The Hour

[sniper]

got busted - a couple of times [ and it got whiped away at the time], e

But hasnt been forgotten by everybody. In 2007 some german race organizers refused merckx as a special guest because of his doping past. Dont remember details.
Anyway, to not pass the intelligence test three times in one carreer is quite the achievement, although admittedly at least one of the products he tested positive for was later removed from the illegal ped-list.

 

[MonkeyFace]

I find this tidbit always funny.

Eddie Merckx was known for drilling out his frames among other things to make his bikes as light as possible. The bike that he broke the record on in Mexico City was lighter than the restrictions for present day for the record. Not that weight makes a lot of difference on a velodrome but I also found this to be kind of goofy.

 

[D-Queued]

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?

Add marginal gains, and you have all of my favorites.

I love the human evolution part.

It makes perfect sense, because the 33 dog years you indicate are actually something like 231 cyclist years, or over 7 generations of cyclists.

Human evolution, of course, requiring some sort of breeding lineage component from one champion to the next.

Oddly, the only actual lineage we had was Eddy to Axel. If Axel tried the hour, even with Ferrari's assistance, would that show evolution or regression?

Dave.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

I think the things we can agree on confused are:

1. the hour is a pretty darn good indication of FTP
2. the hour is a pretty darn good indication of mental fortitude

 

[D-Queued]

I think the things we can agree on confused are:

1. the hour is a pretty darn good indication of FTP
2. the hour is a pretty darn good indication of mental fortitude

3.The hour is a pretty darn good indication of the wattage that a very well trained, elite cyclist can hold for between maybe five and ten minutes. Or, in the case of Indurain, for maybe 2-1/2 minutes.

Dave.

 

[Alex Simmons/RST]

1. the hour is a pretty darn good indication of FTP/m^2

If you have recorded the power output, then of course yes it's a good indicator of FTP. However given most records this data is not available then it tells us more about power to aerodynamic drag ratio than it does about power per se.

Power estimates from such attempts are very much dependent on having very good estimate of a rider's CdA (often not well known) and environmental conditions (usually easier to ascertain), and to a smaller but not insignificant extent rolling resistance (some tracks are faster than others and some tyres are faster than others).

 

[DirtyWorks]

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

great post! Thank you.

 

[Ferminal]

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.

Thanks for the post.

 

[doperhopper]

Want to have clear and comprehensive picture of the today vs. eddy's times? Easy - introduce track hour as TT in TdF.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Want to have clear and comprehensive picture of the today vs. eddy's times? Easy - introduce track hour as TT in TdF.

 

[sniper]

not bad idea by doperhopper.
matter of fact is that we have very little fair comparative data for road cyclists from different eras.
unlike e.g. for track'nfield athletes, where can simply compare fatest times.
introducing The Hour as an obligatory discipline for the protour riders somewhere throughout the season (e.g. during World Championships or TdF) would give us exactly that: fair comparative data.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

not bad idea by doperhopper.
matter of fact is that we have very little fair comparative data for road cyclists from different eras.
unlike e.g. for track'nfield athletes, where can simply compare fatest times.
introducing The Hour as an obligatory discipline for the protour riders somewhere throughout the season (e.g. during World Championships or TdF) would give us exactly that: fair comparative data.

One track, with 1 rider on the track at a time, with 180 riders, equals how many days? Who goes first and who gets the most recovery? Assuming you could push the officials to run 18 hours / day it would still take 10 days. Now in that 10 days, imagine the temperature goes from a balmy 35 with 80% humidity to 17C and 25% humidity as a cold snap hits the town where the track is.

Where do they get fixed wheel bicycles from?

Eddy did it fresh as he wanted, where he wanted (ie at altitude at a track of his choosing), at the time of life he wanted. Where are you going to take the Tour to replicate the conditions, where the riders are as fresh as they want to be?

Track riding is entirely different to road riding, and requires time to acclimate to going around in circles, etc.

It's a naive suggestion to gather data to compare present day riders to Eddy Merckx's record.

I thought these points would have been obvious. Have you guys not raced on the track and road? Not done multi-day races?

 

[sniper]

One track, with 1 rider on the track at a time, with 180 riders, equals how many days? Who goes first and who gets the most recovery? Assuming you could push the officials to run 18 hours / day it would still take 10 days.

lol
yes, major practical problems.