[HN Gopher] Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Ol...
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Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion
Author : billfruit
Score : 379 points
Date : 2021-07-25 15:20 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cyclingnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cyclingnews.com)
| manquer wrote:
| Being a pro athlete competing and winning at an event like
| Olympics and pursing a post doc in a tough field like mathematics
| is an achievement lot more interesting than whether she is really
| amateur
| pjbster wrote:
| This isn't the first time something like this has happened:
| cycling aficionados will remember the tale of Robert Millar and
| the "stolen" 1984 Vuelta [1].
|
| I personally love it when races are run without radios. The UCI
| tried to ban them in 2010 but the pro teams rebelled, claiming
| that they were essential for safety reasons; the number of
| crashes at the 2021 Tour de France would suggest that they aren't
| succeeding very well at that core function.
|
| Radios make the races formulaic. Not necessarily predictable but
| certainly a different event. I can't think of any other sport
| where pros are held to different rules (i.e. allowed technical
| assistance) compared to amateurs.
|
| [1] https://crankpunk.com/2012/11/09/robert-millar-the-case-
| of-t...
| frereubu wrote:
| > I personally love it when races are run without radios
|
| I agree wholeheartedly.
|
| It levels the playing field in a way that means money can't
| interfere as much. Some people make a break off the front? You
| have to remember how many people went and how good they are.
| You want to make sure they don't get too far away? Chase them.
|
| Cycling fans (of which I am one) make a lot of noise about how
| they enjoy the strategy involved, but there are different kinds
| of strategy. There's nothing I dislike more than a few people
| making a breakaway and the peloton sauntering along, knowing
| that they'll be able to catch the break within X kilometres of
| the finish if they make Y effort at Z kilometres out because
| they know exactly where the breakaway is. People wax lyrical
| about heroic individual deeds and head-to-head competition of
| the past. You want more of that? Ban radios.
|
| The whole safety argument is bunk from what I've read of it -
| the amount of cameras and personnel on the course is more than
| enough to catch any issues.
| rocqua wrote:
| If you don't have radios, you still need to tell riders about
| the gaps.
|
| Perhaps a radio channel that just tells riders the state of
| play without input from the teams themselves.
| mijamo wrote:
| Before radio you had a moto putting the latest gap to display
| in front of the peloton. This is very simple and would not
| cause trouble. Note that they do not have that for the
| Olympic games for some reason.
| rurban wrote:
| Wrong. Anna was constantly informed by the moto of her
| lead. We will have to hear from others, like Longo or
| Brennauer if there were informed or not. But I'm pretty
| sure they were.
| frereubu wrote:
| Why do you _need_ to tell riders about the gaps?
| rocqua wrote:
| 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
| channels. Probably from the broadcast, but if delayed too
| much, from physical spotters with stopwatches.
| pythko wrote:
| 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 interest in pulling the group to catch the
| break, since they would just get beat by one or more of the Dutch
| riders, and the Dutch riders didn't seem to have a clear plan on
| how to control the race and who would sacrifice their chances and
| work on the front for the rest of the team.
|
| As others have said, there were no radios allowed for riders in
| the race, so all information about the breakaway came from the
| race director's car trailing the peloton. This was a well known
| fact about the race coming in, and it's the same way that the
| annual World Championship race is run. It's normal for riders to
| drop back to the team car to get information about the break, and
| the lead moto for a group of cyclists will occasionally show time
| gaps on a whiteboard.
|
| At least one of the Dutch riders claimed to have known about the
| lone rider off the front [1], but somehow that information didn't
| make it to the rest of the team. It seems that most of the
| peloton didn't know (or didn't care) how many riders were up the
| road, and the Dutch team failed to communicate amongst themselves
| and establish a plan.
|
| All that leads to Kiesenhofer's solo move working out. All credit
| to her for an extremely strong ride.
|
| [1]https://netherlandsnewslive.com/miscommunication-and-
| underes...
| la_fayette wrote:
| 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...
| rocqua wrote:
| She did not earn her money with cycling. Last year, her
| proffesion was Mathematics teacher. She was also far from a
| favorite for this race.
|
| She spent one year in a proffesional group. The commentators
| were saying she really dislikes riding in 'the bunch'. Which
| would make proffesional cycling hard. She qualified through
| national championships, which are open to non-proffesionals.
