tFUnK

Was it Pogacar or someone else from UAE who slipped a lot on one of those descents last season? Seem to recall hearing that on one of the recent stages.

PeteHski

Sportives over here are not strictly races, but the bigger events are certainly raced competitively. Especially closed road events like the Tour of Cambridgeshire and L’Etape du Tour. I wouldn’t use clip-on aerobars on that sort of mass start event, but a few people do anyway to get an advantage. I prefer to stick with a UCI legal road bike just to draw the line somewhere and stay safe.

PeteHski

Not sure if he slipped a lot. But he did famously slip off the road on a descent in the TDF when trying to gap Vingegaard, but that looked more like a mistake than a tyre issue as he over-cooked an apex on the limit and then lost his back wheel on some gravel at the edge of the road.

Pogacar looked rock solid in the opening wet TT, so his Pirelli tyres seem pretty good. Actually I've ridden those same tyres myself in the wet and they had excellent grip. But we can't say the same for Stefan Bissegger who crashed twice and looked like he was riding on ice with I think Vittoria tubulars. There was some rumour about his tyres being over-inflated, but I don't know if that's true, or they just had poor wet grip.

GhostRider62

How do you know a rider would use clip ons for an advantage or is unsafe

This is a very british bias

GhostRider62

Pirelli and Schwalb test relatively poorly in the wet on BRR tests. I'm not impressed with Schwalb at all in any condition

Veloflex, Vittoria, new compound Michelins and Conti score higher. Tire width and pressure matter a lot, too.

PeteHski

I thought it was widely accepted that they can be dangerous when riding in a group and hence banned from road competition. That's the main reason I don't personally use them. It makes perfect sense for guys training for TTs and triathlons to use them. I would too if I was into that kind of competition. Riding solo also makes sense if you find them more comfortable/faster. But I'm training for mass start group events so I don't personally see any point in riding with aerobars. A few guys (not many in reality) will turn up at a mass start Sportive with aerobars and I've even seen the odd full-on TT bike. It's not a big deal for me, my point was that I just prefer to set all my times on a UCI compliant road bike without any other potential performance aids. Also my main target events are both UCI regulated mass start events where aerobars are not allowed anyway. I don't actually have any problem with others riding with whatever gear they like as long as they are riding safely.

Shadco 

Who was more aero?

Sagan

or

Skelator?

.

ussprinceton

I believe premiere bikes are simply faster

georges1

I think all depends of how much you use to train as well as your pedaling frequency. As for aluminium I rode once Canondale CAAD4 but it was uncomfortable for me,back then when I was involved in road bike racing more than 24 years , I only rode on my Peugeot in Reynolds 708 Classic with Mavic Cosmic Expert wheels and 105c 16 speed before upgrading it to Ultegra 18 speed,evenafter that I still continue to ride this bike, I had Michelin Performer tires on it. The lightness of the frame, plays alot,so does aerodynamism of the wheels and overall lightness of the groupset components. As for tires, my new choice will be the Conti Grand Prix 4seasons

ummed

Sy Reene

Then again, it's hard to easily see all the gains in equipment tech over the last 20 yrs.

tomato coupe

Some context is useful:

RChung

Here's the problem with that quote: if you take a look at winner's speed in the Giro, the Tour, and the Vuelta for exactly the same years, you don't see the same timing trend. So, either 1) the doping behavior of riders was different in the same year in the Giro, the Tour, and the Vuelta, or 2) the anti-doping enforcement was different in those years for the three races and the riders knew that ahead of time so they could adjust the winner's speed; or 3) there's something else that was influencing speed trends that was not related to either doping or anti-doping enforcement.

[Edited to add:] I looked at the time trend in Tour and Giro winner speeds from 1947 to 2012 here.

tomato coupe

Yep, that's a valid point. Is it possible that the Giro and Vuelta show less significant drop-offs after 2005 because they didn't have as big of increases in the preceding years? (After all, a pretty big driving force in the doping era didn't compete in the Giro or Vuelta.)

Trakhak

Not sure about the Vuelta, but the culture of racing in Italy, at least in the second half of the 20th century, was very different from that in France. Racing in Italy was predominantly about sprint finishes, with both classics and stage races often conducted at a moderate (not to say funereal) pace, at least where the terrain was mostly flat, until the last 40 kilometers or so, when the sprinters' teams began setting up for the finish.

