What I like about this era of cycling is that the athletes actually had to judge their exertion level themselves, without having an onboard computer readout of wattage and heart rate to follow a plan pre-optimized by sport scientists. For this reason it seems more real, with more reliance on the individual cyclists' ability and judgement, rather than the cyclist being only one part of a very large team of specialists like we have today.
@@kevinbuja8105 So true. I sincerely doubt any of the small climbers of today could even finish one mountain stage with a 42-23 drivetrain on a 20 pound steel bike.
Love this type of cycling/racing, no fancy gear or technics like today. Merckx is amazing. Not sure about the fans, think theyve been doping!! Thanks for putting this video up.
The 1969 Tour de France was 600km longer overall than the 2019 tour ........so yes cyclists today are getting wrapped in cotton wool. As the decades have passed the Grand Tours have got shorter and shorter. The speed has gone up but that is not because todays riders are better , it's because they are riding shorter stages and a shorter race.
So speak the non-racers. The difficulty is not in the distance, the gradient or the gears; it's in the competition. When I meet someone who, for the first time, finds out that I race on bikes, their first question is inevitably, "what's the longest ride you've ever done?" Even after I've pointed out that my principal involvement is short(ish) road time trials they still don't ask, "what's your fastest average speed for a '10'?" or "what's your fastest time?". It is neither wise nor fair to try to compare the 'best' in one generation against the 'best' of a different generation. Let's just celebrate the endeavours of every rider, of every generation, who pushed back the boundaries of his/her own perceived limits, and achieved more than they had ever believed possible when they set out, whether that was higher, faster or further.
What a display of grit and determination The gear ratios prevented spinning. Hence the shoulder rock. Before acknowledging todays bikies as wonderful, just check out that Chris Boardman got ten metres further than Eddy on an indoor track close to home with a new style helmet and clip in pedals. How many of your favourites rode all disciplines all year long. Spring Classics to Six Days. You are dreaming. Eddy was a total Beast.
To be fair Eddy wrecked is run by going for another record at the same time. I can't remember the distance of the record though. This made him go to hard at the start.
Auténticamente épico lo que hacían estos ciclistas de leyenda , con los desarrollos de aquella época, 42 x 21 y si tenían suerte un 42x23. Estos si eran auténticos atletas. Eran otros tiempos. Saludos desde Tegucigalpa Honduras.
Ohhhh, the GRINDING!! Today, commentators will say, "You can tell he's struggling on this climb by the way his shoulders are rocking." Back then, EVERYBODY'S shoulders were rocking. The whole climb!
The commentator should say "what a bloody waste of energy tossing about parts that don't make the pedals move". Nobody watch this and replicate it on a ride. Eddy or not, it is inefficient.
I started racing in Calif in 1971. ten speed bikes were real I thought 12 speed was a real gift. Seems no one had low gears. Climbed a lot of steep hills on as I remember 42-18 Finely got a 21 on the back. Now I like a broad spread 53-11 and 34- 30 or even 32 on the back. You can get derailleurs made for a triple to work on a double system.
get on top of the gear in an intense cadence you can hold hold it as long as you can, learn a new plateau of pain turn the pain into a new intensity of desire to go faster repeat after recovery, however long that takes
Names I was very familiar with. Had a Gios frame I built up. When Campy ruled, added finger tip shifters. The days of leather hairnet helmets. Best moment in a race I dropped Greg lemond and a few other top riders on a flat, hot, over 100F, super windy day. Would of won except my retarded team mates did not give me any drinks at last aid station. They all left so to watch end of the race! No speedometers, no power meters, no radios, no heart rate monitors, no aero, no carbon. The end of an era.
Professional bike riders and triathletes are the best athletes in the world, bar none. Climbing up mountains at the pace they do it, is totally insane.
Most racing bikes came with a 42 front ring until the late 90's, although on lower end road bikes the cassette had a 30 rear sprocket. I rode l'etape in 99 with a 42x30 although the bike itself had a steel frame and weighed around 26 pounds. Still i managed an average of 15mph on the stage over 140 miles.
I rode l'etape in '99 as well, on a 40lb Schwin kiddies tricycle with one wheel missing and a broken leg.....still managed 42mph over the whole stage!!! SMH
Not much crowd control back then, the fans were alot more rabid. Seems like it would be so hard to concentrate and you would worry that you might be knocked off your bike.
-2 degrees centigrade........these days they would shorten the stage because it was too cold. No race radios here to spoil the tactics , the riders had to judge the race for themselves by knowing their rivals strengths and weaknesses.
Not necessarily, I saw a stage in the Tour of Colorado that was not shortened due to cold. They had the highest point on any tour race that year Just we never got to see the peak due to the high winds keeping most off the course and forcing the retirement of some of the lesser cyclist and teams.
Great triumph by José Manuel Fuente "el Tarangu", perhaps the greatest cyclist ever from Asturias, in the video we see him winning in the Tre Cime di Lavaredo. Mercx, Gimondi, Baronchelli, nobody could follow him.
If you were a real man, you used the biggest chainring possible. If one thing Armstrong did correctly was stay aerobic with a high cadence....and lots of doping, of course.
Ils allaient toussent ce rabillers quand le roi eddy merckx avait envie de gagné et quelques soit la stratégie de la course car eddy avait la rage de vaincre et tout les jours il était la . Eddy roi des rois le plus grand pour l éternité. Ce qui me rend heureu ces que mon idole est toujours en et parmi nous pour voir que sont palmares est inégalé inégalable. Que dieu protège le grand eddy merckx.
