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Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion

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Re: Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion

#131

Post by gameswithgo »

TomK32 wrote: post #72
spodek wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Breaks are rarely a winning strategy (on mountains they are, but those are a pure display of strength and will-power). Granted she is a mathematician and might be literate in road racing strategy but I'm sure a lot of that strategy is down to experience which she doesn't have.

An early break is often very unlikely to get you a win and also the best chance you have for a win, at the same time.

Re: Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion

#132

Post by yuliyp »

frereubu wrote: post #124
rocqua wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because otherwise the Olympics for road cycling and actual high-level road cycling races become totally different things. The entire game of road cycling races is based on judging these gaps. Without it, you would probably never let anyone ride off. Then races become attrition, followed by sprint. Either that or you get a weird spotting system where people try to get gap timings to the riders through unofficial chann…

I'm talking about the whole of cycling, not just the Olympics, so the first point doesn't stand. Do you really prefer the spectacle of the peloton letting a breakaway head off into the distance, knowing that in 95% of cases they can just reel it back in just enough not to have an effect on the GC? Today just showed how exciting it is when people can head off down the road far enough for the others not to know what's…

A road race involves people traveling over dozens of kilometers, with many spectators lining the streets. There are so many ways a spectator can signal something to a rider in code (color of hat, waving or not waving a flag / choosing what flag, shouting something as they pass, etc.).

Sometimes a spectator might just say something about "oh that group a couple minutes before you looked fast" and not even be part of a team.

Re: Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion

#133

Post by davidw »

pythko wrote: post #18

Some 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…

This is part of what makes road racing so much fun to watch. You need to be strong to win, but it's not just a pure contest of who can put out the most watts per kilogram. Tactics - and some luck - play a factor too.

Re: Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion

#135

Post by hprotagonist »

LiamHex wrote: post #80
boshomi wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She was at least 40km alone in the wind. There she needed 20-30% more energy then the riders in the peleton. So this was a incredible performance while the peleton calculated wrong.

And she was in the wind regularly (in a small group of 3) for the other 100km. Incredible.

all that TT training really paid off!

Re: Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion

#136

Post by killingtime74 »

Quarrel wrote: post #4

This is incredible, but some of the headlines of "amateur wins gold versus pros" are a little misleading. She was with a pro-team, she is the current Austrian time-trial champion and had devoted herself to making this happen over the pandemic. Meanwhile the Dutch World Champion didn't know she was ahead, so didn't chase her. I love the story, but it isn't a simple amateur beating out all the pros story.

4 year gap is plenty to be considered an amateur no? It's not like it was 4 months

Re: Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion

#137

Post by sanguy »

Fantastic ride and if you follower her Twitter she's been doing a lot of very detailed exploration of her endurance limits in preparation.

When the lead group fell to 3 they had an 11 minute lead.

She broke free and went solo with 40km to go.

When she finished that lead had eroded to 2 minutes as the front group she dropped had been caught.

So in those 40km she lost 9 minutes of lead she had built with the help of the breakout group.

This was all strategy and then a tremendous physical performance on her part.

Dutch team needs a serious kick in the ass for underestimating an "amatuer" in this regard. It was obvious she was in it for the gold or nothing; and they fatally assumed it would be the later.

Fantastic win when you consider training, strategy, and performance all came together to pull it off. This is what olympians are all about!

Re: Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion

#138

Post by sb8244 »

I'm just about to watch this, very excited to see it play out. I'm listening to the very start of the race right now and it's very funny how things work out:

"[The smartest racer will win, not just the strongest. Well who are we kidding, you need a good bit of luck too.]"

That's certainly true given the sheer luck on display (peloton lost track of breakaway) and how smart Kiesenhofer is. I also think it's interesting how much she dislikes riding in the peloton. She's 10ft off the back in the starting roll-out.

Re: Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion

#139

Post by LeifCarrotson »

davidw wrote: post #133
pythko wrote: post #18

Some 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…

This is part of what makes road racing so much fun to watch. You need to be strong to win, but it's not just a pure contest of who can put out the most watts per kilogram. Tactics - and some luck - play a factor too.

Tactics are a measure of who knows at what time to put out how many watts per kilo.

What happens in road racing is politics. Domestiques grouping up at a leisurely pace to finish a climb stage just under the time limit, celebrities holding the team car by a sticky water bottle to catch back up to the group that dropped them, taking it easy for the first part of the race until a race leader says "let's go", and not attacking while someone important stops to pee, when their extra-efficient, extra-fragile tires puncture, or they get tired and downshift at a bad time and drop a chain or something.

I understand that being 1% faster in a sport where your opponent can save 33% of his energy by drafting doesn't make a win a sure thing. But cyclists have spent a century drafting ever more unusual unwritten rules and it's become more about the politics than the pedaling.

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