Last week I had the chance to spend a few days with John Cobb in Mexico City fitting this time not only my son (who has been fitted by him since he was considerably smaller) but many other young cyclists from the National Track team and various State teams from Mexico concentrated at the National High Performance Center.
JC keeps impressing me not only regarding the patience and the dedication he has when fitting youth and junior riders, but also on the many ways he solves fitting problems. Many times I thought that there was no way he could further improve a fit (by lack of the appropriate stem, frame or aerobars) and at the end the fit was improved for each rider.
One of the riders was Daniela, a top 16 year old sprinter. Daniela is a young, small but very promising sprinter with many wins at the track, including two gold medals at the last Track Nationals in México. No one had noticed before that one of her legs was shorter than the other. John spotted this as soon as she got off the bike and demonstrated it in a very clear way to her and to her coaches. Then he took a good look at her shoes. In a moment John realized that there is a difference in the economic support kids in developed countries get, versus what a developing country has to offer to their National Team riders. Perhaps more confusing to him was seeing some of those kids riding some of the best bikes in the world and others by necessity in badly damaged bikes of questionable quality in a multimillion dollar world class wooden velodrome. Clearly too much contrast. I can imagine his frustration when he looked at Daniela’s badly damaged platforms. He asked why and I responded that new platforms were out of reach for some of those kids. Daniela was very lucky because some people were selling cycling stuff in the parking lot outside of the velodrome. John asked if it would be OK for him to help buying new platforms and I said that if would surely be a great gesture. Daniela for the first time in her life was properly fitted in both her bike position and also regarding her shoe set up. John warned her that the change would probably not be the best for her first race of the season a day after, but surely in a week she would feel much better. That did not matter, and I guess that for the first time in her life Daniela was generating equal power with both of her legs, because she broke the Mexican record for her AG with an impressive qualifying time of 12.009 s in the flying 200 m sprint. Those that race at the track the flying 200 m know how fast that is for a 16 year old girl.
Too bad John did not have the chance to see the kids race. All of the kids fitted (I did not keep count but easily more than a dozen) on those two days, performed very good at the track and a few more at the road race on Sunday.
We are in debt with John Cobb, his support was much needed. I am sure he will keep getting good news in the future from the kids he fitted.
Muchas gracias JC!
Sergio
