Need parcours info etc to be meaningful, but a general trend of increased km/h - 6km/h in 30 years. Quite significant. Bikes weigh less and roads are a bit better. I'd like to see the graph go back to the 1940s
riders are specialist professionals now too, instead of chimney sweeps...
but then if the graph did go back to 1900, surely the progress would be in the first half-century, rather than over last 10 years. That 6kmph faster trend is certainly curious...
what is different about today's peleton than 80s?
Can't just be about the hog in the earpiece can it? _________________ 03-11-2007 = the end
Hi All, Every year I trot out this garbage, so might as well this tour as well. I was fascinated with all this too a while back and dug out all kinds of shite from the recordbooks. Heres a few figs.
This one clearly shows the inverse relationship between tour speed and distance over time. Whether this intersection point in the late 80s is meaningful Im not sure...but I bet Lemond would say it is!
...the idea its just getting faster is largely crap:
This plot shows the average speed for three races...P-R (black), LBL (blue), TdF (red). I have applied a smoothing function to the data sets to even out the variation and give an overall impression.
I think its quite interesting. I see the following: PR and LBL have been very constant in parcours over a long time, and in the early 60s, we see a dramatic leveling off of speeds, whereas the tour is not levelling off at the same rate. It tells me that the continued monkeying of the Tour, essentially making it easier, by making it SHORTER (overall, and each stage), has kept the speeds up. It also shows the advances intraining, bikes, and doping have not had a quantum effect on speed, suggesting we are at the capacity for human achievement.
Clearly the years between wars were teh most phenomenal in cementing the rigor f the major races. that 3 races show the same thing says the old days were pretty incredible...and why records were falling all the time. It might also be linked to the seriousness of the endeavor and certainly in bike construction. All these do point to huge advances in cycling, just not in our time. It strikes me the immediate post WWII years were really an apex in cycling. that bikes weigh about half now, with 2x the number of gears basically says those guys were monster hard asses on the road. Add road surfaces changes ago, and its clear we stand on the shoulders of giants today. Really doping and bikes and training etc have inched up the speeds from the 50s, but not hugely when looked at through the perspective of a lens where great races have been largely constant over time (PR, LBL). The Tour has been such a moving target that focusing on speed give a very partial picture, and one where we might easily be convinced that cyclers are getting materially much better...but I dont think thats the case!!!
Thanks for the analysis, HW. Definitely something to think about!
Here's a thought for you - does making the TDF stages shorter necessarily make it easier? Riding to your limit over (for example) 250km is probably not that much different to riding to your limit over 180km, as you do the latter faster, so that in both cases, the tank is empty at the end of the effort.
Admittedly, I've never ridden anything like 180km in one go, so the above is guesswork, but I've done a lot of running and rowing over various distances and short endurance events are every bit as hard as long endurance events. (Harder in one context, actually, as your cruising pace is closer to your absolute maximum pace in the shorter distances, and "peak pain" is higher! As an athlete, I suppose which you consider harder depends on whether you like lots of pain for a short time, or lower levels of pain for sustained periods. I always found the most preferable option was the one that I wasn't currently undertaking. ) _________________ EPO is for wimps. Proper cyclists go faster on beer, curry and porridge.
Headwind siezes the torch of scholarship! Excellent.
I believe a huge part of it is greater participation: the pool of athletes has grown, and athletes have more exposure to different sports to discover their specialty.
I can't see HW's graphs on this computer, but looking at Jack's last graph there seems to be a steady trend up till about 1960 and then another steady rise starting about 1970. Something odd in the 1960s. Ideas? Apologies if its clear from HW's data.
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