The Hour

[Dear Wiggo]

If human evolution, training methods and mental training have come so far, can anyone explain why Boardman (+10m, 2000) and Ondřej Sosenka (+269m, 2005) have barely managed to nudge the record set by Merckx in 1972? That's 33 years of human evolution and physiological training method improvement.

Wiggins and Cancellara are threatening to have a crack in 2014 - any takers for the improvement we will see thanks to human evolution, training methods and mental training?

 

[Le breton]

If human evolution, training methods and mental training have come so far, can anyone explain why Boardman (+10m, 2000) and Ondřej Sosenka (+269m, 2005) have barely managed to nudge the record set by Merckx in 1972? That's 33 years of human evolution and physiological training method improvement.

Wiggins and Cancellara are threatening to have a crack in 2014 - any takers for the improvement we will see thanks to human evolution, training methods and mental training?

That's easy
zero

 

[EnacheV]

that's because almost nobody bothers with this
also very few variables, to much rules and backdating rules

on short, who the fuk cares about hour record

 

[Dear Wiggo]

That's easy
zero

That will be very easy to confirm.

Damn. No laughing emoticon.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

that's because almost nobody bothers with this
also very few variables, to much rules and backdating rules

I couldn't remember exactly who it was that talked about human evolution and its impact on performance, but I believe you have jogged my memory.

on short, who the fuk cares about hour record

I do, for one. As it would answer the question posed by my rational thinking brain as to the veracity of the claim that human evolution and improved training methods - both physical and mental - avail performance increases like the ones we have been seeing. And tactics, etc, would be removed entirely from the equation.

Just training.
Evolution.
And a rider on a bike.

 

[Don't be late Pedro]

I couldn't remember exactly who it was that talked about human evolution and its impact on performance, but I believe you have jogged my memory.



I do, for one. As it would answer the question posed by my rational thinking brain as to the veracity of the claim that human evolution and improved training methods - both physical and mental - avail performance increases like the ones we have been seeing. And tactics, etc, would be removed entirely from the equation.

Just training.
Evolution.
And a rider on a bike.

Or compare Boardman's record with a change of position and new bike technology. How did that compare to Merckx's distance?

 

[Ferminal]

Well Eddy was probably off his face (refer to "are BBDE techniques more effective than commonly thought" thread) and though highly doubtful maybe the possibility of some form of blood doping can't be excluded. Also the altitude may have had a small net gain (?) but then again modern tracks are superior. Boardman we simply don't know, and for all his successes is still hardly on the same plane as the GOAT. Sosenka would have been massively tanked and the reverse argument is why with all the wonders of blood doping was he only able to put a lap into Eddy.

I think some combination of Eddy being a monster, and "old" doping being far more than placebo.

I'm still pretty confident that an adequately prepared Cancellara/Martin/Wiggins would put a k into him but that is still only 2% and in GT terms only a couple of places difference so all the benefits of modern doping and training would still not really be evident.

The next step from here and the angle you're working is that training regime cannot explain differences in performance either amongst a very select group in a race or when comparing one champion of today to one from ten years ago. That is of course not to say that an individual cannot improve his own performance if his training regime had not previously been at the benchmark set by the best.

But we already knew that.

 

[EnacheV]

I couldn't remember exactly who it was that talked about human evolution and its impact on performance, but I believe you have jogged my memory.



I do, for one. As it would answer the question posed by my rational thinking brain as to the veracity of the claim that human evolution and improved training methods - both physical and mental - avail performance increases like the ones we have been seeing. And tactics, etc, would be removed entirely from the equation.

Just training.
Evolution.
And a rider on a bike.

you dont get it

if you put 50 riders that prepare for TdF, after 6 months of focused training, at least 10 of them will break the current record

there is a reason that the record for the longest sausage is not break to often.

 

[Don't be late Pedro]

you dont get it

if you put 50 riders that prepare for TdF, after 6 months of focused training, at least 10 of them will break the current record

there is a reason that the record for the longest sausage is not break to often.

"if Boardman can break the hour record, than half of the professional peloton can break it"

 

[Don't be late Pedro]

Also, what age was Merckx when he broke the record? Boardman was at the end of his career and was suffering from osteoporosis which would no doubt impact his training.

 

[roundabout]

At the same time Merckx did pretty much a full season in 1972 winning 2 GTs and 3 monuments so it's hard to tell how much specific training he was able to do.

 

[Bumeington]

Also, what age was Merckx when he broke the record? Boardman was at the end of his career and was suffering from osteoporosis which would no doubt impact his training.

Boardman 93 ~ 410W
Boardman 96 ~ 442W
Boardman 2000 ~ 400W

Boardman 96 would have set the bar much higher. Obviously human evolution etc. is bull**** but Boardman in 2000 was definitely producing fewer watts than Merckx in 72 so he had an aerodynamic advantage certainly.

