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Technical FAQ: Olympics marginal gains —continued
- Updated: August 16, 2016
Home » Bikes and Tech » Technical FAQ: Olympics marginal gains — continued
Dear Lennard, What do you think about the marginal losses of the US women’s team pursuit on those gloves? Talk about floppy; I’m not sure these are fit for gardening!— Alan
Dear Alan, Well, those gloves do look comfortable! And I have no experience maneuvering a bike like that with such precision on a track at high speed; perhaps the gloves made it possible to do things that would otherwise be more difficult.
It does seem surprising, though, that the US team was wearing such bulky, loose gloves, given how sleek and aerodynamic all of the rest of their equipment is. Since the hands are the first thing the wind hits of the rider and bike, and they are moving so fast (57kph average, or 35.4mph), I would think that reducing the size of the hands should cut aerodynamic drag measurably. It would seem analogous to Specialized’s wind tunnel result that shoes are faster without shoe covers by virtue of making the feet appear smaller to the wind.
I don’t know how much time, if any, that racing without gloves might have saved over the 4K team pursuit, but it does beg the question: Could that have saved as much time as the left-side drivetrains the team was running? Felt engineers found that the left-side drivetrain was consistently faster in wind tunnel simulations of team pursuit on the track than a right-side one. The argument for it is pretty esoteric (based on sidewinds) — more than the straightforward aerodynamic argument for reducing the size of the hands stuck out in the wind ahead of the bikes. If Felt thought that it made enough of an aerodynamic difference to put the drivetrain on the left side bikes, it does seem like eliminating bulky gloves might be showing up in a list of small aerodynamic gains.
And it is possible that the U.S. team did test the gloves in the wind tunnel and found that they created no additional drag. I would be surprised at such a result, but I’ve seen many surprising results over the years from wind tunnels, like Floyd Landis’s “praying mantis” position on his aero bars being faster than with his arms flat.
In short, I don’t know the story behind the U.S. Team’s choice to wear those gloves, but it does seem like they might have been able to go without gloves like the British foursome did. It looked like the Brits had chalk on their hands; perhaps that was for the same reason that the Americans wore gloves.
In any case, …
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