Winner's avg. speed trends in the TdF

[Kender]

the plateau on the first chart can be easily explained from the second...

there has been a definate downward trend in speeds since the peak in 2005.

 

[Anonymous]

You clearly are new to the sport. Not something, three things:

Will power, high cadence and hard training.

Dave.

yes, im terribly new to the sport.

Just coming up on 30 years.

 

[Chuffy]

yes, im terribly new to the sport.

Just coming up on 30 years.

Are you doubling up D-Queued's very dry wit?

 

[D-Queued]

Are you doubling up D-Queued's very dry wit?

Yup. Poor guy has been around the block so many times, he is forgetting how the sport got there.



Dave.

 

[Polish]

the plateau on the first chart can be easily explained from the second...

there has been a definate downward trend in speeds since the peak in 2005.

Using Hydration IV's became illegal beginning in 2006.
Wonder if that has had any impact on the decreasing average speeds post 2005?

but this is where its difficult to read too much into these things.

What if for one of the 100km i put a hill in the middle, or made your bike 2lb lighter, or moved your gears from the downtube to the handlebars. this is why its so difficult to compare.

That for me though is why the lance period stands out. Technology wasnt that difference, the courses were similar, but something in those 5 years gave the winner a bit of a lift.

Interesting if you compare Lance's improvement to LeMond's.

Greg's sharp improvement from 1986 to 1989 to 1990 is even GREATER than Lance's from 1999 to 2000 to 2001 to 2002 to 2003 to 2004 to 2005 if you fit a line to their respective data points.

Greg has a steeper slope to his line.
Greg was awesome too btw.

 

[Chuffy]

Yup. Poor guy has been around the block so many times, he is forgetting how the sport got there.



Dave.

What year were long socks introduced?

 

[D-Queued]

Using Hydration IV's became illegal beginning in 2006.
Wonder if that has had any impact on the decreasing average speeds post 2005?



Interesting if you compare Lance's improvement to LeMond's.

Greg's sharp improvement from 1986 to 1989 to 1990 is even GREATER than Lance's from 1999 to 2000 to 2001 to 2002 to 2003 to 2004 to 2005 if you fit a line to their respective data points.

Greg has a steeper slope to his line.
Greg was awesome too btw.

Interesting observations, Polish.

Thus, we can observe the natural progression of development as compared to the jump start when powered by a Ferrari.

Lance certainly got his money's worth, and didn't have to work as hard to improve himself.

Dave.

 

[Mambo95]

While doping has certainly had an impact, other factors have also played a part, such as:

Increased TV coverage. This has made getting in the break of the day far more competitive (a day in the break is great exposure for the sponsor - almost as good as a stage win). The first hour's racing (which we rarely see) is far more frantic than it used to be.

Different tactics. These days there are dedicated sprinters teams (like HTC) which chase down breaks relentlessly. In days gone by, a break finishing 10+ minutes ahead of the main peloton was a lot more common. Furthermore, the GC riders tend not to launch attacks until the final half of the final climb, thereby keeping the everyone together and the pace higher for longer.

Globalization. e.g. Greg LeMond was only the second American to do the Tour in 1984. Now we have four US teams. Add in Eastern Europeans, Australians, Brits, Scandinavians etc, and the talent pool is far stronger than twenty years ago.

It's worth remember that a modern day winner only spends 5-10% of the Tour actually racing. It's the other 90-95% that mainly dictates the average speed.

Doping is a factor, but there's a lot more going on.

 

[Mambo95]

Interesting if you compare Lance's improvement to LeMond's.

Greg's sharp improvement from 1986 to 1989 to 1990 is even GREATER than Lance's from 1999 to 2000 to 2001 to 2002 to 2003 to 2004 to 2005 if you fit a line to their respective data points.

In 1988, the length of the Tour was greatly reduced (permanently), so that had a big impact.

Also, as I have noted above, the average speeds of LeMond and Armstrong had little to do with LeMond and Armstrong.

