Get up to the minute entertainment news, celebrity interviews, celeb videos, photos, movies, TV, music news and pop culture on ABCNews.com. Downhills at the Tour de France Test Cyclists Against Time, Danger and One Another. NICE, France—Their fingers were too numb to grip a water bottle, let alone the brakes. As the freezing rain turned to hail on a Saturday afternoon in March, the riders in the peloton shivered their way up the Col Saint- Roch. At the top, there was no relief. As hard as the ascent was, the worst part of the stage was ahead of them: They now had to plunge down the hill. French rider. Tony Gallopin. Lotto- Soudal, who was chasing the leaders’ group in the Paris- Nice cycling race, knew the famously steep drop in the hills behind Nice would be hair- raising. But like a lot of modern riders, he had learned that seconds could be mined on these mountain descents. Chasing world road race champion. Some people are fans of the Tampa Bay Bucs. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Tampa Bay Bucs. This 2017 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the. Famed white hat hacker Marcus Hutchins—better known as “MalwareTech”—was arrested by the FBI yesterday while trying to fly home to the United Kingdom from Las. News, sports, features, obituaries, advertising, and special online features from the city's daily newspaper. Michal Kwiatkowski. He moved his backside off the saddle and practically rested his chin on the handlebars, where he clung on for dear life. On the slick, narrow roads, any debris, any jerky twist of the wheel, would cause his inch- wide tires to skid at more than 5. From there, he could be thrown into the side of a cliff, a guardrail or into sheer oblivion. Mr. Gallopin pulled away when Mr. Kwiatkowski ran out of gas, and he eventually swooped down the final descent alone to win the stage. His body and bicycle had made it in one piece. His nerves, not so much. I took a lot of chances,” Mr. Gallopin said in French at the finish. And the brakes weren’t working at the beginning. I scared the daylights out of myself.” Not often discussed, riding downhill is cycling’s supreme test of derring- do. Even seasoned pros avoid going downhill full tilt if they can help it. And as the Tour de France sets off Saturday with two- time Tour champion. Alberto Contador. Spain, 2. 01. 3 winner. Chris Froome. of Great Britain, 2. Vincenzo Nibali. of Italy and the 2. Nairo Quintana. of Colombia battling for the lead, the difference, cycling experts and riders say, may very well come on the way down.“There’s been a flurry in the last couple of years of guys like Nibali, who have seen that there are gains to be made in the descents,” said. Dave Brailsford. the architect of Team Sky’s victories in the 2. Tours. Bicycle makers continue to produce lighter machines with better grip and more powerful brakes. Riders have been flirting with unheard of speeds during descents, touching 7. And race organizers have been responding with more challenging mountain stages than ever. The past four editions of the Tour all featured at least 1. Ten of the descents in this summer’s race are even stiffer, averaging at least a 6% downhill, including the notoriously technical Col d’Allos in the race’s final week.“In bike racing, there are 9. That descent is too dangerous and we shouldn’t be doing that,’ ” said. Jonathan Vaughters. U. S. Postal Service and Crédit Agricole rider who now runs the Cannondale- Garmin team. And the other 1. 0% are thinking, ‘This is how I’m going to win this race.’ ”In the sport’s rampant doping years, all the focus was on the climb—the area where riders with enhanced blood could make up the most ground. But today, with doping believed to be far less prevalent, one of the biggest advantages seems to be a matter of guts. Descending barely requires pedaling, just seriously advanced bike handling. The only limit is the rider’s appetite for risk. Sometimes you’ve got to do bad stuff to get down a hill quickly,” said Cannondale- Garmin rider. Alex Howes. “Stuff your mom wouldn’t watch you doing on TV.”Testing boundaries. This summer’s Tour marks two significant anniversaries in its tumultuous love affair with the mountains. It is the 4. 0th birthday of the iconic red- polka- dot jersey, awarded to the Tour’s King of the Mountains. But it is also 2. Fabio Casartelli. Col de Portet- d’Aspet in the Pyrenees, a section of road that still appears on the Tour. Mr. Casartelli isn’t cycling’s only victim of the downhill. More recently, the 2. Giro d’Italia claimed the life of. Wouter Weylandt. ; the 2. Giro left. Pedro Horrillo. May. Domenico Pozzovivo. Giro after a gruesome crash while aggressively rounding a corner. So when organizers hear fans demand more daring stages, more made- for- television drama, these considerations weigh on their minds.