2024 Pro thread

Questions about bike hire abroad and everything light bike related. No off-topic chat please

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Requiem84
Posts: 459
Joined: Sat Oct 17, 2020 5:07 pm

by Requiem84

spud wrote:
Thu Oct 03, 2024 1:11 pm
So Eddie Merycx is now saying that he remains the GOAT. From an aggregate statistics standpoint, he's not wrong. I wasn't watching when he was the dominant force in cycling and I recognize that he raced a lot more days/year than current pros. But I can't imagine his strike rate is as good as Pog's, certainly this year. Further, I can't imagine that Merycx's competitors were as well trained as Pog's competitors.
It's always so hard to compare era's.

I think the comparison with the competition back then is difficult. Everyone in that era didn't have access to powermeters, apps for nutrition, training science etc. I think the most fair comparison is to compare how much better than everyone else Merckx was compared to how much Pogacar is to everyone else nowadays. Up to 2024 I would have said Pogacar is not as much ahead of his competition (TdF 2022, 2023 etc).

But this year he has taken a mega step. Problaby somewhere to the extent of 20 watts around threshold, whilst also losing a bit of weight. If Pogacar wants to be at the level of Merckx he should keep this gap to the competition for a few more years. 1 year of ULTRA dominance is not enough.

As for the level of cycling: let's not forget it still is a relatively small sport from a global perspective. In 20 or 30 years time we will laugh about how limited the number of riders from outside the EU were in 2020...

by Weenie


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MichaelK
Posts: 552
Joined: Wed Jul 04, 2018 4:50 pm
Location: UK

by MichaelK

spud wrote:
Thu Oct 03, 2024 1:11 pm
So Eddie Merycx is now saying that he remains the GOAT. From an aggregate statistics standpoint, he's not wrong. I wasn't watching when he was the dominant force in cycling and I recognize that he raced a lot more days/year than current pros. But I can't imagine his strike rate is as good as Pog's, certainly this year. Further, I can't imagine that Merycx's competitors were as well trained as Pog's competitors.
Actually I thought the same, many people claimed Merckx raced against semi-pros and farmers. But I took a deep dive into PCS recently and found some of the fields at big GTs, Monuments and WCs were actually pretty stacked according to their Startlist Quality Score.

CrankAddictsRich
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by CrankAddictsRich

spud wrote:
Thu Oct 03, 2024 1:11 pm
So Eddie Merycx is now saying that he remains the GOAT. From an aggregate statistics standpoint, he's not wrong. I wasn't watching when he was the dominant force in cycling and I recognize that he raced a lot more days/year than current pros. But I can't imagine his strike rate is as good as Pog's, certainly this year. Further, I can't imagine that Merycx's competitors were as well trained as Pog's competitors.
I think that Merckx's strike rate was pretty good... he entered a LOT of races, but he also won a LOT. I deifnitely don't think the competition was as good though, on the whole.... What POG has done this year against arguably the strongest competition the sport has ever seen, is insane.

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tymon_tm
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by tymon_tm

but it was even more limited back then. and purely amateur-ish for the most part

I'd say we've entered a different era. when? hard to say but IMO the transition period started with Lance and enden somewhere around SKY turning into Ineos and women's cycling rise from the ashes. so if EM was the king of the past, Pog has every possible quality to become the GOAT of what has started only recently.

it's only fair to distinguish how pro cycling has evolved over the last decade and what recent post-covid seasons have brought us in terms of talent, racing strategies and intensity, training, gear, sponsors...

perhaps to the outside world it's just still people pushing pedals but i'd argue it's an entirely different sport today
kkibbler wrote: WW remembers.

CrankAddictsRich
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by CrankAddictsRich

tymon_tm wrote:
Thu Oct 03, 2024 1:33 pm
it's only fair to distinguish how pro cycling has evolved over the last decade and what recent post-covid seasons have brought us in terms of talent, racing strategies and intensity, training, gear, sponsors...
Actually, now that you mention it... I feel like Covid caused a big shift in the strategy aspect of races. Once Covid hit and threat that races could be shut down or shortened or effected by some outside force, the racing got a lot more volatile. It was evident in the stage races definitely, but also even in one day races... An attitude of "go all in today, because who knows if we're even racing tomorrow." I feel like that drastically changed things very quickly and we have not relaxed back to the old style.