|
| As for invisibility, the person who came second thought they
| were first. So somehow they missed this. And she wasn't the
| only one who didn't know there was still someone ahead.
|
| Non of this is meant to say Kiesenhofer did not deserve this.
| She rode an amazing race, and earned this gold medal.
| walshemj wrote:
| And women's pro cycling pays very poorly compared to the
| Men.
| rocqua wrote:
| Notably, 15% of men riding in the tour de France earn
| less than 45000 a year. That isn't a low salary, but for
| a proffesional athlete at the peak event, it isn't a lot
| either.
| TomK32 wrote:
| 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.
| ..
| la_fayette wrote:
| This sounds rather idealistic and doesn't represent the
| reality, particularly for this female cycling race! The top
| competitors of Anna Kiesenhofer had professional contracts!
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Curiously, every single soviet sports athlete who ever
| competed on any international event was considered an
| amateur, while in fact being a full time professional
| devoted to his sport.
|
| Usually they were officially 'working' at some factory, but
| were members of a sports club and received a substantial
| stipend, never doing any work but training and competing.
| This practice still lives in Russia. The income of any
| Olympics team russian athlete is estimated to be no less
| than 5-7k USD, generally coming in the form of several
| grants and stipends.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| She finished over a full minute ahead of second place and at
| one point had as much as a ten minute lead. She was out of
| sight for most of the race.
| la_fayette wrote:
| Ok so you want to explain to me that when she was breaking
| out from the group at the beginning she was invisible?
| Dingen wrote:
| As you can also read in the linked article, she broke
| away with some others, as is usual in cycling. After a
| while the peloton caught up with the breakaways, thinking
| they're now racing for the lead. But they didn't realise
| Anna Kiesenhofer wasn't among them, as she is a virtually
| unknown amateur, so nobody missed her.
| rurban wrote:
| Excuse us, she never was an virtually unknown amateur.
| 2017 she got a professional contract from a Belgian team,
| but refused to cycle on their "stupid" rules. She rather
| went by her own rules, without a team and didn't need the
| money. 2018 she was 5th in the European time trials. She
| constantly rode, but not so much on professional UCI
| events, but also on many amateur marathon events. Which
| she thought were harder and better. She was official
| Austrian champion afterall.
|
| The peloton just missed her, due to complete lack of
| communication amongst the disfunctional leading dutch
| team. There were many dutch and other coaches on the
| street with cellphones, but they didn't try to catch her,
| so she was lucky. A properly organized peloton would have
| caught her easily. You could see with your own eyes how
| disorganized the peloton was. Extremely interesting case
| for social studies.
| Dingen wrote:
| Yeah, I don't mean to discredit her. Just saying the
| peloton didn't think of her as they caught up with the
| front runners, as they didn't really know her. Exactly
| for the reason you state: she didn't attend a whole lot
| of pro events.
| TomK32 wrote:
| 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.
| sharken wrote:
| It would be a breath of fresh air for Tour de France if they
| did not use radios.
|
| Another outcome could be that we would not see the same rider
| winning multiple years, simply due to missing radios.
|
| All in all seems like a win for viewers.
| caycep wrote:
| Totally, and way more fun to watch and even ride in too. I
| feel like pro cycling is way too cold and clinical these
| days.
| ISL wrote:
| With cell phones, the crowd would suddenly have a lot of
| agency (and spoofing).
| TomK32 wrote:
| More time trials, that's what does mix up the Tour de
| France. I mean who needs a radio on a time trial anyways
| :-D
| hourislate wrote:
| Is it possible that an outlier, an amateur, a lone wolf, was
| able for a moment to draw the strength and determination that
| would lead to victory and not even the best in the world stood
| a chance.
|
| Of is as you say....she was lucky and her victory was just a
| series of unfortunate circumstances for the other riders. I
| want to believe that there was no one that day that could beat
| her.
| hinkley wrote:
| On nearly level terrain the peloton has a distinct
| aerodynamic advantage that lets them reel in most people who
| are just having a good day. People try it anyway and hope for
| bad luck, or leverage time bonuses if the rules allow it.
|
| Big groups on a downhill are dangerous, on an uphill are too
| hot and cramped and so in both cases individual skill and
| power are outsized. If a technical downhill racer can break
| away on the last climb, they may be gone for the day. Tours
| have been lost or won on this tactic.
