No it’s not…it is very easy to dismiss because it is just wrong.
Look at his example of Froome’s crash last year. He didn’t crash because he was on a TT bike, he crashed because he took his hand(s) off the bar while descending in windy conditions.
Rasmussen may have been a MTB’er before he raced on the road, but that doesn’t mean he was a good road bike handler (hint - he wasn’t). Those clips are an amalgamation of a guy who lost all his confidence because of a mistake that HE made, not because of some inherent danger in TT bikes (we have all seen clips of guys who blow a corner on a road bike and then can’t get their schitt back together and struggle the rest of the way down…same concept here).
One of the scariest moments I ever had on a bike was on a road bike with Spinergy wheels, descending the Morgul Bismark outside Boulder…after cmoing out of the shelter of two hills, I got hit with a strong crosswind at 40+ mph. So using his logic, road bikes must be dangerous, too…
Conversely, I set the fastest bike split in the Racine IM70.3 in some of the worst crosswinds I have ever experienced…and I was riding a Zipp 808. The scariest element was all the other riders I had to navigate around, not the wind conditions.
Tens of thousands of people have completed the Kona bike leg without crashing.
The Welshman [G.] had to cover the 31.7km course without any information on his power or speed after his Garmin computer was misplaced before his effort.
I hear you, and I’m suspicious of pretty much everyone at the top of the pro cycling ranks. But compared to say WVA, I assume Ganna spends a lot more time on his TT bike and trains specifically for TT worlds. How much time do you think the other close guys have spent preparing for this race (aside from maybe Dennis)? In that context a 30sec margin seems more reasonable to me.
I’m not too terribly suspicious of him, personally. As dominant as that performance was, it was the not the same as Pogacar’s in the tour. 20-30 second seems reasonable on that course in particular. Taking the right lines and maintaining better form over that length of road on a fast course could be the difference. Lots of tight jogs where a rider could gain a second or two just by keeping more momentum with the right line while staying in the aerobars.
…and silver medal for AvV riding with a broken wrist ! Could have had some more broken bones as well, after being elbowed towards the barriers by Longo Borghini…luckily they both stayed upright.
Of course she could have doped, as could any of the riders. In the World Champs she won the TT by 15 seconds (in a 40 minute race), and in today’s road race she effectively won by gapping the rest of the field by a few seconds on one climb - having had the rest of the Dutch team soften up the field previously.
So hardly such an outlandish result to suggest doping. Unless you were just trolling…
I’m just following the trend of questioning the authenticity of winning riders based on the behaviour of historical riders. Rabobank was the Dutch team, after all.
If they are smart enough to dope and get away with it, who’s to say they aren’t smart enough to temper their efforts to give the appearance they aren’t doping?
Anyway, cool route with the mix of race track and rural roads.
Josh Poertner has said that the visor is a crapshoot on whether it’s better or not. Each individual needs to go to the wind tunnel to see if it works for them.
He wasn’t using a Giro Aerohead for his Hour Record, it was a HJC…totally different visor design.
Josh was referring to more “traditional” visor designs, such as that on the Specialized where it is essentially just a face shield but the helmet still covers your ears, etc. The Aerohead visor design is completely different and is a critical component of its aerodynamics.
I’d really like to see some top down shots of that sprint.
From the front doesn’t look as egregious so maybe nothing but it could warrant a written warning as it were, just for consistency with the Tour of Poland crash and TdF Sagan/WvA stages. That way UCI has some consistency (and maybe hell will freeze over).
