Motorpacing is a motorpacing does

There are those that doubt. There are those that know.

From: J.
just saying moto pacing must be working for someone

The email came with two pics. Pretty straightforward stuff. Ride behind car, win races.

What did the Italians do to prepare for the 2009 Worlds? They rode the course at race speed, in the draft of an automobile.

The Italian squad break into smaller groups for motorpacing.
The Italian squad break into smaller groups for motorpacing.

– Read the rest: cyclingnews.com/features/worlds-image-gallery-elite-men-on-course-recon.
– Image source: cyclingnews.com/features/photos/worlds-image-gallery-elite-men-on-course-recon/89349.

Ballan as World Champion in 2008. Think the Italians know what they’re doing?

e who dares wins for Alessandro Ballan as he takes the world title ahead of a charging field
He who dares wins for Alessandro Ballan as he takes the world title ahead of a charging field.

– Read the rest: autobus.cyclingnews.com/road/2008/worlds08/?id=results/worlds086.
– Image source: autobus.cyclingnews.com/photos/…worlds08.

Ballan had the top end speed in 2008. And, he used it well. Video here: youtube.com.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uFNvaPfV-w[/youtube]

Embed disabled on that one. Bastards. If anyone finds a decent version of that vid that can be embedded, let me know in the comment section.

About big jonny

The man, the legend. The guy who started it all back in the Year of Our Lord Beer, 2000, with a couple of pages worth of idiotic ranting hardcoded on some random porn site that would host anything you uploaded, a book called HTML for Dummies (which was completely appropriate), a bad attitude (which hasn’t much changed), and a Dell desktop running Win95 with 64 mgs of ram and a six gig hard drive. Those were the days. Then he went to law school. Go figure. Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

9 Replies to “Motorpacing is a motorpacing does”

  1. So, a bike race win goes to the team with the most cars with the steadiest drivers? I see again why I was turned off to pro racing. Looks and smells like cheating. If you can’t dope your bloodstream, then use a vehicle’s slip stream.

    In my world, I don’t motor pace. I pass cars, or they pass me. We don’t hang.

  2. I have frequently been tempted, when passing a cyclist on a big hill, to slow down to like 15 mph and see if he grabs my tailgate and “skitches” a ride up… wouldn’t the world be a happier, more beautiful place if we all did this for our brothers? NOW I feel a group hug coming on…

  3. I think everyone is a little confused here…

    1) The motorpacing picture is from training/course reconnaissance of the 2009 Worlds in Switzerland – not in competition.

    2) Ballan won the 2008 Worlds in Italy.

  4. Bruka,
    You are absolutely correct, the images are from two different World Championships. Re-reading my post, that isn’t clear at all. I’ll make a few tweaks.

    The point is motorpacing is used by many teams, including the Italians, who certainly seem to know what they are doing. At least, sometimes.

  5. Of course it’s all fun and games until you pull an Ullrich through the back window of the team car the day before the TdF prologue.

  6. Mr Bill, drop me a link to where the vid is at. That code is an incomplete function block not related to a video embed.

    gnome (at) drunkcyclist.com