Great Innovations in Cycling (Presented by Sky)

[BroDeal]

It is hard to keep track of all the cover stories...err, excuses...err, marginal gains...err, things that no one in the history of cycling ever thought of before.

1) The year long peak. Stop being a bone-idle ****er by taking it easy while carefully building to a peak for a targeted event. Just maintain maximum form all year. Brilliant. Just brilliant. It's hard to understand why everyone does not do this.

2) Cadence. Reducing cadence (even though you appear to use the same RPM as everyone else and the same RPM that you used the previous x number of years) increases time trialing speed. No one can quite explain it, but it has something to do with rolling resistance and the gears.

3) Warming down. Not quite an innovation. Apparently everyone in cycling forgot a fundamental piece of advice that has been used by excercisers for decades if not centuries.

4) Training hard all year with nary a break. Another example of bone-idle ****erness that is all too common in cycling, its fans, and humanity in general. Again it is one of those things that would be unbelievable if we did not know it was true. No cyclist ever thought to train hard in the off-season. ****s.

5) Mood lights. Okay, I'll give Sky this one. No one ever throught of that. I am sure Krebs will be around shortly to post a load of hypothetical mumbo jumbo "proving" that could increases efficiency but with not a scintilla of evidence showing that it actually makes anyone faster on the road when combined with all the other factors that make up performance.

6) Ugly BC bikes. Designed with a fraction of the resources available to the large companies like Trek, Specialized, and Cervelo, all of which have spent years making frames for the profitable triathlon market and have huge financial incentives to one-up each other's products for obsessed middle aged triathlete age groupers who think that a single gram of extra drag might cost them a Kona slot. The plucky Secret Squirrel Club managed to put one over on all those money grubbing Americans and quite a few greedy Canadians as well. If only they had been freed of the burden of making a profit by making a better product instead of just doing it for queen and country. Good show!

 

[taiwan]

7) Secret squirrels. Actual squirrels that noone knows about.

 

[ferryman]

8) Missing your kid's birthdays (seriously this was put to me today by a girl in the office as a reason why Wiggins can't be a doper).

 

[Montanus]

Year long peak. I guess Andy is scratching his head.

 

[errbud]

No longer having sugar in your coffee.
I remember Wiggins coming out with that gem after his 2009 gc breakthrough one of reasons for his weight loss

 

[Dr. Maserati]

Controlling your "inner chimp".

PS Fun Fact - Inner Chimps hate cameramen and people on twitter.

 

[ghostofjoy]

9) working with a swim coach to simulate swimming work loads on a bike. soon swimmers will be working with cycling coaches, and the circle will be complete.

10) cathartic stress relief via press conferences where internal doubts, fears and general insecurities are projected onto journalists, who become ****ing ****ers. catharsis achieved, and rider can now climb and tt with zen-like focus (lance clearly pioneered this strategy, but it took wiggins to bring it to perfection).

 

[taiwan]

11) Employing only doctors with experience in overseeing riders' doping regimes, to treat saddle sores.

 

[Jeanne]

Year long peak. I guess Andy is scratching his head.

Andy should also consider giving the cadence thing a chance.

 

[taiwan]

12) Special team olive oil

 

[doperhopper]

and do not forget the magical Sky PILLOWS (or marginal?)

 

[D-Queued]

...

3) Warming down. Not quite an innovation. Apparently everyone in cycling forgot a fundamental piece of advice that has been used by excercisers for decades if not centuries.

...

As perfectly (!) demonstrated today.

1. Swear at your support staff.

2. Grab the towel out from under his arm.

3. Wave all the w@**ers off.

4. Sit down on the pavement.

5. Have support staff carry OJ (EPO mix???) and give you a water bottle.

That, my friends, is the perfect warm down. If put to good use, you will be going 50 kph+ in a TT within the month.

Dave.

 

[Altitude]

Not even looking at the Tour de France route before the race. Wiggins claimed he didn't know when the mountain stages were.

 

[Benotti69]

XIIV) Employing 'specialised' Doctors to ensure TeamSky Staff live long enough to complete a GT.

 

[Caruut]

Not even looking at the Tour de France route before the race. Wiggins claimed he didn't know when the mountain stages were.

Reconning the stages, too. That was how Chris Froome said he won on La Planche des Belles Filles.

 

[WinterRider]

Not even looking at the Tour de France route before the race. Wiggins claimed he didn't know when the mountain stages were.

You've got to hand it to him here, he definitely didn't get this ones from Lance!

 

[doolols]

You guys crack me up, you really do. Same old crap, just repeated in (yet) another thread. Seriously, when are you going to either:

a) give it up

or

b) come up with some evidence of doping (as opposed to the "they're winning, so they must be doping" or "they're using a doctor who was once associated with a team who was doping" or "they're racing in a way that we don't like - i.e. using steady, efficient pace, rather than the more exciting dash and fall back - so they must be doping")

Dear God, how many Sky / GB-related threads are there now?

I'd be very interested to see any real evidence of wrongdoing by Wiggins, Froome, Sky, or Team GB. But I expect I'll just get a load of abuse now, and the core issue will be ignored. Same old, same old.

