Velo Quips
Cycling humor and insight
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Daylight Savings Revelations November 9, 2014
Introducing LetsRide.co October 1, 2014
A Look at the Relationship between Age and Performance in the Pro Peloton November 25, 2013
The Funniest Thing I Have Ever Done October 20, 2013
Can You Imagine? October 14, 2013
Of all the major 1 sports, cycling “performance” is the most easily quantifiable. There are power meters fixed to the majority of the bikes in the professional peloton and wind tunnel testing has become a staple of the offseason regime for folks with pro contracts and those with cash left over from their latest Audi purchase. Yet (and I promise I’ll get off my high horse after this), people forget that “performance” is not about the Watts, the deep rims, or the obnoxious helmets; it’s about the results. (which is fortunate, because power data for many pros is simply a matter of speculation 2 ).
This brings me to my first assumption: a rider’s performance is directly related to their position on the results sheet . A cyclist needs to have the power, the handling skills, and the tactical awareness to get high up in the results (not to mention a little luck). The limitation this assumption introduces is the fact that the work of the lead out men 3 and the domestiques go unaccounted. I’m okay with this assumption because domestiques and lead out men are typically not nearly as good as the person they’re leading out, so would generally fall to less significant places if riding for themselves.
Let’s start with the 2013 World Tour. Up until the end of October, 228 riders have scored at least one World Tour point. Their ages 4 fill the distribution in Figure 1.
We observe a roughly Gaussian distribution, peaking at 28 years old. However, this doesn’t account for the relative performances of each age group (i.e. a rider with 1 WorldTour point and one with 100 points count the same, but shouldn’t). To give a better representation of the performances, I took the sum of the points scored by each age group. The results are shown in Figure 2.
I think this distribution gives a much better approximation of how performance is related to age because it accounts for the magnitude of results, not just the count (though a count is indicative of the trend by itself). That being said, I think Figure 1 is essential for a qualitative interpretation of Figure 2, as the total number of World Tour points scored and the number of riders scoring those points are obviously correlated.
Because these data are quite noisy (we would expect nothing less from a sample of just one year), I repeated this process for 2012 and 2011, the first year the current system we implemented. These results are shown in Figures 3 and 4.
In both figures, we observe that a Gaussian distribution better fits the data, though for the latter figure, there is significant deviation at age 32. This spike has a lot to do with the likes of Bradley Wiggins, Tom Boonen, Alejandro Valverde, and Simon Gerrans having banner years in 2012, taking 4 of the top 6 positions, not to mention Joaquim Rodriguez and Michele Scarponi’s great 2011 seasons putting them 3rd and 4th, respectively, in the WorldTour for that year.
However, a lot of the noise in the distribution may be a result of the way the World Tour ranking system is designed. The “worst” cyclists on this list (and there are quite a few), have only one point. Compare this to Philippe Gilbert in 2011 where he accumulated 718 points and enough wins to keep even the most ambitious amateur sandbagger content for their whole “career.” Does this make him 718 times better than those with only one point? I think not.
I turned to Pro Cycling Stats for a ranking system that put the performances of different professional cyclists in better context. 5 They have their own points per age distribution that I encourage you to check out, 6 but I feel that once we start getting past cyclist #300, the ranking starts to get a bit muddied as it’s so terribly hard to properly weight races and account for riders across country lines. Therefore, I stuck with a similar sample size as the World Tour – 250 riders. In Figures 5 and 6, I add the data from Pro Cycling Stats to Figures 3 and 4, normalizing both point values in the latter figure.
In Figure 5, we see that the Pro Cycling Stats and World Tour populations exhibit a nearly-identical trend. However, in Figure 6, we observe that the Pro Cycling Stats model has significantly less noise, due in large part to the nature of their points-allocation style.
If we imagine a Gaussian curve over the data, we might conclude from the data that peak cycling performance is achieved between the ages of 26 and 28. That being said, I think it’s quite likely 2011-2013 were just bad years on the whole for riders aged 29-31, and that as the years progress and more data is presented, we might see performances of the middle-aged (relatively speaking) cyclists approach or even match those of their younger competitors.
Pro Cycling Stats has ranking data as far back as 2005, but as far as I’m concerned, every performance in those years should be subject to significant skepticism. It’s like comparing football quarterbacks from different eras – there’s just a completely altered climate that inserts so much murkiness (e.g. older riders might have been better at doping and getting away with it).
As expected, there is a clear correlation between cyclist age and their performance as measured by results-based ranking systems. From the last three years, the data indicates that the average rider will reach their peak around age 27, though it will be interesting to see how the distribution fills out as the seasons progress.
