carleton

I'm a lot like Baby Puke, I would set up my road bikes to mimic my track position, including saddle position and even crank length. I'd buy the cheapest cranks I could find in the size I planned to race the following season. The only difference being the bars would be set at a comfortable height a few inches higher than track.

The first season I raced 165mm cranks, I put 165mm kid cranks on my road bike months before. Hills sucked, but I learned to carry high cadences like Taras mentioned. I even put 40cm bars on.

Hopping back and forth between bikes was easy.

Right now I have 170mm on my spin bike and 165mm on my track, and I can feel the difference. I really wish I had 165mm on my spin bike. It's gonna take a fair amount of research and tinkering to get 165mm on there (need ISIS 165mm and I have no idea what the chain line is, and I need to be able to use track chainrings to avoid tacos). I did efforts last night on the spin bike (170mm) then hopped on my track bike (locked into a mag trainer, 165mm) and it felt sooooo goooood.

But, as Taras says, it depends on what you are doing with your road bike. Southerfox, I recall you being a road racer, so maybe it's important enough to approach the two differently and if they come together, cool. But, for me (and maybe Baby Puke) the road bike is essentially a track bike with gears and brakes.

All that being said, some people simply can't feel the difference (in a good way).

taras0000

I lived in an area right under a 300-400 foot escarpment (the Niagara Escarpment). Also at the time, I needed to do the racing because the nearest "real" track was Bromont (8 hrs), and then T-Town (8.5 hrs) was a nearly as close 2nd. This was before Bloomer Park (4hrs) came around which cut travel time in half from Bromont.


This is what I would recommennd for a sprinter with no team/road obligations. If all one was racing were crits on the road, then you could get away with this as well.


Hills actually seemed easier for me on the smaller cranks. But you do learn to spin more with them as well. That goes back to the "Gain Ratio" that someone had mentioned a few months back. I threw the specifics of the differences out there because Southernfox did mention that she did some road racing. It's basically info for anyone to use so they can see why I had those differences, and decide whether or not they have similar differences in needs to warrant having slight changes between bikes.

southernfox

EX road racer The road bike is only for training for track now I'm in the process of putting 165mm cranks on (167.5mm on track bike now).

But this was a cleat position question...switching from pure-road racing to pure-track racing (as a sprinter).

taras0000

Right under the balls of the feet. Think of running to sprint, you would be looking to replicate the same contact points on the foot for pedaling as a sprinter.

taras0000

Your shoes will make a difference too. Shoes with a toe kick will be better than flatter shoes.

carleton

To offer a different point of view, I've seen photos and screen captures of Hoy and others using a further back cleat position. Damn near mid-foot.

My guess is that this was experimental as they were moving to bigger gears.

The further the cleat is from the leg, the longer the lever (foot) becomes and calls on the calves to do more work. This makes the calves sort of a "snap" multiplier (if they are strong enough). I think this plays well for smaller gears and snappier riding (think 90s match sprinting). Ever see a guy gap-off someone with 2-3 pedal strokes? That kind of riding.

But if your calves are a limiting reagent (weak link) then moving the cleat backwards allows you to apply more torque as in leg press where you press through the middle of your foot as opposed to on the balls of the feet.

Not sure if the GB experiment worked. Hoy had custom shoes, so he could have the cleat placement anywhere. Maybe it was his personal preference. There is only so much fore/aft you can do with off-the-rack shoes where manufacturers generally go with ball of the foot placement when designing the shoe.

There were some triathletes experimenting with mid-foot for similar but different reasons.

taras0000

Cleat placement is definitely going to become a personal preference/mechanics thing. I played around quite a bit with my cleat placement before settling where I did.

As far as the midfoot-ish placement amongst sprinters, It must've been experimental because in the latter part of Hoy's career (where the Brits were using the custom "wing" drop bars), he's back under the ball of the foot.

The calf also serves to "blunt" the transitions that the leg goes through around the pedal stroke. It can act as a force producer, as well as a damper to ease directional transition. Making this foot lever smaller, ends up limiting the effect of both. Anyone playing with cleat position is going to have to really take into account how strong they are, how smooth they are, and where they fall along these lines.

carleton

Just a random thought:

We are open to change, right?

The sport is evolving. The Flying 200M is becoming more of an event unto itself and less of an accurate tournament seeding tool (its intended purpose). At the World level qualifying times are increasingly close. This year, positions 1-10 were separated by 0.114s (0.867kph). This is less than the penalty from swerving up to (not over) the red line once. One can only imagine that this will shrink even more going forward.

Further, the gearing (huge) and equipment (aero helmets) are different between qualifying and racing. This is like a race car driver qualifying using one car and racing another.

Is the flying 200M the best way to seed a sprint tournament now?

Some ideas: (not to be implemented all together. Pick and choose.)
- Require mass start helmets in the qualifying?
- Require the rider to use the same gear from qualifying in the 1st round? (controversial, I know)
- Separate the F200 into it's own medaling Time Trial event?
- Have the riders ride 2 flying 200s and throw out their worst time?
- Figure out a different way to seed the tournament? (also controversial)
- Get rid of bye rounds? This grants an advantage to those who qualify fastest. Carlin rode 9.715s for 5th only 0.041 off the leader and had to race in the 1st round.
- 1st 2 rounds are 1-ride round-robin and the results seed the rest of the tournament?