The difference can even be seen in comparisons of French pro-level bikes to Italian bikes, especially in the 1980s. Whereas French road bikes generally maintained geometries varying very little from parallel 72-to-73-degree head tube and seat tube angles, Italian road bikes sometimes approached 75-degree angles. And, of course, "French fit" refers to bikes set up with saddles and handlebars at nearly the same height.

And then there's the fact that the Giro and Vuelta have traditionally been regarded, outside of Italy and Spain, anyway, as minor league racing compared to the Tour. Racers have almost always said that, although there are always difficult stages in the other Grand Tours, the Tour de France is always raced at another level entirely.

Just remembered a favorite quote from Jack Boyer, an American pro in Europe in the '80s who was arguably a Poulidor to Lemond's Anquetil, in reply to an interviewer asking whether his having raced three Tours de France to date would be an advantage in the upcoming edition:

"Not really. Because I know what's coming. And what's coming isn't good."

Bah Humbug

Good thing they've never changed the course style or anything that would make and A-B. test impossible.

RChung

I suppose that's possible, but if you exclude Armstrong the 2nd and 3rd-placed riders in the Tour would still have shown essentially the same speed patterns and we know from other sources about the doping practices in Italy and Spain.

We also know that the Tour, the Giro, and the Vuelta organizers were doing things that changed the average speed, chief among them, the length of the Tour, the additional rest day, and the number of "mountain" stages. Milan-Sanremo is a simpler case to analyze since the route is essentially unchanged. I think Furlan may still hold the record for the Poggio.

tomato coupe

Do you know how those speeds have evolved?

RChung

About like this:
https://www.cyclistshub.com/milan-sa...-average-speed

It's possible the speed has increased, slightly, but not as obviously as the Tour. This is roughly consistent with the idea that the organizers of the Grand Tours can do and have done things that affect the average speed of those races. To be fair, that doesn't mean that doping didn't also have an effect -- just that you shouldn't look at average speed of only the Tour (and ignoring the Giro and Vuelta and all the classics) as a marker for it.

(And, look up the 1994 Fleche Wallone and the casual podium sweep by Gewiss if you want to see what domination looks like. Furlan had just won MSR with that record-setting Poggio climb. As an aside, a very young Armstrong was in the chasing group).

PeteHski

I would expect team tactics would greatly influence average speeds. The dynamics of a breakaway in particular where the peloton is not necessarily riding to chase them down and the breakaway itself is carefully managing the gap to avoid triggering the peloton to close them down. I would imagine team tactics were a lot less sophisticated in the past with less communication tech and specialist human resources. I would also imagine differences between years were there is one dominant team vs several at the same level.

So maybe "average speed" of the winner is not actually a good indicator of subtle road bike performance trends.

Bald Paul

Getting back to the original question - I think the only way to determine if any one brand is "faster" would require some type of non-human testing. Connect a motor to the crank arm that puts out a constant X watts. Measure the watts output to a roller under the rear wheel. This would take into account drivetrain, frame flex, and tire loss. Then, wind tunnel testing to determine the coefficient of drag on each bike, sans rider. Someone much smarter than me would then plug in the power loss number and figure in the aerodynamic drag to come up with a winner.
Then, for $15K, I could buy one and look really, REALLY fast at the rest stops.

RChung

Hmmm. If only someone had come up with a way to do that.

RChung

In mass-start racing, average speed doesn't matter: the only thing that matters is finishing in front of the guy you're racing against.

"A man shouts: 'Faster!' He probably thinks bicycle racing is about going fast." -- Tim Krabbe, in The Rider

Sy Reene

Yes, and the same in all sorts of events from track running, to swimming. Is there any conclusive view though, whether road tour type cyclists as a whole are getting faster over time vs their predecessors? Easier to evaluate see progression in a track event (eg. marathon times) where presumably equipment is theoretically less of a factor.

RChung

Hmmm. Do you mean, overall, or net of equipment changes? I think there's conclusive evidence that, overall, runners and swimmers and track cyclists have gotten faster. High jumpers jump higher, weightlifters lift more, shot putters and discus throwers throw farther. Average heights of populations have increased. The track and field team at my local high school would've won every track and field event from the 1896 Olympics. The surprise would be if road racers hadn't gotten faster.