As I was compiling the age information for many of the cyclists, I noticed that the birthdays tended to be earlier on in the year. If so, perhaps this is a byproduct of the ‘racing age’ organization that cycling has adopted. If you’ve read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, you will be familiar with this phenomenon. Athletes born earlier in the year are more developed than their slightly younger counterparts, and therefore get more attention and support from coaches, amplifying this difference all the way to the professional level. Perhaps a subject for another analysis.
Thanks for reading.
1 I know, I know, cycling hardly qualifies as ‘major’ in the States, but from an international perspective, I have no qualms calling it ‘major.’
2 If I never heard or saw the term ‘VAM’ again in my life, I think I would die a very happy man.
3 And women. This analysis focuses on the male professional peloton as there are more (and better recorded) data.
4 ‘Age,’ used throughout this post, means racing age, the oldest age one will be in the current year.
5 You can find all the rankings here .
6 You can find Pro Cycling Stat’s age distribution here .
Two years ago we saw the infamous dogfight between Team Sky and Juan Jose Cobo. On a day shrouded in mist (literally and figuratively), we saw Cobo take the race by the horns with a daring attack up the Angliru, distancing race leader Wiggins and teammate Froome to take the red jersey.
The next year we saw a courageous attack by Alberto Contador on Stage 17 to take over the race lead, which he barely held on after a vicious move by Joaquim Rodriguez on the penultimate stage.
And this year, with the return to the Angliru on the last GC-relevant stage on Saturday, we saw a spectacular race that will go down as one of the finest of the season.
In many ways, this stage was such a representation of the beauty of the sport for reasons not having to do with the actions of the cyclists. The thick fog and huge crowds, pressed into the center of the road, created an atmosphere rarely matched in any race.
Vincenzo Nibali showed his class with repeated attacks in the face of a stronger opponent, Chris Horner. With the gap between them small enough to be flipped using time bonuses, Nibali’s aggressive riding made this race a true nail-biter. While he wasn’t able to unseat Chris Horner, let’s not forget his master class in the Giro back in May.
Kenny Elissonde taking the stage solo, yet another win from the ranks of the French youth, perfectly encapsulated the paradigm that successful bike racing stems from courageous riding. No team was able to control the race and stage after stage we saw the favorites duking it out with very mixed results.
While the Tour de France has a more polished air about it with developed team tactics and meticulously-calculated efforts, the Vuelta has consistently produced a story that reflects what the sport of cycling is all about. A fitting concluding chapter in the 2013 Grand Tour book.
See the first part here .
Today the Vuelta a España comes out of its second rest day and into its final 5 stages. While Vincenzo Nibali cracked hard on Stage 16, Chris Horner and/or Alejandro Valverde are going to have to do something special to keep Nibali from the Giro-Vuelta double.
But instead of looking forward, let’s look backwards; off the back, that is.
I’m in a bit of a quandary. I don’t know how to classify Horner’s (and Rodriguez’s) words in and around the Stage 11 time trial. Before the time trial they pulled the old:
“I’ll try to limit my losses.”
In other words, “I suck at this particular facet of stage racing.” Sure enough, they both shed a minute and a half to Nibali. After the race, Horner asserted that he wasn’t much of time trialist. So my quandary:
Is it an “excuse” if a rider says they are going to suck, goes on to suck, and then verifies after the race that they do indeed suck?
If not an excuse, then what? See, it’s sort of like Mark Cavendish coming to the Alpe d’Huez stage in the Tour de France and saying “you know what guys, I’m probably going to finish off the back today.” But on the other hand, all these Grand Tour contenders are exactly that: Grand Tour contenders . This typically entails time trialling. So a Grand Tour racer saying that they lost because they can’t time trial is just a deeply ingrained excuse, is it not?
What happens when you take a guy built for classics and try to make him a pure sprinter?
That being said, Farrar had a good run at things a few years ago taking a stage in the Tour de France, but I feel like he’s following the same path as Thor Hushovd (i.e. quickly losing all sense of relevancy). As Cyclingnews reported on Stage 12:
“Frustrating? Oh, of course. I am enjoying the Vuelta, but I am frustrated that the results have not been better. The team was perfect. It was too hard for me. I was on Gilbert’s wheel, he seemed boxed in, but he found a way out. Alex [Rasmussen] put me in perfect position with 2km to go.”
“This happened, then that happened, then something else happened and that’s why I’m off the back.” Like in basketball, the triple threat is a big difference maker executing excellent cycling excuses. Except that in cycling you can do all three threats at once by piling your excuses on top of each other.
In yesterday’s Stage 4, Chris Horner lost 6 seconds and the overall lead to Vincenzo Nibali. The excuse? He got “caught out.” This is a VQ favorite excuse, and it goes hand and hand with “I couldn’t move up.”