|
| In a multi day tour a twelfth place competitor might pull
| away, even take a few people with them. The other teams may
| not be interested in catching, might have lesser members in
| the breakaway and be hedging their bets, so they can't build
| consensus on burning their people to kick up the pace. They
| make think that they can wait for him to wear out and reel
| him in later, but there comes a point where from one update
| to the next they discover he's still gaining on them, and oh
| shit do we still have time to catch? We better find out.
|
| The worst for me is when they catch the breakaway mere miles
| from the finish line. Sometimes a person stays away all day
| only to end up finishing in the group, or at least beaten by
| all the sprinters.
| pythko wrote:
| > The worst for me is when they catch the breakaway mere
| miles from the finish line. Sometimes a person stays away
| all day only to end up finishing in the group, or at least
| beaten by all the sprinters.
|
| Yeah, this is why I (and most others, I believe) find most
| of the sprint stages in the Tour pretty boring. The break
| vs. peloton dynamic is critical for road races to work
| (e.g. if there's no one up the road, why don't we all just
| ride along at 25kph?), but in those flat stages, the sprint
| teams are so good and care so much about the sprint finish
| that it's almost a guarantee they catch the break.
| hinkley wrote:
| When they added the time bonus to the point system I was
| not sure it was a good thing. But sometimes a third place
| climbed to second or first cemented a bigger lead by
| staying out front for 2/3 of the race and then finishing
| with the pack. Especially if they could pull it off twice
| pythko wrote:
| It would be nice to believe, but when second place celebrates
| like she won says she wasn't aware of a rider up the road,
| it's not just not the story today. Perhaps if they had known
| and chased, Kiesenhofer still would have been able to hold
| them off, but we'll never know.
|
| I also wouldn't call the rest of the peloton "unfortunate."
| They knew keeping track of the breakaway would be especially
| important given the lack of radio communication with a
| director in a team car, and they still didn't. I think
| Kiesenhofer deserves a ton of credit for this win; she was in
| the break from the very start of the race, and she was solo
| for over an hour, I believe. You can't do that without a lot
| of dedicated training and preparation. If anything, I think
| this is an example of "shoot your shot." You never know when
| things will break your way!
|
| Part of the reason I love cycling races is that it's a
| combination of athletic ability and strategic thinking that
| you don't see in most other sports. The physics of drafting
| mean that a well coordinated group almost always has the
| speed advantage over a lone rider, but lone riders often win
| races because they don't have to deal with the coordination
| problems of a group. After 4+ hours of racing, people are
| trying to calculate optimal game theory decisions while at
| their max heart rate. It can be bonkers to watch!
| hinkley wrote:
| If you can manage to pull away when the front of the pack
| is dominated by people with no chance, then it can be hard
| to catch. Part of the chess match in cycling is keeping
| your friends close but your enemies closer. If you can
| catch a draft off of the person making a break, you burn
| far less energy than they do. If you're trying to reel them
| in then you've won. Otherwise if you can't beat em, join
| em.
|
| This is why relative unknowns often break away. Especially
| as a professional. Nobody was watching Pedro Noname, but
| now the sponsors and recruiters know his name. Even if he
| doesn't win, he's gotten a good story and better prospects.
|
| In this case it sounds like communication was bad and so if
| you didn't _see_ her break away then some people didn't
| know she was gone. Or vastly underestimated her.
| TomK32 wrote:
| A few months ago on my usual round I (6'3", 103kg) by
| chance teamed up with a much smaller woman. I felt the
| draft effet even when I was behind her rather small statue,
| and it was a fun and quick ride. Then came a bus of five
| riders working even better then we did and they went by at
| an incredible speed. Since then I humbly accept that
| breakouts winning a race is rare.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| There's always someone who can beat you. It doesn't matter -
| they didn't. What matters is that she chose and executed her
| best-chance prep and race day strategies wisely and bravely.
| It takes away nothing from her achievement that she also
| happened to hit the one outer she needed on the river
| Ostrogodsky wrote:
| All this is true but it doesnt stop painting the Dutch riders
| (and the rest of the peloton) as very amateur. It is not about
| resources, people like van Vleuten or Voss receive resources
| (money, sponsorship,equipment) than 99.9% of cyclists in the
| world will never see (both men and women) and yet they made a
| schoolboy mistake here. When you compare that to the men's
| event it could be practically be a different sport.
