This video was blocked by the IOC. I claimed 'fair use' under the copyright ordinance and they've released it on the grounds it's for educational and review purposes. Hopefully it stays up. Cheers.
None of the racers could afford the oversized jockey cages and wheels. Great video as always. One thing I will point out that PROS cannot do is grow a gut. The gut provides more of a foil type shape and reduces dead air behind the aerobars. Also lean cut muscle at 6 percent body fat produces turbulent air in the worst places above the UCI mandated mid calf socks. It likely cost Dumoulin the gold.
So rippling 6 packs are out and beer bellies are in yeah??? I wonder could you strap on a prosthetic gut from a movie production company and design a skinsuit to go around it!!
The bikes they are riding are indeed S-Works but they are branded Specialized instead for the Olympics. They have done it now for the last 3 Olympics, I presume for a wider audience exposure or some Olympic branding rule!
No, as per Olympic committee regulation, brands can only use their own brand name registered (ie: SPECIALIZED), not other moniker (ie: S-WORKS) on their equipments.
Also I'd imagine a lot more non cyclists would recognise specialized if they walk into a bike shop looking to buy a bike. Only cyclists know what s-works is. Id imagine given the amount of people watching it's probably better for their marketing
@@markmuldoon7044 Hell, a lot of cyclists won't know what s-works is. Not everyone is interested in high end Specialized bikes or even ever exposed to them depending on where they live.
Tom D's custom setup couldn't be made. Jumbo said : no time to make them in time for Olympics. Kudos to him he shrugged it off and pushed on, mentally he's in a better place now.
Dumoulin was always a TT specialist until he shocked everyone by becoming a climber in recent years. I think we'll see a return to focus on his favourite discipline now
Rogla is more of a w/kg rider so his cda wouldn’t have mattered as much, he won this race on the climbs not the faster sections where aero is more important.
Fantastic vid. Love PT's content. The most dead pan guy on RU-vid. It's incredible to see the evaluation from Jan Ullrichs Bianchi TT bike setup, with bars down style to today's bars up. His wrists were on the elbow pads back then!
For the Shiv TT bike. I think Specialised tested with and without the cut out and it made no difference aerodynamically so they got rid of it to decrease frame weight. I'm not convinced but it is still a fast frame
@@Your_Paramour if you compare the Tri bike vs the TT bike, they actually have different seat stays height connecting to the seat tube, differences around the headtube aswell because the Tri bike doesnt have to confine to a certain rule, unlike the TT bike. Doesnt matter much to you though because you are one of those who think oh im hating on specialized im so edgy kinda guy.
If you look at the athletes opting to go against their trade team sponsor's bikes, they were choosing the Shiv. The gap is ugly but I bet the bike as a whole is the fastest in the wind tunnel.
@@11-inch Got any sources that the shiv is full monocoque design? I don't understand how any reasonable person could say im a Specialized hater based off of my one comment about them. I will never understand why people random people in the cycling world are so keen to act as part of marketing department for certain brands.
I suppose specialised used the full name as norms watching cycling may of heard of them but s-works unless your a cycling fan probs never heard of them. The cut off around the rear wheel I found strange as all aero bikes used to have them but in the last year with the migration to lighter aero bikes most bikes have changed now. I find it rather odd as the TT bikes mainly still have them apart from specialised 🤔 Enjoyed the video great watch once again
Great Video. The pros seem to want the XTR rotors as they are 12g lighter than DA. Some anecdotal testing data from Parcours that they might be more aero (less than the margin of error tho). Oversized pulley wheels: pay $500 to gain 0.5W friction efficiency, lose 2W in aero. Best bike bling scam ever (and I bought some once! ;-)
how do you feel about uphill/downhill/flat coast down tests for riders who dont get to use wind tunnels or have access to pressure rakes or other attached gadgetry? do you have any advice for a test protocol you think might work for riders who get to play with just a bike and a gps or stopwatch.
I can't wait to see what the new Hope Track bikes can do along with the new track chains. Are these developments for real, or a bust? We may see starting Monday!
Depends on you local dealer here in Japan. In our city, the dominant bike shop carries spesh/sworks/cannondale/pinarello, so pretty much every club ride, those are the brands youll see (Im the only rogue canyon rider at least in our city). The neighbouring city is more like trek/giant.
Regarding the wide base bar. As it doesn’t really control the shoulder position for a great period of time unlike a road bike drop bar. The extra 2-4 cm^2 of area is in the nice aero section of the bars so is probably quite a small drag penalty for the extra benefit of improved stability whilst descending and leverage when out of the saddle.
My point is - There will be a small vortex at the end of the bar, and could be pointless to have it flowing outside the rider's legs when it may be useful.
