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The Spokesmen Cycling Roundtable Podcast
Episode 169
Sunday, 24th September 2017
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUESTS:
David Bernstein
Richard Wittenberg
SPONSOR: Jenson USA
TOPICS
Saaaaagggggaaaan wins World Championships for record third time
Cookson is voted out as UCI president. Vive La France!
The Lugano Charter [PDF]
Breaking Away
Giro d’Italia to start in Israel – will protests mar the event?
The firestorm over a broken TT bar failure – Red Kite Prayer’s tech explanation.
TIPS
David’s nerdy way to protect bikes on a roof rack.
Police crackdown on “close pass” drivers leads to huge safety gains – Traffic West Midlands’ police twitter feed.
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Oh Carlton,
I’ve had to write. The latest Spokesman. Where do they get their views from?
Sky – consider the winnings for the golf open vs Wimbledon vs the Tour. Who gets the spread of winnings and for how many days effort is the reward for?
UCI and rules on bikes. It’s crazy. UCI track masters Euro Champs. GB women’s team had three. The French had four. That was okay, however, the sock length of one of the GB riders wasn’t!
Are the industry protecting themselves over their current bike brand position? If the rules were opened up then we would have a far more interesting competition and for us end users, miles more choice. Surely getting rid of the seat tube alone would cause most of us to rush to the shops? After all, once your have an aero-carbon , who swap? Then again, with the research on wide and flat tyres being better, the current frame design is screwed – going from conversions on stands at the Cycle Show NEC at the weekend. ‘27mm at a squeeze mate!’
Zwift – one course! Where the flip has David been riding on Zwift? Bkool – Seriously?! Cyclops? Does he like inaccurate power meters? The US bias is crazy.l! Elite are really knocking out accurate and reliable units. Tacx are leading the way and are also having reliability issues. Wahoo are incredible and really innovating. For us Brits, there is the new Wattbike Atom. However, Zwifters know of the generous watts kicked out by the IsitatrueWattbike.
The new smart-bikes are fascinating. Why have a decent bike and a £1k turbo, when you can have the full package in one and the ability to easily tweak position?
Just the thoughts of a casual cyclist.
Thanks,
Dave.
Thanks for commenting. David has tested lots of indoor-training systems; I haven’t (at a push I use rollers, and listen to R4’s News Quiz on catch-up).
Which smart-bikes do you mean?
Do you find it a little ironic the Spokesmen and others, rightly and yet rely at least in part on online retailers that are aiding that decline.
Salary caps are interesting, American sports leagues don’t all do them the same. I believe baseball teams can exceed the cap but pay a “luxury tax” back to the league. Spending on other things is less regulated so Sky would be free to get as large of a trailer as they would Ike. Of course, one of the huge differences between cycling and most other sport is the funding model. Sports played in closed arenas are mostly funded by TV revenue which comes from the organizer and ticket sales which are more or less equivalent across teams.
BTW: I was an Indiana student when Breaking Away was made. Many of my friends were on the road and track for the movie.
Bob, that’s a great BTW …
Johnathon Vaughters is the man to talk to about the broken model for teams.
Smartbike – Rumours have it that Zwift have changed the game. It is possible to train indoors successfully using Zwift and there is also the gym aspect. Marry Zwift with an easy to use gym bike, that is accurate and simple to use and it could be a winning formula. Firs out-of-the blocks are Wattbike with the Atom. Next, Wahoo, Elite or Tacx – or all of them? Imagine a fully customisable static-bike, that looks great, has an accurate power meter and that doesn’t need recalibration.
Ah, I see.
I have a fair few bits of tech from Wahoo.
A full-on smartbike would be good. If it meshed with the Apple Watch. For me, anyway.
If knocking out BLE and Ant +, maybe it would – using a third party app.
Dr James Gill, the TitaniumGeek.com – Britain’s verision of DC Rainmaker would be excellent on the show.