given these two photos, what do you think?

I think he rides with an SRM and it would be nice if he'd share his data.

Look closer, and you'll see that he didn't ride with a SRM during worlds. Nor did he do it during stage 19 of the Vuelta. The Shimano SRM is a two-piece construction, and the crank arms are not directly attached to the spider. Everything on the 7900 is in one piece.



vs

The 2nd picture looks like an SRM crank to me. Why would he change?

looks like a SRM to me in the picture

Second picture is an SRM but he is on a standard 7900 on the first one!

My armchair analysis has for many years been this:

Professional rider crosses (mountain top) finish line and immediately stops/checks SRM: clean rider that tries to maximize work capacity by tracking input/output. Recent sighting: Hesjedahl at Giro.

Professional rider competes sans PM: power production is not correlated to CTL, ATL, TSB or whatever, but must rather be hidden from the world at all cost. Recorded power data could come back and bite you! Recent sighting: Reborn Gilbert at Worlds.

For other armchair analysist: don't accuse me of being cynical about professional cycling. Puleeze...

Compare with olympic marathoners: from ~10th place down, everyone stops their watch on crossing the line and check performance, including splits. Input/output...

Edit 2, look at this "numbers guy" at 2004 Alpe d'Huez:

the second pic of course is a different race than Worlds. Why would he choose not to use one at Worlds? In a road race like that, last race of the year, he obviously doesn't need it during the race. When you attack to win the race you're not looking at your PM. The only reason he'd want it is to analyze data afterward. So maybe he wanted to use what was lighter and/or stiffer (not saying that makes any difference ... but that might be the thinking) to give any little advantage he could get.

That may be applicable on a long hill climb but I've never heard of any numbers that could be deemed incriminating for short efforts like 5min. There is plenty of variation within the peloton for that duration and no line, clear or fuzzy, that would separate clean riders from dopers.

I think Brian's explanation of last race of the year and no need to look at the data afterwards is more likely.

Perhaps he was suffering from PM paralysis? Staring at the SRM numbers telling himself that he was over the edge, or that he couldn't win early in the season and so decided to switch to less data for racing later in the season?

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Jordan Oroshiba --- Roadie invading Triathlete space for knowledge access

he didn't use a SRM in either one of his Vuelta wins. Some people never raced with a PM and probably just don't want to deal with it.

Cancellara does the same thing. He actually won the 2010 RvV with a SRM and then rode without one the following week