1.When aero gains go too far

Rowman, I want to talk about when does the quest for arrow gains? When does this quest go too far? Let's cure that intro! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness, and our long changes? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Rowman Podcast. Roadman! Welcome back, Roadman! It's another Roadman cycling podcast. Thanks for joining me. I hope everybody had an amazing bank holiday weekend and it was full of nice, boy croiding, adventure, exploration, laughs and maybe a small few beers. Bank holiday here in Ireland. I realize it wasn't a bank holiday everywhere around the world, but look, you'll have to put up with me sitting on my ass on bank holiday Mondays on the Irish schedule. The joys of being Irish. Your Olympics are going on at the moment that I'm absolutely loving the track. The track cycling I suppose the track athletics. You know, I don't know what's going on in that. But track cycling, that's what I want to talk about. But today I want to specifically dig into one aspect of the track and that's aerodynamics because if you see how far the times have advanced. Like if you look at two Olympic cycles ago, the girls now in the women's team pursuit are going as fast as the Bradley Wiggins team with Garan Thomas saying that an air Clancy to one gold back a decade ago. It's phenomenal how much and that leads to getting slightly better. No doubt we're getting sports on since filtering from British cyclers spending crazy money on this and the sports ons around recovery, dealing strategies, strength and condition of working the gym. That's all going on a bit, but that's coming on small amounts where the huge gains are being made is aerodynamics. And this is the Olympics for me that's potentially marking the turning point in. When is the quest for aerodynamics too much? Yesterday if you had a chance to look at the men's team pursuit, we seen the Australian rider and he was riding on this new 3D printed aerobar. So if you're not familiar with this. The Aerobar, it's like a typical time trial bar. So with Aerodynamics, it's a quest for CDA, coefficient of frontal drag, and you want to lower the drag. It's that amount of frontal area that's exposed to the wind as you're going around. And that's really what the biggest factor in slowing a rotor down is this drag of the rotor. So we do everything we can to minimize this from shoe covers to aero helm, it's to dimpled fabric to even cotton skin suits leaves and we'll get into some of the other things Team Denmark we're down in a little bit but everyone's trying to push the envelope on this and one of the big innovations that's happened in the last couple of years we've seen this in filtering down to the world tour it's the Arrow Bar itself so the bar was creating a pocket of air so the air the forearm that sits into the ski was wider than the bar itself so it was creating a weird pocket of resistance. So some clever folk are came along and he decided what if we take a mould of a roidor's arm, 3D print this mould and use this as the arrowbar because it removes that pocket of air. So that's what most of the top teams have been doing. But yesterday Australia who are rowing these 3D printed bars broke and it broke resulting in a pretty horrific look and crash. No major damage but crashing on the track is no joke, I've crashed on the track in my short but colorful life a few times. I remember my first ever track camp within Irish team. I got picked through a talent identification where you go in and you do four minutes and I didn't know what I was doing. And I went in, I think I was around 70 kilograms and I was probably wearing like soccer shorts.

