Revisionist History / Cycling

iainf72
iainf72 Posts: 15,784
edited September 2016 in Pro race
Not strictly pro cycling related, but if I might recommend something, Malcolm Gladwell has a series of podcasts called Revisionist History - There are a series of them and he re-evaluates various subjects. They are generally quite fascinating (The Toyota and Satire episodes are brilliant) but this one

http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/ ... cant-shoot

appealed to me. And made me wonder, how much stuff that happens in cycling is governed by similar "rules". Watching Froome again today reminded me how much people fuss about his position.
Fckin' Quintana … that creep can roll, man.

Comments

  • iainf72 wrote:
    Not strictly pro cycling related, but if I might recommend something, Malcolm Gladwell has a series of podcasts called Revisionist History - There are a series of them and he re-evaluates various subjects. They are generally quite fascinating (The Toyota and Satire episodes are brilliant) but this one

    http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/ ... cant-shoot

    appealed to me. And made me wonder, how much stuff that happens in cycling is governed by similar "rules". Watching Froome again today reminded me how much people fuss about his position.

    Interesting stuff, not only because I've got a lad that plays basketball and is pretty crap at free throws....

    WRT Froome, it's not so much his position as the extreme high cadence seated attacks that freaks people out. But they clearly work for him, and seem to allow him to recover very quickly. There's a strong possibility that there's a physiological trade-off somewhere, that suits Froome but not others though.
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  • Funny, I heard about that on this American life and thought about it when contador followed the attacks and froome worked his way back early on in the vuelta. It made me wonder if others could be better if they didn't mind looking a bit daft.
  • RichN95.
    RichN95. Posts: 27,137
    There's a certain parallel between the underarm throw and asymmetric chain rings. Just as the only basketball player to use that technique now is the son of the only previous user, Froome was coached by the previous notable user Bobby Julich. Wiggins is the Wilt Chamberlain figure in that despite his success using them, he then rejected them as 'silly'

    I think Froome and Kerrison are also a good match for each other as they are both outsiders who both had to learn cycling on the job rather than by adopting the received wisdom of a conservative system.

    I've never quite understood why standing on the pedals in a higher gear is seen as attractive while accelerating seated by pedalling faster is not. Especially as the former seems so much harder to me than the latter.
    Twitter: @RichN95