Is that a Giro Air Attack in the last pic? :sarcasm:

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In some contrast (looks painful to me):

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In the first 2 pics the riders are attacking and that is the position you want to attack, in the the other pic they are just riding along.
That's the position you want to be in when attacking: low down on the drops.
Since position is rather personal and if you are more of an upright rider then you better have the extra watts to compensate for that position.
Forget all the aero stuff you have on, position is king when you want to go faster than yourself in an un-aero (if there is such a word) position.

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Have to agree. Some riders just break the rule book . I mean who would think a little tubby fellow like Cav could wipe the floor in a sprint with a mean machine like Greipel.

Agreed. But my point is Kelly isn't that much different from the others except his arms are a bit more vertical. It was Guimard and the '80's that produced really extreme stretch, and Kelly sort of avoided that, so LeMond in his book criticizes Kelly's position, but I don't see it. The human body hasn't changed and guys like Coppi, Anquetil, and Merckx had no problem getting aero.

Starting perhaps with Bartoli there was a counter trend to not stretch out but stretch down: maximum bar drop. That's what Andy Schleck does and it's perverse. He can't even reach his drops in the saddle. The guys with the best position, from Coppi to Contador, look balanced: they can get low when they need to be, but they aren't forced there when they don't.

On Cavendish: he wins because he's explosive, has amazing ability to put himself where he needs to be, and because in the sprint he's consistently the most aerodynamic sprinter there: indeed arguably the most aerodynamic in history at that level. It's not just power which wins sprints, and most sprinters focus primarily on power.

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You've likely all seen it a hundred times, but still, a great drop bar TT position. (not sure about THAT much toe drop though!)

Kelly had his saddle lower than standard compared to traditional fit now. I should have made that more clear. From other pics he seemed more bunched than those posted.

Anquetil also used 180mm length cranks, Bugno was similar in that he toed down...too much plantar flexion but still champions...

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"It never gets easier, you just go faster..." - Greg Lemond

"Because technology alone is a poor substitute for experience." - Richard Sachs

I honestly wonder how some of these dudes rode the way they did, especially Anquetil and wonder if they could possibly be as good today.

Contador's fit does not look that good at all. He sits with his seatbones basically on the nose and constantly adjusts and scoots forward all the time and has a lot of lower lumbar flexion

Didn't Specialized guru Andy Pruitt fit Contador?

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"It never gets easier, you just go faster..." - Greg Lemond

"Because technology alone is a poor substitute for experience." - Richard Sachs

They claim he fits them all. I would bet the reality is a bit of both him and whatever they have previously been happy with. They are claiming to have changed Boonens fit this year, yet again.

From what I remember reading, Pruitt "fitted" all of them, but most of them ended up just changing their shit back to what it was after. In the article he claimed to have brought Frank Schleck's bars up and in something like 2cm, but Schleck still ran his -17 140mm stem after.

Pruitt is too focused on bar height and not enough on seat height.

On Contador (and Coppi), there is this


BTW, on that Anquetil photo, I also love it. The road provides something of a horizontal to see his back is nice and straight. It shows things have changed less than some might believe.

On a related note, I stumbled across this great blog post on building a bike to race "Merckx style" consistent with US racing rules.

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What is all that got to do with LA riding Crumpton

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as long as you can go fast