2.Track crashes and the sock rule

I think I'd done 48, 45 watts for four minutes. And that was enough to get me into this talent identification program when I went off and you know so I could learn a moulded me and brought me through track plans but one of my four sessions on the track I actually slid down the bank and when you're up very high there's a minimum speed you need to do to keep to keep stuck to the track and I'd finished an effort and I went up high and I was just kind of rolling down super easy and I slid down the track and I got a pretty bad splinter and bad enough that I had to get eight stitches in my ass to get get the splinter caught out of me in the hospital with a scalpel and then sewn back up. So crashing on the track is no joke, it hurts like shit and you always get these splinters. The Aussie lad went down heavy yesterday, no doubt he's picking splinters out himself. He didn't start today, they brought in the reserve instead. But a call to me, a call into question for me, this idea of you know, arrow gains. And when is when do we stop pushing this envelope and deemed that you can only push it so far before safety becomes an issue. And this was really calling the question again today for Denmark have been over the last few years the fastest team pursuit team in the world. They're working with Dan Bingham who is an aerodynamic specialist. He's involved in the company AeroCulture. I'm not sure if he's a founder or one of the founding partners but he's involved there and they do a lot of aerodynamic testing, aerodynamic design. and Denmark have brought him in for aerodynamic assistance into the squad. So yesterday he tried to circumvent the rule of the height your sock can be. So a sock has to finish, and now this is a crazy rule for anyone who's not super geeky out. You're probably thinking, what the hell is this about? Your sock has to finish midway between the end of your ankle and the start of your calf, and that's where your sock has to finish. and there's a certain height parameters and stuff you get into, but really the reason is they don't want people using these huge socks because Lycra is smoother surface and you can put dimples on and stuff similar to like a wooden golf ball to help it fly through the air faster. You can dimple fabric where you can't dimple your skin. So Denmark decided to try and circumvent this rule by using Kinesia tape, like a big cilla tape or plaster, up their shane to smooth the air flow and they got away with a bit of complaint about it so they removed the first day. Now today is race is what I want to talk about because it was Denmark, GB, and it was a place in the gold medal roid off at stake for the winner. And we had Denmark absolutely roid an amazing scintillating roid. They were coming around to lap GB. GB had Charlie Tanfield in, who was their reserve after Ed Clancy. He suffered from sciatica. So we had to pull out an effectively end on his olympic career and I suppose actually just before I go on and tell you about the Denmark 10 just a word for a Clancy because for Olympic cycles probably wanted the own song heroes in British cycling if not world cycling hugely decorated with the for Olympics tree goals in that his multiple world titles along the way very much an own song hero in the media as well nobody ever talks about on board an absolute stalwart in the success of British cycling for the last decade. So, real change in the regard to see him leaving the British team pursuit and a side-end to it as well at sciatic. And if you remember back to the last Olympics in Rio, it was talk even if he compies us or he continued competing that he'd be wheelchair-bound, his back problems were that bad.

3.Blind at 60km/h: Madsen's position

So, that's testament to his dedication as well and how much he wants to represent GB. But Charlie Tanfield came in and a high-pressurized situation to come in. He's fifth man, maybe not expecting to ride and then he comes in and to think about this for a bad day for Charlie Tanfield. He comes in late now to see all that pressure coming into the GB team, the best team pursuit team in the world historically. He's down to three men, you need to finish with three men, he is the toward man at this point and then he's dropped which is a fucking disaster getting dropped when you're a man tree because the time doesn't stop, the clock doesn't stop running until man tree. So he's dropped from the two British riders up front, they don't know, so he's having to ride the black line, the race line as fast as he can because the clock won't stop until he finishes. So you can't trust that if a rider is dropped, a forward rider and he pulls out, you don't need to finish with four, you only need to finish with three. So if you're dropped and forward man, I swing up the track high and I stay out of the way. But because Charlie Tanfield is dropped, he still needs to finish. So he's on the black line trying to get around as fast as he can to stop the clock. Now Denmark are on the road in their life, potentially going for the world record of Italy and the Denmark front-lad it was Frederick Madsen he has his head down and this is where Dan Bingham comes in again and why I told this one the quest for Errogance and when is it too much? He's in this position that is completely visually restrictive his hands are up blocking his head and I realize this isn't the video but I just mimicking the position. His hands are blocking his head. All the vision he has in front of him is the black line below him. That is all he can see. Nothing else. So picture it right at 60km an hour. Full gas and you can't see anything. He's like a horse that has blinkers on him. Just the black line behind him. I'll be honest with you, I've done it on the tandem with this head down position and it's fucking terrifying. I remember the first time doing it and thinking what the hell like. This just isn't worth it. It's terrifying. But these lads are so used to it, and it's a faster position. So everyone has their head down. You're straining your eyeballs, looking up as much as you can to try and get a glimpse of when the corner is starting, so you can start turning. And he has this position. He hasn't glimpsed up because he's just come out of the bend. So he knows he's a little bit of time before he needs to start looking for the next bend. He's not expecting to see Charlie Tanfield in the black lion and he just smashes straight into the back of him. So Charlie Tanfield has now been drafting late, now he's been dropped, now he's on a low air after being dropped and Madsen smashes into the back of him and the compound that had insult to injury. Charlie Tanfield has done nothing wrong at this point but away, it's entirely Danish order. The Danish order gets off and starts screaming at him. So it's an absolute joke shop, Nightmare Day for Charlie Tanfield, and really for a cause into question this whole aerial position and should there be some sort of safety assessment on A, the structure and integrity of these bars like the Australian team, they said they're stress tested but clearly not stress tested enough if that's happening. Crazy amount of GE force gone through the track in that corner and it's different in every track because every track is bank differently given different amount of GE gone through the corners. Also, this position, it needs to be looked at, you need to be able to see where the fuck you're going and common sense needs to prevail because it's just going to get more and more dangerous unless we start.