The fact that Michael Hutchinson claims in his second attempt on the hour that he rode at 49.5km/h for almost an hour in training tells you the bar is not as high as it could be.

I'd be suprised if Cancellara and/or Wiggins don't go further than 50km.

 

[Don't be late Pedro]

At the same time Merckx did pretty much a full season in 1972 winning 2 GTs and 3 monuments so it's hard to tell how much specific training he was able to do.

True. And apparently he started of very quickly to try and break various records along the way. But if he had tried in 1977 what kind of distance would he have got then?

 

[sniper]

Well Eddy was probably off his face (refer to "are BBDE techniques more effective than commonly thought" thread) and though highly doubtful maybe the possibility of some form of blood doping can't be excluded. Also the altitude may have had a small net gain (?) but then again modern tracks are superior. Boardman we simply don't know, and for all his successes is still hardly on the same plane as the GOAT. Sosenka would have been massively tanked and the reverse argument is why with all the wonders of blood doping was he only able to put a lap into Eddy.

I think some combination of Eddy being a monster, and "old" doping being far more than placebo.

I'm still pretty confident that an adequately prepared Cancellara/Martin/Wiggins would put a k into him but that is still only 2% and in GT terms only a couple of places difference so all the benefits of modern doping and training would still not really be evident.

The next step from here and the angle you're working is that training regime cannot explain differences in performance either amongst a very select group in a race or when comparing one champion of today to one from ten years ago. That is of course not to say that an individual cannot improve his own performance if his training regime had not previously been at the benchmark set by the best.

But we already knew that.

good points.

note also that hgh abuse was already rampant in the early 70s.

 

[the sceptic]

Dawgzilla should do this. He would easily beat Boardmans record.

 

[Fearless Greg Lemond]

If human evolution, training methods and mental training have come so far, can anyone explain why Boardman (+10m, 2000) and Ondřej Sosenka (+269m, 2005) have barely managed to nudge the record set by Merckx in 1972? That's 33 years of human evolution and physiological training method improvement.

Give Dave Brailsford a ring. He knows how this works. He has riders who bonk on the Alpe and still are much faster than Lucho and subsequently would wipp Boardmans behind in any TT anyday of the week.

I believe Merckx could have gone faster, didnt he go for all the world records that day, 5k, 10k, 20k etc?

 

[Fearless Greg Lemond]

If human evolution, training methods and mental training have come so far, can anyone explain why Boardman (+10m, 2000) and Ondřej Sosenka (+269m, 2005) have barely managed to nudge the record set by Merckx in 1972? That's 33 years of human evolution and physiological training method improvement.

Give Dave Brailsford a ring. He knows how this works. He has riders who bonk on the Alpe and still are much faster than Lucho and subsequently would wipp Boardmans behind in any TT anyday of the week.

I believe Merckx could have gone faster, didnt he go for all the world records that day, 5k, 10k, 20k etc?

I like this topic I must say.

 

[thehog]

Dawgzilla should do this. He would easily beat Boardmans record.

The Dawg could do a high cadence in-saddle acceleration for an hour.

 

[Zam_Olyas]

The Dawg could do a high cadence in-saddle acceleration for an hour.

while riding one handed and texting Miss Cound?

 

[thehog]

while riding one handed and texting Miss Cound?

....and fighting off Badzhilla with the other hand.

 

[red_flanders]

While we're all speculating on Merckx's bio-chemical engineering, and I'm not saying by any stretch he did anything different than anyone else in his time, let's try to remember some facts.

He was absolutely dominant, by a degree that is difficult to imagine in these times.

525 victories (most ever), including:
28 Classics victories (most ever)
54 victories in one season (most ever)
34 TdF stages (most ever)
8 victories in a single TdF (tied for most ever)
96 days in yellow (most ever)
Only cyclist to win the GC, Points and Mountains in a single tour (1969)
11 Grand Tour victories (most ever)

He won about 1/3 of the races he ever entered. Can you imagine that? Not placings, that's outright wins. Staggering. He was asked not to participate in the 1973 Tour because of his dominance. Try and imagine that happening today.

Whatever dope he took, and he took some dope, it's both ridiculous and unsubstantiated to suggest or imply he was doing something different than his competitors and given the doping of the time it's pretty clear it didn't make any meaningful difference in terms of having some competitive advantage.

He was completely and utterly dominant. I can't think of an athlete in any sport who compares.

 

[Echoes]

Merckx never went for the 5k record (that's the pursuit record, okay?).

Strictly for the 10k and the 20k. Even though this is a great achievement as such and he started very fast indeed, we have to bear in mind that he had the advantage of altitude for these two records. Ritter got them in a separate attempt from his Hour record and in Zurich at low altitude.

