View Full Version : How Does Equipment Last?
m_sasso
11-15-2017, 02:50 AM
How does equipment last under some of these guys? The guy third from the left is Roy van den Berg, "The Beast", squat PB of 265kg and 2715 Watts!
https://i.imgur.com/6Ts41FW.jpg
weisan
11-15-2017, 04:03 AM
m pal, I believe the answer to any engineering problem is...you design accordingly to intended use.
fignon's barber
11-15-2017, 05:47 AM
My guess is The Beast needs to repaint his top tube after every ride. He's definitely not wearing jeans off the rack.
Bentley
11-15-2017, 05:55 AM
What does that really mean? My guess is that professionals have a combination of custom made gear and custom "tuned" retail gear that gets a lot of maintenance and regular replacement. I suspect some parts are "designed" but is suspect most is retail stuff that gets a lot of "special" treatment.
I could be wrong but I suspect there is not enough money in track racing to make it worth a big investment in "design for use".
Ray
nooneline
11-15-2017, 08:22 AM
Guys like that can and do break ordinary parts. I've seen and heard of bent axles, bent and broken handlebars, stems, steerers, wheel axle, etc etc etc. Standing starts can be brutal on gear.
Here's how they last: track bikes are very simple compared to road bikes, and track sprint bikes are made to be handle a lot of force. 1/8" drivetrains with cogs that have big teeth; steel chainring bolts. No QR skewers - they use nutted wheels with tensioners to help set and hold the wheel position, and there is a lot of work to make sure trackends are in good shape so that the nuts properly bite it.
Sprint handlebars are extremely stiff, and sprint stems are common. They use big velcro straps to reinforce their shoes and secure the connection to their clipless pedals - otherwise, during a standing start, they'd just pull backwards out of a standard road pedal through the spring tension.
https://i0.wp.com/www.blsglobal.net/int/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/main-1.jpg?resize=497%2C507&ssl=1
Anarchist
11-15-2017, 08:30 AM
It’s so good to see such healthy athletes displaying the benefits of completely natural hard work, and lots of water. And bread.
ColonelJLloyd
11-15-2017, 08:38 AM
Here's how they last: track bikes are very simple compared to road bikes
Pretty much this. Simple and strong. And spares for when that fails.
MattTuck
11-15-2017, 09:52 AM
And I thought I had issues finding pants that fit my quads well.
El Chaba
11-15-2017, 10:11 AM
It’s so good to see such healthy athletes displaying the benefits of completely natural hard work, and lots of water. And bread.
I agree...and I am comforted in the knowledge that the UCI runs a thorough and effective drug testing program.
FlashUNC
11-15-2017, 10:38 AM
Fwiw, if you follow Roy on instagram, you see he's as much power lifter as he is track cyclist. Spends a lot of time in the gym working on those quadzookas.
nooneline
11-15-2017, 10:49 AM
Fwiw, if you follow Roy on instagram, you see he's as much power lifter as he is track cyclist. Spends a lot of time in the gym working on those quadzookas.
yup - and olympic lifting. that's the only way to achieve that sort of power and speed. strength is base training for sprinting. strength -> power -> speed.
fiamme red
11-15-2017, 10:52 AM
Some strength is necessary to be a world-class sprinter, but there's a point beyond which being able to squat more and having bigger quads won't make you any faster. Top Olympic weightlifters don't spend the majority of their energy squatting, but rather practicing the Olympic lifts.
MattTuck
11-15-2017, 11:03 AM
Some strength is necessary to be a world-class sprinter, but there's a point beyond which being able to squat more and having bigger quads won't make you any faster. Top Olympic weightlifters don't spend the majority of their energy squatting, but rather practicing the Olympic lifts.
Sam Bennet had an article toward the start of this season in which he talked about his off season strength training and how he developed a lot more muscle mass and strength leading up to 2016 (I think) but that it did not translate into better sprinting results. And for 2017 he was going back to less focus on building strength.
However, if we're talking purely about track racing, I think the benefits of bigger quads probably outweigh the costs that you'd see with road racers. It is hard to lug that extra weight up hills and across 100s of kilometers.
fiamme red
11-15-2017, 11:11 AM
Sam Bennet had an article toward the start of this season in which he talked about his off season strength training and how he developed a lot more muscle mass and strength leading up to 2016 (I think) but that it did not translate into better sprinting results. And for 2017 he was going back to less focus on building strength.
However, if we're talking purely about track racing, I think the benefits of bigger quads probably outweigh the costs that you'd see with road racers. It is hard to lug that extra weight up hills and across 100s of kilometers.The great Vasily Alexeyev said several times in interviews that squatting more did not necessarily make one a better Olympic weightlifter. How much more true that squatting more doesn't necessarily make one a better sprinter.
https://www.elitefitness.com/forum/weight-training-amp-weight-lifting/interview-vasili-alexeyev-340962.html
"I have observed that many train without sense. They do a great deal of work for nothing. For example, Falev, an athlete on the Soviet team weighing 110 kilograms, does squats with a barbell weighing 320 kilograms. I don't use one weighing more than 270. There is a difference of 50 kilograms in his favor. But he jerks 220, while I jerk 256. Thus, it turns out that the result in the classical exercise is not determined by the strength of the legs..."
verticaldoug
11-15-2017, 11:30 AM
These guys only look big standing next to one another. Put a football, basketball or rugby player in the mix, and they are runts.
Barry Bonds or Bo Jackson on a bike looks scarier.