4.Italy's world record and Bennett's return

And this is the thing with the UCO, they spend all their time on this stupid fucking shit like, you know, the super talk on the road, which has never ever caused a crash. And this is the stuff that they're ignoring. It's amazing how incompetent they are. Italy, by the way, broke the world record of Felipe Bogana's honed them around 3 minutes 42 seconds for a 4 kilometer pursuit. That's astonishing. If you've ever ridden a 4 kilometer pursuit, it's Ridiculous folks. So it's I can't believe how fast that is. It's a combination of crazy arrow gains Well-jailed team and the fastest pursuit are we've ever seen for Lee Bogana Tomorrow's falling. I'll Denmark got into the final decision of the commissar after the crash because they had caught the British team So it's going to be an amazing ride off tomorrow for a goal between Denmark and Italy. We'll probably see another World Record goal. I absolutely cannot wait for that. Well, maybe before I sign off today, just one brief bit of breaking news I say in just a start in the podcast that Sam Bennett has confirmed that he's gone back to Borahansgrove for a next season. He was obviously with him between 2014 and 2019 and he's had quite public falling out with Patrick LaFeyevre who equated him going back to Bora as beaten housewife returning after a series of domestic violence. LaFeyevre could well be seen island losing his mind. Sagand's gone, Ackerman's gone, both their respective lead outs are gone to their new teams. So that means the way is clear for Ben to come back. He's going to bring Archie Bold with with him from the kind of quick step. Archie Balth followed him around since on post. He's gonna bring Ryan Mullen across from Trek, Sega, Fredo, and I've believed that Evan Popel is going around as well. So he's coming from one-to-group, Go-Bare. So Sam Bennett in a very brief statement said, it was a difficult decision to leave, but I decided I need to continue my professional and personal development in a new environment. Well, some may have questioned my decision at the time. I believe it's a right move to his horn to Bora. I've enjoyed two great seasons at the kind of quick step. boyhood dream team and I've continued my development boat on and off the bike while making lifelong friendships. Sam has gone high when Patrick LeFavor has gone low. Now it's good that he hasn't buttered getting involved in the chit for Tassen. Hopefully Bennett's getting paid what he's worked because he's over 30 years old now, 31 years old. He hasn't got a lot of big seasons left in him. So let's hope he gets his big paycheck that sets him up for his retirement years. Roadman, I've got a super exotic guest tomorrow. Make sure you tune in for that one, especially if you're a fan of the bio hacking genre. And don't forget the finals on tomorrow, Denmark versus Italy. Roadman, be safe. And in those quest for arrow gains, make sure you remember saying that one of my first coaches gave me head up, accents down. Jazzy tomorrow, Roadman. Hey everybody, it's Anthony again. Really quick, I want to invite you to join arguably the best thing I've ever put out inside the roadman community. It's a challenge. It's a challenge called a 14-day Kickstarter challenge. So regardless of where your fitness is at right now, this is going to be the catalyst for making you faster and making you the leaner. I've created this challenge to take the guesswork out of everything. It's 14 days of training plans regardless of what your level is. There's a master's beginner, advanced, there's meal plans, shopping list and even a video course holding your hand and talking you through at all.