 

[StyrbjornSterki]

Another point to remember is that aerodynamic drag increases with the square of the increase in velocity. Meaning going 1% faster doesn't take 1% more energy, it takes 2% more (1.01^2). So the same gain in kph is substantially harder to come by from a 39 kph average vice a 38 kph average. Which somewhat accounts for the curve being steeper before 1956 than after 1976.




But back to the OP, what else was going on that might have caused the curve to fall off so suddenly in the mid-60s?

 

[D-Queued]

<snipped>

Globalization. e.g. Greg LeMond was only the second American to do the Tour in 1984. Now we have four US teams. Add in Eastern Europeans, Australians, Brits, Scandinavians etc, and the talent pool is far stronger than twenty years ago.

It's worth remember that a modern day winner only spends 5-10% of the Tour actually racing. It's the other 90-95% that mainly dictates the average speed.

Doping is a factor, but there's a lot more going on.

In other professional sports, expanding the league generally lowers the level of competition.

Why would inclusion of the colonies make it go faster?

Dave.

 

[StyrbjornSterki]

In other professional sports, expanding the league generally lowers the level of competition.

Why would inclusion of the colonies make it go faster?

Dave.

No Frenchman has won the TdF in the quarter of a century since an American first won it. Even excluding FLandis (and perhaps soon Pharmstrong, too), the Yanks have won more than 1/3rd of all TdFs contested since then. That doesn't sound like they've lowered the level of competition.

So either you ride faster or you wait for the broom wagon.

 

[Andynonomous]

Because you are not diluting the pool of talent by spreading it out through more teams, you are increasing the pool of talent.

 

[Andynonomous]

In other professional sports, expanding the league generally lowers the level of competition.

Why would inclusion of the colonies make it go faster?

Dave.

By keeping the same pool of talent, but spreading it out into more teams, you should decrease performance.

By increasing the pool of talent, by including riders from more countries, you should increase the performance.

 

[Mambo95]

In other professional sports, expanding the league generally lowers the level of competition.

Why would inclusion of the colonies make it go faster?

Dave.

I'm not talking about extending a league from say 20 to 24 teams, while still picking from the same talent pool. I'm talking about extending the talent pool. There's more choice.

Back in Merckx's day the Tour was generally competed for by the French, Belgians and Dutch. There were also two Spanish teams and one Italian. These five counties made up 125 of the 130 starters in 1974. Of the current top 100 of the CQ rankings (better than UCI rankings) 54 are from those five countries - a big shift in demographics.

Back then World Champions from Australia and Norway, a GT winner from Russia, an American Tour winner were unthinkable. Even Spanish Tour contenders were rare.

So the average Tour cyclist is better, because they are drawn from a wider net.

If you like we can do an experiment. We both pick Fantasy Tour teams (you pick which one). You pick from just France, Belgium, Italy and Netherlands. I'll pick from the whole world. We'll bet £100 each. Want to take the offer?

 

[D-Queued]

I'm not talking about extending a league from say 20 to 24 teams, while still picking from the same talent pool. I'm talking about extending the talent pool. There's more choice.

Back in Merckx's day the Tour was generally competed for by the French, Belgians and Dutch. There were also two Spanish teams and one Italian. These five counties made up 125 of the 130 starters in 1974. Of the current top 100 of the CQ rankings (better than UCI rankings) 54 are from those five countries - a big shift in demographics.

Back then World Champions from Australia and Norway, a GT winner from Russia, an American Tour winner were unthinkable. Even Spanish Tour contenders were rare.

So the average Tour cyclist is better, because they are drawn from a wider net.

One Italian?

The Italians are bred for cycling.

And the New World against the Euros? C'mon! Have you raced Masters in St. Johan?

There must have been something else to level the playing field.

Dave.

 

[Mambo95]

One Italian?

No, one Italian team. Not one Italian.

PS You replied before I amended my post. Have a look at it. Fancy the bet? After all, if widening the talent pool has no effect, you should be at no disadvantage.

 

[Escarabajo]

I think Mambo95 has it right this time.

