Benv wrote:
devashish_paul wrote:
Benv wrote:
monty wrote:
And I'm sure Chrissie Wellington could have gone over to cycling, or even running and done quite well. We have Kirsten Armstrong that has done well from Ironman to cycling, there is your cycling gold medal if that is what you need to move on...
Well you said good skater to good cyclist which is what I am focusing on not, going from Olympic Skater to Olympic Cyclist. That's a higher bar just to make the Olympics
Sorry man, I don't think you can use Olympic medals do determine if it is possible for a speed skater to transition easily to cycling. And to be specific, they will generally do better at TTing and track cycling since speed skaters are bigger athletes relative to Froome or Quintana. But you likely have not been exposed to this sport adequately to make that determination. Those who are in the sport know. So asking you again....have you ever been on speed skates ever?
--> gold medals in both sports is what you said
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.