The One Hour Record

wilmar13

Yeah he is a big boy, his website says he is 2M tall (about 6' 7") and 80-82KG in season, and 90KG out.
http://www.sosenka.cz/profil.html

gntlmn

Our new hero fits the stereotype of the TT specialist much more than Boardman did. Boardman was short. This Czech Sosenka is very tall--2.00 m or 6'7"--and weighs 181 lb or 82 kg.

http://www.athens2004.com/en/Partic...2&rsc=CRM012101

gntlmn

I'm glad to see your result agrees with mine. It seems like height and weight are often listed incorrectly on the web.

wilmar13

He is very light for his height, but he must be one of the tallest guys in the peloton...

gntlmn

I'm thinking again about the heat dissipation factor in the One Hour Record. I think this is a big factor. Consider Sosenka and Merckx, both tall guys, both very light for their heights, and both standouts in the Hour. Being tall is an advantage in the TT because the frontal surface area doesn't increase much more with height even though the rider is much taller. However, body weight becomes a big factor in dissipating heat--the lower the better without decreasing too much the lean body mass. They're going to be generating a lot of body heat as the wattage ramps up.

gntlmn

At 6'7" and 181 lbs, Sosenka's body mass index is 20.4, which is not deathly low. It's about ideal for long term longevity. I think 18 to 20 is best for non athletes with regard to maximum lifespan. It's lighter than most people in modern society.

http://nhlbisupport.com/bmi/

gntlmn

Interestingly, King of the Mountains winner in the 2005 Tour de France is Mickael Rasmussen. He's 5'9" and weighs 130 lbs, meaning his body mass index is 19.4, even lower than Sosenka's. Yet it seems that the best mountain climbers are not the best TT riders. It seems that the TT requires a little bit more muscle on the body.

gntlmn

Here's an awesome photo of the tall man in action in the velodrome: http://ida1.physik.uni-siegen.de/menn/sosenka.jpg

gntlmn

There were only something like 3 web pages dedicated to Sosenka the day after he broke the record. Now there are something like 6,000 web news pages. This just goes to show how much fame you can generate by breaking this record. Any readers ready to try?

wilmar13

BMI doesn't work for people that are taller than average. It gives you deceptive numbers when compared to smaller people as everything is proportionally larger.

Not sure about being taller giving you an advantage in TTing either. All riders with good position are showing shoulders and legs to the wind with the torso giving additional surface drag. Longer legs= more surface area... take two similarly proportioned riders, one tall and one average and the taller rider will also have more surface area from his body/shoulders.

Really the only thing that matters is power to surface area (or power to weight when climbing). You are saying taller helps this ratio, but I am not sure how, I think thinnner certainly does, and a guy that is really long and lean has an advantage, but it is more about the ratio than the absolute height(for example think of Bobby Julich who is not tall at all, but is very long and lean proportionally). I can garantee you that most of the NBA stars can't and never would be able to TT worth anything.

gntlmn

In hindsight, I'd say you're absolutely correct, but for different reasons. I think TTing (or cycling, for that matter) requires long term conditioning to develop the legs and the neuromuscular coordination to generate the smoothe motion required for world class performance. If those NBA players would have instead dedicated their lives to cycling instead of shooting hoops, I suspect we'd see a few of those names at the top of the heap. Reggie Miller might have been one of them. He was known to run his opposition into the dirt. But that's only my opinion. At this stage in their lives, they'd never make it. It takes too much time, and too much cut in salary.

taras0000

They would never make good TTers, even mediocre ones. Their genetic makeup predisposes them to quickness, not steady state endurance.

__________________
Taras

gntlmn

Here's a photo of Sosenka from a different angle. Certainly, the guy is lean and long limbed.

http://www.sosenka.cz/

gntlmn

Here's a progression of the UCI One Hour Record, from 1893 to present. Notice only 21 riders have held this honor in the past 112 years. It was broken by former record holders 6 times.

http://www.bikecafe.net/Press/PR.07...infostrada2.asp