| [deleted]
| acdha wrote:
| 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.
| Ostrogodsky wrote:
| 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.
| acdha wrote:
| Totally unopposed, except for the part where they caught
| 2 of the 3 riders? Nobody is arguing that it wasn't an
| error but that happens regularly -- everyone is making
| strategic and tactical decisions while riding at a high
| fraction of their maximum heart rate, and there was
| clearly a communications breakdown based on the claim
| that Van Vleuten and Van der Breggen had been told that
| Plichta was the last. Mistakes under pressure are not
| gender-specific.
| dang wrote:
| 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=f
| alse&so...
|
| [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=f
| alse&qu...
| spodek wrote:
| > 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.
| jamincan wrote:
| 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.
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| If you're losing then it's a good idea to take actions that
| increase the variance of the possible outcomes.
| boshomi wrote:
| 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.
| LiamHex wrote:
| And she was in the wind regularly (in a small group of 3)
| for the other 100km. Incredible.
| TomK32 wrote:
| 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.
| throw_nbvc1234 wrote:
| https://youtu.be/mccKzTdfXts
|
| But when they are it's amazing to watch. Completely
| different circumstances though.
| croes wrote:
| The others had no strategy because they didn't know she were
| upfront.
| diskzero wrote:
| Other than showing up on time for the race, step one of
| your plan for winning is knowing the position of your
| competitors. This is road racing 101.
| localhost wrote:
| If you're interested in learning more, the Lanterne Rouge
| podcast has an excellent recap of today's race:
| https://youtu.be/uKXX_3GKZWE
| antattack wrote:
| Sounds similar to Emma Coburn's win in steeplechase in 2014[1]
|
| [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_riHHyAIvk
| GavinMcG wrote:
| (Coburn, rather)
| shayankh wrote:
| in germany every1 has a phd; no surprise really
| mkurz wrote:
| Except that she is from Austria, studied in Vienna, which is
| also in Austria. She has absolutely nothing to do with Germany.
| Tainnor wrote:
| A PhD in mathematics is not the same thing as a ghostwritten
| PhD in some other disciplines that are notorious for this sort
| of thing.
| PuddleOfSausage wrote:
| (More related to the comments than the article) I've seen tons of
| takes on this since watching the end of the race this morning
| and, although it certainly played a part in deciding the outcome,
| it's a shame that more focus has seemed to be on making excuses
| or how the Dutch riders messed things up instead of Dr
| Kiesenhofer's incredible story and ride.
|
| Kiesenhofer was on a fantastic day: van Vleuten's earlier attack
| from the peloton made no inroads to Kiesenhofer, assuming the
| time gaps shown on the TV were correct.
|
| Watching on the TV we knew there was still a rider out front and,
| even if the race "ardoisier" (blackboard holder) wasn't the best,
| team management should have figured out a way to get that
| information to the chasing pack. I mean, the race finished on a
| motor racing circuit with pit lanes containing team helpers! It's
| not like it was like stage 16 of this year's Giro, where poor
| weather stopped race images being broadcast[1].
|
| [1] https://cyclingtips.com/2021/05/gallery-amazing-images-
| from-...
| Sergiu37 wrote:
| In giro they have radio communications from the team manager.
| In the Olympics they don't have that, they can't tell them the
| differences.
|
| Also winning when the opponents are not really trying to catch
| you it's not really a story either. It happens a lot even when
| they know a rider is upfront in order to save energy for second
| place and not give a free ride to other cyclists -see how
| Carapaz won in men events where only Wout tried to catch him.
| The real story is the mistake from the dutch team that could
| have catch her but missinterpreted the situation.
| j7ake wrote:
| What an amazing effort from Kiesenhofer. I imagine being alone in
| the front for that long would be many times more effort than
| staying in the peloton. Heroic effort.
|
| I am curious how this upset compare with other upsets in previous
| Olympics? Has there been bigger upsets than this one?
|
| If this were a tennis event, would this be like someone who was
| ranked top 50 or top 100 in the world beating Novak Djokovic to
| win gold?
| dmix wrote:
| I'm curious how much the extra year has helped some athletes who
| wouldn't have won or might not have won until 2024. Or given a
| few the extra time to show they can compete.