I got trapped on one side, I could see the acceleration going on the other. It wasn’t bad luck, you know it’s going to happen, there’s nothing you can do and if you get caught out….that was the way the race went. Source: Cyclingnews
I got trapped on one side, I could see the acceleration going on the other. It wasn’t bad luck, you know it’s going to happen, there’s nothing you can do and if you get caught out….that was the way the race went.
Source: Cyclingnews
Pro Tip: Don’t be 30 riders back coming into the last kilometer if you’re the Grand Tour leader on a hilltop finish. Big shoutout to Dominic Nerz (BMC) et al for dropping the wheel that caused the time split.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-JvFBwTrOE]
Henao finished way off the back on Stage 2’s mountain finish due to the “hunger knock” despite being the declared leader for Team Sky. And thank goodness, because if I had to watch another Grand Tour featuring the leader incessantly looking down at power numbers, I would probably just SCREAM.
You’re probably asking what “hunger knock” actually is. According to Wikipedia ,
In endurance sports such as cycling and running, hitting the wall or the bonk describes a condition caused by the depletion of glycogen stores in the liver and muscles, which manifests itself by sudden fatigue and loss of energy. . . The British may refer to it as “hunger knock.”
Said Team Sky’s “performance manager” Rod Ellingworth:
He simply forgot to eat enough and that was that. Source: Cyclingnews
He simply forgot to eat enough and that was that.
The problem with the bonking excuse is that EVERYONE knows better, from your weekend warrior to your most fearsome powerdad.
Before the run up to the final climb a podium contender has 4 tasks:
Don’t crash
Don’t get dropped
Hydrate
Eat
Four Things . That’s it. It seems straightforward but every race we see some rider going OTB because of poor fueling during the race.
Stay tuned over the next couple weeks as the terrain gets hillier and the excuses get more frequent and creative.
The Vuelta a España kicked off on Saturday with the most soul-crushing of events: the team time trial. Somewhere a small kitten dies every time a race organizer puts one of these in a race.
Back in mid-March, I found myself in one such event. There were still 4 miles left to race and I was completely blown, but I couldn’t drop off as the team needed me to score (the time is taken from the 3rd rider across the line). In the depths of my pain, I actually wished that I’d crash out so I wouldn’t have to continue.
As I was scanning the stage results from the Vuelta TTT, I was shocked to see Garmin Sharp 1:41. The cause: a crash . I can’t help but wonder if, just for a split second, one of the riders who went down wasn’t just a little bit relieved. Obviously crashing is awful and has implications for not only the riders’ placing and in many instances, their careers, but the suffering from this discipline brings the mind to a state hard to understand.
In any event, Velo Quips Approved Rider TM Dan Martin is now way off pace and, despite Johnny Weltz’s (Garmin Sharp’s Director Sportif) insistence that “we can turn this around,” it seems clear that this is yet another Grand Tour where Garmin will be chasing stage wins.
Even since the Great Sagan Butt Grabbing Controversy of 2013 , I’ve been meaning to write about podium girls in the sport of cycling.
In what was an uncharacteristic response (for me), I actually found the incident kind of funny, at least initially. It was a rash act of immaturity, perfectly captured by camera. As I thought about the act of sexual harassment more and saw past photos of Sagan in various shirts belittling to women, I changed my mind.
But I’m not writing because of this controversy, I’m writing because of the bigger picture – podium girls in general.
Society has been pretty shitty to women over the course of human history. And while gains have definitely been made, especially in the past 70 years, true equality is still a long time coming. That being said, I think it’s well past time for us to dispense with the tradition of putting pretty girls on podiums.
Women’s place in the sport of cycling. . .is on the bike. Racing. Being fucking bosses, like Marianne Vos here:
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/69596492]
Sure, there will be many people that say they are an integral part of the tradition of the podium ceremony, but I can think of a number other traditions that didn’t hold up to any sort of scrutiny (*cough* denying suffrage *cough*).
Wouldn’t it be better to bring on other, more deserving people to present the prizes, like local dignitaries, youth, or even fans? At any rate, I think it’s high time for professional men’s cycling to dispense with the podium girls.
As everyone knows by now, 12 hours after the finish of today’s TDF stage, Dan Martin has taken home his second prime time victory of the season. Martin is only 26 years of age, according to wikipedia…who trusts that!?, but has been around for as long as I can remember. He has rode for Slipstream sports aka some form of Garmin for his entire professional career dating back to 2008.
Dan Martin winning stage 9 of le Tour de France credit to www.Guardian.co.uk
Garmin is a team that I always have high hopes for and then they never fail to disappoint. Then when they do pull through there are always plenty of detractors to sully their victory. Whether it is Ryder’s win at the 2012 Giro against a soft field or Dan Martin’s win at LBL. (Classics winners are usually considered perennial all stars or flukes, Johan Van Summeren, Nick Nuyens, Gerard Ciolek!!!!!). Garmin’s main man Jonathan Vaughters is super strict on anti-doping but hasn’t stopped him for retaining plenty of ex-dope$tars on his team. Regardless, I want to believe with my whole heart that Dan Martin is part of the future.
