after all, a TT is just a relatively “long sprint”. i was surprised to see that on stage 18, sprinters (cavendish, hushovd, etc) were quite far in the back on the GC (forget the point classification…). the course was mostly flat w/ only one hill at Cote de Bluffy…
am i missing something?
slow twitch vs fast twitch muscles?
Same reason a 100 m sprinter is not likely to do very well at the mile or longer distances.
after all, a TT is just a relatively “long sprint”. i was surprised to see that on stage 18, sprinters (cavendish, hushovd, etc) were quite far in the back on the GC (forget the point classification…). the course was mostly flat w/ only one hill at Cote de Bluffy…
am i missing something?
You assumed they care how fast they could ride yesterday. There was no point in going fast for the two riders you mentioned. They are much better off giving a mild effort, making the time cutoff and preparing for the work on the stages which do matter for them. Perhaps it is depressing to know guys can ride 28 mph for 40.5 km without feeling strained, but that is the reality. I would say that ouside the top 20%, the field yesterday really didn’t care much about how fast they went. Unless someone has GC aspirations or TT greatness aspirations, they likely didn’t give an all out effort.
Cavendish can TT well. He comes from a track background, and I know he won the prolouge recently…was it in the Tour of California…I forget!
Oh, and any course with a Category 3 climb is not mostly flat. In a triathlon, it would be considered a very hard, nasty climb. I’d guess the course is probably similar to the San Diego Triathlon course, with the climb coming out of the harbor. These guys still averaged 30-32 mph!!!
after all, a TT is just a relatively “long sprint”.
No, it’s not.
Despite the confusing naming of a “Sprint Triathlon”, sprints are measured in seconds, not minutes. 40 kilometers is not even remotely close to “a relatively ‘long sprint’”.
Thor has done well in quite a few prolouges.
after all, a TT is just a relatively “long sprint”.
No, it’s not.
Despite the confusing naming of a “Sprint Triathlon”, sprints are measured in seconds, not minutes. 40 kilometers is not even remotely close to “a relatively ‘long sprint’”.
X2, a threshold effort is not a sprint. A 40.5k tt is a threshold effort. Might feel like your sprinting but your not or you wouldnt make it to the line. Prologues are a little different because they are so short that if a sprinter can recover quickly from an effort and then keep putting out a multiple strong efforts they could do very well in a 5-10 minute race but not for 45+ minutes.
Cavendish can TT well. He comes from a track background, and I know he won the prolouge recently…was it in the Tour of California…I forget! <<
40K TT v. 4K pursuit…big difference.
Not really. If someone is very good at a 4km pursuit, then he/she could certainly become very good at a 40k TT. Probably not best to peak for both at the same time, but a peak for pursuit in one year and a peak in a 40k the next is not unreasonable at all.
part of it is they don’t try, they save themselves for the sprint
and part of it is that anerobic talent gets you a lot in a sprint, and not in a time trial (unless its super super short)
after all, a TT is just a relatively “long sprint”. i was surprised to see that on stage 18, sprinters (cavendish, hushovd, etc) were quite far in the back on the GC (forget the point classification…). the course was mostly flat w/ only one hill at Cote de Bluffy…
am i missing something?
I think a 4k falls into that grey area, where some people who are good at 4k may also be able to get good at a 40k, and some won’t
depending on how exactly they are achieving that good 4k time.
Not really. If someone is very good at a 4km pursuit, then he/she could certainly become very good at a 40k TT. Probably not best to peak for both at the same time, but a peak for pursuit in one year and a peak in a 40k the next is not unreasonable at all.
thanks for the comments and details folks! no a day passes by where i don’t learn something thru ST. bam!
Not really. If someone is very good at a 4km pursuit, then he/she could certainly become very good at a 40k TT. Probably not best to peak for both at the same time, but a peak for pursuit in one year and a peak in a 40k the next is not unreasonable at all.
well except that if you follow hushovd checks on stage 18, (check 1 (km 18), check 2 (km 25), check 3 (km 28.5), check 4 (km 37)), his lag keeps increasing. my point was, maybe given their (sprinters) body type (70kg+), they seem no to be able to maintain a steady pace for say the frist 35km (@ LT pace, i’d assume), and then peak and sprint for the last 4km or so…
If Cav could produce the same amount of watts in a 40 k TT as he does at the end of a field sprint, he would beat the field by about 10-15 minutes. 40K def. not a long sprint.
Wiggins is a good example of a pursuiter who moved up from 4K to 40K pretty well, isn’t he?
a 40K TT is like a 6-10 mile run. I don’t think too many people would call that a long sprint.
…already covered. I know.
Are you guys on crack? Thor charged up some huge hills and even got some KOM points trying to get all the sprint points the other day. Then in the IT he cruised thru what would be roughly a 51 min 40 k distance corrected on a pretty hard course. Define fast… If he was motivated I would guess he would have been under 50 min. which is a whole lot faster than probably 90% of the pro triathletes would go fresh. But what was the point of digging in that hard? None. The guy is an animal. They also hauled their big bodies up some serious hills before the sprint today…
I think the opposite of most of you. TT experts are the guys who can’t climb or sprint. I should know cause I are one.
Thor was U23 World TT champ is 1998
He also won the prologue one year.
Aside from all of that the real reason they don’t perform up to your expectation is that they don’t get paid to TT well, they get paid to sprint.
x2
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They actually do care how fast they ride the TT, in that if they do actually ride the ITT as fast as they can, their respective DS’s would proceed to rip them a new one for working their butt off in a stage that they could place higher, but wouldn’t actually win…