I was actually wishing they’d just use the full Fuji circuit for the TT considering they cancelled the FIA WEC race there. Enjoyable competition though
The only reason to energize airflow is if you're hoping to get it to reattach/stay attached longer to a plane that is at too steep an angle for the flow to remain attached otherwise. In the case of the legs that would need to happen right before the natural seperation point. Otherwise the only other lever to play with is pressure drag management, but the bars are way too in front of the legs. Dumoulin's extensions on the other hand would work in this reguard, but I don't know that they could be assumed better than molded extensions.
Best way of killing a speed wobble is to grip the top tube with your knees. Presumably this has the effect of increasing the stiffness, and therefore the resonant frequency of the system.
Winced slightly at induced drag instead of profile drag, otherwise cracking analysis. Always pained me how hard it is to find narrow enough base bars. No idea why you'd have anything wider than legally required
Super video and analysis, very well done. Changing the subject slightly (as well as a bike geek i'm also a watch geek!!)...is that a seiko skx pepsi on your wrist?
Thank peak torque awesome vid I've been thinking about trips and vortex generators on my TT bike and helmet my theory was to trip the air off the back of arm pad as my legs are just behind and also triping air on helmet behind the ears b4 the shoulders glad to here that I'm not just wishful thinking
Small frames are awesome frames. Another benefit is the shorter wheelbase makes them feel more reactive to body positioning but you tend to run them with longer than usual stems which dials out the twitchy characteristics. The more extreme drop makes the body more aero as well. I think Gilbert used to ride a 48cm for a while even though he is 5'10." There is a picture of him drafting behind a BMC car that looks crazy with how tiny the frame is.
There was also a big factor: The riders who dug deep in the Road Race paid the price. From those who were in the fight for medal in the RR, only 2 made in the top10 (WvA and Urán). The design of this race favored GC riders so they could rival TT specialists.
Excellent overview! You mentioned the back Princeton disc wheel but worth noting the shape the front wheel. Ineos giving them a go. Similar enough to Zipp that SRAM actually ended up filing a lawsuit against Princeton for patent infringement a few months ago.
Interesting video, I remember Hambini mentionning the gap ahead of the backwheel on the specialzed as being bad as well. By the way, anyone has news of him? He's been pretty silent lately.
Specialised did the same thing in Rio where the bikes were labelled Specialized not S-Works. My hypothesis is that the viewership of the olympics aren’t cyclists (on average) and don’t know what SWorks is so they’re better off labelling the bikes as Specialized for brand recognition. Just my hypothesis.
The important fact is that if they where ghost riders their aero helmets would melt due to burning skull heads instead of regular human heads ,, not aero
Re: speed wobble - I recently moved to the Med. Some surfaces on the quieter paved roads are pretty dire. Including deep, high frequency washboard on very steep hills ... which is nightmarish descending - particularly as a heavyish rider (85kg). The lack of traction for braking means you have pretty much no hope of stopping if you aren't heavily dragging the brakes from the get-go. But even then, given how steep some of it is, you're subject to speed-wobble at low speeds as you have to be hard so hard on the brakes & you're getting thrown around. Then you have to deal with locking up the rear as soon as the rear tyre finds any traction. Any tips at least to mitigate the speed wobble? Haven't balanced my wheels ... but not entirely sure how to approach that anyway with tubeless - doesn't the sealant make that impossible?
To balance the wheel you can tape some metal to the rim , i think I've seen videos on RU-vid on how to do that. Your sealant should be evenly distributed once rolling. Other than that, death wobbles are terrifying, try a different bike?
The POC helmet, from what I have researched, favors someone who doesn't move their head around. Apparently, the second you dip down, or aren't perfectly in that position where the helmet is downright fast, you take quite a hit. I am quite sure someone with far more time and resources than me tested this and they are wearing the right helmet for their body and conditions. I think there is a movement towards minimizing the aero penalties vs going as fast as possible with the right helmet, because no matter what, the body isn't perfect.
saw a comment from a world tour pro on a tt forum re aero which read (they) '' have that much gas they don't care.'' Seems the moviestar philosophy of just pedal harder is still strong.
This hole in Shiv's tt seattube might be a way to decrease the pushing effect of wind blowing from the side, especially when the bike is equipped with disc wheel plus this shiv is designed to be fast and light, so probably they saw that this hole is making bike more stable in crosswinds and ligther at the same time.
You're talking about the one brand that has streamlined everything production wise over recent years to cut all the losses that had them sell massive shares to Merida (wonder why they sacked the labor intensive Venge or abandoned PF BB's). They just didn't bother adapting the frame from the triathlon model and it's storage/hydration box as the market for long distance Tri bikes is much bigger than the one for UCI compliant TT bikes only pros and semi pros would go for (ok, maybe your dentist as well).
