Olympic Men's team pursuit

[Keith A]

I know this comes on today...does anyone know if this will be televised live?

[shovelhd]

The schedule has it on Friday.

[Keith A]

The schedule has it on Friday.Thanks. I now see that the qualifications are today.

[nooneline]

Rio track racing starts at 3PM today with Team Sprint qualifiers. Then there are Team Pursuit (men's and women's) qualifiers - it's the rounds and finals that are tomorrow - followed by Team Sprint medal rounds.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CplJiflUEAE1fMv.jpg

[jruhlen1980]

2 p.m. Central time, men's qualifying. Women's shortly after.

So I missed this back in May - the women's team is using a left-side crank setup.

http://velonews.competitor.com/2016/05/bikes-and-tech/team-usas-not-secret-weapon-left-side-drive-felt-tafrd_406510

Also, interesting similarities in the NBC article yesterday and the velonews article from May. Either they were both quoting from the same press release, or there was some liberal copy pasta going on at NBC.

http://www.nbcolympics.com/news/left-side-drivetrain-could-give-team-usa-edge-track

[nooneline]

yeah, the new Felt is pretty interesting. I'm a bit 'meh' on the whole left-side drive thing, and in fact I think super-proprietary bikes are kind of annoying (the only wheels that work on that bike are those HED discs; the bike is designed for pursuits only, not mass-start racing).

I wonder, too, if the "more wind comes from the left and that's more aero" is a bit of a misleading thing - since the right side of the bike travels further I wonder if taking the chainring out of that wind is what drives the improved aerodynamics of the left-side drive.

Either way, the left-side drive is more media gimmick than gamechanger - it's a very small piece in the accumulation of marginal gains.

BUT, I think it's super cool that USAC, Felt, Stages, Vision, and HED all teamed up to create a superbike for the women's pursuit team (and for Bobby Lea's pursuit in the omnium). That's the real story here - that, and, USAC has put resources into this team pursuit team medal hunt. This team has been several years in the making - I'm excited to see this kind of investment in Team USA, and hope that it is the first step toward a meaningful talent ID and track development pipeline.