That rider is Ned's Jan Willem van Schip, who silvered in both the points and omnium in the recent WC's. I recall he also had a really narrow (and kinda high) track hand position. Impressive racing at GW, in the big break all day and survived to top ten (I think) at the finish.

BLS interview with Josiah Ng: https://www.blsglobal.net/int/interview-josiah-ng/

I think this needs to be expanded upon.

Tactics in sprinting have become more "limited". It's a more subtle game and the only mistakes left to make are small mistakes, and with the larger gears, it's much harder to recover. It's like going from walking a balance beam to walking a tightrope. The balance beam allows you to do much more than the tightrope, but the consequence of falling off is the same, you lose.

Some solid 200m times at the Lea Valley Good Friday Sprint Trophy.

The Good Friday meeting, started in 1903, is perhaps the longest running event in the world.

What's mind blowing is that Alex Spratt has only been cycling for just over a year. He's an absolute freakshow who was doing 10.5s on a TC1 with spokey clinchers. It's equal parts inspiring and demoralising, haha.

word on the street via Yoeri Havik is that they are Nitto B135AAs. It's a significantly flared rando bar in 26.0. The narrowest it comes is 40cm, but the flare is so dramatic that they're a lot narrower at the hoods.

They have a long reach and a high hood, too, so it makes sense that an enduro would want them.

Makes me want to design the perfect, modern enduro bar: aero top, slightly flared hood, long reach, flat drop. A lont of bars come close but miss something important.

If you know what you want, maybe contact a company like Seven (custom Ti), Parlee (custom carbon) or Predator (custom carbon) and see if they’d take in the project?

Between the 3, I bet at least one would be up for it. Seven makes bars and Predator made a custom one-piece bar+stem combo for the TK1 back in 2010 or so.

Add Calfee to that list of options, too.

This idea has had me thinking for the last hour or so.

I can see custom bars being at least as beneficial as a custom frame where you set the dimensions and angles.

Handlebars are unexpectedly more important than I think a lot of people give them credit for. I've used a handful of bars on the track and can articulate the characteristics, pros, and cons of each. Same with aero bars.

It seems that the top teams with R&D budgets make lots of custom bars (UKSI for GB, FES for GER, LOOK for FRA, etc...). I've noticed that individual members of the GB and GER teams often will ride different custom bars even when specializing in the same events.

http://www.genf.diplo.de/contentblob...eam_sprint.jpg
http://cdn.coresites.factorymedia.co...eam-sprint.jpg
http://images.smh.com.au/2012/04/03/3186398/germany.jpg
http://keyassets.timeincuk.net/inspi...eam-Sprint.jpg

Maybe there is something to the idea of having track drop bars made to spec (reach, drop, angles, grip sizes, etc...). Note that Vogel and Welte's bars are very similar but have slightly different shapes and drops...and every one above is on a custom frame. The only non-custom bars are the 33cm Alpinas that the British sprinters seem to favor. These were also favored by the Kiwi sprinters for a while. I think they also ride custom bars now, too.

Ha! This is fun to just think about...

Those custom bars have to cost the Federations a ton of money. Didn't Wiggins' custom bars for his Hour ride cost something outrageous? I have to wonder if that is even viable for anyone except those on a fully sponsored national team.

eh, i know a few people with custom bars. ranging from bar mods to fully custom. it's certainly expensive but not all that out of line with what we spend on other parts.

i just don't want to spend that much dough on handlebars. though sometimes i'm tempted.

I had Naked Bicycles (website is down) make me some custom aerobars back in 2010. Steve Hill (US Kilo Champ in 2007 & 2008?) had some made by him as well.

They were aluminum and cost about the same as some mid-range TT bars from a high-end tri shop. And certainly less than the top aero bars.

I would imagine that custom carbon track bars aren't as difficult to make as carbon frames. Predator has offered house-made bars in the past:

https://www.bikerumor.com/wp-content...-2-600x387.jpg

I even ran the idea by Mr. Tiemeyer when he was making one of my frames. On the call, I asked him and there was a long pause as if to say, "ehhh...I could...but it's not my thing..."

I would argue that handlebars are as important as shoes...and custom shoes are a thing. As well as custom specifications for frames, wheels, skinsuits/kits, sunglasses (prescription), etc...

If I could have what I wanted, it would be a mix of features from the Easton EC90 Track, 3T Scatto, and Alpina Pista bars...and I'd be happy to pay for them provided that they were up to the task.


EDIT: More Predator stuff:

https://www.bikerumor.com/wp-content...ndlebars01.jpg
https://www.bikerumor.com/wp-content...ndlebars02.jpg

My guess is that the cost was the actual engineering and wind tunnel testing to find the best configuration of custom aerobars. Not just making a one-off set.

