"Of all the riders I've met in my career, Van der Poel is the most impressive I've ever seen" - John Degenkolb

thank you! yes, a limit is, by definition, a limit.

i made the mistake of speaking figuratively about riding beyond one’s limit, having been led astray by common cycling parlance about “limits.” e.g… A few years back, after losing a horrifically hard cx race to mvdp (in i THINK it was Namur), wout van aert said, “it has always been a great ability of mathieu to be able to ride beyond his limit. i’m capable of riding a very good finale also, but often mathieu can just go deeper than i can…”

this talk of “going deep” and “riding beyond the limit” is not scientific, clearly. it’s about some riders being able to cope with a higher degree of pain and discomfort for longer than others. cycling, we all know, is a sport defined by suffering. in many, most, or even all cases, the mind quits before the body absolutely fails — and here i AM speaking scientifically.

so, “riding beyond one’s limit” could be understood to literally (or even clinically?) mean having the ability to cope with pain in a way that gets you closer to your absolute physiological limit. we all know, just as humans walking around on the planet, that everyone handles pain differently. cycling is a sport for professional sufferers. but it’s still just a microcosm of the population and some will be better at it than others, and SOMEBODY is going to be the “best” at it. that IS an absolute. now, i dunno if mathieu is THAT GUY, but he certainly appears to be on the short list.

thanks for the comment. checking sloppy language is worthwhile and often stimulates thought and discussion. hopefully someone else will say something a lot more interesting about what “limits” mean in cycling than i have. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

It’s one of those words everyone has a right to use in the way they feel and it is up to the reader/listener to interpret in which way it was intended. Some people or more, others less good at that but in this age many deliberately misinterpret, they (no-one in particular here) know exactly what was meant but it suits agendas to pretend otherwise. That said, limits in sport are used in a multitude of ways and so understanding context is crucial, you can pass your current limit (skill, physical, mental, performance, and improve, it’s something we all do, we have to to get from current to future level. Basically we never can attain the final limit, there is always margin for improvement but we are also always stuck at a limit until we get past it. Inthink what makes champions is that they refuse to accept their current limits and can always surprise by pushing to a new level they don’t know they’ll reach in advance. It is the nature of sport, moving the goalpost limits further and further. We have seen impossible limits come and go, eg in athletics 10s sprint 4m mile 1h semi and soon 2h marathon, 9000 decathlon. With accidents it’s different again, non-fatal ones allow us to learn where limits are or were and see if we can push them more, fatal ones embed an image of defined limits that can’t be altered.

Just like speed limits on the road. It is impossible to exceed them.

chapeau.

i know what you mean about willful misinterpretation, but it’s better for my peace of mind to just proceed as if everyone is being completely sincere.