@@lauig Agree with everything you said, but why do you think abandoning press fit bb's would be a cost saving measure? The whole impetuous for moving to press fit (once you got past the marketing fluff) was that, by being able to skip tapping the bb, it simplified the manufacturing process. Full disclosure: I'm one of those weirdos who is actually disappointed that the bike industry is going back on that rather than fixing their collective inability to hit entirely reasonable tolerances.
The aero elephant in the room are rider numbers. You want to integrate timing chip (ok) but the idiotic numbers are all flappy or in special pockets. In regular WT road events it’s even more ridiculous, especially after crashes. Same with track & field, by the way. We have developed amazing aerodynamic skinsuit materials and designs but are still beholden to the ancient pinned number…
Specialized have said themselves they have that cutout in front of the rear wheel for weight saving, also saying having a cutout doesn't do that much for earodynamic loss
If i remember correctly, in 2012 London or 2016 Rio games, some rider(s) used normal road bike(s). They were from african country or something with limited financial sources and there because of the rules about number of participants from different countries or something similar - didnt make it even close to top spots
Smaller frames are not more aerodynamic then larger frames (Always test bike with rider!). The developers of the Dutch track bike came to that conclusion. Watch the Dutch track riders and probably their frame size is bigger than their competitors.
Had a conversation with Dennis's coach last year about the POC helmet. They have tested it and it was significantly slower. Guarantee you that Dennis has tested every piece of equipment and position. I believe the POC Tempor is faster for maybe 20% of riders, but can offer notable gains for those for whom it works.
He used that Kask Mistral in that period where he’d walked from BM but was yet to join Ineos. I think it was a world champs. He ran a blacked out BMC with it.
Also think the POC requires a very still head (somewhat easier on track!) and some riders don’t have that. In fact I think the Kask Beluga, which I think Ganna uses, may be designed for that.
@@PeakTorque He was using a Giro Aerohead at the time of the conversation (was pre-Ineos - probably 2 years ago, now that I think about it). Definitely, the POC tested slow for him. I'm sure Ineos would have made it crystal clear what equipment he was allowed to choose from when he joined after the Yorkshire brouhaha
It's quite hard to get the arms forward far within the UCI dimension rules. Maybe Ganna has his seat further back? I found it felt really cramped going from CTT position to UCI.
@@PeakTorque interesting, I know maximising the extention angle to the legal limit effectively brings the ends of the extentions in while maintaining the elbows at the same reach, which might have given me a bit of extra elbow reach as I rode a fairly flat forearm position, but with my saddle close to 5cm BB distance limit, even as a fairly short rider at 172cm I looked and felt pretty cramped by the reach limitations. I didn't have di2/etap which doesn't help but I did tilt the sram R2C shifters right up.
The reason Specialized bikes are never branded S-Works in the Olympic road race and time trial is for advertising purposes. The majority of Tour de France viewers will be cyclists, save for a few stages, who are already familiar with bicycle brands and would be more willing to fork out the cash for an S-Works if they see their favorite rider win on one. The majority of Olympic viewers are not participants in a given sport. Specialized makes the vast majority of its revenue on everything that isn't a performance road bike. If an average viewer sees a bike they like and wants to take up cycling, looking for a Specialized retailer is much easier than an S-Works retailer. Keep in mind most Specialized shops aren't permitted to stock and sell S-Works, just like the average Mercedes dealership won't have AMG in the showroom. Source: Asked the rep for our particular shop in my brief time as a mechanic.
@@MozOnBikes If a similar vortex will be generated by the front wing, that then travels through the suspension, around the sidepods and over the diffuser (ideally), I think it might be called the same. That or the rule it's generated by. In reality I don't really see a feature that would generated a similar vortex on new cars though. I'm not an aerodynamicist and the car shown is just one interpretation of the rules, but yeah. The Y250 vortex was generated to condition the flow around the structures of the car. We will see how the new rules will enable or force the teams to condition the flow, similar tactics will surely come up.
@@PeakTorque To me the Olympics, vs any pro race, should be about the athletes and not the equipment. I don't know why they don't all ride the same spec'd bikes and leave the custom one-off alien bikes for the Grand Tours.
the "oversized jockey wheels" bit hurt my feelings :-) I love my ceramicspeed, but yes... probably just expensive bling really loved the analysis and insights
You made a statement that disc brakes are not slowing anyone down . So can you explain why Tadej Pogačar used conventional bikes for the mountain stages ? It's a fact that discs breaks heavier a good 600g if not more . 🤔 Thank you
They are more sensitive to cross winds than spoked wheels, there were no really deep front wheels used either so it could be that it was windy on the day.
They are not always faster. They tend to be better at higher yaw angles, which is actually not a requirement at this level, because at these speeds the yaw angle is relatively low (5-10). So its just not worth it: that small time you would win, you would probably also lose because of the added instability.