Giro D'Italia 2011 - Mountain Time Trial Bike Choice

May 24, Stage 16: Belluno - Nevegal 12.7km

I scanned through a recording of this stage expecting to see a range of variants of bike equipment choices as riders looked for marginal gains, but was surprised by the lack of variation.

The first thing that struck me was that the stage was far from straight forward with the first sector being a reasonably technical descent through the town of Belluno, before crossing a bridge and then beginning a gradual ramp up to the finish. The remainder of the climb was not unusual – a mix of switchbacks and straights before false flatting down to 1.6% for 900mtrs and a final 400mtr kick up at 6%

0 - 1660mtrs downhill
1660 – 5350 gradual ramp averaging 2.9%
5330 – 9760 average 10.4% peaking at 14%
9760 – 11350 6.4%
11350 – 12250 1.6%
12250 – 12650 6.0%

Alberto Contador set the fastest time of the day at 28:55 which was around 25Km/h average. In my mind the first priority is to minimise weight of the bike and rider. Pro Tour race bikes are often reported as having weight added to them to come up to the minimum permissible limit. Secondly the rider needs to be in the best position to optimise power when climbing , whilst minimising aerodynamic drag. Most things I read seem to suggest that below about 30km/h the aero impact is not very significant. Other factors would also include frame stiffness – i.e. you want all the power to get down to turning the wheels and not twisting the frame and bike handling for that tricky opening descent.

What I saw was a few standard road bikes with clip on tri bars, 1 dedicated TT bike – a Focus, with manual bar end shifters but the vast majority were road bike setups. There were some different wheel combinations - Scarpoini had a deep rim rear for instance.

Clearly there is a geometry difference between TT Bike and Road bike and the 'fast forward' position of TT bikes is obviously adopted for a purpose. With many sections of the course ridden out of the saddle, geometry largely goes out of the window.

I did notice Alberto Contador had obviously thought about aerodynamics and on the flatter sections of the course he often adopted a TT position with his hands right by the stem, elbows tucked in and thus minimising his frontal area and drag.

To me it looked like a perfect day for an aero road bike like the Cervelo S series, tweak the saddle position - which with various Cervelo's you can do by virtue of flipable seat post heads, fit clip ons and depending on where the weight is - a wheel set up that would have probably involved carbon of some depth. 

This half way house position means that you would be in control on the fast descent, have a good aero position on the flatter sections, but could still climb - in and out of the saddle in a comfortable position.

The factor that I can't account for is that it is a race that comes 2/3rds the way into the toughest Grand Tour, the GC is blown apart so marginal gains might not count for anything  in the grand scheme of things, and there could be knock on effects for riding a different set up which might compromise performance in following days.

Still at least as bike geeks we can talk about thesethings till the cows come home!

Checkout the photos and report from www.cyclingnews.com

 José Rujano - tiny guy noted for staying on the clip ons as soon as it was flattish and finished 4th.