Wiggins is the type of athlete who would want to try a dozen bars in the wind tunnel, half-of which would probably be off-the-rack and the other half custom molded from scratch.

Wiggin's bars for the Hour were 3D printed Titanium. There were a few iterations and that's where the high cost came from.

C4 carbon as well. They seem to specialize in bars.

Has anyone seen a decent photo of the Cervelo T5 with the pitot tube in the headtube? I think you can see it briefly in this video about 1.27 in

Was perusing some Gord Singleton related stuff, came across this thread - https://www.bikeforums.net/track-cyc...kilo-bike.html, and noticed that we had a real heavyweight from cycling's past chime in on these boards. Check out post #7 and see if you recognize the name.

More Singleton related stuff.

In the other thread I posted, he mentions about how much endurance work sprinters used to to compared to today. A year after I had stopped racing (and training completely), I did a running race on a whim with a friend, and I was able to place top 10 in a pretty competitive 5k run (there were many nationally ranked runners in the event) based on my residual fitness from a year before (friend who is a competitive runner was PISSED, lol).

Many people don't realize how "fit" one has to be to go really fast. Gord in 1984 did a competitive "tower climb" at Niagara Falls' Skylon Tower. He won the event with a time of 3:24 against many nationally and internationally ranked runners. It wasn't until 2016 (32 years later) that the record fell, by Troy Alston, who specializes in tower runs. Alston took 3 seconds off of Gord's record over the 660 steps.

Another way to look at it is Jonothan Toews of the Chicago Blackhawks attempted the feat this past year, intending to break Gord's time (now a Canadian record), and fell 10s short. Hockey players routinely run and sprint stairs because it's such a close movement to the skating stride. It really puts into perspective what it means to be "Sprinter Fit" when another world class athlete who trains this way isn't able to top someone who did the event on a whim.

Troy Alston also broke his own record this past year, with a 3:02!

https://www.niagarafallsreview.ca/ne...lls-at-skylon/
https://www.niagarafallsreview.ca/ne...ain-at-skylon/

And yet more cycling related Canadiana.

Jocelyn Lovell

Jocelyn Lovell ? The Muhammad Ali of Cycling | Pedal Magazine
https://vimeo.com/211018512
https://www.gettyimages.ca/photos/jo...mily=editorial
Lovell bicycles

Sorry for all the posts, but it's still -23 to -25C in the mornings up here and it's cozy and warm in front the computer, lol.

I wonder what Gord is up to these days.

Following on these observations, it seems like people are not preparing for the kilo the same way they did in the past. I think the classic workouts for kilo, like repeated flying 500's on a timed rest until you die, are not the bread and butter they once were. I recall a few years ago Teun Mulder rocked up without doing any specific kilo training and won worlds. He'd been preparing for sprints and keirin. 2010?

In my own training, I was recently (loosely) working with a coach who recommended I drop my kilo training and focus instead on increasing peak speed and lactic capacity (rather than lactate tolerance= classic kilo training). So instead my bread and butter have been flying 100's, rolling accelerations and rolling 500's on full rest, pretty much garden variety training for match sprints. My results are necessarily dependent on my limited training time (I'm old, have an adult job, have a wife and child), but I can say I'm not missing the lactate tolerance work.

When I played tennis in HS, my teammates and I asked one of our coaches the simple question, "Who is the best tennis player in the world?" To which he replied something like, "We'll never know. The best player will never know. They'll never pick up a tennis racquet...." That was deep to a bunch of 16 and 17 year-olds, hahaha.

Nonetheless, it was interesting to consider that the sport's best athletes could simply miss the sport altogether due to a series of unlucky events (e.g. Santa bought them a Nintendo instead of a bicycle that one Christmas).

I'm inclined to think that Singleton was that exceptional athlete that was lucky enough to find athletics in general and cycling in particular.

It's not as common in the US, but a lot of countries do talent scouting pools... basically you just get a bunch of young folk together and make them try a bunch of different sports to identify anyone that's got a natural gift for it.
Otherwise a lot of time you're very "regionally" locked into very specific options for sports. I grew up in redneck south, so it was pretty much football, baseball or basketball. There were some swim teams and cross country (and I remember in HS they tried to start a soccer team) but they weren't "normal." Cyclists were (are) basically ostracized if not downright treated with hostility.

Same thing when I see a Skeleton/Luge rider... how many great athletes for THAT sport are there that don't live near one of a handful of facilities that can allow someone to even try it.

Very true. I was watching something where they were talking about Usain Bolt and how the only reason he was a runner was because he was born in Jamaica. Given his physical attributes, if was born in a host of other countries he would have been a swimmer/tennis player/basketballer etc. In any of those other countries, they would have told him he wasn't built right to be a runner!

Check out these shorties

http://i.imgur.com/RaDkXKX.jpg