Thursday, June 18, 2015

Watch and learn...


The occasion is stage 7 of the 2009 Tour de France. Maillot jaune Fabian Cancellara had double punctured. That he would lose the yellow jersey was beyond doubt; there was a break up the road and this was the day Contador would show his teeth on the climb to Arcalis—the stage finish. Still, Cancellara didn’t want to finish the day alone, behind the laughing group so he dropped down the Porte del Comte in a way that a stage leader will rarely risk.
Clearly, when it comes to descending, Cancellara is doing it right. I’ve seen plenty of video of pros at the Tour taking turns in ways that seem to lack an understanding of basic geometry. Cancellara’s body positioning is a manual of physics, an illustration for every lesson I took from Davis Phinney’s interviews in Winning Magazine.
I’ve watched this just to examine his upper body position. I’ve watched it to look at his legs, his hips, when he keeps a pedal down vs. when he keeps the cranks parallel to the ground. And I’ve watched just to look at the lean angle of his bike in those most extreme turns as a means to remind me just what a bike can capably execute.

Thanks to Red Kite Prayer

2 comments:

Andrew said...

Just like Hotham 2014! Poetry.

Steve said...

That's very cruel...:)