Didn’t know Lambie was on the team. The team pursuit and individual pursuit make sense to me, but who is their hour rider? Archibald I guess since he is their fastest pursuiter? I have doubts that one will succeed. None of these guys have done that well in Pro/Elite TTs. And I have a feeling they won’t gain as much speed at altitude as they believe.
*Dan says: ‘We know the World Record is achievable. There is a place in Mexico at 2,000 metres above sea level. That altitude is worth a huge amount in distance and we would go about six to eight seconds faster than at sea level. It would not just be the team pursuit, we would have a go at the individual pursuit and Bradley Wiggins’ hour record as well. We have run it through our performance models and it’s all achievable… * We will go into altitude chambers and analyse each rider and then tailor our training and head to Mexico in March/April. We finish the season in January and will have a bit of down time and then build back up to it.
Lambie own the pursuit world record (4mn07)
Archibald own the 2 best pursuit perf at sea level (4mn09 and 4mn10.177)
Not sure wich one could try the hour record. Need some serious endurance work, while team pursuit need also serious anaerobic work. Globally, lot of work…
Maybe they are a bit too young, but on the other hand :
altitude !
aero : HUUB worked a lot around boundary layer management, probably some good gains here
aero again : the team worked a lot in wind tunnel, finding UCI compatible ways to get high mantis… and efficient high mantis, from the results announced, with Bigham (6’) getting as low as 0.168 UCI compliant… ouch
I would guess a few guys have an outside shot. Tanfield was silver at Commonwealth and Bigham has some impressive TT’s the last few years, however he did an hour attempt in 2015 (albeit at reading palmer which isn’t anywhere near an ideal track, even for an outdoor) and came up with a little under 47km. He’s obviously gotten faster since, but probably not Wiggins fast for an hour. Archibald…maybe, pursuiter doesn’t really mean hour guy usually though. Lambie would be interesting, he’s got a fair amount of “big/long/epic” rides and is still enough of an unknown to not be sure what he could do in an hour.
Those guys don’t play around though… they are as data obsessed as any team ever has been… if they think they have a good shot I doubt it’ll be amateur hour when they show up.
Tanfield was silver at Commonwealth and Bigham has some impressive TT’s the last few years.
But Commonwealth isn’t that high a level. Still a good performance. I was thinking of Harry at Euro Championships where he was 16th. And Charlie at U23 Worlds was 27th. Not the level where I’d expect a world record.
Granted they definitely have track experience which will help. And they might have a good altitude response.
Yes certainly possible, although in Obree/Boardman’s era the pursuit was a different animal. People got really excited when Bobridge broke Boardman’s 4k, and wild speculation was that he was going to crush the Superman record… which was of course silly talk even if Bobridge hadn’t set off at such a fast pace from the start.
At the end of the day, a pursuit, a 10mi, an hour, etc really boils down to w/cda, at least on paper. The nuances of riding a record breaking pace for an hour are not the same as those others however in practice.
But I agree, certainly possible with enough specificity.
Well, 27th isn’t too bad if you consider it wasn’t the perfect start
Ya, but he only lost ~10sec though with the poor start.
…it is possible.
It’s possible for someone to do it, certainly. But these guys all race longer TTs and don’t do that well relative to elite pros. The pursuit records are very likely, but I think the hour will be a lot tougher.
A day after Kona in 2016 I was sitting having a beer on my own and this Aussie dude comes up to me and says “mate, you look like a f***ing loser sitting there on your own, come join usâ€
Turns out after about half an hour of him calling me yank and me calling him a kiwi (General good natured “taking the pissâ€) one his friends showed me his phone and told me who it was. Anyways, one of the nicest guys you could meet. Typical Aussie, hospital and nice with just the right amount of smart ass.
Real shame what happened to him with all of the MDMA stuff.
Also disparaged Lambie’s 4k record a bit, and thought 4:00 might be achievable.
Yeah, I saw this a few days ago, and I couldn’t decide if that was disparagement or not. It would be a bit weird of him to publicly scoff at a teammate’s WR like that.
And today Lambie beat Archibald, 4:12.89 to 4:16.730. (5th and 7th places, respectively) Lambie proved that it wasn’t a fluke. That’s a legit - if not world-beating - time.
Maybe a good thing for Archibald to be taken down a notch.
It was the Italian, Ganna, who looked like he’d be ready to hit 4:00 at Aguas, with a 4:07:46.
Also the team pursuit record just got a lot harder.
So before two days ago I might have given HUUB greater than 50% chance of flying out of Mexico with at least two records. Now I’m not so sure about even one.
Yes he does. Victor has good power and exceptionally great aerodynamics. Hell of a nice guy and good triathlete too. I’d love to see him get back to triathlon some day. He still swims regularly and could run quite well back in the day too.
I’m still not sure when HUUB is planning to go. They said March/April over a month ago. I think they better get there before Campenaerts if they want that HR…
Archibald might surprise anyway though. He’s doesn’t have any great TT results at the world level but they go on about how poor he is anaerobically and he still does a 4:09 pursuit.
Agree that the HR is likely to be taken fairly soon. When Wiggins announced he was going for the record I did think he might set a mark that would stand for a very long time as he was pretty much perfect for it (huge engine, ton of track experience, great aero, and able to put everything into that goal rather than balancing it out with other commitments). But the decision to do it in London instead of at altitude (v sensible commercially) and then far from ideal conditions on the day meant it’s a relatively soft target.
Campanaerts certainly has the engine to do it, but not much of a track pedigree and from a recent interview sounded like he was taking a fairly casual approach to it e.g. using a standard track bike and didn’t sound like he’d spent or was planning to spend a lot of time optimising equipment, position, etc. Whereas the HUUB guys will undoubtedly have analysed every last little thing in pursuit of gains. Interesting contrast of styles, would love to see a bit of a battle over the record with it changing hands a few times!
Also disparaged Lambie’s 4k record a bit, and thought 4:00 might be achievable.
Yeah, I saw this a few days ago, and I couldn’t decide if that was disparagement or not. It would be a bit weird of him to publicly scoff at a teammate’s WR like that.
Having listened to a few interviews with these guys, it sounds pretty typical intra-team heckling. Their whole ethos seems to be “however fast we/others are going, we can do better” - if Lambie has the current record but another teammate has better starting-block power, or aerodynamics? So either Lambie can improve and match that, or the other teammate can beat the record by matching Lambie elsewhere.