|
| For ex: an 18yr old Tunisian was a big upset for gold at 400m
| swimming.
|
| https://ftw.usatoday.com/lists/olympics-swimming-ahmed-hafna...
|
| https://youtu.be/nkkn9qEnPbE
|
| Not to downplay any of their abilities or achievements.
| rocqua wrote:
| The extra year was also a year with less competition. That
| probably allowed some people to train up without being noticed.
|
| Normally it would have been noticed how much they improved in
| the past year in competition. Without competition, you don't
| know how people progressed the last year.
| [deleted]
| polote wrote:
| "After Shapira and Plichta were caught by the remainder of the
| peloton the rest of the riders seemed to believe that they were
| racing amongst themselves for Gold, unaware that Kiesenhofer was
| still in front."
|
| Not saying she shouldn't had won, but when nobody is pursuing
| you, it is much easier to win.
|
| We have seen in the men race that even when people know there is
| one person in front, 80% of the riders prefer not to force to
| prevent the strongest guy of the group to win the sprint. (Who
| won the sprint anyway)
| iainmerrick wrote:
| _Not saying she shouldn 't had won, but when nobody is pursuing
| you, it is much easier to win._
|
| She certainly benefited from a mistake by the other
| competitors, but "much easier" is surely a big exaggeration.
| You could equally well say it's much harder to win the race
| when you're out by yourself, with nobody to chase, nobody to
| set the pace, and no pack to draft with.
|
| If she hadn't cycled the race of her life, she would have been
| caught.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| I don't think "much easier" is an exaggeration at all. It is
| hard to win with no help as you say. Which is why there's a
| good chance that she would have been caught if the people who
| did have help knew there was someone they needed to catch.
|
| That being said, good on her for sneaking away getting out in
| front unnoticed. It's not always just about pure ability.
| eCa wrote:
| > sneaking away getting out in front unnoticed
|
| They knew she was in the early breakaway, they just assumed
| she had been caught.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Let's just say, and I know this from experience as
| amateur runner, when you ride an olympic effort you are
| probably not the best at counting and remembering things.
| rocqua wrote:
| Consider what happened in mens racing.
|
| When there is someone ahead, you also get hesitation. No one
| wants to expend the effort to catch them. Everyone hopes that
| someone else will put in that effort. It's a classic game
| theoretical 'tragedy of the commons'.
|
| The same could have happened here. The dutch riders were all
| riding for themselves. The other riders would probably have
| looked to the favorites to close the gap.
| zucker42 wrote:
| Tactics are as important as strength in cycling. The strongest
| person doesn't always win.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| The road race at the Olympics is somewhat of an outlier in
| cycling. It uses national teams as opposed to commerical teams,
| so riders ride with unfamilar teammates, and in this case the
| biggest favorites were actually teammates. It also bans radios,
| so there's no direct communication between the coaches and the
| riders possible.
| jessaustin wrote:
| I didn't see this race yet, and although I enjoy watching it
| I'm no expert on road cycling. However, ISTR that in every
| televised race there is a particular motorcycle that stays
| with the lead rider(s). If a racer thinks she's on the front
| and _doesn 't_ see that motorcycle around somewhere,
| shouldn't she reconsider her position?
|
| Also the racers who had been on the breakaway and got caught
| knew she was still up there, but they might not have cared to
| tell anyone about it.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| There's usually motorcycles in front of the chasing groups
| as well, and I don't think the motorcycle for the leader is
| specially marked.
| TomK32 wrote:
| Even with radio, the breakouts might feel confident with the
| lead but not realize yet that the poursuivants have stepped
| up their speed.
| ossusermivami wrote:
| world/european championship has the same national structure
| as the olympics, the radios are present in those races, so in
| that way the olympics is unique.
| lmilcin wrote:
| 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 riding alone or at the front costs a lot more
| effort than riding behind somebody.
|
| Actually, riding at the same speed at the front might be max
| effort and in the pack might be almost coasting.
|
| Together, this means you may have a very valid strategy to try
| to preserve energy (ie. keep with the pack) and count on your
| better ability to sprint at the end to get ahead of
| competitors. That of course as long as you believe there is
| nobody running away.
|
| At the extreme of effort, very small differences of effort can
| have very large effects on your body. If you look at it, a
| difference of tempo to run a 5k and 10k is very small.
