Ugh…
'sup Peter Sagan.
RT @MarkCavendish: Super happy with the win today in #TourOf Britain. Thanks to the legends that are my team-mates. #MACHINES. Going to miss them a great deal.
Yusss!
I’m gonna beat a dead horse because I simply hate to admit being even a little wrong, but BMC does not offer that frame in “stock” sizes. And it seems to work pretty well. FLAWLESS LOGIC!!!
Schumacher won a TdF TT on that clapped out old walser in 2008. Being so fucking stupid I have a tough time doing math, but I don’t think that was 10 years ago. I’m also missing the correlation between wind tunnel time and bike fit, since the Vroomenites spend as much time getting their hair blown back as anyone else and they can’t make bikes that fit.
http://tinyurl.com/3loxmbq
Sagan sprinted beautifully today. Cobo has to be pretty stoked Sky went with the wrong guy.
I’m convinced. If Andy got a Walser, he would win automatically. He cannot win on a Trek. ARE YOU LISTENING BRUYNEEL?
WTF is going on in Quebec? Street sprints are a professional event now?
I never said Walsers were bad bikes. Quite the contrary my dim witted friend. They laid the ground work for much of what has come since. But things have changed since then. The tri market exploded encouraging bike companies large and small to actually put effort into aero bikes and to put these bikes under their top talent. At the time when Giant came on as a sponsor with T-Mobile they did not even have a commercially available carbon TT bike on the market. By 2005 they brought out their first TCR Carbon TT bike but by then Ullrich already had the Walser he had made for him from the end of his first stint at T-Mobile that he also used when he was riding for Bianchi (earlier in the 1st T-Mobile he was riding a “Pinarello” that I suspect was a FES because the Montello came to market a bit later). No need to change a good thing and with the TT market still small there was no reason to pressure him to ride their bike like the rest of the team. In the case of Stefan it’s no surprise he followed his hero and former teammate’s lead and one of two things happened. Either he bought a Walser himself of Gerolsteiner had some left over Walsers with “Wilier” stickers on them like the one Michael Rich raced in 2004. It’s not like the team would have just thrown them away. With Gerolsteiner and Specialized in 2006 he could ride the Walser or their aluminum tri bike. Pretty obvious choice. When they came out with that abomination that was their first carbon TT bike he stuck with the Walser. No shocker there. He already had the Walser. Why change?
Fast forward to the current crop of TT bikes and the Walser influence is obvious but has clearly been surpassed but the likes of Giant, Trek, Specialized, and Scott (having stolen everything from Giant).
By your logic Lance should not have been able to win TTs on Treks because he raced on a custom Litespeed in the TTs during the 1999 tour.
As for your BMC argument that’s weak sauce. From the fork back the BMC bikes were stock. They were just the first to go with integrating the bars into the front of the fork and offered custom fork/stem assemblies for all their top guys rather than the adjustable one that came on the production model. Cadel was the only guy who ever got something truly unique because he is so goddamn short not because he’s such a star. Canyon had to cut a hole in the head tube of their bike while BMC just bonded the stem to the front of the fork rather than to the top.
As for Cervelo you have two things at work here. First off they really push the whole no spacers = aero and they want to sell bikes to Freds so they chose to go a bit taller in the head tube on their R series bikes. Their 56 has a stack of 580 compared to the 558 of a Supersix. That’s why all those pros riding 56 and bigger Cervelo frames have -17 stems. It hardly means they don’t know how to make bikes just because 1% of the people riding them use a STANDARD PRODUCTION stem from 3T to get their fit right. Hell maybe if Andy was not so intent on having 10 feet of drop from saddle to bar he might actually be a decent descender. You can’t blame the bike builders for that. Blame his coach.
As for Andy and Trek there are the expected differences between sizes in stack/reach with the speed concept bikes. This coupled with one of the most adjustable front ends out there for aero bar placement makes your argument completely null. Trek sells TT bikes. Lots of them. They want to make good ones for the pro teams and have done their home work. They gave Andy a great bike. Andy is just lousy a TTs.
Edit: I don’t even get the Ekimov reference. He rode a Trek TT bike to Silver in the 2004 Olympics.
You are either a complete dimwit or I just got trolled super hard.
Whoa, aero nerd fight!
Does not afraid to bring the wall of text when needed. I geek out over obscure TT gear like blazedelf geeks out over French bottom brackets.
^that i did not know
kinda skeered now
ahaha. wow. that was awesome, braden.
Wait what? What’s the back story here? I’m completely for the idea of PRO street sprints.
http://cyclingtv.neulion.com/cycling/console.jsp?id=1898%20&&ref=A_T_Other_www.steephill.tv_090511&utm_source=www.steephill.tv&utm_medium=Affiliate&utm_content=CTV_SH_Q3_LINKS&utm_campaign=Other_CTV_SH_Q3_LINKS-090511
(can we bring back the easy tags buttons? I don’t know how to post a link with alternate text)
4-up sprints on a ~1km course. They start on a tt style ramp, ride down a street, make a u-turn and ride back to the finish on a slight uphill. I haven’t watched the whole highlights video, but it seems like a lot of positioning until the last 200m. There was some mention at some point about trackstands happening in one of the races.
[quote=bradencbc]
Edit: I don’t even get the Ekimov reference. He rode a Trek TT bike to Silver in the 2004 Olympics.
You are either a complete dimwit or I just got trolled super hard. [/quote]
It’s a little of both, man! A little of both. But I’m all fired up talking Walser. (I love Cees Ada and his wheels, too, but that’s another story of early 90s tech for another day)
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Ekimov rode a “trek” TT bike pictured above in the 2004 olympics. It was a repainted Walser. You can see it photographed above in Athens-Olympic guise. While he did finish 2nd in Athens, the infamous Mr. Hamilton was found to be carrying a little brother in his tum-tum. Which gives the gold medal to Ekimov (and a silver to Bobby J!). I don’t remember what bike Ekimov won on in 2000.
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Do you know the Lance/Trek/Walser/Athens story?
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I know that logo. Thanks for hosting the party / rapha ride nahbs. Great shop & beautiful ride. I bought a cap which sees regular use. EDIT: your screenname probably should have tipped me off, but, again… I’m more than a little dim of wit!
that
is
not
a
walser
That’s an ALMOST bone stock Trek TT bike. A friend of mine had one of the first gen ones just like it. The only difference is that on the production ones the seat height was adjustable by about 3 cm with a series of shims.
This is one of the things I love about having three Grand Tours.
Each has a different character, and the Vuelta is often where you first see talented young riders really show their stuff.
I’m just going on the story I know from Athens 2004…
“here’s the short of it… trek went through a bunch of keystone cop style intrigue efforts to secure a walser tt bike while sitting on a dozen walser bikes in their paint booth.
they get the bike, they build a copy of it and give it to lance to ride. he is unequivocally faster on the new narrow bike, at a lower heartrate…but his wattage is down. so he won’t ride the fucking thing. ekimov, as per his soviet tendencies, figures free means good and takes the narrow bike and wins the olympics on the fucking thing.”
Can someone wake me up when the conversation moves on from TT bikes? I really, really don’t give a shit.
…to the surprise of nobody.
Is Devolder injured or something? Why would he not be selected for the team?