“I see sometimes on social networks, ‘They don’t dare try anything. Shouldn’t we have a time- trial in a descent?’ ” Tour de France director. Christian Prudhomme. We would never do that. It would be irresponsible. It’s insane. Yes, it could spice things up, but to what extent: killing people? It makes no sense.”Still, organizers test the boundaries. They know that mountains drive ratings. At the 2. 00. 9 Giro, after Mr. Horrillo’s downhill crash, the peloton protested a course for being too dangerous. The boys in the bunch are livid,” Lance Armstrong wrote on Twitter at the time. Two years later, also at the Giro, the peloton considered another protest after seeing the gravel- road descent off the infamous Monte Crostis. There is not just one or two but 1. Women cyclists are also squeezing seconds out of downhill stretches, although their top stage races, such as the Giro Rosa in Italy and Women’s Tour of Britain, are much shorter. Marianne Vos. the world’s top female cyclist, has worked closely with mountain bikers for years to hone her technique riding downhill, most recently at her team’s January camp in Spain. It is no coincidence that Ms. Vos, also a multiple world champion in cyclocross, has used her speed in technical descents to build leads in all three of her women’s Giro wins.“When you’re actually looking at mountain stages in the Tour de France and doing reconnaissance of them, you’re reconning the descents more than the climbs,” Mr. Vaughters said. “Because at the end of the day, the climbing, that’s just a physical effort. A climb is a climb is a climb.”Each mountain crest brings a set of potentially life- or- death questions. Riders’ heart rates slow from around 2. Vital downhill skills include precisely timed braking, efficient cornering and a mastery of aerodynamics. How do you cut the corner?” said Trek Factory Racing’s. Fabian Cancellara. Tours and one of the best downhill riders in the professional peloton. Do you brake? Not brake? How much do you trust the tires?”Some questions are less technical and more existential. They all affect how hard a rider is prepared to go, Mr. Cancellara said. “Are you young? Are you a bit older? What are your goals? Do you have a family? Do you have kids?”It can take months to restore confidence after even a small crash downhill, Mr. Cancellara explained. Lars Boom. a Dutch rider for the Astana team, said he had to coach himself back to descending at full speed after his first daughter was born. The problem is that descending is almost impossible to practice at top speed. It is too dangerous for teams to send their best riders hurtling down mountains with nothing at stake. Plus, they don’t get roads to themselves in training the way they do on the closed course of a race. You either have it or you don’t have it, this skill,” Mr. Cancellara said. For those who do, technology is constantly giving them the tools to maneuver faster. Carbon- fiber bike frames made the first impact when they began replacing steel and aluminum in the late- 1. The frames used by professional riders now weigh around 2 pounds, making them faster—but also more finicky. At the same time, manufacturers have made advances in the development of rubber compounds for tires, improving grip at high speeds. But the biggest jump has come in the brakes department. Improvements in the materials and precision of caliper brakes—two pads on each wheel squeezing the rim, a design used for a century—have given the riders the ability to carry huge speeds into bends.“The stopping power and modulation has improved a lot, even though it’s still just within the caliper- brake realm,” said Cannondale- Garmin team leader Andrew Talansky. Brakes are about to improve more with a major innovation: disc brakes. Commercially available on road bikes, they operate by giving the brake pads a cleaner surface to act on. Instead of pinching the rim of the wheel—which also needs to be light, strong and aerodynamic—the brakes squeeze a disc at the wheel’s center. The bike manufacturers’ lobby has been urging the sport’s governing body to approve disc brakes for use in the three Grand Tour competitions—the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a España—for years. Entertainment News |Latest Celebrity News, Videos & Photos - ABC News.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
November 2017
Categories |