|
| The current world records for 5k is 12:35.36 and 10k is
| 26:11.00.
|
| If you look at difference, 5k is 151s/km while 10k is 156s/km,
| just 5s or 3% slower.
|
| And yet that minute difference lets you run twice as far.
| rocqua wrote:
| And yet, there are quite a few solo wins. I think somewhere
| between 10 and 25 percent of races get won solo?
|
| The advantage of the solo strategy is that everyone behind
| you is trying to put in less effort than the others behind
| you. So they can get stuck in a game theoretical tragedy of
| the commons.
| TomK32 wrote:
| Why 5k when it's only a week since Austrian Christoph
| Strasser set the records for 1000 (one thousand) kilometers,
| in just under a day (with 2 minutes total for breaks and
| clothes changes).
| lmilcin wrote:
| Because I ran distances from 5k to marathon (with 10k being
| my favourite) and so I know from my own experience. I have
| no knowledge of how you run a 1000k run.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| Time trial is a better way of finding which rider is the
| fastest, but the race is so boring without an obvious winner.
| hinkley wrote:
| 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 place several people in the top 10. If you're their hedge
| against the captain being injured, that might even be your
| name in seventh place.
|
| Lemond is famous in small part for being number #2 to Bernard
| Hinault and feeling it should have been him on the podium.
|
| But Lemond is the classic case of the unreliable captain. He
| was like a race horse. On a good day he was like the wind.
| But a stiff breeze could lay him up. He lamented the Hinault
| situation but illness stopped him from winning two others.
| And then that goddamned duck hunting trip... (I met him a few
| years later, he did a signing at a bike shop owned by a
| friend... who he as going to go duck hunting with the next
| day. I so wanted to ask him why he was crazy.)
|
| I never felt he had the sort of lieutenants that Armstrong
| enjoyed, the way he was to Hinault. I'm racking my brain
| trying to remember who was on Delgado's team and coming up
| completely blank. But I think that just proves my point.
| rjsw wrote:
| > I'm racking my brain trying to remember who was on
| Delgado's team and coming up completely blank.
|
| Delgado had Miguel Indurain [1] working for him, hardly an
| unknown rider.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Indur%C3%A1in
| hinkley wrote:
| Oops. Seems I have flipped Delgado and Indurain in my
| head. Which I should have realized when the wikipedia
| page seemed to be understating his win history.
|
| Who was Indurain's right hand?
| lmilcin wrote:
| > 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?
| Leherenn wrote:
| Most countries will have a clear leader yes, especially
| the big ones with 4/5 riders. Sometimes they hedge their
| bets by having one guy "free", often in the breakaway. It
| apparently wasn't so much the case with the Dutch women
| this year though.
| freefal wrote:
| The big difference between typical pro races and the Olympics
| is that in the Olympics the riders don't race with radios,
| which made this situation possible. In a typical pro race, the
| team director would be telling his riders there is still
| someone up the road.
| Quarrel wrote:
| 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.
| rocqua wrote:
| She's only an amateur in the technical sense.
|
| It seems to me like she has the passion and drive for time
| trialing, not really road racing. It's hard to do that for
| money, and she is apparently driven and lucky enough to be able
| to have a job but still train like a pro.
| mkurz wrote:
| > She was with a pro-team
|
| Only in 2017. She quit a Belgian pro-team shortly after she
| joined [1]. Quote from the linked article: "I noticed that
| professional sport is too much physical and psychological
| stress for me and that I prefer to only do hobby sport"
|
| > but it isn't a simple amateur beating out all the pros story.
|
| IMHO she probably is not really just an amateur, but also not a
| pro. I mean, she is 30, doing her post-doc at EPFL Lausanne
| right now... It's not like training is the only thing she
| spends her time with. Also not sure if she has sponsors.
|
| And to everyone here on HN saying that the Dutch riders didn't
| know there was someone in front: These are professional
| athletes, competing at the olympics. If the Dutch's claim is
| true, it's their own fault. Knowing who is/how many are in
| front is part of the game. And they lost that game. Also
| Kiesenhofer was ahead 1:15 minutes. It's not like that's
| nothing. Even if the Dutch would have chased her, is it sure
| they would have beaten her? I am not sure...
|
| The point being: Kiesenhofer won, no matter what.
