Pro-cycling thread

Legion have cancelled their "Into the lion's den" event; rumours suggest it's because Justin Williams got a 3 month ban for his sort-of fight a week or two back

@dubtap Think it was a Reuters article which said they do the same for all Danish athletes that win a gold medal, guess this is the same level. Pretty cool for sure. Link (sorry for Apple news…) https://apple.news/A77Kl5sRXQHOAFkpmop8_Ow

Never realised he only started cycling part time and was working as a fish packer in a factory to support his training 5 years ago!

Nope. Only at major events, not just for gold medals. European championship in soccer ‘92. World champions handball etc.
Mads Pedersen joked that when he won the world championship his reception was only in the lobby and no crowd outside.

Would the British?

https://twitter.com/tompidcock/status/1552306205946781699

When you're born with genetics, you're born with genetics. All the training in the world can't turn a donkey to a race horse.

Good for him. Seems like a really down to earth guy. Nice winner.

I was at a Q&A session with a British coach, whose name I've momentarily forgotten, who was asked by a young lad how could he win the Tour. His response started with "first of all you need to pick your parents..."

Yes, any anyone who pretends otherwise is deluded. I get really riled up by big athletes who say if you work hard you can achieve anything, it's just bullshit.

thinking of this quote from 'The Rider' by Tim Krabbé; "...if you would have started training when you were young enough, you could well have been a mediocre pro"

Probably why I like a good drink then.

If I were a highly talented (and succesful) athlete I would be even more riled up if people said that all my results are due to my genetics and not my work ethic.

A donkey may never turn in a race horse, but no amount of talent will bring you a gold medal if you don't do the work

But it's both isn't it. I was better than most people will ever be, with a life of training, the first day I rode a bike, but I will never be as good as a world tour pro, no matter the work I put in. I just don't have the physiology.

Absolutely. Does my head in that commercial coaches charge parents loads of money for training plans with talk of them "making it" if they follow the plan etc. It's clear very quickly whether someone has the genetics.

And that also applies to psychology. I'm OK at racing a bike and was pretty decent as a kid but I hate training (same as revising etc) so I knew I would never make it no matter what my physiology was.

Basically, if you ain't ripping the legs off local elites and 1st cats on youth/junior gears at 16/17 it doesn't matter how hard you work for the next 5 years, you ain't going World Tour.

(late starters can adjust the timeline accordingly)

I'm sure I'm world tour talent, just didn't bother 😅

I would ask you to quantitatively define how good you were on the first day vs the others with a life of training, but that's not the point I'm trying to make.

Maybe what you are saying is more true for a a 3weeks stage race where is the length of the event itself which favours the genetically gifted (is it though? albeit in a different situation, look at Anna Kiesenhofer), but in other sports there are plenty of examples of people that "made it" without being born with extraordinary talent.

The other side of the coin is that if you start telling people from day 1 that they will never achieve their dreams because of something they have no control over, then what's the point in even trying? Better spending your life on a couch, drinking beer and eating pizza

if you start telling people from day 1 that they will never achieve their dreams because of something they have no control over, then what's the point in even trying?

Nah better to set realistic dreams. Take up cycling at 23 and are willing to train hard? Aim to get round a prem or a divs medal. The great thing about competitive (cycle) sport is that you don't have to be the best to get something out of it.

in other sports there are plenty of examples of people that "made it" without being born with extraordinary talent

Got any examples in endurance sports? (genuinely interested)

Better spending your life on a couch, drinking beer and eating pizza

Sign me up.

Nah better to set realistic dreams. Take up cycling at 23 and are willing to train hard? Aim to get round a prem or a divs medal. The great thing about competitive (cycle) sport is that you don't have to be the best to get something out of it.

A 23 years old can understand his limitation quite well (hopefully). But what if you say that to a 10/12 years old? I think that you would fuck him up for life

Got any examples in endurance sports? (genuinely interested)

How well versed are you with rowing?
A kiwi named Hamish Bond (even tried to transition to cycling) as a junior/u19 had mediocre physiological parameters. Flash forward 10/12 years and between 2009 and 2016 never lost a race (bagged two olympic golds in the process), solely by outworking everyone else.

Still regarding rowing, I remember reading somewhere of an italian who as a 15 y.o. was told by his then coach that he didn't have nor the height or the wingspan to "make it"
To this day he has a couple of world championships wins and two olympic bronze (iirc)

During the Tour a couple of years ago the GCN guys were talking about this. How basically every single person you see on a bike there, even the one currently getting shot out the back of the peloton was winning races against teenagers when they were 8 and likewise against adults then they were 15.

So what you’re all saying is, i simply dont have the genetics to make it out of cat4?

Its a weight off my shoulders tbh…

The great thing about competitive (cycle) sport is that you don't have to be the best to get something out of it.

THIS

I love racing my bike, even now, but I knew in my early 20s that I was only ever going to be mediocre at it.

You can work as hard as you like, but if your cardiovascular system isn’t top tier, then you’ll never get beyond national level.

BC have been very good at spotting talent and nurturing it, but even a casual observer like me could see that the likes of @taogeogheganhart, Ethan Hayter and Fred Wright had something more to them than your average teenager.

It may have been once upon a time you’d hear of talented sport stars going unnoticed and then being discovered, but it’s less frequent now. And was probably the same then.
It’s why there are so many stories and movies about it all. Like Sean bean playing for blades in that film.

It’s why people like Ian Wright (apols for football)mean so much to others. He should have been in a team from 16, but circumstances meant he didn’t get picked up until 23. And when he played it looked like he wanted to be there more than anyone else ever.

Sports people are genetic freaks.

as someone who is at the far end of shit genetics spectrum (obese south asian) this is very comforting

I guess the guy who won gold at 1500m in the mean world athletics was “sort of undiscovered”. In that they knew he had the talent but they had to work it in a different way so his final kick could be used to full effect.