WTF happened to Millar’s wheel at the start of today’s time trial? It looks like the disc was actually pulled out of the rim.
Phil Liggett is talking about snapping a chain but I didn’t see that happen. I know he had another issue with his bike just after the first but I couldn’t really see what went wrong there.
I doubt Millar was putting super-human power to the wheel at the time. Anyone else have any info?
Pieces went flying!
From cyclingnews.com:
13:44 CEST
Wow…that’s terrible…David Millar had just started his TT and his Mavic TT wheel disintegrated. The rim came clean away from the carbon covering. He threw his bike down in disgust and got another one. That’ll cost him time though. Millar was aiming to try to win today’s TT.
14:21 CEST
Millar’s mechanical happened perhaps 200 metres from the start house. He accelerated down the ramp and was getting up to speed, then bits of carbon fibre started flying all over place. It looked pretty dramatic.
With all the doping going on, you don’t think it is possible that a cyclists puts out superhuman power. Now Millar is supposedly a reformed doper, so perhaps you are right in this case.
I just watched an interview on Eurosport where he says that the wheel on his spare bike fell apart as well - what kind of disk was he riding - it said Mavic but…?
Brings up an interesting question: When a relabeled component is used, due to sponsorship, etc., and it fails, perhaps catastrophically, like this did, how would the company respond? Concerned about their reputation as a quality parts maker. Concerned about sales, etc.
It definitely wasn’t the chain, you could see that it was still intact. I think it was a Mavic Comete disk. Maybe it was flexing enough under that kind of power that it ended up rubbing on a chain stay or the cutout and that caused the catastrophic failure…
Manufacturer and re-badger both lay low in public.
They were Mavic’s - Obviously fuming he was quick to piont out who made them when interviewed!
I seem to recall hearing that mavic had done special lighter wheels for him? Generally Mavic stuff is built to be solid and dependable - maybe they should stick to that philosophy.