I know that a lot of effort is done to keep the top 2 riders from meeting early on and eliminating each other. But, the top Match Sprinter could easily be eliminated in qualifying now...which is worse. Levy qualified 17th (9.923s) and fought through and finished 4th at this year's Worlds. That 17th place could have simply been the result of a "speed wobble". And if the field were smaller, only the top 16 would have qualified sending Levy to the showers.

Just some thoughts.

carleton

I'm going to venture to guess that we'll see more disparity between qualifying times and final placement at the lower levels (local, regional, national, masters) as those who get good at qualifying may not be as good at match sprinting. Almost as different as a 4K vs a Scratch Race.

ruudlaff

At the elite level removing seeding and doing a random allocation for the rounds would go a long way. Riders would then only put in enough effort that they think will get them into the top 16 (or whatever the cutoff is for the event). So you have a risk reward situation where if you could try to save some matches for later in the day, but at the same time it would gauging that risk...

sarals 

I heard about a rumor that the UCI is going to change the format for masters athletes for Track Worlds this year. Basically no 500M TT or 2K pursuit. Men will do a 4K and kilo, and the women really get hosed by only having a 3K pursuit. They do get to have four person team pursuit, over a 4K distance.

I HOPE this isn't true!!!!

southernfox

I want to say 'That can't be right,' but who the hell knows with the UCI :/

FinkFloyd

I'm intrigued by the analogy (as it seems to suggest that the difference between qualifying and racing is unique to track sprinting and thus unwelcome; at least, that's how I read it).

I would suggest that it's slightly different and that it's not like race car teams using different cars, so much as different setups - and that has been common in car racing for many years. During the 1980s BMW were notorious in Formula One racing for their 'qualifying' engines which were developing well over 1000bhp in that state of tune, but which were prone to overheating and self-destructing if they were asked to do much more than three laps at a time. That's perhaps an extreme example but it still goes on today in various iterations; Formula One do now demand that the engine is untouched between qualifying and the race, which cuts down on it somewhat.

It seems to me that qualifying and racing are probably different skills, but they're both skills a top sprinter needs - I like your idea of making them use the same gear for both the qualifying and the sprints (not dissimilar to the aforesaid F1 rule) which would make it more tactical. If the small gaps are the issue, though, why not simply increase the length of the qualifying event? If you made it a flying 450 (the current 200 plus one lap) you'd (a) have bigger time gaps; (b) make it more of a tactical choice for the participants as going all-out for a favourable qualifying spot would be a more destructive effort.

Unless I'm missing something, which I might be.

carleton

No, I wasn't trying to imply that it's unique to track sprinting. But, what little I know about motorsport, I figured it would be against rules to qualify in one car and race a totally different one.

I would imagine that qualifying in motorsport serves the purpose of testing to see:
- Who are the best drivers.
- Who has the best cars.
- Who knows how to ride this course.

...all without others interfering during the test. Because, I'm sure there were situations in the past where rivals who were both contenders to win a big race, one manually assigned to the Pole and one manually assigned waaaaaay in the back and having to fight through 20 cars just to get to the former guy...made for some angry teams.

It's my understanding that qualifying exists to objectively prevent issues like that.


No, I think you got it. Thanks for the insight about motorsport. That's a similarly mature sport and you illustrate that it has dealt with similar issues. Maybe we should look there for ideas.

And as you suggest, a longer qualifying event would also have the desired effect. Even a Flying Lap would be an improvement and would have the benefit of being more like a race situation than a Flying 200.


I don't think is a clearly present issue now in track sprinting. But, the trend has moved in that direction every year.

I think the UCI has to reevaluate the question: "How do we determine who the best Match Sprinter is at a given event?"

carleton

(this isn't to FinkFloyd, just more general talk)

To apply Match Sprint Tournament rules to it's sibling event, The Scratch Race....

Typically, if an event like Elite Nationals has a lot of people sign up for the Scratch, they will have heats to determine who races the final.

- 20 are allowed in the race for medals.
- 40 sign up.
- 20 are in Heat A, top 10 advance to finals.
- Other 20 are in Heat B, top 10 advance to finals.

Now what if instead of racing 2 Scratch Race heats to determine qualifiers, they used a 2K time trial, and the top 20 in the 2K time trial got to race the Scratch Race final? That'd be weird, huh?

taras0000

Not totally comparable. You're comparing an 8 lap race to a 40 lap race. With the flying 200, at least both events are run over the same distance. I would say that if one were looking to keep qualifying the same as racing, then the riders should keep the same gear for the first round.

I'm of the opinion that the qualifiers are there to allow the riders to get the best seed spot that they can. It used to be that the seeds would be close to indicative of the final outcome. One can argue then, that you would only need to run the F200 and then give out the medals.

