Originally Posted by
jajacek
I agree. But his coach is almost 70-year old. He is not up to date with equipment. He has no experience with powermeters and modern equipment at all and thinks equipment makes no difference and junior can ride on anything. Even an alloy bike and alloy wheels as long as he trains right. Old school. So we need some external advice. There is very few people here who have any idea about modern equipment and they are not keen to share their knowledge. And we aspire to medals in European Championship.
We also need some good aerobar. We have no clue which one. The one we have is more than 10 years old and has no adjustments. My son complaints that in team pursuit, he can't see a wheel in front of him when riding on this aerobar.
It is probably true that your son can win on anything, but equipment does make a difference. When you're racing among the top 1%, equipment alone can be the difference between a podium and 10th place.
As far as cranks go, with your son's long legs, he can essentially use whatever crank length he likes, which sounds like 170.
This article is a fairly good summation of some studies on the topic. You could deduced from it that crank length in the commonly used spectrum of 165-175mm makes no difference to power output. Fit would be the primary concern being that his leg movement doesn't affect his aero positioning