Paris Olympics SPOILER Thread
Comments
-
Quite.
tweets like this confirm it. They’re right on the edge of performance. No margins for pushes or starting faster or slower. It’s just right on the edge of how fast you can get your 3 lads around 4Kms worth of laps:
At this level you’re a mug if you don’t ride to anything but your own pace. We see the Brits do it all the time. Coach tells them every lap how close they are to their planned a schedule
0 -
Just caught up with the Women's Speed climbing finals. Delighted for Aleksandra Miroslaw in taking the Gold. Was half expecting her to go under 6 seconds (which just boggles my mind frankly)
The speed climbers were probably the most disadvantaged in Tokyo with the fully combined format, so glad they've started to separate the disciplines.
1 -
Told ya.
The Yanks keep pinching our medals.
Bugger!
"Science is a tool for cheaters". An anonymous French PE teacher.2 -
Family brag. The wife's cousin (who is a 4 time TP World Champ and Olympic Gold medalist) coached 2 of the Aussie TP squad from the age of about 12.
He was in a front row seat on the finish line to see them take gold, and was clearly extremely happy, and very emotional.
Perhaps I should enquire what he thinks of rick's analysis.......
1 -
Yeah do. Genuinely.
Ask him if there are any other genuine usable tactics to Olympic TP than getting your lads over the 4km as fast as they can.
Everyone on the forum after the fact looks at the fast time of the winners and goes “well yeah, unbeatable” never “well if they ran the race tactically…”
If they ride to their world record pace, what you gonna do?
0 -
So 4 medals out of 12 have been awarded on the Velodrome.
Remaining we have:
Thursday: Women's Kierin, Men's Omnium
Friday: Women's Madison, Men's Sprint
Saturday: Men's Madison
Sunday: Men's Keirin, Women's Omnium, Women's sprint
GB have 1 gold so far. If they had Archibald, I'd wager the women's omnium was almost a certainty, but they don't.
Keirin's are always a lottery (Unless you're prime Hoy), medals likely, but no guarantee - Finucane probably the strongest chance in both Keirin and sprint.
The male sprinters have a chance, but the dutch look dominant, there would need to be a bit of luck involved I think.
Hayter is clearly on some serious form and stung by his mistake at the end of the TP, I can see him giving it all in the Omnium, presumably Viviani will be going for that too, although he's getting on a bit now.
I think if they can manage two more golds they will be doing well - the whole team have performed brilliantly imo, there have just been some teams that have been very marginally quicker is all.
I can see a shed load more medals though, but the majority will be silver and bronze I think, I hope to be wrong :-)
Felt F70 05 (Turbo)
Marin Palisades Trail 91 and 06
Scott CR1 SL 12
Cannondale Synapse Adventure 15 & 16 Di2
Scott Foil 181 -
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that GB's tactics in the men's final last night were to match the Aussies and hope to pressure them into a mistake in the final stages. Hayter being so cooked that he couldn't stay on his saddle is not consistent with aiming to complete the 4k as quickly as possible. Riding the 4k simply to get round as quickly as possible against a team that is faster would have guaranteed silver, which would be the worst case outcome from the scenario I describe.
But on a wider note, I want my TV licence fee back. The BBC claims to have Michael Johnson, a multiple Olympic Champ, World Champ and WR holder as their athletics pundit. Yet the guy they claim was MJ was emphasising the importance of tactics in the men's 400m last. Surely the real MJ would have known that there are no tactics in a multi-lane race and that everyone just needs to run the race as quickly as they can.
4 -
I like a bit of enthusiasm, but pundits do need to keep it real. Dame Laura appears to have forgotten that the opposition looks to improve between OGs, doesn't reveal their full hand before the OGs and then peak on race day, just as the Brits do.
1 -
-
Seemed to me they just tried to ride the whole thing faster but these lads are so on the limit there is a chance stuff like that happens.
Indeed, that was the analysis from Dr Hutch etc.
The idea these lads are riding this fast but can still have room to ride slower/faster to account for tactics is utter nonsense.
0 -
It really isn't. Have you ever seen a team pursuit in person? Or ridden one? There are tactics as to how you ride that you employ to beat your opponents. The reason why Dan Bigham is part of the GB team is because he and his team mates from Team Huub/Derbados times, innovated with pursuit tactics and radically changed how the event is ridden, i.e. having someone whose role is to start fast, do one more big turn between 2-2.5 kms and then bail. Almost all the top countries have adopted this tactic, but it was non-existent at the 2012 Olympics, and was only really seriously adopted for Tokyo.