Yeah and it took until 2010's to get barricades out for the slower mountain stages in tours so that we did not have a racer having to literally run a borrowed tour bike up the hill because the size of bike was not what he needed after his crash with a fan in which a known user of performance enhancing drugs Alberto Contador in his last year left his teammate out to dry and Alberto (also in wreak but bike was not damaged bad just fell slower then teammate) was not even in the top 10 at that point in the race and was not even in the top 10 in the stage. That was the tour De France
The only thing that sucks about these old clips are the comments. Why do RU-vid people always see vintage stuff as a que to complain about it's modern equivalent? Cycling back then was cool and cycling today is still cool. To hell with the singular nostalgics. People's minds on here are just too narrow. Eddie Merckx himself enjoys watching modern cycling for Frick's sake.
These guys back them were really"Gnarly"and the fans seemed even crazier then today even! Notice how the riders didn't have sufficient gearing to reach these summits in any kind of sitting position; the cadence was so slow compared to how it's done today.
42x52x 13-25 or 26 was the norm for gearing back then , Campagnolo wouldn't make a chainset with a smaller inner chainring ( even though Merckx asked them ) Campag was just about on every bike in those days. Stronglight was the French manufacturer that made cranks that could fit 36t chainrings on but they were seen as tourists gears.
Because cycling is the most efficient of all sports, an athlete can give all he has, go beyond his capability, and where runners and boxers would be packing it in, the cyclists are just starting. Where the others end, they begin.
Indeed. No beyond pathetic gay spinning. No lifeless plastic bikes and plastic equipment. Real bikes, real riders. And here's the disturbing part........... They were faster. Hello!
@@death2pc Really? I highly doubt that. I wasn't able to find any statistics for the "Giro d'Italia", but here's some for the Tour de France: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_de_France_records_and_statistics#/media/File:Overall_Speed_Tour_de_France.gif
Sono italiano ed ero tifoso di Manuel Fuente grandissimo scalatore. Fuente ha sempre staccato Merckx in salita. Anche in Italia abbiamo avuto Pantani grandissimo scalatore staccava tutti in salita anche i più grandi. Chissà chi fra Fuente e Pantani avrebbe vinto in salita, secondo me sarebbero arrivati sempre appaiati al traguardo.
Those were true riders..NO DOPIONG..you can see by the way they move and there bodys reactions..my hot off to those riders..Merckx was an animal..what a rider..after the 80s everything change.,.DOPING STARED
@TheCleghorne They had only six cogs not 10 or 11. Also the bikes were heavier and the roads much rougher than today's. No carbon, no ultra torque, lack of aerodynamics.. Still, these were men of steel and not the softies running the Tour of France today, happy when they take a couple of seconds by sprinting the last 300m at the end of an steep climb. This was real cycling and not the joke of today's Tour of France.
get on top of the gear in an intense cadence you can hold hold it as long as you can, learn a new plateau of pain turn the pain into a new intensity of desire to go faster repeat after recovery, however long that takes the pain turns into intensity as you get stronger than you can imagine with sufficient recovery, however long that takes
Really if you are in top shape it really is not pain at all it is just effort and that has a pleasing side. I loved riding flat out. Just no talent so was not fast enough to win much. Training only takes you so far. Greg Lemond, then Armstrong so obvious case in point near no training and were fantastic on a bike. Years of training and you have top riders. We now have Remco just 19 yr old now to watch. More natural talent than anyone I have seen EVER. With LUCK he should dominate racing for many a year specially after he is a few years older 23 plus. He is as good as the very best second string riders who are 25 or so in age now.
.en aquella época había mucha diferencia entre los desarrollos que movía un profesional y un cicloturista,entre los profesionales,subiendo estaba " mal visto" mover desarrollos muy pequeños.Hoy en día subiendo,mueven los mismos desarrollos un profesional y un cicloturista,solo cambia la cadencia
Primero :El público pensé que era problema de éstos tiempos , imprudentes con el riesgo de hacer caer a los ciclistas. Segundo: La moto hizo caer a un ciclista.Tercero: Veo cómo subían en esa época hasta con riñones, subían más trancados y movían mucho la cabeza, ahora la ayuda de tanto plato como piñón ayuda muchísimo que suban a rotación, con cadencia y CUARTO : mucho público, muchos aficionados porque no hay los mismos habitantes de hace más de cuarenta años y si alguien en español me puede decir a que subida es?
@pitracon Oh, I know all of that. You would think that even with only a six, in the mountains a 52/42 crank set and a 13, 15, 18, 21, 24, 28 rear cluster would allow more leg speed this. My knees ache just watching. Real cycling? Umm. I would call today's riders more efficient. Softies? I wouldn't call any professional cyclist that. Guys continuing on after atrocious falls and accidents bandaged up like mummies almost. Soft is not term I'd use. Enhanced maybe but not soft.
Eddy Merckx was Number One and will stay Number One for ever. Coppi was a very good runner, a campionissimo, but he was Number Two in history, or maybe Three or Four (Binda ? Bartali ? Hinault ?), we can discuss about that. The only completely certain point is this one : Eddy was the greatest. Final point. The one who says something else doesn't know anything about what he says.
Not to mention Merckx was all-terrain winner. Flat, valley, mountain... Well mountains a little bit less. It just points out the incredible efforts he imposed to himself to be a 'Tour winner'...
