The_Mikester said:
Thanks to Youtube and Universal Sports I have been able to get some fix of bike racing. One thing I love are the helicopter shots of sprint finishes. It blows me away how fast Cav is. And four TdF wins this year on top of his other palmares. Any idea how fast he was going, for instance at Milan-San Remo?
The_Mikester said:
Thanks to Youtube and Universal Sports I have been able to get some fix of bike racing. One thing I love are the helicopter shots of sprint finishes. It blows me away how fast Cav is. And four TdF wins this year on top of his other palmares. Any idea how fast he was going, for instance at Milan-San Remo?
I can't answer your question specifically about Milan-San Remo.
In general there's a lot of mystery around finishing top speeds in road racing.
From Cipollini and in particularly of Petacchi is said that they occasionally reached a top speed of 74km/h. I've never heard any reliable figure of Cavendish, although he is IMO not by definition a speedster, but rather an extreme good tactician and accelerator.
He won in 2003 the 200m qualification during the British Juniors in 11,387s and beat a.o. the now famous Jason Kenny (11.985).
But on the SRM website (from the manufacturers of the famous Powermeter) there's a lot of stuff. It's in German.
Navigate: Select (left) Event Blog. Select on the bottom Seite (page) 8 and you will find the powerfile of the last km of André Greipel (also one of world's best sprinters), while winning the 4th Stage of the Deutschland Tour in 2008.
He was involved in a 3-way sprint with Mc Ewen and Robert Förster.
On page 9 you will find the powerfile of the same race of Robert Förster.
Average last km: 60.6km/h/659W and accelerating in 24s from 39,5km/h to top speed of 71km/h.
60km/h is, unless slightly uphill, and no considerable adverse wind, easy in a peloton sprint. Rember top track cyclists can from a stand still reach 60km/h in rather 10s. If there's a tailwind involved not to speak of slighly downhill, the top speeds wil soar.