0 -
They just ride to what the coach's position trackside tells them to do, so the coach is making the tactical decisions in-race, with the overall strategy agreed (not necessarily by the riders) in advance. Going all-out isn't an impediment to making tactical calls in a TP - runners, rowers and swimmers etc. experience similar levels of hypoxia / pain and make their own calls - but there's simply no practical way of any rider communicating calls to the rest of the team, hence everything goes via the coach. (I don't know if you saw the interview with the GB women's double after they won their bronze, where the stroke said she didn't look at the opposition and simply followed her partner's calls, with said partner making all the tactical decisions. And "back in the day", Steve Redgrave made all the calls in-race in either the 2- or the 4-. Pinsent at stroke just did what he was told! Oddly, in the 4-, Cracknell at bow made all the calls in training as he had a better view of river traffic that might force a sudden change of plan.)
If there were 4 teams riding for 3 medals they would likely have done something a bit different, as their approach from last night would have lost them any medal, whereas there was no possibility of ending up with worse than silver given the competition structure.
0 -
-
Are tactics important to win a week-long argument, or do you just need to maintain your maximum post rate?
5 -
It’s just we keep being presented with the evidence and no one can see it. Drives me mad honestly
on the call at 1.75km in Boardman goes “they’re absolutely at max effort no margin for error”
0 -
It's certainly an endurance race.
“You may think that; I couldn’t possibly comment!”
Wilier Cento Uno SR/Wilier Mortirolo/Specialized Roubaix Comp/Kona Hei Hei/Calibre Bossnut2 -
Going back to my earlier observation, this "evidence" of which you speak appears to be ignored by rowers, swimmers and runners in multi-lane event who are heavily into the importance of getting in-race tactics correct. Surely this must give even you pause for thought.
0 -
I will absolutely die on this hill. It’s a total fugezi.
I don’t know what has rotted everyone’s brain.
I think people confuse tactics with “methods we use to cover the distance the fastest”
0 -
I'm sure we all admire your commitment to the cause. Being on the opposite side of the argument to Michael Johnson takes some commitment!
1 -
Bro only ran the fastest races he could all the time, famously, and then wangs about tactics before races, but never afterwards, unless it’s that they didn’t run their own race!
“I was always chasing that perfect execution”
Go read his twitter the rest of the year, he spends a lot of time how they need to make athletics coverage more “entertaining”.
0 -
He's reserving the right to define what tactics means now. Nothing will stand in the way of RC being right, nothing.
1 -
Now listen, you know exactly what I mean. How you chose to cover the distance as fast as possible is different to racing differently to finish ahead of your rival. If you can’t see that, no wonder you struggle with the concept.
0 -
Deploying your resources to maximise your team's chances of success is tactical. Introducing kilo riders in team pursuit line ups isn't about technique, it's completely to do with tactics. Technique is ensuring you perfect the changeovers and other areas like that.
1 -
Oh my god I give up. How is that not “covering the distance as fast as possible”?!?!
How to arrange your team to do that is not tactical. That’s just optimisation.
Next you’ll be telling me that it is tactics that pog rides 54 chainrings and not 52s
0 -
I think your confusion stems from the ida that everybody knows how fast they can go, and how fast the opposition can go. As we've seen from the actual races, there's a huge amount of risk when your riders are at their absolute limit, if a coach asks for too much from a rider then the whole thing can fall apart with spectacular consequences. So how much risk does the coach take on? Well that depends on the context of the race - both what the beliefs about the oppo are pre-race and what the actual situation is during the race. The small adjustments that a coach will be making during a race are decisions based on how much risk to take. In popular parlance, these decisions are known as tactics.
Warning No formatter is installed for the format1 -
Given the coaches all tell them every lap exactly how close or far away they are to schedule, I think they have a very good idea
0 -
You're missing the point that the coach can change the schedule at any point. The coach is telling them how far ahead or behind where he wants them to be they are. He can adjust to take more or less risk depending on context.
Warning No formatter is installed for the format1 -
Why don’t they simply find their best time and do that every time? This coaching thingy is easy.
The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.4 -
Yeah that’s entirely the point of 4 years of training! The challenge is the closer you get to the limit, the closer you get to total collapse and doing a really terrible time.
But that does not make a time trial tactical.
0 -
It's not a time trial though, it's a head to head race, the time is irrelevant. You can take 10 minutes if your opponent takes 11.
Warning No formatter is installed for the format0
