Old versus New.

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Smokin Joe

Legendary Member
[QUOTE 5443836, member: 9609"]I done a chart

MPH v Year
View attachment 439044

I'm wondering year to year variations could be something to do with climbing ?[/QUOTE]
Tours have got shorter, roads are better, training methods have improved out of all recognition, and equipment has got lighter and better.

As well as that up until the Lance era the top riders rode all the big classics from the start of the season to the end. No Tour contenders will do that now, they will often spend their entire season with everything specifically geared to the Tour de France and most wouldn't touch races like Paris-Roubaix of the Tour of Flanders with a bargepole. Up until fairly recently it would have been unheard of for the top riders to miss the World Championship road race, but neither Froome or Thomas bothered this year. The TdF has almost become a sport in it's own right.
 

Aravis

Putrid Donut
Location
Gloucester
Tours have got shorter, roads are better, training methods have improved out of all recognition, and equipment has got lighter and better.

As well as that up until the Lance era the top riders rode all the big classics from the start of the season to the end. No Tour contenders will do that now, they will often spend their entire season with everything specifically geared to the Tour de France and most wouldn't touch races like Paris-Roubaix of the Tour of Flanders with a bargepole. Up until fairly recently it would have been unheard of for the top riders to miss the World Championship road race, but neither Froome or Thomas bothered this year. The TdF has almost become a sport in it's own right.
I think @User9609 was asking about year by year fluctuations, not the overall upward trend.

The most conspicuous peaks in average speed were 1971 and 1981/82. The 1971 Tour included the stage to Marseille where they arrived two hours ahead of schedule. That's enough in itself to increase the average speed by half a mile an hour. I don't know much about the 1982 Tour, but 1981 was unusual in that it started in Nice, made an immediate foray into the hills and then went almost straight to the Pyrenees, so the real GC battle started very early. Except it was more a procession than a battle.

Maybe having a closer look at some of the slower tours will reveal a stage or two where they rode particularly slowly. The 1968 event might be worth looking at. Following the disaster the previous year I believe the route was quite conservative - it was won by a sprinter/all rounder type (Janssen) - but the overall speed was quite low.

From my recollection, the first to build a season around a small number of events (basically the Tour and the World Championship, nothing else mattered) was Lemond. The modern riders look pretty busy by comparison.
 

rogerzilla

Legendary Member
Greg LeMond rode and won lots of other races before his hunting accident but suffered from erratic form afterwards (he had a shocking reputation for DNFs). Also, half the peloton had started using EPO by the time LeMond stopped winning.
 

Aravis

Putrid Donut
Location
Gloucester
Greg LeMond rode and won lots of other races before his hunting accident but suffered from erratic form afterwards (he had a shocking reputation for DNFs). Also, half the peloton had started using EPO by the time LeMond stopped winning.
I don't think you'll find Lemond was a frequent winner at any stage of his career. When he won the Vassivière time trial in 1985, I remember Liggett saying in commentary (admittedly not an absolute guarantee of accuracy) that it was his first win in any race since the 1983 World Championship. You'd have to discount the white jersey win in 1984 to have a chance of it being 100% true.

Sure, the shooting accident was an exceptional event and changed a lot of things thereafter. But I'm sure I remember him being quite open about having a non-traditional way of organising his season even before the accident, and I suspect he was quite influential.
 

Gravity Aided

Legendary Member
Location
Land of Lincoln
Dodging bomb craters and snipers probably didn't help either.
No Tour de France during the war. Even though L'Auto was collaborating , they would not organize a race, so i'm told. After the war, the race went to L'Equipe, due to L'Autos collaborationist ties. After that, it went to Amaury and La Paris Libere.
In my town, growing up, there was an old resistance fighter , btw.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_de_France_during_World_War_II
 

si_c

Guru
Location
Wirral
Even if a steel bike could run with the pack (and I've yet to see any evidence one couldn't do so with a comparable rider), that ain't what's putting the food on their table.
Genesis Volare 953 Team. Was used by Madison genesis for a couple of years. Gorgeous bike too.
 

overmind

My other bike is a Pinarello
The main thing is being happy with what you've got. Old or new, heavy or light if it puts a smile on your face you're a winner.

I am happy with what I have. I have a BTwin Triban 3 (the red one) which I use in the summer. In the winter I have an old Amazon Vittesse (sic) racer which has been modified into a hybrid (by me). I taught myself bicycle mechanics by watching YouTube videos and the thing I like best is being able to feel when something is a little out of sync (e.g. wheel bearing, bb bearings, wheels out of true, gear wrong) and the thought that I can fix it when I get home. Its a bit like that scene in the movie Rush.

 
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