Martin’s (clean?) success this year has made me think: “Is Dan Martin a revelation in pro cycling?” or “Is Dan Martin’s rise to prominence a sign, a sign that the sport is finally cleaning up.” I know some would point to Sky as that sign but I don’t trust them any further than I can throw them. Which is pretty far; those boys are light.
In a stage that featured 4 category 1 climbs things seemed strange. Watching the GC guys that used to bash skulls on a daily basis seem like mere mortals made me think the field is finally playing fair, fingers crossed.
So can we get our hopes up? Sure!
Will they be crushed in the next few months? Maybe.
But until that time there is no harm in being excited for Dan Martin, excited for pro cycling and excited to watch some of the most captivating racing I have seen in a while.
Namaste Bro,
Eran Preble
If you’ve been keeping up with the scandal-ridden professional peloton, you’ll know that the Giro d’Italia has reached its second rest day, plenty of time for the tight and toned wheat to separate themselves from the chaff at the top of the leaderboard. Now, while we here on Velo Quips like to make fun of amateur racers for their propensity to come up with outlandish excuses for getting dropped, we expect professional cyclists to be…professional. We hold them to a higher standard when it comes to explaining why they didn’t perform to expectations.
But, as @isabelle points out , the excuses can come out just as quickly from pros as amateurs. While Brad Wiggins’ “chest infection” was a great way to explain his disappointments after the time trial, nothing can compare to Ryder Hesjedal’s comments after the 9th stage of the Giro. In true cyclist fashion, Hesjedal offered a number of excuses to cover his time lost on the stage:
I couldn’t get the power out of my legs.
Yes, this is the fundamental reason people get dropped. To clarify things, Hesjedal offered:
I didn’t feel bad today, I felt pretty good.
And then came the double punch of:
Maybe I had a severe case of time trial butt as well…and the cold got through to my muscles as well so I couldn’t find the power for those short moments.
We understand, our brave rider from Garmin had a bad day, but there is such a thing as TOO MUCH padding in your suitcase of pride and Hesjedal clearly packed too many shirts in this interview.
If you read the last installment of the Cycling Tips “The Secret Pro” series, you’ll know that there will likely be a big name (past Grand Tour winner) busted for doping according because of inconsistent values in his biological passport . If we look at the grand tour riders still racing (top is most recent), we have:
Contador
Wiggins
Hesjedal
Cobo
Evans
Scarponi
Nibali
Schleck
Basso
Valverde
Menchov
Di Luca
Cunego
Garzelli
The secret pro writes:
I can’t say who it is but when the news breaks you’ll know who I’m talking about.
So immediately we can eliminate everyone who hasn’t had any links to doping:
What’s suspicious is that Basso pulled out of the Giro at the very last moment due to a “cyst.” One could also speculate about Cobo, who didn’t really do anything before of after the Vuelta, his most recent result being 7:30 down on the leaders in yesterday’s Stage 4 of the Giro. That being said, his presence at the Giro makes it seem unlikely that he’s the one they’re going after as his team wouldn’t want that publicity. Let’s just go ahead and highlight the names of all the guys not doing the Giro right now.
I highly doubt it’s Garzelli just because it wouldn’t be a big deal – he hasn’t done big things in many years. The same goes for Cunego. Di Luca is a possibility but Menchov hasn’t done big things in a while, so it’s hard to see that he’s been doping. I’m definitely suspicious of Valverde, Scarponi, and Cobo, but they are all racing the Giro right now, so, like before, I sort of doubt their teams would put them in that position if they knew. Contador is the wild card. Hard to see him doping again, but then again, it’s not out of the realm of possibilities. So, my final predictor is going to be:
What do you think?
I enjoy watching bicycle racing. Sometimes, with my schedule at school, I won’t be able to watch an event live, but I’ll always go back and watch the last 5-10 minutes of the mid-level races (read: Tour of Qatar or Tour Down Under) on YouTube or the equivalent. But in the last few days, I’ve been feeling much like this:
If the race isn’t being broadcasted (or rebroadcasted) there is no way I can get those last 5-10 minutes of stage-ending, race-winning feelings that make me love watching cycling. This article at the Podium Cafe sums up the situation well.
I love seeing Peter Sagan race and, according to the brief video recap, he had a spectacular win on Stage 2, followed up with another dominating display on Stage 3. Wish I could’ve seen that.
Fortunately, in two short weeks, I will not need external sources of race coverage as the collegiate road season begins in the Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference (ECCC)!
As of right now, I plan on making every race except Army (Fundamentals of Engineering Exam) and hopefully will be heading out to Utah for Nationals in May!