 

[Dead Star]

1. Build up a collective of believers to hunt down any w****** and c***s and belittle as much as possible? The Texan did well with this.

 

[Square-pedaller]

12) Special team olive oil

Did you notice that as well as the olive oil there were superfast oats - obviously what Wigoo gets his extra speed from

 

[No_Balls]

A) Learn more about cadence. It is all about cadence. And "forward momentum". That special guy listened to what his master Lance teached him and perfected it for the world to see and read. This would make him sustain his "all year around form": climbing like Contador, time-trialing like Indurain, Gregario like Ullrich in his -96 form, Roleur like Jacky Durand, Stephane Heulot, Eros Poli and Cedric Vasseur put togheter.

 

[gustienordic]

I can't believe no one has mentioned this yet:

Weight loss method. Drink enough to vomit to induce weight loss.

 

[errbud]

You guys crack me up, you really do. Same old crap, just repeated in (yet) another thread. Seriously, when are you going to either:

a) give it up

or

b) come up with some evidence of doping (as opposed to the "they're winning, so they must be doping" or "they're using a doctor who was once associated with a team who was doping" or "they're racing in a way that we don't like - i.e. using steady, efficient pace, rather than the more exciting dash and fall back - so they must be doping")
P
Dear God, how many Sky / GB-related threads are there now?

I'd be very interested to see any real evidence of wrongdoing by Wiggins, Froome, Sky, or Team GB. But I expect I'll just get a load of abuse now, and the core issue will be ignored. Same old, same old.[/QU
If humans lived by the logic of "there is no proof let's leave it " we'd still be living in caves , people have a right to speculate

 

[ferryman]

You guys crack me up, you really do. Same old crap, just repeated in (yet) another thread. Seriously, when are you going to either:

a) give it up

or

b) come up with some evidence of doping (as opposed to the "they're winning, so they must be doping" or "they're using a doctor who was once associated with a team who was doping" or "they're racing in a way that we don't like - i.e. using steady, efficient pace, rather than the more exciting dash and fall back - so they must be doping")

Dear God, how many Sky / GB-related threads are there now?

I'd be very interested to see any real evidence of wrongdoing by Wiggins, Froome, Sky, or Team GB. But I expect I'll just get a load of abuse now, and the core issue will be ignored. Same old, same old.

No abuse, it's just a forum afterall for all to post on. I wonder if, as many on here will do, if you were to replace the bolded bits by US Postal, USA, Armstrong, Heras, US Postal and USA if we have really moved forward.

 

[doolols]

No abuse, it's just a forum afterall for all to post on. I wonder if, as many on here will do, if you were to replace the bolded bits by US Postal, USA, Armstrong, Heras, US Postal and USA if we have really moved forward.

I can see what you're saying. Thanks for the non-abuse.

Wiggins is not like Armstrong. Wiggins does not climb like Contador, as someone else said. Whoever thinks that hasn't been watching cycling. Wiggins comes from a track background, team pursuit, that sort of thing, where the ability to set a pace and vary that pace slightly brings success. Because he was good at it. Lots of Olympic and championship medals show that.

So, can we say that he should be a good time trialler. It's what he doesn, it's the way he rides.

So, the climbing. How does he climb - off the front like Contador, Armstrong, Ricco? No, he sticks behind his team mates, they do the work for him, mostly, and they stick to a set pace. When Froome lights up and moves away, Wiggins has no answer. Once he had to come back because he was dragging Nibali with him away from Wiggins, and once because he thought it was the thing he should do (or Yates told him to).

What we saw in the tour would have been very different if Contador or A Schleck had been there. Sky would have had to leave Wiggins, because he had no reply.

So, in truth, although I see some similarities between Sky and US Postal, Sky only ever have 4 people in the team on the climb (Wiggins, Froome, Rogers, Porte). USPS used to have more.

 

[BroDeal]

I can see what you're saying. Thanks for the non-abuse.

Wiggins is not like Armstrong. Wiggins does not climb like Contador, as someone else said. Whoever thinks that hasn't been watching cycling. Wiggins comes from a track background, team pursuit, that sort of thing, where the ability to set a pace and vary that pace slightly brings success. Because he was good at it. Lots of Olympic and championship medals show that.

So, can we say that he should be a good time trialler. It's what he doesn, it's the way he rides.

So, the climbing. How does he climb - off the front like Contador, Armstrong, Ricco? No, he sticks behind his team mates, they do the work for him, mostly, and they stick to a set pace. When Froome lights up and moves away, Wiggins has no answer. Once he had to come back because he was dragging Nibali with him away from Wiggins, and once because he thought it was the thing he should do (or Yates told him to).

What we saw in the tour would have been very different if Contador or A Schleck had been there. Sky would have had to leave Wiggins, because he had no reply.

So, in truth, although I see some similarities between Sky and US Postal, Sky only ever have 4 people in the team on the climb (Wiggins, Froome, Rogers, Porte). USPS used to have more.

It will be interesting to hear this excuse again after Froome smashes Contador in the Vuelta.