I personally think that they should leave the current format untouched. I have non-cycling friends that actually like watching the qualifying rounds with all the gear and the all-out assault on getting a best time. To them, it's a spectator draw, especially now because you have people who are REALLY fast, but maybe not be as tactically smart as someone who may have qualified lower. Watching someone like Levy climb the ranks is something that people can get excited about.

carleton

Yeah, my example is sort of hyperbolic, but I think it’s valid to show how unrelated a time trial is frim a head to head race.

Further, the fact that your friends get a kick out of watching both the F200 and the sprint tournament can be used to support my idea that the two events could be separated into two that award a champion.

I think we can easily envision a regional championship where therein are 2 events:

- Flying 200 TT where riders get 3 runs and throw out the worst time.
- A 1 or 2 day round robin then semifinal (final four) bracket sprint tournament.

Both events would provide great excitement.

carleton

An extrapolated example would be how NFL, MLB, NCAA, and many other sports leagues play round robin for a given period then, based on ranking from the round robin, they seed the tournament bracket that crowns a champion.

Baseball players don’t run 100m dashes to gain entry into to the playoffs

carleton

And to address the question of, “Well how can the UCI do all of that in 2-3 days?”

Who says they have to?

What if they schedule regional round robin sprint tournaments to gain entry to the World Championship sprint tournament? Oh wait...that’s the World Cup! Problem solved!

carleton

Sorry to ramble. But get this: Sarah Hammer could ride a world-class Flying 200m. Go back and look at her Omnium Flying Lap times and chop off 20%.

But she never cared to sprint.

I’d venture to guess that if the Flying 200m were its own event, she and riders like her would ride the hell out of it and push it even further.

Edit: Same for Cavendish.

taras0000

I wouldn't make the F200 it's own event, simply for the fact that the IOC decided to eliminate the Kilo and that was one of the most popular draws in track cycling. Something has to be said about getting a single shot at somehting and having everything ride on that. The stakes are higher. Here the stakes on your qualifying ride are the chance to compete.

Also, to make it it's own event would eliminate it as a sprint event. Track cycling seems to be the easy place for the elimination of events when it comes to IOC medals, and no one eliminated any endurance events. I would keep things the same just to preserve the sprint side of cycling.

carleton

It seems that you are looking for reasons to not change as opposed to looking at the reasons to change. I think the latter outweigh the former.

If the objective is to see the very best in an event, then make that event a medal event. Period. Then you will see Flying 200M times get better and Match Sprinting get better. This same logic applies to the Omnium....which promotes the best all-around riders and not the best IP, TT, Elimination, Scratch, or Points racers. The Omnium was the death knell to the specialist and wake up call to the all-arounder...all to gain fan appreciation. But, I think you are arguing that fans appreciate the specialists, right?

The Team Sprint and Team Pursuits have gone from a 1-ride, sudden death events to qualifying and finals system in the Olympics as well has IP and Time Trials in the World Championships and people are OK with that...and provides for surprises, as what happened at Worlds a few weeks ago.

The IOC dropped the IP and TTs to make room for BMX because BMX was a new and experimental event. I think it has proven itself to be a worthy and popular sport now. I wouldn't let what the IOC thinks determine what happens for UCI events from Worlds down to local races. The ones where the UCI has jurisdiction. Let's discuss those?

The IOC can and will change in the future...a new format might inform that change.

carleton

Here's another point of view:

In track and field (athletics), what if the 100M dash were used as a qualifier for the 800M?

And also like track and field, they enjoy lots of events with lots of event specialists. Our sport is more like track and field than any other...including other genres of cycling.

Baby Puke

I dunno, Carelton. I'm enjoying watching the truly crazy times people are doing now in the 200. For all intents and purposes, it's become an event within an event. Apparently, "back in the day" there was no 200. I've been told our ancestors used to do three-ups for the first round instead, but I'd rather see 200's than this. Kind of agree with your point about the top few 200 riders getting a by in the first round, don't like it.

taras0000

I just don't see a need to make them 2 separate events. Qualifying is a skill, just like the rest of match sprinting. In fact, match sprinting is becoming more and more like qualifying. With bigger gears, increased launch speeds, aero helmets, and less cat and mousing, sprinting and qualifying have never been more similar. When was the last time you saw a sprint start from a trackstand or a slow roll? The fact that Levy may have had a speed wobble that put him back at 17th is irrelevant. You can chalk it up to skill or luck, but that same skill or luck can work for or against someone in the sprint rounds as well.

As far as the multiplle rides in the TP and TS, I think those events should have ALL the same riders doing the rounds, not swapping out 2 of the 3 riders for the TS final. It's stupid to see 5 guys standing on one step of the podium. Trade out someone if they're injured, but otherwise the qualifiers should be the ones riding the finals. Just like arguing that the F200 and the Matches are different, well, shouldn't the teams be the same if they are getting a medal as well?

When the IOC got rid of the Kilo, it killed the event for 10 years. It's taken that long for the event to recover and become the respected marquee test that it once was. Until recently, elite riders didn't think it was worth the training and effort to train for something that didn't garner them Olympic medals. It was Pervis who resurrected the event through his training to become a better TS anchor and Keirin rider.