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tymon_tm
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by tymon_tm

which is great. but it's not just covid. women raced like that before, and i believe this shift is also, if not mostly, caused by young generation of crazy strong riders who can afford to 'go crazy'.

besides there's the cool factor involved. old timers most often didn't seem to give two freaks how they won. today peoples' expectations and quite possibly some patterns of their/our behavior are influenced by social media. I'm not saying they race like that to look cool on insta; it's the other way round - they're shaped according to different standards and in certain aspects, in ths case their job, it just shows :noidea:
kkibbler wrote: WW remembers.

spud
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Joined: Sat Feb 07, 2009 5:52 am

by spud

It seems to be common practice now to take no more than 4 weeks away from the bike during the off season, and gain no more then 5 pounds or so. With the prevalence of power training, and especially data capture, there's no more telling the coach you did 5 hours when in fact you were down the pub having a few. The accountability factor didn't exist back in the 70s and 80s. Not to suggest that the best guys weren't disciplined, only that the depth of the pool has increased immensely since that time. Certainly the older riders in the transition years of the late 90s/early 2000s used to complain about how hard the early season races were becoming.

ichobi
Posts: 1953
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2012 11:30 pm

by ichobi

Not sure if you guys have read it but these two paper by Dr. San Millan (UAE coach, and Pog's personal coach until 2023) dive pretty deep into his metabolomics and the finding is pretty nuts. In short he has insane aerobic capacity, have very high lactate threshold (the highest in the test) among the test subjects (20+ UAE riders), have the ability to metabolise fat very very efficiently with little metabolites. A clean efficient engine with big fuel tank that can repeatedly attack essentially.

Interestingly one of the paper collect blood sample from 2019 amgen ToC through out the race and it shows that Pogacar has some of the best ability to maintain freshness for a long stage racing.

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/ph ... tQhn3K7vjQ

https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... NGmYD3E0RQ

Obviously none of the paper cite the name nor the team but it's so easy to guess. They even layout the exact distance, gradient of the climb of the stage race they collect the sample from. That race is 2019 Amgen TOC. "Cyclist 1" is Tadej Pogacar.

The paper is more nuanced of course, so go check it out. San Millan certainly enjoy the benefit of having access to WT team and did not hesitate to use that access in his study.

UpFromOne
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Location: Olympic Nat'l Park, WA

by UpFromOne

LOL how Merckx clawed back his original statement after sleeping on it.

spud
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by spud

I had kinda assumed that as guys get older, they care less about the alpha male thing. I certainly don't care about how I stand compared to guys I used to race 20-30 years ago. But I guess the fact that Mercyx still cares that much means he REALLY cared when he was a young man - which was one of the reasons he won so many races.

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MDecius
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by MDecius

tymon_tm wrote:
Thu Oct 03, 2024 5:12 pm
which is great. but it's not just covid. women raced like that before, and i believe this shift is also, if not mostly, caused by young generation of crazy strong riders who can afford to 'go crazy'.

besides there's the cool factor involved. old timers most often didn't seem to give two freaks how they won. today peoples' expectations and quite possibly some patterns of their/our behavior are influenced by social media. I'm not saying they race like that to look cool on insta; it's the other way round - they're shaped according to different standards and in certain aspects, in ths case their job, it just shows :noidea:
Pog himself said that pro riders are going for social media highlights during his Sigma Sports interview with Matt Stephens. I think he said that riders and teams go for much crazier attacks or strategies that would have previously been stupid, because they know fans are watching every moment on social media and want a big show/spectacle.
Road - Time Alpe d'Huez 01 rim
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Lina
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Joined: Sat Sep 01, 2018 9:09 pm

by Lina

If the UCI insists on doing Gravel worlds in Europe they really need to take them to a place in Northern or Eastern Europe with low population density and actual gravel roads. Not this gravel kermesse BS.

kervelo
Posts: 978
Joined: Wed Jan 21, 2009 6:58 am
Location: Finland

by kervelo

Lina wrote:
Mon Oct 07, 2024 8:58 am
If the UCI insists on doing Gravel worlds in Europe they really need to take them to a place in Northern or Eastern Europe with low population density and actual gravel roads. Not this gravel kermesse BS.
The European Championships in 2027 will take place in Finland.
https://uec.ch/en/actu/297/uec-gravel-e ... nd-finland

Some images from the Falling Leaves gravel event in Lahti 2024 (linked from nordicgravel.com).

Image

Image

Lina
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Joined: Sat Sep 01, 2018 9:09 pm

by Lina

kervelo wrote:
Mon Oct 07, 2024 9:39 am
Lina wrote:
Mon Oct 07, 2024 8:58 am
If the UCI insists on doing Gravel worlds in Europe they really need to take them to a place in Northern or Eastern Europe with low population density and actual gravel roads. Not this gravel kermesse BS.
The European Championships in 2027 will take place in Finland.
https://uec.ch/en/actu/297/uec-gravel-e ... nd-finland

Some images from the Falling Leaves gravel event in Lahti 2024 (linked from nordicgravel.com).
Yeah I know what is available in Europe in terms of gravel. That's why I want the gravel champs in places with good gravel instead of these gravel kermesses.

by Weenie


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maquisard
Posts: 3989
Joined: Thu May 01, 2008 8:51 pm
Location: France

by maquisard

Iceland would be a perfect location, amazing terrain and rides across the black volcanic sandy trails.

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