Re: Most significant advance in bike technology for speed?

On 1/25/2025 1:43 PM, cyclintom wrote:

On Fri Jan 24 18:00:57 2025 Zen Cycle  wrote:

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I'm going to take issue with this claim. The speeds have been showing a
steady increase. "Great" increase is somewhat subjective, and taking
into account the general "square-law effect" with going faster on a
bicycle, a increase of 1MPH from 28 to 29 MPH could indeed be considered
a "great" increase over going from 25 to 26 MPH.
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Granted, this has little to do with integrated shifting, my nit is over
the claim "there was no great increase in average race speeds....since
about 1960"
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from wikipedia, the top ten fastest editions of PAris-Roubaix were:
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   Mathieu van der Poel (NED)    47.80 km/h (29.70 mph)     2024
   Mathieu van der Poel (NED)    46.84 km/h (29.11 mph)     2023
   Dylan van Baarle (NED)        45.79 km/h (28.45 mph)     2022
   Greg Van Avermaet (BEL)    45.20 km/h (28.09 mph)     2017
   Peter Post (NED)        45.13 km/h (28.04 mph)     1964
   Fabian Cancellara (SUI)    44.19 km/h (27.46 mph)     2013
   Rik Van Steenbergen (BEL)    43.99 km/h (27.33 mph)     1948
   Mathew Hayman (AUS)        43.91 km/h (27.28 mph)     2016
   Peter Sagan (SVK)        43.55 km/h (27.06 mph)     2018
   Pino Cerami (BEL)        43.54 km/h (27.05 mph)     1960
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Out of the top ten in the 100+ year history of the race, 6 are within
the past ten years. I challenge anyone to argue against a 10% increase
since Sagan in 2018 to VDP in 2024 as anything but a "great" increase.
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Milan/San Remo shows a similar trend. From
https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/milano-sanremo/results/fastest- editions
   :
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Edition    Year    Avg. speed
115    2024    46.11
114    2023    45.773
113    2022    45.331
97    2006    45.268
112    2021    45.06
100    2009    44.421
98    2007    43.665
110    2019    43.625
104    2013    43.577
102    2011    43.486
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It certainly isn't due to drivetrain technology, I'll suggest the trend
towards wider tires has a great deal to do with it, but more so training
and diet technological advances.

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Got that Frank, he takes issue with your comments despite the fact that these courses all change change a little from year to year, the speeds on the hardeat races despite being shorter than in the past are going down and not up.

the speeds of the hardest races are going down?
Paris roubaix
Mathieu van der Poel   47.80 km/h (29.70 mph)     2024
Mathieu van der Poel   46.84 km/h (29.11 mph)     2023
Dylan van Baarle       45.79 km/h (28.45 mph)     2022
https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/paris-roubaix/results/fastest-editions
https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/liege-bastogne-liege/results/fastest-editions
https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/tour-de-france/results/fastest-editions
https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/giro-d-italia/results/fastest-editions
Must be more of that "tommy math"

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While I don't agree with your use of flat rides that are all in high gear and things like STI are unlikely to have effect, Flunky's comments at least are rediculous.

Sure sparky, show a reference to an overall trend which shows that race speeds are going down.