One way of making the EPO era stand out is making the split between flat + smooth hills kilometers versus mountain kilometers. I think they keep track of that somewhere. You can use an adjustment for the amount of mountainous kilometers in each year and normalize the curve. That way the 90's would stand out regardless of what Mambo95 said.

I was going to assume a speed for the flat kilometers depending on the decade and calculate the mountain speeds. That would give a general value of performance improvement. The steepness of the mountains would even out with the moving average. The only problem is that performance of the flat has improved as well then making it more difficult for normalization of that data.

Maybe I'll work out something if I have some time.

 

[Kender]

Another factor to consider is rolling resistance of the road surfaces

roads these days are alot better and smoother, and far more often than not, sealed for the whole stage (pave, cobbles, gravel, dirt vs seal)

correct me if i'm wrong but i'm sure there used to be alot more off-seal racing. especially gravel and dirt roads in the high passes.
often you see brand new sections of sealed road which have obviously been done because the tour is in town

 

[JMBeaushrimp]

In terms of 'widening the net', Mambo has it right.

It's not like more teams were created, and those teams were forced to draw from the same talent pool as the existing Northern Euro teams.

The entire pool was 'embiggened'. Including a lot of cyclists that were willing to do a lot more to escape future careers in the local asbestos mine.

With the globalization of cycling, the talent pool grew almost exponentially. The number of teams getting GT invites did not grow nearly as much. This created a 'high-grading' situation where astute managers and DSs had the ability to pull riders into their programs that heretofore esentially didn't exist. And as stated above, a lot of them were really motivated to pursue their passion (vs. the mundane career options they were presented with).

Hein and Pat have spoken a lot about thier supposed mandate to globablize cycling. As that's been developing, there seems to be a concomitant decrease in the importance and application of doping protocols. Forget about spitting in the soup, these guys don't want to p*ss in the pool...

 

[greenedge]

The riders can still ride faster though or make the race more exciting

 

[benpounder]

In other professional sports, expanding the league generally lowers the level of competition.

Why would inclusion of the colonies make it go faster?

I dont think you can compare all other sports to cycling. First you have to narrow it down to non-team and non-motorized sports. Further narrow it to endurance sports. Then pare it down to sports that are generally non-reliant upon specific regions and weather. In other words, compare cycling to long distance running, and to a much lesser extent, cross country skiing.

I think you will find that when long distance running went "global", the pool of superior talent vastly increased. (I included cross country skiing just because so many endurance athletes realized that they could train effectively in winter climates.) So the quality in cycling is increased with globalization because so many non-European nations already had a indigious cycling subculture (with very rudimentary understanding of training and nutrition) that had yet to be tapped, so to say.

 

[Random Direction]

Was it total elapsed time for the winner that was used, or the sum of each stage winner? If the former, it is possible that the historical and current speeds will not be comparable 1:1 due to more breakaways surviving in the past.

 

[D-Queued]

...

If you like we can do an experiment. We both pick Fantasy Tour teams (you pick which one). You pick from just France, Belgium, Italy and Netherlands. I'll pick from the whole world. We'll bet £100 each. Want to take the offer?

I like a good bet. But, I am only taking this one if I get to choose from Spanish riders or Spanish residents. You can have absolutely everyone else.

Until (if ever) they tighten up PED accessibility, Spain is plain.

I dont think you can compare all other sports to cycling. ...

I need to use more smilies.

You are getting far too literal here. Ullrich had it right. If you can't figure it out, then I can't help you.

Combine oxygen vector drugs, periodization, and a notorious inbred culture in the sport with the highest physical capacity:skill ratio and we know exactly why increasing the competitive pool increased peloton speed and competitiveness.

Heck, the French still don't believe in irrigating their wine grapes. Explain that to New World wine growers and you get a pretty good laugh out of them.

You can do it the old fashioned way, or you can get with the program.

Next thing you know, the UCI will want to restrict bicycle frame geometries or something.

Dave.

 

[Square-pedaller]

For a while, the teams at the TdF were national teams, not sponsored professional teams. I guess that might have affected average speeds,