The advance in training methods and diet since the 1970's is WAY overrated. Coppi brought to cycling pretty much all the modern methods that current riders need. Only technology improved a lot. Interval training was already generalized in the mid-sixties (though it's of no use for the Hour contest, but it's an indication, people tend to romanticize the past too much).

Merckx was 27 when he broke the hour but if you look at the Hour's history, it's pretty much exceptional to do it at that age. Prior to him, all the best broke it at a very young age (Coppi, Anquetil, Baldini, Rivière) or past their time (Anquetil's second attempt) because at that age they did not have such a heavy calendar on the road and they could prepare for it. Ritter and Bracke broke it in their prime but they were primarily track riders and they had time to prepare for it.

Bobet made an attempt to break Coppi's record by 1954 (at age 29) and he failed because he could not prepare for it. He had just been World Champion and won the GP des Nations and as J-P Ollivier said "you don't improvise an Hour record."

Merckx broke the Hour on October 25 1972. On October 7 he won the Tour of Lombardy. On October 8 he won Across Lausanne, the 2 stages and a criterium in Sallanche and on October 11 he won the Baracchi Trophy. In the meantime he had carried out some testings in labs in Milan and Liège to test whether he could adapt to high altitude (because he knew that Bracke failed in his attempt to grab the title back from Ritter, because he couldn't adapt) but he was all okay.

When Merckx arrived in Mexico it rained cats and dogs and he was feeling a little depressed. "Traveling 7,000km and having the same weather as in Belgium." He had to wait for 5 days before he could start and the track was still damp. Albani said that his body was already weakening by then. A record at high altitude should be either be attempted immediately or after a long stay at high altitude (like Ritter did). This fact and his lightning fast start showed that he could have set a far higher mark.

 

[Fearless Greg Lemond]

While we're all speculating on Merckx's bio-chemical engineering, and I'm not saying by any stretch he did anything different than anyone else in his time, let's try to remember some facts.

I dont give a rats behind on whether [spelling] Eddy did something he shouldnt have done out of a clean perspective, I think he did - slash got busted - a couple of times [ and it got whiped away at the time], what I do mind is Eddy sending HIS SON Axel to the best doping doc around.

In my book that says something about someones mindset.

What ever that says on the Hour I dont know.

I do find it very interesting Christopher Boreman onely beat Eddy with 10 metres just prior to the implementation of the EPO test.

edit: thanks echoes for the correction there

 

[red_flanders]

In my book that says something about someones mindset.

What ever that says on the Hour I dont know.

I don't know either.

 

[red_flanders]

Merckx never went for the 5k record (that's the pursuit record, okay?).

Strictly for the 10k and the 20k. Even though this is a great achievement as such and he started very fast indeed, we have to bear in mind that he had the advantage of altitude for these two records. Ritter got them in a separate attempt from his Hour record and in Zurich at low altitude.

The advance in training methods and diet since the 1970's is WAY overrated. Coppi brought to cycling pretty much all the modern methods that current riders need. Only technology improved a lot. Interval training was already generalized in the mid-sixties (though it's of no use for the Hour contest, but it's an indication, people tend to romanticize the past too much).

Merckx was 27 when he broke the hour but if you look at the Hour's history, it's pretty much exceptional to do it at that age. Prior to him, all the best broke it at a very young age (Coppi, Anquetil, Baldini, Rivière) or past their time (Anquetil's second attempt) because at that age they did not have such a heavy calendar on the road and they could prepare for it. Ritter and Bracke broke it in their prime but they were primarily track riders and they had time to prepare for it.

Bobet made an attempt to break Coppi's record by 1954 (at age 29) and he failed because he could not prepare for it. He had just been World Champion and won the GP des Nations and as J-P Ollivier said "you don't improvise an Hour record."

Merckx broke the Hour on October 25 1972. On October 7 he won the Tour of Lombardy. On October 8 he won Across Lausanne, the 2 stages and a criterium in Sallanche and on October 11 he won the Baracchi Trophy. In the meantime he had carried out some testings in labs in Milan and Liège to test whether he could adapt to high altitude (because he knew that Bracke failed in his attempt to grab the title back from Ritter, because he couldn't adapt) but he was all okay.

When Merckx arrived in Mexico it rained cats and dogs and he was feeling a little depressed. "Traveling 7,000km and having the same weather as in Belgium." He had to wait for 5 days before he could start and the track was still damp. Albani said that his body was already weakening by then. A record at high altitude should be either be attempted immediately or after a long stay at high altitude (like Ritter did). This fact and his lightning fast start showed that he could have set a far higher mark.

Great post, thanks for that.