Ok thanks, when I said that I meant taking kids or even adult athletes locally between sports and getting them on podiums at local and regional levels (we have lots of examples of that, especially in Canada where lots of kids skate at least in hockey and figure skating and you see the strong skaters quickly become strong cyclists). But you can't take cyclist kids and convert them to speed skaters easily (we can take hockey players and figure skaters and make them into speed skaters). That takes a lot of techincal skill as I mentioned...just like swimming takes technical skill. Olympic games is a different bar. Body types come into play too as well as specialization. Look at a protour male cyclist. Even the biggest guys are tiny compared to most long track pros (and that was Heiden's problem as a a pro cyclist). And you basically provided a great example with Lotto-Jumbo. No way both groups would be able to train well together. The training is too different when there are doing sport specific stuff. This does not mean that the physiology does not cross over....training is just too different and if the cyclist don't know now to skate it would just be a ridiculous group session anyway, almost like getting basketball players in the pool with Phelps.

In any case talk to your friends in Holland if you don't believe the physiology crosses over. If you put a 5000m skater on a TT bike for a straight and flat 4000m bike TT with a 4000m bike pursuit athlete, you'd be surprised how well the skater will do. Put a 4000m pursuit guy on skates (let's say Wiggins or Boardman if they can't skate) and most 9 year old kids who can skate will beat them.

we're on an endurance sports forum and I gave you names who are big in the history of running, cycling and swimming. Nothing really that hard, and I don't expect your history class to cover ANY of them, but if you're going to be debating the cycling career of Heiden and then resorting to google and missing many of his achievements (that would be found on wikipedia or footage on youtube), while not understanding the difference in body types in different type of cycling and then complaining that Heiden was before your time, well I provided you with a number of names before the times of almost everyone around here, who are part of the history of endurance sport.

Minimally you SHOULD understand that the body type for pro level speed skating and pro tour cycling are different (encapsulated in your Lotto Jumbo example). It does not mean that at regional levels or even for specific events at national level (like flat TT's) that skaters can't be competitive.

Anyway, coming back to entire overall thread topic, its just hard to go from non technical sports to technical ones, and much easier to go from technical to non technical provided the athlete has the right physiology for that sport. It's why coaches in none technical sport can scout talent from technical sport, but coaches in technical sport won't even bother touching athletes without the skill side. There is a reason why in triathlon we recruit high caliber youth swimmers who happen to be light enough to also convert into runners. We're not worried about cycling because if they can swim and are light, we got ourselves the right raw material (maybe the first three examples of this are Mark Allen, Dave Scott and Scott Molina all coming from swim backgrounds). Phelps would be the wrong raw material given his weight.

Luc van Lierde was originally a top age group swimmer in Belgium. He was a good swimmer that made the transition extremely well to triathlon. He was I believe primarily a breaststroke and IM swimmer.

So this is another example of a swimmer of short events doing well at long distances. Van Lierde liked to run and had a very high VO2max.


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Jerry Cosgrove

Sports Resource Group
http://www.lactate.com
https://twitter.com/@LactatedotCom

What lightheir said. In my experience as a Peleton owner, top ~5% is around 220 avg watts for a 45 minute class. If that's close to a "hard" effort for Phelps he isn't competing with pro tour riders anytime soon.

TBH, I'd have been disappointed if he hadn't been a stoner..! :)

I think it would be more accurate to say that Thiago may not have the athletic skills needed to run well; i say "may not" b/c, as Dev Paul pointed out, he is carrying an extra 25 lbs above his normal competition weight which obv will affect his running prowess. His swim-specific athletic skills are clearly world class and, as many have stated, he could prob be a very fast cyclist if he set his mind to it.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."