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- Agree with the first part totally, not the second. It may not be a perfect solution or needed for everyone but what’s wrong with protecting non fully developed kids? It starts when they’re born when you instinctively know you shouldn’t try to make them stand or put them in push-up positions as they’re not ready strength, bone shape or -resistance wise (amongst many things). You don’t send small kids with huge backpacks full of books to school and you don’t expect teens to lumber around building sites chucking cement sacks. There were good reasons for this and the gearing issue was a result of this, especially considering the frail stature of cyclists in general. HOWEVER, the rule has been abandoned as being unnecessary. The original idea wasn’t bad for kids in general but what it overlooked was that by the time kids actually reach the level to enter junior race level and compete seriously, they’ve done enough training to strengthen their mechanisms and over enough time for bone composition to adapt to new loads so they are unlikely to get injured from excessive loads as no-one can push more than a certain human power and they’ve worked their way close to that already. If you think it was overkill, fine but reflect on this, I trained for and had done several marathons and one day decided to enter the first edition of our local one. Despite being used to and perfectly prepared, I was in pain for weeks after and a year later the local media was full of reports of an explosion or injury related visits to doctors post-race by participants. What nobody realised in advance was that the course was very demanding on joints as much of it was in the city centre with short straights and sharp corners with pavements to mount so you were constantly also stepping up and down and leaning hard, just to show how sensitive you can be to new solicitation on the body.
- Let us know when he beats a quality field of sprinters!
- Agreed. What is the point of this? The pros should just start a new league and break away from the UCI. Let it sink
- Who even cares? It’s the goal of a bike race to ride as fast as possible? And that’s what we want to see?? This is maybe the dumbest article ever.
- This is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. It's an advantage to the person who does his best power at the highest RPM. This rule was dumb in junior races and would be dumb at the pro level.
- More and more guys to share the spoils, of which he didn’t get many when he had a better chance. Looks thinner. I hope he enjoys battling for the Giro, maybe good for him to focus on a different kind of goal.
- I watched the last 40k. Wout's body lanquage spoke volumes. In the last 10k. Remco was nose breathing. Wouts jaw was dropping with his mouth wide open he was just hanging on. He made a good fist of disguising it and taking turns, you could see that he was tiring. This will do him good, he will come good I'm sure. It's getting harder and harder though with Pogagar and Evenpoel around.
- Maybe his knee injury and subsequent power loss on that leg. Otherwise, there is no reason why Wout can't score a win this season.
- Sure, hopefully Islam will work out for the best.
There's a first time for everything.
- If you pick the right years
1948 43,5km/h
1964 45,1km/h
If you look at every year you see the progression used to be in steps and became more rare and gradual, there still seem to be steps sometimes but pretty small. The two biggest influences are 1. how the race evolves on the day and 2. wind direction. It seems high speed is now more consistent, probably because the way of racing has focused towards that, gone are the days of the leisurely 30km/h outing in preparation for a few hundred meters of sprinting towards the end.