So we have a consensus in ST!

no radios
No teams
No motos with gap Info

It will be the best TdF ever! Except the TTT will be interesting with no teams. How about the top 15 GC guys do a school yard pick of who’s on their team, starting with 15th GC.

The irony of all this is: if it happens Sky will benefit the most.

Their advantage is not power meters - all teams have them. Their main advantage is the fact they overwhelmingly have the strongest riders, especially for the mountains.

Add to that, they always seem to be leading the others in terms of inventiveness - warm ups, cool downs, comfortable bus, specialist chef etc etc. They were first.

Take away PMs, and Sky will be the most likely to find the best way of working with PE and HR (or another metric they will probably invent), and how to race accordingly.

IHMO this just makes them stronger.

classic internet argument ;)
that is how they are used in the mountains, but most pros can judge their power well enough to do this accurately without a PM.

Take this:
“When you attack, everyone looks at their power meter and immediately knows what will happen,” Quintana said. “Of course they mark your style of racing.”
change it to
“When you attack, everyone considers their perceived effort/HR and immediately knows what will happen,” Quintana said. “Of course they mark your style of racing.”

what has made racing boring is the sky led appreciation that a steady pace gives the fastest overall time. PMs are just one way of doing that, remove them and riders will use another way. no more yo-yo attacks



completely agree

Perfect, then Sky can dominate all 3 grand tours instead of just one and a half.

Pretty much. Take away power meters and it won't make a difference. *IF* Sky does rely on metrics to pace themselves in the mountains, they'll just use VAM instead. Take away all electronics and they'll just use RPE. The end goal is that they are simply going to ride steady and hard to thwart attacks because they have proven it's the fastest way to the top.

If there are 4 Sky domestiques left in the GC group, they are willing to let 1-2 attackers go not because they are looking at their power meters to make a decision. They let it go because 4 guys working for the 5th (the protected rider) will always be faster than 1-2 guys working for themselves. You don't need a power meter to know that and make the decision to continue riding steady and hard, even if it's just by RPE.

Serious question: have you ever actually raced a bike? Ever watched one on TV?

Nah man. You're really, really wrong.

+1000 on banning race radio. And splits.
Let the riders race based on knowledge they have on hand.

(admittedly team cars will pass on info, but that info isn't immediately available to the whole team)

If dumb ole me can figure out how to pace 10 mile climbs, and even Mt Evans in Colorado at altitude, after riding seriously for less than a year, for PR’s, pros can too. If I can go from a pool swimmer to figuring out how to nail a 5k (sub 1 hour) and 10k (2:15ish) in one summer, pros can too. Hell, I ran a half marathon after 3 weeks of training after swim season and did just fine.

It’s AG’ers that can’t because they rely too heavily on numbers and/or have no athletic background. Use the numbers as a guide, but really, y’all need to be able to do this without numbers.

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"The person on top of the mountain didn't fall there." - unkown

also rule 5