Both in their prime would have put out a heck of a lot more watts ATMO too.
ColonelJLloyd
11-15-2017, 11:49 AM
These guys only look big standing next to one another.
Who said these guys look big? At a glance I'd say there is no one on that stage 6' tall.
nooneline
11-15-2017, 11:53 AM
These guys only look big standing next to one another. Put a football, basketball or rugby player in the mix, and they are runts.
Barry Bonds or Bo Jackson on a bike looks scarier.
Both in their prime would have put out a heck of a lot more watts ATMO too.
Uh no
FlashUNC
11-15-2017, 12:20 PM
These guys only look big standing next to one another. Put a football, basketball or rugby player in the mix, and they are runts.
Barry Bonds or Bo Jackson on a bike looks scarier.
Both in their prime would have put out a heck of a lot more watts ATMO too.
https://media.giphy.com/media/KDNVWB8sOZ2nK/giphy.gif
m_sasso
11-15-2017, 01:21 PM
Who said these guys look big? At a glance I'd say there is no one on that stage 6' tall.
Haha, the skinny guy Theo Boss is 6 foot 2 inches!
tv_vt
11-15-2017, 03:22 PM
It would be interesting to see how these guys do on a normal group road ride in hilly terrain. Sure, they're not world class climbers, but perhaps they'd do totally fine in anything less than ProTour/World Tour level.
cadence90
11-15-2017, 03:49 PM
It would be interesting to see how these guys do on a normal group road ride in hilly terrain. Sure, they're not world class climbers, but perhaps they'd do totally fine in anything less than ProTour/World Tour level.
Theo Bos could definitely handle "normal group ride hilly terrain". He's not a Sastre, but he has been Sastre's teammate, etc. Not bad for a World Champion track rider.
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m_sasso
11-15-2017, 03:57 PM
It would be interesting to see how these guys do on a normal group road ride in hilly terrain. Sure, they're not world class climbers, but perhaps they'd do totally fine in anything less than ProTour/World Tour level.
Teo Boss road results. Don't know about you, however I know he would punish me on a group ride.
2009
Olympia's Tour
1st Prologue & Stages 1, 2 & 4
1st Ronde van Noord-Holland
1st Omloop der Kempen
3rd Ronde van Overijssel
4th Beverbeek Classic
2010
1st Clásica de Almería
1st Stage 5 Vuelta a Murcia
Vuelta a Castilla y León
1st Stages 1 & 2
1st Points classification
2011
Tour of Oman
1st Stages 1 & 3
1st Tour de Rijke
1st Stage 6 Tour of Denmark
1st Dutch Food Valley Classic
2nd Delta Tour Zeeland
8th Scheldeprijs
2012
1st Dwars door Drenthe
1st Dutch Food Valley Classic
1st Memorial Rik Van Steenbergen
Tour of Turkey
1st Stages 1 & 8
1st Stage 3 Eneco Tour
1st Stage 2 World Ports Classic
3rd Clásica de Almería
3rd Scheldeprijs
2013
Tour of Hainan
1st Stages 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 & 9
Tour de Langkawi
1st Stages 1 & 2
1st Stage 2 Volta ao Algarve
1st Stage 1 Critérium International
1st Stage 3 Glava Tour of Norway
1st Stage 2 Ster ZLM Toer
8th Scheldeprijs
9th Ronde van Zeeland Seaports
2014
1st MaillotCyan.PNG Overall World Ports Classic
1st Jersey green.svg Points classification
1st Ronde van Zeeland Seaports
Tour de Langkawi
1st Stages 2, 7, 8 & 9
1st Stage 3 Tour de Pologne
1st Stage 4 Tour of Alberta
2nd Handzame Classic
3rd Overall Tour de l'Eurometropole
1st Stage 3
m_sasso
11-15-2017, 04:28 PM
Meanwhile Cavendish is trying to kill cats at the Ghent Six-Day track event.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/othersports/article-2842414/Missed-whisker-Mark-Cavendish-avoids-crash-cat-Ghent-race.html
http://video.dailymail.co.uk/video/bc/rtmp_uds/1418450360/2014/11/20/1418450360_3900919244001_CAVENDISH.mp4
nooneline
11-15-2017, 05:38 PM
It would be interesting to see how these guys do on a normal group road ride in hilly terrain. Sure, they're not world class climbers, but perhaps they'd do totally fine in anything less than ProTour/World Tour level.
you know, sprinters - even world-class ones - get a "one-and-done" reputation, but it's pretty undeserved. i raced against a bunch of sprinters with serious palmares at TTown all summer long. They'd enter plenty of the Tuesday night endurance races, and plenty of them - including one guy on the podium in the original post, and a bunch of other guys who went to the world cups the past few weeks - hung just fine. Even when us enduros were trying desperately to snap the leash.
i was in a group with Ed Dawkins in a points race that had been pretty hot. a group of at least four riders were off the front scooping up points in the last third of the race but we'd been motoring pretty hard chasing them. so, i remember getting all hot to trot for the final sprint, going for finishing order, thinking that maybe the others in my group, Dawkins included, might be the right combination of cooked and unmotivated for that final sprint. i started coming around Dawkins, and he looked at me like a lazy dog and with a lean on his pedals just absolutely blew me out of the water.
Going back to the original question, perhaps the equipment doesn't last. Two heavy and strong guys I ride with often break stuff. One breaks a frame at least once a year, another has broken two Dura Ace cranks, typically all warranty replacements.
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