"The Luke Hopkins Effect" Aerodynamics Analysis in Nice

Triathlon Forum
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There’s a young triathlete called Luke Hopkins who has a social media following that would make Casper Stornes blush. He’s so popular that there is a kind of meme going around about this “Luke Hopkins Effect” on TokTok among regular people and I don’t really understand because he’s not at all good at triathlon. He is a part of the Nick Bare coalition of pickme influencers and is attracting a ton of eyeballs despite being slow as molasses. I’m all for his enthusiasm but have issues with the specifics.

I watched a recent YouTube video with him and his coach Parker Kerth (down a rung on the NVDM pyramid) and it is claimed that Luke has an FTP of 330 watts. He is not a very large man from what I can tell. Based on his Strava he pushed 220 watts average in Nice to split just under 6 hours.

Is he really that unaero, or is the course really that hard? Or is his power meter broken? I don’t see how a guy who appears to be 165 lbs rides 220 watts and it takes him 6 hours. And I don’t see how someone like that with an FTP of 330 goes that slow.

Nick Bare appears to be setting the trend of extremely poor bike fits and it’s possible that his protege is also just really slow in the wind. What do you think

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6’3” and 190 lbs?

Think this thread will have more legs with a few images of egregious bike fits, including this ‘tached “CEO and Founder of Inner Flame LLC”. Good effort to haul himself round the IMWC course with his physique in 11 hours.

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He had a great swim, a solid bike actually, and paid for it on the run is how I’d look at it based on his times alone.

If you’re saying he’s jacked and carrying a ton of muscle, maybe he ran to potential. But he did clearly start the run too fast. That’s actually understandable because of that 20mph tailwind that suddenly becomes a headwind right as the 112 miles of biking 7000ft just reminds your legs they are actually tired.

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He went 9:17 with a 3:13 run at Ironman Arizona. I think that’s actually quite good. I still think his bike is pretty slow for his claimed FTP (4:55).

But to beat his protege Nick Bare by close to an hour, I think he’s doing pretty good.