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The Tour de France is happening somewhere (France, I’m guessing) and so the media is in the grip of Tour Mania! (Or at least Tour Meh-nia.) For example, USA today reports that Greg LeMond will receive “Congress’s highest civilian honor,” by which I assume they mean the Small Business Administration Jody C. Raskind Microlender of the Year award:
It’s a pretty sad day when an article about Greg LeMond starts out with the words, “Remember Greg Lemond?” They’d never do that with any other athlete in any other sport. In fact, they wouldn’t even do it with Lance Armstrong, who’s just a washed-up podcaster now. Also, could someone tell me more about the “underground competitive cycling scene” that produced LeMond?
In the underground competitive cycling scene of his era, LeMond was so much better than everyone else that officials let him race against older boys. He beat them anyway.
I had no idea he made it to the professional ranks by racing alleycats.
Meanwhile, did you know that we’re in the middle of an AERO WAR???
It’s true!
Also did you know that “Cycling is about where Formula 1 was 20 years ago?”
“Cycling is about where Formula 1 was 20 years ago,” says Jean-Paul Ballard, a former senior F1 engineer at Toyota and Sauber, and the founder of Swiss Side, specialists in manufacturing aerodynamic cycling wheels.
“But people now understand the gains you can make. We’re in the middle of an aero war right now.”
What the hell does that even mean? Not only are they two completely different sports, but competitive cyclists have sought aero gains from the very beginning. Does he think the drop handlebar was invented because they liked the way it looks? Also, to quote USA Today, remember Greg LeMond?
But no, according to the New York Times, until cycling discovered aerodynamics this year, there were only three ways to make a rider faster:
How do you make a rider go faster? Historically, cycling had three answers. The first was to push more power. The second was to lose weight. The third was to dope. Some of this thinking was more misguided than others. But as a collective, they missed the point.
Wait, they missed the point? That’s one of the dumbest things about bike racing I’ve ever read.
What about individual tactics? What about team tactics? What about bike handling? What about nutrition? What about equipment choice? What about the ability to avoid the errant dog that always seems to run out into the middle of the race?
But the article does contain some useful information. For example, did you know cars and bikes are different?
“In F1, you’re going at such speed that the car always has what we call a turbulent boundary layer,” explains Ballard. “And that’s much more predictable and controllable. It’s classic aerodynamics. In this field, you talk a lot about NACA profiles — aerospace profiles built by NASA that can be anything up from 150mph, to supersonic speeds, to 1000mph.
“But these don’t work efficiently at the low speeds that cycling works at. So when we try to apply our theories and experience from F1, we realised you can’t just copy and paste. We needed to do a whole load of new processes. It’s a completely different field — you can be a Michelin-starred cook who isn’t necessarily a great patisserie chef.”
“Michelin-starred cook?” “Patisserie chef?” What the hell kind of pretentious sports references are those? Please send this guy back to F1.
Then again, what can you expect from someone who left car racing over “environmental responsibility?”
But there are reasons for the aerodynamicists to test their brains in this alien field. Ballard, for example, who got into cycling when training as an endurance racing driver, left F1 partly over environmental responsibility. And for many, cycling is more fulfilling as an aerodynamic problem.
“Woosie.“
Though to be fair he also got bored:
“It’s hard to have an impact in F1,” says Bigham, who worked at Mercedes as a junior aerodynamicist from 2012 to 2013. “You’re really at the cutting edge, but I was literally working on a wing mirror for six months. And as the sport gets bigger, your work gets smaller — you’re looking at a nut or a bolt. You don’t feel like you’re a big part of the puzzle — but cycling is the other end of the equation, because you have to do so many jobs.”
Don’t worry, thanks to the “aero war,” in a few years you’ll be looking at just a nut in cycling, too, though in this case it’ll be because you’re optimizing the aerodynamics of a rider’s “pants yabbies.”
Meanwhile, despite all the “advancements” in equipment, the Tour only gets more dangerous:
His comments were echoed to The Athletic by Tour de France course designer Thierry Gouvenou.
“The speed of riders has increased a lot in recent years, precisely because of the equipment,” he said. “We are reaching a very delicate moment, we are at the height of our risk. I think it’s time to reverse the equipment, we have to stop the evolution of material because otherwise we will not be able to use the roads that people use every day.
So much for those disc brakes and helmets.
