He doesn’t have 20 lbs to lose, IMO….not without losing a good chunk of wattage. He is simply too big, end of story.
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I think he has a great chance of being competitive in 1 day races, he has plenty of weight to lose but I don’t think he has the time to develop the endurance required to ride grand tours this late in his career. Having said that I think UnoX will take him on board and give him the chance to try though…
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Will be interesting to see the transformation
To me, those kinds of races are even harder. Winning a grand tour is usually a physiology contest. Sit on the train and attack at the last 5km plus win time trials. One day races on narrow roads in France, Belgium and Italy require 10x better tactics and race knowledge.
I raced in France way back when. The narrower the road, the more difficult the race.
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I would say that endurance (and fueling) is the least of his problems given his background in long course and the training volumes he’s done previously
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Except cycling endurance and long course triathlon endurance are very different. Long course triathlon is basically sit at a high (% of FTP) wattage and keep it there. Grand Tour endurance is: at the end of a 4 - 5 hour stage, can you do an explosive around threshold effort for anywhere from 5 - 30 minutes
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A three-week tour is a very different kind of endurance.
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The way elite Ironman athletes train would sufficiently prepare them for a grand tour type race. GC competitors basically try not to crash then ride threshold up long climbs. You would imagine that if KB can successfully not crash (ie have good enough bike handling), then he would be a very competitive racer in the pro peloton. Descending might be a challenge, but who knows. He trains at altitude most of the time so I’m sure he is no stranger to challenging descents. Tho it’s easier said than done based on watching the skill gap between remco vs JV and pogi
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He is not slim. he is a lean barrel
No, it wouldn’t sufficiently prepare them.
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Care to elaborate? An engine is an engine. KB basically has one of the largest in the world, and even relative to all professional endurance athletes.
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To win at the top level of professional cycling, it’s not just raw endurance, but “fatigue resistance” to be able to do a max effort / sprint at the end of the race.
Perfect example: women’s Olympic Road Race. Faulkner drops the chase group except for Kopecky (??? on spelling). They chase back to Vos and Vas, and then Faulkner hits the other 3, who couldn’t respond. So Faulkner’s win required more than just steady state endurance, but the ability to up the pace to catch the leaders, and then be able to go hard enough that 3 world class women cyclist look at each other as none of them wanted to go hard enough to pull the others back to Faulkner.
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Is he going to win the yellow jersey? probably not, but to say he has no shot at being competitive seems a bit harsh to me. He trains 20-30hrs a week between the three disciplines, him making the jump to 20-30hrs a week cycling doesn’t seem that out of the realm of possibility to me.
His races are currently anywhere between 2-9hrs, so he races a good mix of shorter high intensity (draft legal races) and longer near threshold type efforts, I think that fits well into what he’ll need in the cycling world.
Also, cycling is full of athletes that came from triathlon, or skiing, or rowing, etc. It isn’t super rare for people to cross over to cycling and be successful.
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I would argue being able to run a marathon after a 112mile TT would qualify as pretty fatigue resistant. Unless your focus is on the sprinting at the end of an endurance event, in which case I would say running a 30min 10k would qualify as being able to sprint (or near sprint) at the end of a hard race.
So in your example wouldn’t KB be one of these world class athletes that were on the podium?
Edit: sorry if this came off as argumentative, just trying to keep the conversation going, no ill will was intended, you could definitely be right and me wrong.
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@AlphaDogCycling , an Olympic RR is more like a classics RR than a grand tour. As I said before, winning GC in a grand tour comes down to you ability to not crash in the pack (and lose time) and also not be dropped on the long climbs when the race is in the mountains. Chris Froome practically won the tour with his eyes glued to his power meter (I say this jokingly but it has some truth to it).
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Cycling has a number of cross-over athletes who joined the game earlier than age 30.
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KB should try to make it into this year’s ITT world championship. Let’s see how he does there first. If he’s not even competitive, then there’s your answer
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And that marathon being a 2:3x marathon after a 2:4x “warm up” earlier in the week.
It’s an outside chance that he has of succeeding in the grand tours, but it’s a chance.
And you raise a good point about training volume. Without running he’ll eat 40hrs on the bike for breakfast.
You’re right to be skeptical, but this is unfair - ITT is about aerodynamics. I think his coaches approach makes total sense.
Year 1 settle into grand tour riding, year two try to claim stage wins…
And I have to reiterate, look at it from their point of view: He’s won triathlon. He’s won Ironman. What’s next? Fade into insignificance ? Keep touring with Ironman to win again? Start an online coaching service?
If you think he shouldn’t try grand tour, what should he do?
Well, it’s not that they’re saying they will try cycling. It’s that they are saying the goal is to basically be the best at it in 3 years time. Just pointing that out, but I am with you and am rooting for KB. I like his style!
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I would be shocked if he won the Tour and will be very surprised if he ever even rides in it. But I think it would be cool to see him give it a shot. Tough for so many reasons like his age and not knowing how well he rides a bike. Having an engine is super important, but as we’ve seen from Roglic, if you can’t ride a bike very well what are the chances he makes it through 21 stages?