>Wiggins wins on a head to head TT battle 9 out of 10 times.

Against Schleck? 10 out of 10 times.

Put them on a climb and then compare positions... you might have a tough time getting a clean shot of Wiggins with all the other riders in the gruppetto around him. Lets not forget, Andy won the tour... and came in 2nd, which seems to be a better mix of skills than Wiggo thus far.

From what I've read it seems to be more down to poor natural flexibility and lack of interest/motivation to work on that.
Can't afford to lose 10% of the winners time on each of the TdF TTs for sure.

yeah Andy may have the longest humerus(es) on the planet for someone his height...just wasn't genetically engineered to be a TTer. Blame his parents

From what I've read it seems to be more down to poor natural flexibility and lack of interest/motivation to work on that.
Can't afford to lose 10% of the winners time on each of the TdF TTs for sure.

I'll ask him when I'm in Paris...thats right, headed to the Champs on the final day of the tour!

IF he doesn't break anything...He seems to be, how would you say, Fragile (Fraaagilly), it's Italian.

just drop the bars more, or superman it a bit. there are solutions, he just isn't trying. imho

it would be fascinating to get inside info on what the deal is. sometimes the pro power to weight ratios create problems none of us mortals can understand.

Some guys have to be faster than others. Sure the Shlecks are slow for Protour guys, but how many top lanky climbers have their body type and can TT with the best at their level? They still TT fast just not at a TT winning level fast. They are almost certainly low power/low weight guys. Great for climbing, poor for TT.

yeah Andy may have the longest humerus(es) on the planet for someone his height...just wasn't genetically engineered to be a TTer. Blame his parents

it would be fascinating to get inside info on what the deal is. sometimes the pro power to weight ratios create problems none of us mortals can understand.

Maybe, but I would like to see them get their face down in the hands and their head below their torso and then see how they do. Maybe they try this and for some reason it can't work for them, I just can't see any obvious reason it wouldn't.

Why is it so hard for everyone to accept that there are body types that just don't work for TT's

No one with Schleck's body type has ever won the tour through good TTing....just through mountain stage success. The strategy is obviously to limit losses in the TT and make the gaps happen in the mountains. I suppose the question is how much those losses in TT's can be minimized....you guys on ST obviously believe he is leaving time on the table.

On a side note...one thing I noticed from the TV coverage as I watched my DVR last night...Taylor Phinney was rockin' an Adamo saddle :-) So much for the "Why don't protour riders use those saddles?" question ;-)

God Andy has got a long torso.

Selle Italia makes some super pro looking, light saddles with cutouts.

you can have your cake and eat it too!

And Technically AS has won the TdF. I wouldn't bet against him this year. AC out, and CE one year older and maybe not as hungry. Lots of guys have been on fire in March and April, but no where in July.

Tom I'm convinced a great deal of the time whether it be age groupers or elites that the saddle is chosen on how cool it looks while the bike is resting against a car. I'm not being facetious I'm dead serious. A couple of guys I ride with suffer from taint issues and whine incessantly about it, but they won't even think about trying a cutout. Even when I tell them about being on Leavaquin for 3 weeks with a prostate infection they still won't budge. 'My Arione looks so bad ass though and it has carbon rails that Adamo weighs way too much anyway.'. Sigh.

I don't know that anyone with Schleck's body type has ever won the Tour, period. Rooks, Theunisse, etc. never came up with the goods because they couldn't TT.

Problem is that it appears that Schleck is not really working at limiting his TT losses.

And yes, I concede that is my Armchair DS analysis.

If anything, I bet most here would think AS has a better position than CE, IF we just thought they were random AGers.

He could possibly change some things but he also has been in a tunnel and this may be as good as it gets.

AG'ers or pros, and in some cases I could imagine it could be worse with pros...

I think Andy S has had the best TdF results ever for this body type and when he tries, his position is half decent for this body type. We could perhaps put Pedro Delgado in this group. Poulidor also never won the Tour, but he overlapped with Anquetil and Merckx. Same for Zoetemelk also with perhaps a similar body type overlapping with Merckx, Hinault and a young Fignon, all with a different body type from the classic waif thin climber.

Selle Italia makes some super pro looking, light saddles with cutouts.

you can have your cake and eat it too!

NiceTriCoaching wrote:

jackmott wrote:

it would be fascinating to get inside info on what the deal is. sometimes the pro power to weight ratios create problems none of us mortals can understand.

