Last night OLN was rebroadcasting the Lance Chronicle edition that showed Steve Hed and other guys showing Lance their ideas for the Alpe d’huez TT.
It got me wondering, anybody know who are the european versions of the US aerodynamics gurus we are always talking about around here?
Jim
Morgan Nicol
“Morgan Nicol”
you’re joking, right? i mean, i know it ruins the joke if you have to explain it, but it might be that your joke is so fine and nuanced that i’m one of the few who gets it.
for that reason you may need to explain your joke, or, if you want, i’ll explain it to the readers for you.
You mean besides myself? :-)))
Either he’s joking, or, he has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about. Again.
Anytime Gary tries to talk about the bike industry, please change channels.
To answer the question with some degree of accuracy:
The British Olympic Federation is working with Peter Keen and Mike Burroughs
Team CSC is working with Gerard
Saeco/Canondale goes in the Pininfarina tunnel fairly regularly, don’t know who their advisor is.
Once was well known for putting a large effort into keeping current with bike design/TT technology. They worked with Time and later Giant (Mike Burroughs, for a time.)
Tyler/Phonak were working with somebody - name will pop up if you search his site.
Ullrich (or somebody advising him) has apparently been doing some testing, with the maverick results in evidence on his bike/position this year (he wasn’t riding disc-less because of the conditions, he’s riding disc-less because he thinks it’s faster. Note that the Lew wheel folks presented info to support this viewpoint on their website back when thy were still around…)
Most of the Euro teams do not do testing/R&D like LA does.
Ok, I’ll bite… what’s the joke?
Brian
The Joke is that calling Nicol an “aero-guru” is like calling Lee Iacocca a drivetrain engineer.
Ok, I think I have a handle on what Iacocca did at Chrysler in the 80’s, but I am still in the dark.
Sorry but I gotsta know, I was considering their aerobars.
Brian
The question I answered was the title of the post “**So are there Eurpoean versions of Steve hed and/or John Cobb? **”
Hed runs HED, John Cobb runs Bicycle Sports/Blackwell, and Nicol runs Oval and defers the technology and aerodynamics to Cobb, who designed the Oval bars and forks for the most part. I believe that Nicol designed many of the other products in the line. I was not trying to infer his “guru” status. Sorry for any confusion there.
Pete Keen was one of my lecturer at University, what he doesn’t know about physiology/kinesiology isn’t worth knowing. He was Chris Boarmans guru at that time.
Mike burrows is the man when it comes to bike technology in Britain. He was headhunted by Giant after Lotus copied his bike design, (badly according to him) but he now works for himself. He specialises in recumberants at present as he has taken bike aerodynamics as far as they will go under UCI rules. He is currently making a Monoblade for my new steed al la Graeme O’Bree. You should really read his book:
AndyA
by the way, i was “wattmanager.” my mistake. i was logging a new forum user in and was testing the login and forgot that i wasn’t logged in as myself.
i’ve known morgan nicol for about 15 years. at that time he was 2nd chair to wen hsieh at KHS bicycles. then he became head of ritchey europe and did that for about a decade before starting oval 2 years ago.
i met morgan nicol through steve hed, as nicol was one of hed’s best friends for years and years.
nicol is not a product guy. he’s a sales and marketing guy. the other part of oval is the taiwanese agent who was ritchey’s agent during nicol’s tenure there, and when nicol and ritchey split joseph went with nicol.
so, whether it’s stems, seat posts, forks, aero bars, or whatever, in everything i’ve seen so far most of the knowledge was first conceived and derived by ritchey, hed or cobb. not that there’s anything wrong with that. i use suave shampoo. why pay for R&D when you can just use everybody else’s?
europe? don’t know that you can really say burrows anymore, as i don’t think he’s adding anything to the industry that i know of. pancrazio centola, previously of 3T and the Deda, was pretty creative. the guy at walser. used to be jo kleiber made interesting stuff. maybe he will be again one day.
thanks for clarifying, those Oval stems look a lot like Ritchey
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the jerk says there are a few…andy walser is one of them. there’s not alot of snake oil salesmen like john cobb and the liar for hire john howard in europe because it there aren’t as many idiots over there who believe you can buy speed…the former east german government did some cool things in terms of track bike design and the jerk believes they are still operating under more market driven masters…most of the top euros do wind tunnel test but giant spent alot of money to try and prove andy’s bike was no slower than their junk…to no avail as it turns out because the kraut is on his walser…
jerk
Ask JC or Steve Hed and they will tell you they don’t know Jack about the technical aspect of the wind tunnel. The guys in the booth crunching numbers with the computer do the work. JC has told me that many times that he hires the “experts” to do the work,
JC and Steve and a few other guys can look at a rider and see what is fast (position wise), but the rest is trial and error. That is why just because a bike looks swoopy, it may not be fast at all. I know JC has mentioned they have a couple really really nice tunnels in Europe. The big problem with the tunnels is the high dollar cost of using time in them. G