys don't also have a team helping pull them. Sure the fast twitch helps for the last 500 meters or whatnot, but the other 190+ kilometers, why are they still in contention even during the last 20kms? Why over that distance and 5 hours later, hasn't the 'slow twitch' rider put away the sprinting field from contention well before the end?

What do people think the results would look like if it was a 198km individual time trial?

seypat

I didn't watch that stage so I can't comment on it. However, the simplest answer to your question might be that all of the riders are riding for a team instead of themselves. The team's designated sprinters are supposed to win the sprints. The team's designated GC contenders are supposed to win the GC and so on and so on. If, if the riders were all racing just for themselves, you might see some different results.

MinnMan

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to me that you're not grokking how peloton and team dynamics neutralize GC-type prowess on a flat stage. Assuming that the peloton doesn't allow any breakaways (which can almost always be neutralized by the peloton if it wants to), and neglecting crashes and other interferences, everybody arrives at the end in a single bunch and only the explosive power of the sprinters at the end matters

noodle soup

Something that hasn't been mentioned here, and some of you might get upset by hearing this is...

Some athletes are using "enhancements". They don't build sustainable fitness, but the do build muscle that remains long after they get clean.

colnago62

What Coggan learned from studying many, many riders’s power data is that the winner, in a lot of occasions, was the rider who coasted the most during the race. There are ways to save energy in a large group that will allow sprinters come to the line as fresh as possible.

HTupolev

1-You're overestimating the gaps in specialization between these athletes. They're all endurance athletes, some are just more sprint-focused than others.
2-You're (probably massively) underestimating the effects of drafting.

The simple reason that the strongest GC team with strong TTT chops doesn't simply TTT off the front of flat stages is that everyone else in the peloton would hop on their wheel and casually let them blow themselves up.

surak

The goal for the GC types on flat stages is to see as little wind as possible and ride safely to the last km with minimal drama so they don't lose time. They save their energy for the mountains where they can create big time separation. There is no point for them to spring a long-range attack on a flat stage in hopes of gaining what would only be a minuscule time advantage -- if they can even do that, given that they have supreme W/kg but less raw power, which matters more when the road isn't uphill.

In one-day or shorter stage races, sometimes a GC type with top-notch TT abilities will go on a long break and win (e.g., Annemiek van Vleuten, Remco Evenepoel), but inaction and disorganization in the peloton behind plays a huge part in why they can stay away.

MinnMan

Yup. Those heroic breakaways - which are indeed heroic - wouldn't happen if the peloton was determined to shut them down.

noodle soup

#Spartacus

diphthong

agree on all fronts. also would posit that more than a few people, following sporting events of any sort, realize athletes are forever looking for an edge and are frequently one step ahead of a regulating/disciplining agency. if they'll dope in curling, they'll dope anywhere. under zero illusions of any sport/athlete being 100% pure. if they are, awesome. jaded or
negative? maybe. more like realistic tho. when you come across instances of doping where money isn't a factor, it doesn't
take much to realize how a new/future contract/sponsorship involving $$$ could possibly be influenced by the twin pull of staying relevant and money. does it make myself (and others) less appreciative of sporting events. not really. it's been going on for decades and it ain't new. more than a few sports are in denial tho.

https://abcnews.go.com/International...ry?id=53269083

sorry to get off topic tho...pretty much every sport has its specialized athletes for specific moments/times. the sprinters just do it faster than the rest of us on flattish ground and would destroy nearly every non-professional/never-pro bike racer/rider once the road tilted up.

noodle soup

I know 4 pro cyclists. One is 22 and on the rise, and the others are now retired. They say that it's still going on, but the dopers are way ahead of the testing..

diphthong

and the pro tour "vampires" actually conduct testing. how's that going with american sports like basketball? baseball?
football? how about the pga tour? the real football on other continents?

i was so waiting for the other shoe to drop on the operation puerto nonsense back in 2006. remarkable, how spain, a squad that had done little internationally historically, suddenly became a top dog. cycling caught the brunt of it but i don't remember any scuttlebutt from the investigations/fallout hitting any football teams. serious ca$hi$ih
involved to keep that quiet. cycling $$ are peanuts compared to the football establishment in europe.

MinnMan

At least they're not all bald these days.

canklecat

Recovery and pacing over a three week grand tour is another factor. Lots of pros and even a few amateur riders could do well on some stages in the TdF, Giro or Vuelta. The trick is repeating it day after day for three weeks. Besides the physiological stamina it's a brutal mental game that can break some athletes who are physically strong.

downtube42

The sprinters aren't suffering because they can't climb. They're suffering because the cutoff time is determined by guys who can climb insanely fast.

rubiksoval

In a 100+ person field, you can do 30+ mph barely pedaling at times. I've done a race(s) and averaged 31 mph and my average wattage was around 230 watts (power that on my own would normally get met 20-21 mph average). The draft sucks you along.

Individual time trials come down to watts/cda. It would be very, very different, with time gaps in the tens of minutes (especially because most anyone not in contention would simply do the minimum to make the time cut).

Sy Reene

Thanks. Kinda what I was thinking -- ie. that all of the athletes have to be pretty darn good at long haul endurance. The reasons for the typically heavier sprinters to not win climbs has been pretty well explained, and I think your's and Rubik's comments explain mostly why sprinters do and can win some stages. Honestly, I didn't realize that the peloton draft offered what was mentioned as roughly a 10mph speed bonus.. I always assumed (incorrectly obviously) that it was maybe half of that.

Since even the sprint/flat style stages tend to have their GC riders finishing with the same time (though typically not winning) as the winners, I partly wonder why teams bother to pay and put name-brand sprinters on their teams, as opposed to more GC contenders. I presume it's to gain more likely and frequent appearances by their team on the podium (and maybe a green jersey), vs. the tradeoff gamble on stacking the deck for a better shot at a yellow jersey. GC contenders as well have more likelihood/overlap of also showing up with polka-dotted or white jerseys.

burnthesheep

I'm more interested in how riceaway was able to stare at somebody else's power meter to be able see they were doing a 4-digit power for that long. Never in my life riding have I looked over at another rider's gps for any reason whatsoever. Much less "doing 1600 for 15 seconds out of a turn".