Racing: Don’t sprint on the hoods!

Last month, at the Rob Ver­non Memorial, 21yo AIS cyc­list Peta Mul­lens scored a rare female vic­tory in a CSV open cyc­ling event. Rare because she’s female — the 9 girls that raced were out numbered by males 30:1.

One of the many reas­ons cyc­ling is such a great sport for woman, is because it’s one of the few sports they can com­pete on an even play­ing field with men. This pic­ture shows Peta clearly show­ing the boys how to do it.

It also brings me back to a con­ver­sa­tion I had with crafty NZ (male) cyc­list Jar­ron Poad in 2003, who was whin­ing about hav­ing his arse handed to him by Olympic gold medal­list Kathy Watt in a recent ‘race of truth’. As I said, there’s a lot of female cyc­lists that can really dish out some horsepower — put­ting most of us lads to shame.

Where’s wally?

Besides point­ing out Peta’s mag­ni­fi­cent win to the world — I did have another motive for writ­ing todays post.

(look back up at the pic­ture above — at the guy on the right — OK now you can come back)

Joel Stratchan -  on the right, clearly had a good day to be involved in the final sprint. I’m not tak­ing any­thing away from Joel — I wasn’t there — but I do want to touch on an obser­va­tion I made in the photo.

Joel is sprint­ing on the hoods!! — what the?

Apart from los­ing shit loads of points in the cool­ness depart­ment, he’s surely not get­ting the lever­age he needs for a suc­cess­ful sprint fin­ish. I’m not say­ing that if Joel was sprint­ing in the drops, the res­ult would be dif­fer­ent. But I do feel com­pelled to share with my fel­low sprint­ers, that sprint­ing on the hoods isn’t help­ing your cause.

Hoods, drops… wha?

Lets first look at the typ­ical handle­bar setup.

Road bike handle bars are typ­ic­ally setup for three spe­cific func­tions. Climb­ing, sprint­ing and errr — cruising.

The names I’ve used in the pic­ture above, are offi­cial cyc­ling maven terms only. It’s the lingo that I’m per­son­ally most famil­iar with, but I think you’ll find, most of the big boys and girls will agree.

• The Tops — great for climb­ing or cruis­ing around on your own. I say on your own — because ‘the tops’ don’t exactly give you fast access to your brakes if you’re in  a group/bunch ride. For climb­ing, ‘the tops’ provide excel­lent lever­age when sit­ting in the saddle on those longer climbs.

• The Hoods — ideal for climb­ing, par­tic­u­larly out of the saddle. Provides greater lever­age on steeper or shorter power climbs. Jump­ing onto the hoods on a climb, allows you to change gears and accel­er­ate or decel­er­ate. The hoods are also used in group rides, as access to the brakes and gears is right at your fin­ger tips should a sud­den stop be required.

• The Drops — Whilst racing or going very fast, most cyc­lists will and should be in the drops — par­tic­u­larly for the sprints or cri­terium races. You’ll also see people in the drops when they attack in a road race. The main reas­ons are, lower and more aero­dy­namic pro­file on the bike, bet­ter lever­age whilst sprint­ing and you are able to change gears and brake at speed.

Sprint in the Drops

If you watch any sprint fin­ish — of any major cyc­ling race, I’ll guar­an­tee they won’t be sprint­ing on the hoods.

I’ll admit that even I’ve been guilty of this mis­take in the early days. Prac­tice get­ting in the drops whilst train­ing. I know some of us old farts struggle with our flex­ib­il­ity, but if you want to win some races, you’ll need to get the tech­nique in place.