Exactly. These riders have some of the brightest minds in the sport adjusting every nuance of bike fit for the lowest time possible, and it's presumptuous to think that we have THE answer for a victorious bike split that magically escaped the world's best coaches, wind tunnel engineers, physiologists, etc.

Andy has set himself the TTing target of being within 20s of Evans over 40km this year - from 2m30s last year - so, with that kind of improvement to make (35W+ one way or another?) maybe he will be happy to hear any ideas that come up here!
http://www.cyclingnews.com/...tour-de-france-focus

3/5/12: put me on the record that Andy doesn't even make the TdF podium this year.

Evans or Wiggo for the win. Rest of podium between Jurgen VDB, Sanchez and Horner, IF he's allowed to fly free and with the form he had last year.

Carl Spackler wrote:

Froome could be the dark horse pick but I suppose that depends on if they pin him as a worker with goals of a different GT.

I think Wiggo is going to get it together like Cadel did last year. His TTing is certainly there, he just needs to avoid the one bad day that plagued Cadel so many times.

And here's another top 5 wrinkle: if Contador signs with Movistar, which I don't know why he wouldn't, Valverde could end up as their guy in July.

???

Did Contador get sacked from Saxo?

I've tried working with him a bit, but it doesn't look like much has stuck. I think there are too many cooks in the kitchen on this one and they don't know who to listen to. They've worked on the fit, worked in the Velodrome, worked in the tunnel...but, he doesn't give anything a chance. He consistently reverts back to the Velodrome testing done with SRM. In my opinion, AS doesn't have the patience to try and improve his TTing...just keeps doing the same thing hoping for a different result. The position is so adaptable, but doesn't give it the time. His saddle wasn't as far forward as it could go...he wasn't at UCI extension limits, his arms were really wide (hard to know without wind tunnel data if this is good or bad, but usually, tall skinny dudes are most aero with narrow elbows). It will take someone spending a lot of time with Andy to change this...Not one wind tunnel trip or a bike fit, but someone who will be there daily for a few weeks that he trusts and will give him the confidence to try something different and be there to make modifications along the way.

Interesting...you can lead a horse to water, huh? ;-) I guess my speculations in post #49 of this thread were right.

Perhaps what is needed is for him to talk to someone who's had to go through the process of "adapting" to the new position and saw the results from it...someone who he would potentially respect, like another top pro rider? Got any ideas? I'm trying to think of someone who's transformed their TT'ing ability by changing their position...

His position in the bottom left photo *looks* pretty good.

Tony Martin
Craig Alexander
I bet at one point Levi Leipheimer went through something like that.

Yeah, see here. Stokes is legit on reporting.

Contador was also linked to Movistar when that team formed, which makes sense like Cav > Sky. There was also a CyclingNews article citing a report that said he was done with Saxo, which all parties denied. That probably means it's accurate.

Matt almost put Andy on the Boardman Corima position:

>.I'm guessing it might have to be a retired euro-pro...


You might look up Johan Bruyneel's background

Were you reading my mind as I was editing my post calling the Corima the original P3?

I was
but I bet if we dig there is a bike somewhere pre-dating the corima with the rear wheel cutout.

Jan had plenty of help and was more successful as a pure TTer. So the supply side argument doesn't play

Yeah, see here. Stokes is legit on reporting.

Contador was also linked to Movistar when that team formed, which makes sense like Cav > Sky. There was also a CyclingNews article citing a report that said he was done with Saxo, which all parties denied. That probably means it's accurate.

3/5/12: put me on the record that Andy doesn't even make the TdF podium this year.

3/5/12: put me on the record that Andy doesn't even make the TdF podium this year.

from Indiana, living in Boulder.

There's 60 miles of ITT in this years' tour.

I buy this.

These changes were first made in December when we were out in Calpe for the first camp. Several weeks later, we went back to Spain for Radioshack's second camp. I asked Andy how the changes were and he said that he had not ridden his TT bike since. Therein lies part the problem. The TT position is an adaptable one. Ask anyone who rarely rides the position to go out and ride it for an hour and they'll come back complaining. Tell them to keep doing it and soon enough, those early complaints will be gone.

For protour guys I wouldn't think trading off climbing for TT work would pay off. They spend way more time climbing and a bad day on a climb can cost tons of time. I think AS is doing what he can and should. His position has improved a ton over the years, get him on the right equipment and have him ride the TT bike on many of his easy days so he is comfortable on it.

