It has been a pretty busy month for the sporting world, with the Olympics coming to a close just last week and the Tour de France just last month.
I haven’t really been following the Olympics, only managed to catch the Men’s and Women’s Road Race and Individual Time Trials, together with some Track and occasional BMX and MTB action. I have followed the Tour de France much closer, and whenever I’ve the opportunity I would watch the live telecast, or at least the highlights of that stage. I have also been following the power meter data by a few riders, as well as the interviews of the different riders.
The domination of Team Sky at the Tour de France this year, and the attempted one at the Olympics, has definitely caused me to reflect and try to draw some insights on what contributed to their success, and their failure.
Here are the 2 main insights that I have gained from watching both the Tour de France and Olympics:
Know what the race demands, then train specifically towards those demands
We all saw the way Team Sky took the race by its horns and dominated it. They had the yellow jersey after the first week, which was a pretty risky thing because it was still quite far from the finish line in Paris and there were still a lot of tough mountain stages to go through. This was in contrast with the Tour de France in 2011, where the yellow jersey was only decided on the day before the last stage in Paris.
What was even more interesting to watch, was how everyone in Team Sky could just get to the front, and set the tempo on the mountain stages especially which made many riders crack, yet at the same time annul any attacks easily (e.g Nibali’s attacks). There was no sharp acceleration from them, just a steady pace and occasional rise in the tempo to bring back any attacks (mind you, it made the attacks out front look stupid). Froome and Wiggins were able to hold such a high tempo that they made everything looks so easy. What’s the reason, you may ask. Another doping scandal on the rise?
It’s obvious that such a high sustained tempo could only mean one thing, lots and lots of specific training. Specific training to get the Lactate Threshold to a certain wattage, such that they could hold that specific high tempo. Specific training to allow them to produce a high power output on the slopes of the Tour de France, yet able to Time Trial like a motorbike on the flats.
The only way to know what to train for, is to look at what the race demands from the rider, and Team Sky did a really great job at just that. They were able to analyse every single detail of what it took to win the Tour de France from past power data of their riders (Wiggins was 4th in 2009) from similar races and were able to put together what the race demanded from their riders. The concept is simple: If you’re able to replicate what happens during racing as much as you can during training, the higher your chances of doing well. Training should thus be specific to that big race/event that you are aiming for.
It’s not all about the numbers, but also about guts, panache, and aggressiveness
We also saw how Team Great Britain (well Team Sky in essence) didn’t manage to deliver Cavendish to the line in first place to win the Gold medal in the Olympics Men’s Road Race. To be fair, they were forced to do all the chasing and control in the peleton (they only had 4 men to do that, excluding Cav), which looked almost impossible to pull off. The peleton took full advantage of that, and a sizeable amount of riders were in the winning breakaway at the end. Even though Team Sky might have the men and the right ‘numbers’ to accomplish such a task, it proved that racing is also about using your head, and having the guts to be aggressive even when the chances of winning are slim. We saw how riders like Gilbert and Nibali shoot off the front even though they knew there was quite a big chance of getting caught back. Racing requires panache, and the guts to try even when you know the odds are against you. A fine example would be the newly crowned Olympic Champion, Alexandre Vinokourov, who did a gutsy attack with Uran within the last 5km, and made a cunning move on him and sprinted to claim the Gold medal.
Of course, it is important to have a fine – tuned engine when you race. It is important to be able to hit a certain amount of wattage and train specifically to your races. But it is also just as important to have the racing smarts and aggressiveness to be able to use your engine to it’s maximum capacity.
I leave you with these 2 insights, do feel free to comment in the box below! Happy riding!
CrankSMART 