|
| [1] https://sport.orf.at/tokyo2020/stories/3081410
| rocqua wrote:
| It is definitely the mistake of the dutch riders, and the
| dutch team. From reports, it might also be issue with
| communication between the organization and the dutch team.
|
| There were complaints about unclarity of information for the
| riders. If true that probably is something the organization
| to do better. But 'our girls' could have done better.
|
| My read is that: being used to having communication; hubris
| and situational awareness mistakes; unclear signaling of gaps
| to the riders; and a spotty cell connection in the coach's
| car combined to the Dutch riders making a very bad mistake.
|
| What would have happened without this mistake is an unkowanle
| what-if. My money would be on Kiesemhofer having been caught,
| given how quickly the gap was shrinking at the end. But that
| what if doesn't matter as much as the huge mistake that
| prevented it from materializing.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Seems 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...
| sdenton4 wrote:
| This was what I came into the comments to find out! I like that
| the faculty is 'celebrating her result,' a phrase we often use
| for new discoveries and theorems, rather than race placements.
|
| I got excited when I saw 'Catalan' in the original article,
| but, sadly, as she's in PDE research, she's merely from
| Catalan, not studying Catalan numbers.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_number
| enriquto wrote:
| > I got excited when I saw 'Catalan' in the original article,
| but, sadly, as she's in PDE research, she's merely (...)
|
| _angry Catalan noises_
|
| I'm really happy for her, she did her PhD at my alma mater,
| in a rather well-known lab. Here's one of the main papers
| leading to the doctorate: https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.02605
| dls2016 wrote:
| 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!
| egeozcan wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_at_the_2020_Summer_Oly...
|
| With more than a minute difference to the rest? She wasn't even
| in the pack, incredible victory.
| billfruit wrote:
| In fact initially Van Vleuten thought she had won when she
| finished and didn't knew that Kiesenhofer had finished ahead of
| her.
| tosh wrote:
| Interesting preparation twitter thread by Anna Kiesenhofer on
| body temperature
|
| https://twitter.com/AnnaKiesenhofer/status/14113592085247262...
| TomK32 wrote:
| Interesting, the race taking place on a hot day and she doesn't
| feel hot when her core peaks at 39.3 degrees.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Especially with global warming I wish they took climate into
| more account with deciding locations. It becomes borderline
| unsafe I think the US track trials were too hot if I remember
| right?
|
| For training though the US climbers have a small space in their
| gym that is enclosed in plastic with heater humidifiers for
| this reason. pretty funny.
|
| Temps + humidity - or 'condies' as the kids say - are really
| important to climb at the top level. Cold and a breeze is
| usually best.
| tosh wrote:
| Great performance, thrilling race, well done!
| haunter wrote:
| There are no radios allowed at the Olympics, like there are at
| professional races (ie Tour, Vuelta, Giro etc.)
|
| That simple. The last refresh point was ~50kms before the final,
| if the person there didn't give an info to the riders then they
| just didn't know how far she was ahead hence the confusion of van
| Vleuten at the finish
| tokai wrote:
| No radios really exposed the poor racecraft of the Dutch
| riders. Seen some commentators criticising the no radios in OL
| (and WM) races, but I personally I think it is nice that it
| emphasize the skill of the rider and minimise the impact of
| SD's. Riders in the van Vleuten group, such as Uttrup, did know
| that there was a rider up the road. So it does seem that the
| mishap is truly on the Ducth riders.
| elijaht wrote:
| I recently started watching road cycling with this years Tour de
| France and now the Olympics and it's pretty interesting. A lot of
| tactical depth and it's a perfect WFH background noise- it plays
| out over hours so you don't have to be watching every minute
|
| Both mens and womens road race in the Olympics were excellent
| too, a lot of drama and interesting mind games
| consp wrote:
| Don't know where to add it to so I'll add it in response to the
| OP as some discussion is about it:
|
| Quotation from the Dutch TV (interview with van Vleuten, silver
| medal winner) [1]:
|
| > "Onderschatting van de tegenstander, in combinatie met heel
| veel miscommunicatie en ook slechte communicatie vanuit de
| organisatie."
|
| Which roughly translates to () is mine: "Underestimated the
| opposition (singular), in combination with lots of
| miscommunication and bad communication (with the team) from the
| organization."
