British Cycling – The Crux Of The Success
If you want to go faster, you have to cut drag to a minimum, as any racing car designer will tell you. But with cycling, it’s just a bit more difficult! Or it was until Crux Product Design of Bristol got in on the act and came up with futuristic streamlined helmets. The story is here on This is Bristol. There are also some great pictures on the Crux website.
It just shows how redesigning something as mundane as a cycling helmet can reap big rewards.
What other simple things need to be redesigned? Or should it be designed properly for once?
The French Say Things Differently
The row about the bikes ridden by the British cyclists at the Olympics continues according to this in the Guardian.
The sprinter François Pervis, who had tweeted “la sodomie continue” (rough translation, “we got shafted again”) after Jason Kenny’s victory over Grégory Baugé in the match sprint final, said on Monday that he was certain the British were not using drugs, but that they had the edge on the equipment front. “I am sure they are clean but their kit …
So you now know how to say you’ve been shafted again in French.
Britain’s Secret Ingredient – The Twenty-Third Of March
Someone has just pointed out on Radio 5 Live, that Steve Redgrave, Chris Hoy and Mo Farah, all share the same birthday; the 23rd of March. They were born in 1962, 1976 and 1982 respectively.
Believe it or not they share the date with Roger Bannister, who was born in 1921.
The theme is carried on by Chris Hoy’s colleague Jason Kenny, who won gold in Beijing and London.
The British Secret In The Velodrome – Round Wheels
The French are getting a bit uppity about the British bikes in the velodrome.
The British have joked that they use round wheels and the French have swallowed the story, hook, line and sinker. Read about it here in the Standard.
But I doubt, that the story is very far from the truth. Even your car from humble run-arounds upwards, has its wheels properly balanced, at manufacture and when new tyres are fitted. We’ve all been in cars, where there has been vibration because of out-of-balance wheels.
So I suspect that British cycling has borrowed from Formula One and other industries that spin things fast, and developed extremely accurate roundness and balance sensing for bicycle wheels. So they run straighter and truer than the best the French can do!
I didn’t do the work myself, but forty years ago, I worked in a department at Plastics Division of ICI, that did a lot of calculations in this area, to try to stop vibrations in chemical vessels. So the theory is nothing new.
It is the application of technology to bicycles, helmets and other things, that have given the British the edge. I doubt that cycling is the only sport to have benefited either!
Death Of A Cyclist
It is always very sad when someone dies, but the death of a cyclist outside the Olympic Stadium is creating a few waves as well.
He was knocked off his bike and killed by a media bus, at a place that cyclists have said was dangerous for years. It was the typical cyclist under a turning vehicle accident, if any accident is typical.
I know it doesn’t help his family, but Bradley Wiggins has made strong statements about safety and said that all cyclists should wear helmets at all times.
One subsidiary point, was that quite a few of the soldiers guarding the Olympics were about but sadly couldn’t save the victim. Surely, this in itself is an argument for using soldiers at big events, as I suspect their emergency medical skills are a lot better than your average security guard.
Newham Pushes The Bike Out
Newham was welcoming visitors and handing out information from a bicycle with a large box on the front, much like those used to dispense ice cream.
Newham Pushes The Bike Out
It’s a simple eco-friendly method and should be used more often. The picture incidentally was taken by the cable-car and it was quiet.
Arise Sir Bradley
If after his exploits this year in the Tour of France (It’s the Anglo-Saxon’s now!) and then his untouchable performance in the Olympic time-trial yesterday, where he made a world-class field look like amateurs, he must be odds-on to be knighted in the near future. The web certainly thinks so.
Would he be the first Sir Bradley?
Searching the Internet only finds an anti-gay evangelical Christian web-site, a US wrestler called Sir Bradley Charles and a Sir Bradley Avenue in Sacramento, California. In my book only the last one has any credence. So who was it named after?
So I think he would be the first Sir Bradley!
There of course a lot of sites saying he should be knighted.
For different reasons, such as his part in bringing the Olympics to London, it can’t be long before Her Majesty corrects the mistake the Greeks made over David Beckham, by adding a knighthood to his name.
Did The Cyclists Have a Plan B?
It was very disappointing, that Mark Cavendish or one of the other GB cyclists didn’t win any medals in the Road Race today.
But as we saw in the Tour de France, they are not exactly untalented, so when their tactics were failing, as commentators were saying, why did they not change them?
It should be noted that when Mark Cavendish won the World Championships, the teams were larger, so the small team size probably didn’t help.
It seemed too, that the Germans didn’t have an alternative plan either, so it’s not just a British problem.
On the other hand in the Tour de France, plans appear to be changed regularly to suit the circumstances. But then the riders there are much more controlled from coaches in the cars and are in radio contact!
It strikes me that cycling teams need to evolve a better way of working.
Promenade des Anglais
This is the headline on the front page of The Times complete with a picture of Bradley Wiggins in yellow.
The Times for July 23rd, 2012
Not quite in the same vein as The Sun’s infamous “Hop Off You Frogs”, but it has a similar impact, especially as it is balanced by an article inside entitled “France hails its favourite Englishman” Even the French President, Francois Hollande is quoted in this article in the Telegraph.
French President François Hollande: “He is a complete rider. He is a good climber and a super time trialist. His team-mate (Chris Froome) is also very good, so if Wiggins had not won the Tour he would have been there. It was the British year.”
Even L’Equipe the French sporting newspaper, declares Wiggins’s victory to be like Miguel Indurain and used the heading of God Save the King as the link to their report of the last stage.
When was that phrase last used in a French newspaper?
So it is a victory to savour and I don’t think it will be unique within a few years. But now we’ve got the Olympics!
Will we see the Wiggins effect ripple through Team GB?
Where’s the Tour de France
On a day, when we’re going to win France’s most prestigious sporting trophy, where is the action?
Radio 5 has some golf and you can only get fleeting bits between the adverts on ITV4.
The Black Prince, Henry V, Hawke, Cochrane, Nelson, Wellington and John Churchill will all be spinning in their graves. I suspect too,that even the French won’t be very pleased, as I think they’d prefer to see France shown at its best to Les Anglais and also as they’ve rather taken to our Bradley. Perhaps we can all take a leaf out of his book and learn to speak better French.
The Anonymous Widower 