elapid said:
Interesting weights. Earlier in the thread someone mentioned something to the effect that Wiggins was fat, or must have been to lose that much weight. I am the same height as Contador and at my lightest weighed 70 kg. I was skeletal and everyone was worried about me. Contador is apparently 9 kg lighter - OMG! There's skinny and then there is cyclist skinny.
What I find interesting is that Contador is not that skinny (which is part of explanation why he TTs better than Schleck). Examples of skinny cyclists are:
Pantani: 56/1.72^2=18.9
Schleck: 66/1.86^2=19.1
(wikipedia gives 57kg for Pantani, but many other googe hits state 56kg. I wouldn't be surprised if sometimes he was even lower. Wikipedia gives 67kg for schleck, but to me he looks more trim than before, so I ad hoc estimate 66kg. At 67kg, he'd be 19.4.)
Now, these guys are skinny, but not unnatural or even unhealthy. These are the BMI ranges (see e.g.
wikipedia):
<18.5 underweight
18.5-25 Normal
25-30 Overweight
>30 Obese
70kg at 1.76m is far from skinny - it is in the middle of the normal range.
To give you an idea, in my early twenties, I had 61/1.79^2=19.0. This corresponds to clearly visible ribs and about 4mm between the fingers if you pinch your stomach fat. Since then, I spent a decade ice-climbing and mountaineering, putting on upper body muscles and some fat. I now have 65/1.79^2=20.3. This corresponds to faintly visible ribs and 10mm stomach pinch. (I use myself as example only because I don't have access to this info for other male athletes)
What BMI does not reflect is th edistribution of muscles. for cycling uphill, upper body muscles weigh you down. If you compare images of contador and schleck, the latter apear to have much skinnier arms.
Concerning 'normal' people, americans average high on the BMI scale not only because many americans are overweight and obese, but also because among healthy fit americans 'hitting the gym' i.e. doing strength workout (including building various upper-body muscles) is much more comon than in europe. So even fit americans often end up with BMI>22.