|
| Though it looked like she was contend with the performance of
| Anna Kiesenhofer vs her eventual performance.
|
| [1] Source: https://nos.nl/tokyo2020/artikel/2390838-38-jaar-en-
| ze-had-m...
|
| Video is country restricted for some stupid reason as it is a
| interview ... stop whining about rights ...
| endisneigh wrote:
| Her victory is well deserved, but from what I can tell in the
| Olympics isn't it the case that unless they're right in front of
| you contestants have no way of knowing if they're even winning?
| This could be a case of #2 and #3 falling from the lead and not
| even realizing they're #2 and #3, and rather thinking they're #1
| and #2. If they knew their true positions it's possible the
| outcome could've been different.
| tokai wrote:
| >if they knew their true positions it's possible the outcome
| could've been different.
|
| That is part of the sport. riders keep up with time gaps on
| boards from the motos, they go back to their team car for
| information (and water), count the riders getting brought back,
| they talk with their team mates or even other teams about the
| situation. Radioless races are run differently, but the
| favourites forgetting the road leader is not common and
| embarrassing.
| srean wrote:
| It might be interesting to recall that Alan Turing was an
| Olympics team contender for 1948~1949
| IceDane wrote:
| Yes, let's use the opportunity this article about this
| successful woman has provided us to talk about successful men
| instead. Great suggestion.
| srean wrote:
| No offense intended, it seems my comment has upset you or
| someone else who has been downvoting unrelated comments.
|
| Turing is a person of interest here, for obvious reasons, so
| did not think it would be out of place. Gender identity was
| the last thing on my mind.
|
| There are some similarities, a mathematician, amateur
| sportsman in an Olympics, don't you think ? Turing's running
| mates were quite unaware of his technical and academic
| contributions, partly due to the secrecy of his wartime
| contributions.
|
| If women athletes with academic accomplishments interest you,
| you may checkout Corinna Cortes. She is VP at Google
| Research, known for her foundational work in machine
| learning, support vector machines in particular. She is
| Danish, if that matters to you.
| xondono wrote:
| Let's ignore talking about mathematicians who participate in
| the olympics and focus on their genitalia, because that's
| clearly what's important here.
| mmdoda wrote:
| The fact that she's a woman doesn't make this interesting.
| (Woman winning women's cycling wouldn't be much news.) The
| reason this is interesting is because she's a Mathematician
| and an amateur.
| hervature wrote:
| It seems like a pertinent interesting side fact about
| mathematicians at the Olympics. The list is obviously pretty
| small.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Any 2 humans who are simultaneously good mathematicians and
| good athletes have much more in common than most pairs of
| women or most pairs of men have just because they have the
| same sex.
| _Microft wrote:
| Honest question: why would this be interesting in this context?
|
| (Edit: check the follow-up comments to see why I wasn't as
| surprised as others about Ms. Kiesenhofer being both
| sportswomen and active academic and therefore did not make the
| connection with Mr. Turing immediately)
| mmdoda wrote:
| Because he's also a Mathematician in the Olympics, similar to
| (but not as successful) as Mrs. Kiesenhofer. We like when
| nerds are not completely 1 dimensional.
| rurban wrote:
| Why don't you call her Dr. Kiesenhofer then? Esp. Austrians
| love their titles.
| _Microft wrote:
| Hmm, I've got a friend who won the German championship in
| their sport (watersport, individual) and went on to get a
| PhD in math, so maybe that's why the idea of both being a
| successful sportsman and following an academic career was
| not exactly foreign to me. Thanks for replying!
| awb wrote:
| 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 were
| intrigued by the intersection of top-tier physical and mental
| abilities.
| [deleted]
| acdha wrote:
| 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.
| jamincan wrote:
| 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.
| acdha wrote:
| Yes - also simply the circumstances: if you're in a
| position to do either well, you probably don't have
| serious chronic health problems, family demands, poverty,
| etc. That doesn't make it easy but it makes it possible
| to focus on something more than survival, much as how
| coming from a financially stable family makes it easier
| for someone to take a gamble on a startup rather than a
| safer job at a big company.
| mncharity wrote:
| There's https://news.mit.edu/2019/student-john-urschel-
| math-football... .
| bijant wrote:
| The Dutch Cyclists didn't even need a phd in PDEs, they could
| have gone for gold if they had been able to count to three.
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