Monday, April 7, 2008

This Week in Pro Racing "Fabian was capable of expressing an average output of about 700-800 watts on the last 2 minutes of the race."
- Dr. Michele Ferrari, Italian Cycling Coach
Picture Courtesy : Graham Watson In Fashion : This handy performance upgrade, called 'faith', may buy you anywhere from zero to an infinite amount of power. Since it exists only in the confines of the heart and mind, it is very quite lightweight and suited by many professionals.

Picture Courtesy Tim de Waele The infamous Koppenberg presents a behemoth 22% gradient. This makes it extremely difficult to negotiate even for top professional cyclists. Quite often, riders slow almost to the point of losing their balance (especially those at the back of the peloton) who have to dismount and scramble to the top on foot, pushing their bikes.
Phil Liggett was right. You get off your bike in dirt and pain and keep fighting the question, 'why am I making a living like this?'

Forward the video below to 3:05.

Angel Gomez, a Saunier Duval rider loses concentration and hits a right curb (called a 'traffic island'), throwing him violently in the air and dead onto the road. Notice the front wheel separates from the bike and rolls mangled like a toy. Loose quick release skewer, broken hub or should this really happen?

According to PPOL News, "he was immediately taken to AZ Hospital in Oudenaarde, where X-rays showed he had fractured his right radius. He´ll be operated on this evening and discharged tomorrow, only to return to Spain for a rehab process that´s going to take several weeks."

I'm surprised he only broke his radius!
Video Courtesy MIHA 2007.

Posted by Ron George at 10:31 PM Labels: 2008 Races, Cycling Injuries, Equipment Misbehavior, Racers Gunnar said...

Actually you might notice in the video that his steer tube broke off the fork.

I don't think it's unreasonable for a modern bike to break in such a situation (30 mph head-on into a traffic island). I'm glad his injuries wasn't more serious.

April 8, 2008 at 12:42 AM Good observation. I seemed to have missed it. I stilled the video at 3:12 and checked it out. Looks to me like a piece of lower fork was firm on the hub.
Yes this seems very much like a steerer tube failure, which is a common occurrence as I have been documenting for sometime now.
[null, {"document_url": "http://www.georgeron.com/2008/04/this-week-in-pro-racing.html", "unformatted_src": "http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_urSQl6wUA5g/R_ponQ4mbPI/AAAAAAAABjk/7DNC0XHZPCk/s400/23.jpg", "src": "http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_urSQl6wUA5g/R_ponQ4mbPI/AAAAAAAABjk/7DNC0XHZPCk/s400/23.jpg"}, null, {"document_url": "http://www.georgeron.com/2008/04/this-week-in-pro-racing.html", "unformatted_src": "http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_urSQl6wUA5g/R_ppeg4mbQI/AAAAAAAABjs/EeZm6jsAn4U/s400/sptdw073b.jpg", "src": "http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_urSQl6wUA5g/R_ppeg4mbQI/AAAAAAAABjs/EeZm6jsAn4U/s400/sptdw073b.jpg", "formatted_filename": "sptdw b"}, null, {"document_url": "http://www.georgeron.com/2008/04/this-week-in-pro-racing.html", "unformatted_src": "http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_urSQl6wUA5g/R_ptkw4mbRI/AAAAAAAABj0/M-OQRUWqOO8/s400/11.jpg", "src": "http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_urSQl6wUA5g/R_ptkw4mbRI/AAAAAAAABj0/M-OQRUWqOO8/s400/11.jpg"}, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null]