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Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion
61–70 of 179 posts
Re: Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion
#62Some additional context for those who don't follow professional cycling: the Dutch women's team was incredibly strong coming into this road race. All 4 riders on their team are stars in their own right, and the only reason there wasn't a clear favorite for the race overall is that people weren't sure which Dutch rider would win. So you have a complicated group dynamic, where the majority of the peloton has no interes…
> All credit to her for an extremely strong ride. And a better strategy, which is a major part of competition. People commenting on her being lucky. She had a better strategy.
I mean, it worked in this case, but winning from the break, especially for an important race like this, is rare. They were definitely lucky.
Re: Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the rules are pretty simple. The one who manages to first cross the finish line wins. Everybody knows the rules. The problem is it is not a very simple sport and there is some game theory involved. Riding as fast as possible is not the best strategy, actually it is pretty poor one. The better strategy comes from understanding you don't need to win by a lot, winning by 1s is the same as winning by 10 minutes. Also…
In professional cycling the Ride as Hard as You Can people are necessary but often don’t achieve any real rank on the team. They might not even finish a tour, either having not budgeted enough for the late stages, or being so new that they can’t understand how tired they’re gonna be later. Their claim to fame may be limited to being on the top team, it might be being on a top 5 team. If you’re lucky you team may plac…
> I’m racking my brain trying to remember who was on Delgado’s team and coming up completely blank.
Delgado had Miguel Induráin [1] working for him, hardly an unknown rider.
Re: Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the rules are pretty simple. The one who manages to first cross the finish line wins. Everybody knows the rules. The problem is it is not a very simple sport and there is some game theory involved. Riding as fast as possible is not the best strategy, actually it is pretty poor one. The better strategy comes from understanding you don't need to win by a lot, winning by 1s is the same as winning by 10 minutes. Also…
In professional cycling the Ride as Hard as You Can people are necessary but often don’t achieve any real rank on the team. They might not even finish a tour, either having not budgeted enough for the late stages, or being so new that they can’t understand how tired they’re gonna be later. Their claim to fame may be limited to being on the top team, it might be being on a top 5 team. If you’re lucky you team may plac…
> In professional cycling the Ride as Hard as You Can people are necessary but often don’t achieve any real rank on the team. They might not even finish a tour, either having not budgeted enough for the late stages, or being so new that they can’t understand how tired they’re gonna be later.
I am not much interested in cycling, but I understand this is the dimension that is not present on Olympics. Or do they also ride as teams and assign from the start who is going to get "protected" to preserve their strength to get the best shot at getting gold?
Re: Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion
#65Seems she's a PhD who studies Partial Differential Equations. Her post-doc research institution is understandably proud: https://actu.epfl.ch/news/epfl-scientist-wins-cycling-gold-m...
I left the PDE group as a postdoc a few months before she joined. This even further solidifies that I wasn’t quite cut out for that level of mathematics… haha.
Congrats on her win!
Re: Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not like men don’t make errors, even at this level – the entire point is pushing people to their absolute limit. The more interesting lesson for anyone not peddling an agenda is the importance of training exactly as the main event will happen – national teams usually have limited experience together and not having radios meant that the riders were guessing about details they normally know far more precisely.
It is obvious you know nothing about cycling. No peloton worth its salt will let a breakaway rider to march all the way long to gold totally unopposed and even worst, without being aware of it. This does not happen even at amateur or very young categories. To the people downvoting me, you cannot wish reality away. But by all means continue living in your fantasy world.
Would you please stop breaking the site guidelines so we don't have to ban you again? Your substantive comments are good but the amount of flamebait you toss in is abusive, and the damage you cause by that exceeds the value of the good stuff by a lot.
We're trying to have a forum that doesn't destroy itself [1, 2]—if you'd like to contribute to that, you're welcome here, but as long as you're adding to the self-destructive tendencies (which are the way things go by default on the internet and hardly need you or anyone else to nudge them), you're not.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Re: Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s super rare to be intellectually gifted and a world-class athlete. There was an NFL offensive lineman with a published mathematical paper as well, but I didn’t know about Turing’s physical talents until now. I don’t know of any other instances of brilliant people being paid or awarded medals for their physical abilities, so I personally found it interesting. I guess the parent comment was for those of us that wer…
It’s also a healthy correction for the nerds-versus-jocks dichotomy which was so common for years. There are a non-trivial number of people who actively questioned someone’s technical competency if they were athletic or assumed that the only way to be a successful academic was to grind everything else out of their life.
My experience is that high-achievers in one area are often high-achievers in other areas as well. For academics as well as athletics, individual ability matters, but the discipline and work-ethic that most high-achievers have translates across fields.
Re: Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion
#68Some additional context for those who don't follow professional cycling: the Dutch women's team was incredibly strong coming into this road race. All 4 riders on their team are stars in their own right, and the only reason there wasn't a clear favorite for the race overall is that people weren't sure which Dutch rider would win. So you have a complicated group dynamic, where the majority of the peloton has no interes…
Sorry but this is ridiculous! Everyone who participates at the olympics must be a professional athlete. Especially, if you are favorite.
Observing the environment around you should be obvious?! It is not like Anna Kiesenhofer had the one ring on her finger and was invisible...
Re: Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion
#69Some additional context for those who don't follow professional cycling: the Dutch women's team was incredibly strong coming into this road race. All 4 riders on their team are stars in their own right, and the only reason there wasn't a clear favorite for the race overall is that people weren't sure which Dutch rider would win. So you have a complicated group dynamic, where the majority of the peloton has no interes…
Oh communication is so important, isn't it? There's even an old Slim Gaillard song about that I used to lindy hop to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teaxWYRH9A4
What I've read, Kiesenhofer would have preferred to race the time trial instead of the the road race, she even told that the austrian press just before the race. A breakout gives you the advantage of riding your own pace at our optimal and constant power level; something a you can't in a breakout group where the the lead does cycle and goes from hundrets watts to almost zero and back again. I guess it's partly due to her not being a professional (anymore), thus not having to deal with team trainings and training mostly on her own? Not sure on that.
Re: Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion
#70Some additional context for those who don't follow professional cycling: the Dutch women's team was incredibly strong coming into this road race. All 4 riders on their team are stars in their own right, and the only reason there wasn't a clear favorite for the race overall is that people weren't sure which Dutch rider would win. So you have a complicated group dynamic, where the majority of the peloton has no interes…
Sorry but this is ridiculous! Everyone who participates at the olympics must be a professional athlete. Especially, if you are favorite. Observing the environment around you should be obvious?! It is not like Anna Kiesenhofer had the one ring on her finger and was invisible...
Ahhh, no. No! NO!
The Olympics as envisioned by Coubertin didn't allow professionals for a very long time, A VERY LONG TIME. For boxers this year is actually the first Olympics that do accept professionals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Games#Amateurism_and_p...