After due consideration, in stepped the UCI and banned the practice.
So there is now a detailed list of accommodation issued at the start of each race, which must be adhered to at all times by all teams and all riders. It’s a handy document indeed. Especially as you now know exactly where your enemy is sleeping. And with this list, if you are evil, your rival might find it potentially difficult to sleep. Game on for the naughty.
If you can’t speed yourself up, slow your opponent down. You don’t need sheep. Just stop your rival counting any himself. A tired rider is a slow rider. There have been numerous complaints by teams of night-time noise being used as a weapon. Hard to prove of course, but it is remarkable how many revellers, partygoers and indeed even live bands have found themselves outside some major team hotels in the small hours of a Tuesday morning, the date of which seems of no apparent significance. Usually in Italy.
Of course, every day of the year has a saint allocated to it. This can provide a lame, if half decent and wily, excuse: ‘Ah, sorry. Today we celebrate Saint Cuthbert the Unruly. It’s in the diary. Have a look!’
Helicopter Doping
The 1984 Giro d’Italia remains one of the most controversial of all time. There were two main protagonists. Step forward the bespectacled Laurent ‘The Professor’ Fignon, the Frenchman who had won the Tour de France the previous year. And then in the blue corner was the popular local choice: the Italian Francesco Moser, who had already broken the hour record that year as well as being victorious at Milan–San Remo. The Italians do like their fellow countrymen to win their national race, and everyone was speculating that Fignon was fitter than his Italian counterpart. The French press were livid, accusing the organiser, Vincenzo Torriani, of drawing up a parcours that was fairly flat by Giro standards and cancelling mountain stages in order to favour either Moser or his fellow Italian Beppe Saronni.
When the Stelvio climb, the third highest pass in Europe, reared its head, the officials declared that it was impassable because of snow, despite many commentators of the time claiming that the roads were either clear or could easily be made clear with snow ploughs. Fignon claimed later, ‘They knew I was capable of winning the Giro and they made sure I lost. They knew Moser couldn’t have followed me.’ In his autobiography, Fignon wrote: ‘Chains of tifosi had lined the cols to push him up. The referees helped as well by fining me twenty seconds for taking a feed outside the permitted area.’
But more was to come. The final general classification rested on the results of the time trial from Soave to Verona, 42 km (26 miles) of undulating twists and turns, which Moser chose to tackle on his revolutionary time trial machine. He set off ahead of Fignon and was duly followed by a low-flying helicopter, ostensibly there to take TV pictures, though others noted it seemed to be flying so low and so close to Moser that the downdraft blew him along the road. Fignon set off from his start position but was now behind a helicopter. One aircraft was blasting Moser along the road while the other was ‘pushing me back’, said the Frenchman, who now had to work twice as hard! Moser won convincingly. In fact, his winning margin had everyone shaking their heads in disbelief.
A similar technique has been employed in more recent times in time trials, with team cars riding up as close as they can get behind their rider. Everyone was asking, ‘Why the hell are the team cars getting so close these days?’ The answer is that a car driving at 40–50km/h (25–31mph) produces a bow wave aero effect that pushes the air in front of it, helping the rider. There is now a 25m (82ft) rule for following cars.
Banned Kit
Skinsuits are constantly changing and adapting as the technical development evolves and improves. Some teams spend millions of euros on researching how to improve them, making for a great deal of inequality between teams. One of the biggest advances was the introduction of the phenomenal ‘flying squirrel suit’. A piece of aero cloth filled much of the gap between ribcage and underarm and at the same time drew the material down and away from each side of the sternum. In effect, the rider became a wing – a flying squirrel. The aerodynamic effect, according to one coach who tested it in a wind tunnel, was to benefit the rider by an extra 20 watts. The suits were worn by Garmin–Transitions riders during Stage 19 of the 2010 Tour de France. Foul, cried the press. Good point, thought the UCI. The commissaires later deemed the design to be approaching a ‘fairing’ in contravention of the rules, and the suits were thus banned from future races.
That hasn’t stopped the clothing companies from trying to gain other advantages. The shift in focus moved from the shape of the suit to the fabric itself. Movistar appeared to have the edge here. Unfortunately, they just didn’t have the riders to match the performance of the cloth. The material would not be the natural choice of an athlete. It looked like something out of Strictly Come Dancing. I’m sure the first fitting was a bit of a giggle, but there was sound technical reasoning behind the design. It followed the principle of the dimples on a golf ball: air becomes trapped in the dimples, which makes the surrounding air ride over another cushion of air as opposed to the surface of the body. Interestingly, Movistar used the suit
