How Does Equipment Last?

[m_sasso]

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!

[weisan]

m pal, I believe the answer to any engineering problem is...you design accordingly to intended use.

[fignon's barber]

My guess is The Beast needs to repaint his top tube after every ride. He's definitely not wearing jeans off the rack.

[Bentley]

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]

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.

[Anarchist]

It’s so good to see such healthy athletes displaying the benefits of completely natural hard work, and lots of water. And bread.

[ColonelJLloyd]

Originally Posted by nooneline

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]

And I thought I had issues finding pants that fit my quads well.

[El Chaba]

Originally Posted by Anarchist

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]

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]

Originally Posted by FlashUNC

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]

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]

Originally Posted by fiamme red

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]

Originally Posted by MattTuck

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/w...ev-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]

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.