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Has Wiggins found form too early?

Bradley Wiggins has returned to his winning ways. AP Photo/Lionel Cironneau
Expert
13th March, 2012
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Matt Goss says he’s just coming into it, Bradley Wiggins has got it, Cadel Evans hasn’t and Mark Cavendish looks like he’s had it for weeks. But what is form?

How do the world’s best cyclists get it? And more importantly, how do they get it when they need it?

Tactics aside, cycling is pure physics, where speed is determined by the power a rider puts into the pedals divided by the rider’s weight. A cyclist is on top form when he or she puts out the most watts of power per kilogram of body weight for a length of time that is specific to their event.

There are other factors, like aerodynamics and pedalling efficiency, but watts per kilogram is the big number.

For a Tour de France contender, like Wiggins and Evans, this means something like 6.7 watts per kilogram when making a sustained effort, like climbing a mountain or riding a long time trial. For sprinters like Goss and Cavendish it could be around 24 watts per kilograms, but only for a few seconds.

That’s form, and a champion must have the potential to achieve these magic numbers. But they have to do it at the right time, and since it’s pushing the limits of human performance this form cannot be held for very long.

Two weeks at most seems to the maximum, which is a problem for Tour contenders because the race is three weeks long. They have to balance coming in at the top of their game (and going down as the race goes on) with coming in a bit under and getting better. Which way they go depends on when the crucial stages are.

Shane Sutton is British Cycling’s head coach and he says that getting form at the right time is a bit like planning a journey in a car.

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“You know where you start from and you know where you are going, so you map out the way to get there.

“The map is the training sessions and races you do, and you add and subtract them like controlling the speed of a car with the accelerator and the brakes. That way you get where you are going at exactly the right time.

“A stage racer puts in hours of steady riding to get stamina, and the longer he spends doing it the longer his form lasts. Then he needs training sessions that push up the anaerobic threshold and stretch the length of time he can stay at it. Those sessions are the accelerator.”

Coaches look at test results and races during the build up to a target race, and in Sutton’s analogy these tell them what speed the rider is doing towards an objective.

“If it’s too fast, if they are in danger of peaking too early we hit the brakes. For an endurance rider that means doing a week of steady miles, because steady miles hold form but don’t add to it,” he says.

So where are the various contenders for 2012 now? Matt Goss looked good in the Tirreno-Adriatico stage race until he got ill, but Cavendish looked better. They are both following a plan designed to bring them to form for Milan-San Remo, which is this Saturday.

When Cavendish won in 2009 he concealed how well he was going in Tirreno, especially on the climbs. He wanted to surprise the all-rounders who said he wasn’t durable enough to win.

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A world champion, Cavendish cannot be anonymous, but he still used the brake and accelerator in Tirreno, winning the stage his coach Rod Ellingworth said he’d go for and keeping a low profile for the rest.

Wiggins and Evans provide a greater contrast, but maybe that has more to do with the other big factor in cycling: confidence.

Wiggins says he wants to prove that fourth in the 2009 Tour de France wasn’t a fluke. Evans won the 2011 Tour and has to prove nothing more until this year’s race.

By winning the Dauphine-Libere and Paris-Nice, the two most important stages races after the Grand Tours, and by taking third place in the 2011 Tour of Spain, Wiggins has laid that doubt to rest.

The thing is, has hitting the accelerator to win in March damaged Wiggins’ chances in July?

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