There’s YouTube videos of a guy who, on a downhill stretch, gets on his tummy and is like a rigid dart flying through the air, overtaking everyone at a ridiculous speed.
I was always curious if it was real and why not everyone does it.
I was always curious if it was real and why not everyone does it.
It is real! It's an extremely aerodynamic position.
> and why not everyone does it.
In races, it isn't a race legal position to use. In practice, it is a very unstable position and you can't race in it so there's not much point to taking the risk. UCI is notorious for being very strict about that sort of thing (even as so far as to ban sitting on the top tube or resting your forearms on the handlebars) and they change the rules regularly to get rid of anything they feel is too risky.
Anyway, roads bikes are pretty efficient even without a peloton. On roads. I've recently built a vintage road bike and only managed to burn 350 kcal on an 1 hr, 18 km ride. Most of it was in HR zone 2, easy. Almost flat, but still. Imagine what a velomobile could do.
Yeah this rule was ostensibly designed to prevent everyone from racing in knee-high, very tight compression socks. Shortly before this rule went in place some teams had found they had a subtle aero benefit by reducing profile and were planning to race in them. However, you get hotter.
I’m guessing this would be a different sport rather than cycling evolving.
If you want mass-start races where riders can agglomerate to reduce required power, then you're probably stuck with rules that make the bikes all much more alike than they are different.
If you want bicycle innovation, you have to go to time trial or endurance events, where drafting isn't a thing and thus the equipment could be anything.
Triathlon is a good example of how small rule changes can drastically change the dynamics of a race. They relax a lot of the UCI rules such as by allowing aerobars, but as a result you can't safely allow drafting, and the bike component of the races become far more spread out than a cycling race would be with a lot less importance laying on attacking or defending a position and group strategy becomes nonexistent. Some of that is due to the fact that there's still a run to go afterwards, but I'm pretty sure the average person would find the bike component of a triathlon less interesting than a cycling race to watch.
For those who want it, as PaulDavisThe1st mentioned, we have stuff like TT races, recumbent TT races, velo, etc. There's a lot of options in cycling depending on the niche you like.
I don’t know much about recumbent bikes.
Why is this statement true?
It seems to me that hills are still tough for recumbent bikes. Are efficient flats riders (maybe sprinters?) able to make up that much time over climbers in the flats?
A recumbent bike greatly reduces wind resistance and makes it so that the person in second does 10% less work rather than 50% (numbers are made up). It's not that hills are easier, but that pulling ahead on flats would actually be viable.
Some short course triathlons do allow drafting (including the Olympics), but those events also ban extended aero bars for safety. Athletes who compete in those events specifically practice riding in a peloton and know how to hold their lines in order to prevent crashes.
Not just for speed, but recumbents are terrible at cornering and are terrible for going uphill. Half the fun in large cycling races are the mountain stages where people go slowly uphill and then really fast and technical on downhills with many corners taken at high speeds. Recumbents would be terrible for that.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that rigid position was really fast though.
If I put the dropper post down on my mountain bike and get low when I am on a road hill I drop like a stone. I’ve often overtaken friends on road bikes doing that.
Matej Mohorič used a dropper post to win Milan-San Remo this year.
I could see them becoming a key aero tool on road bikes in future.
[0] Example of a particularly dangerous version: https://youtu.be/p0mE2b5zu48?t=133
This isn't really as unsafe as it looks... or at least not any more dangerous than keeping their feet on the pedals at that speed.
I spent a lot of time riding around velodromes... you only forget to stop peddling once on a fixie. It is like riding a bucking horse. Perfect example:
The guy obviously has skill and experience on two wheels, you kind of picked a poor example.
Yeah, that looks insanely dangerous. I wonder how much higher the COG is in that pose. At least the example you provided looks dense and lower.
It’s dangerous as hell.