He'll never take time on any of his current comp in a TT but he may not lose enough to matter.

He lost a minute+ in a ~ 6 mile TT. Multiply that by 10. No way anyone can lose 10 minutes to the leaders (in the TdF) and still podium without a miracle in the mountains.

John

Hard to say about who's giving the advice. I don't think seeing up the road is a problem...if it is, he needs to practice and learn how to hold that position while navigating. Many others do it and Andy is not an anomaly.

What say you all to this..valid comparison or no?

Is Wiggins' position the deciding factor?https://twitter.com/...s/176423304838660096[/quote[/url]]


Anyone noice the chainring on Wiggins' bike? Looks like an O'Symmetric. How much of a factor is it?
[img]http://p.twimg.com/AnLID5-CQAIJfJw.jpg:large[/img]

Lets see he has had Cervelo, Specialized, Trek resources to improve his TT'ing, as well as several teammates who were/are excellent at TT.
If he was going to be a contender in the time trial it would of happened by now.

Lets see he has had Cervelo, Specialized, Trek resources to improve his TT'ing, as well as several teammates who were/are excellent at TT.
If he was going to be a contender in the time trial it would of happened by now.

In fairness, I truly hope that a pro of Andy Schleck's stature has access to the best resources in his sequence of sponsorship companies....whether he uses it or not is another story, but I'd think that the aero gurus in each company would drop everything they are doing to prioritize Schleck aero optimization as the highest priority !!!!

Yeah, but it doesn't work that way.....different efforts required for a <6 mile TT vs. a longer one. So the time differences per mile become smaller over longer distances....

damon_rinard wrote:

Good points, how much other help can he expect?

Just to clarify, pedaling a particular brand doesn't mean the athlete has access to the resources of that brand. Not all pros have access; not all who have access take the opportunity, and not all who take the opportunity use or remember the results.

Not only Wiggins, but also Larsson, the winner of the time trial, sported an H3:
http://cyclingfans.com/node/3995

For those that get far enough into the aero debate to go to a wind tunnel, the other equipment the rider is using has a lot to do with this.
H3s are in fact very aero - but for example, not when paired with narrow forks.

The wide-legged fork on my Guru of years past worked wonderfully w/ an H3 - now that I use a narrow legged fork I've switched over to an 808.

Also, 98% of all professionals must use what they are given by their sponsors. (Sky, HTC, & FFWD being outliers here)
Amateurs have a huge advantage in this regard.

I heard that Andy S. didn't start today's stage in Paris Nice because of illness. Possible cause of his poor TT performance?

PS....and taking a step down from grand tours, I guess aero optimization of the Kona contender was not high on Orbea's strategic plan... which forced Craig Alexander to first ride a P4 in Vegas and then go to Specialized....

good point!

Boardman

Your speculation there is off base. Craig was short on patience when the production of his new bike had to be moved back due to unforseen uncontrollable complications with the mold.

Yeah, see here. Stokes is legit on reporting.

Contador was also linked to Movistar when that team formed, which makes sense like Cav > Sky. There was also a CyclingNews article citing a report that said he was done with Saxo, which all parties denied. That probably means it's accurate.

Not only Wiggins, but also Larsson, the winner of the time trial, sported an H3:
http://cyclingfans.com/node/3995

At the same age for TdF wins they are exactly tied. If Shleck wins this year he moves ahead and of course AC can't beat Andy this year, at worse they stay tied. All that said AC has had the better career ignoring the elephant in the room.

So far at his age, AS has cared enogh to do what it takes to perform well in the Tour. AC and Ulirich are about the only riders who essetially are his equals. Believe me I'd love to see reports that he is in the tunnel and putting in hundreds of miles on his TT bikes. But I also realize that last year about this time anyone that was a Wiggens fan ( to bring this thread full circle) waqs exited that he had done "what it takes" to improve his weakness. That ended up not improving his climbing and hurting his strength.

Sorry typo meant was exited, and i forgot that he crashed out of the tour early I was remembering 2010 when he lost a bunch of weight and had a disasterous Tour.

Other than poor typing and the wrong year I still stand by it. He tried to re-make himself and that hasn't paid off, so far. I like Wiggins and would like to see him do well. This should be his year, if any. Its certainly a better TT year than last.