Paris-Roubaix Then vs Now — It’s an Energy Problem

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]AND JUAN FERNARD IS THE WINNER OF the fastest ever ble.

[00:00:05]>> Hey everybody, Josh from Silka here.

[00:00:07]None of us are really talking about kind of the math behind why this is becoming such a big problem. Yeah. And I think one that's just gonna keep going up because from my experience most of the riders um today we still cannot optimize their tire pressures ideally for the like class three class 4 the fourstar fivestar um cobbled sections of rub because we cannot get big enough tires in the bike. And so I went ahead and pulled some old data and uh oh my it's way more so than I even remembered. So um overall 2026 rub 258k you know they change it every year they make tweaks here and there 258k in 5 hours and 16 minutes at 48.9k an hour the year 2000 the big Johan Museo win which you know later came out as being doped to the gills admittedly on EPO you know two humans worth of blood in one human that was a 272k year 64 47 an hour and a half longer. 40.17 kph. Okay. To put some perspective on that, the women's rubé this year was 40.89 kph. So the women are riding about a kilometer an hour faster today than the men were uh 26 years ago. That's pretty eye opening. Um so from 40 to 49 for nice round numbers. But let's look at the Arenberg. Um, we've got some screenshots here. The guys, even with the newer, newly added chicane. Um, they roll on to the cobbles at about 48 49 and then pretty quickly there's a slight downhill. It is cranked up into the 55 56 range. I saw peak 57 on the screen.

[00:02:07]That's all being taken from the moto.

[00:02:09]So, you know, maybe he's accelerating a little bit. But um the average speed in the Arnberg this year 53.9 that's two hour 2 minutes and 34 seconds for the for them to complete the Arinburgg. In 2000 they did it in 328 that is um 39.8 kilometers per hour. So what is that in energy terms? Well, we don't since we're just doing relative comparisons, we basically put the new speed squared over the old speed squared. Um, and that gives us a 1.83.

[00:02:48]So, when the guys this year are hitting the edge of that cobble with their tire, they are hitting it with 83% more energy than a rider from 2000. And the guys in 2000 were damn fast. Okay, so let's say 83% more energy. So I think it really starts to speak to um the challenge that we have with the tires, the wheels. I mean really with all of the equipment, there's so much more kinetic energy um in the system on these modern bikes.

[00:03:23]Now, one of the reasons they're doing that is because the tire technology has gotten so much faster and so much more efficient. And some of that is because we went away from tubulars. Uh I know a lot of old-timers, myself included, love to, you know, really pine about the tubular days and the ride feel and all those things. The reality is the tubular tire has a pretty uh significant limitation and that is the base tape and the glue um in the tire. So even when the casings and the treads and the materials were getting super fast, you were held back by the base tape and the glue. We've talked about this a quite a bit some of these hour record attempts and things where we'll like hard epoxy the tire to the rim essentially making it permanent to uh you know reduce the hysteresus there. But I pulled some quick numbers just to give you guys some idea. So, the fastest tubular tire ever tested and we'll use bicycle rollingresistance.com because he's an awesome independent third party. If you don't know Yarno's website, it's bicycle rollingresistance.com.

[00:04:33]Um, fastest tubular tire he ever looked at was the Victoria Corsa Speed 200 g time trial tubular. Um, if this is a tire from around 2018 to 2022, probably.

[00:04:50]Um, if any of you have ever seen or ridden one, it's a phenomenal, beautiful, amazing tire. It is also a tire that you pretty much just have to stare at hard enough and you can flat it. Um, amazing tire for time trial, uh, for track type use. Very delicate. Um that tire in his test gave a rolling resistance of 0.00318 uh which at the uh 29 kP hour kph he tests at was 10.6 watts um 10.6 watts.

[00:05:25]So for comparison a offtheshelf GP5000 30 mm tire that you and I can buy uh tests at a 0030 that's 10.0 watts at that speed. Um, so 6 watts faster for just an everyday puncture resistant great tire GP5000.

[00:05:47]Um, the tire that we would have been racing had we still been on tubular is the Victoria Corsa G+ that's a 2021 2022 uh tested tire 280 gram. Z43 that's 14.1 watts. So, one of the things with uh Yarno's testing, he does it at 29 kph. Um the writers here, we're going to say, are riding at 50 kph. And so, rolling resistance scales linearly uh unlike aerodynamics. Um so, from 29 to 50 kph, that's a 1.72 difference. 72% uh faster. um here. So what we really wanted to look at is we multiply times 1.7. So that 10 of our GP5000 is 17, but our tubular of equivalent size is 24.5.

[00:06:41]That's per tire.

[00:06:43]So one of the things you see happening is the riders today, these bikes can be on the order of, you know, 40, 50, even more watts faster than the bikes of 25 years ago. You're also looking at another seven, eight watts per tire of efficiency improvement. The drivetrains are faster by a couple of watts. And so essentially what we've done is create this uh this sort of virtuous circle or or maybe it's a vicious circle. Uh tell me what you think in the comments below where the equipment is allowing the riders to go much much faster. Right?

[00:07:20]And that's before you even get to the that the riders are making more power than they've ever made. Um, but when you roll some of this up and I do a quick kind of calculation bike of the early 2000s, bike of today, I very very quickly um get to about, this is going to sound crazy, but I very quickly get somewhere between 80 and 90 watts saved um between frame arrow, wheel arrow. Again, these are 32 spoke box sections, so you know, we're coming from like the worst of the worst to call it average today at these speeds. You're talking 80 90 watts. Um, when you add up rolling resistance, drivetrain efficiency, aerodynamic improvements, and that's really not even thinking about like skin suits, helmets, um, all of that other stuff. And then you have riders making more power.

[00:08:14]So, there we have it. It's essentially not an equipment problem, it's an energy problem. Um yeah, and I think one that's just going to keep going up because from my experience, most of the riders, um today we still cannot optimize their tire pressures ideally for the like class three, class 4, the fourstar, fivestar um cobbled sections of rub because we cannot get big enough tires in the bike. So, uh, great article at Escape Collective today. The Secret Pro came out and said, "We really want 36s, maybe even 38s." And, um, that is a secret pro. Who knows what they're talking about. Uh, 36 is probably the point at which we can start getting most riders onto their ideal pressure. um for those fivestar sectors. 38s really probably allows us to get even the the heaviest of the the riders onto um their optimal pressure. And so, as we talked about in our last video, you it would take away some of this flying close to the sun um situation that we've got now.

[00:09:29]And I was also reminded that the Icarus problem is not just flying close to the sun, but also he couldn't fly too close to the sea or his wings would load up with water and weigh him down and uh crash him. He chose the sun and melted.

[00:09:44]That's really exactly where we are, right? You uh you go too low in the pressure to go faster on the cobbles, you're more likely to break your rims.

[00:09:52]You go higher in the pressure so you don't break your rims. and now you are just giving up watts which actually would then keep you from going as fast and make it doubly less likely that you're going to flat because you have less energy because your speed is slower. So >> tire gets now a spare bike from Shimano gets a spare bike from Shimano from the pool deck in Arambe change.

[00:10:28]>> Seven guys with about with Bugattacha from the pool far back also Kristoff is there. Also Kristoff is there. Make them turn. This is a very good situation at 2 minutes. 2 minutes. Stop. Stop.

[00:10:43]Stop. Stop.

[00:10:46]>> North obviously you sit on. We let V come back for you on 10 seconds. You on 20 seconds. V is back.

[00:10:54]>> Van art perhaps sensed the danger and attacked into sector 12.

[00:10:58]>> Three venaches is dropping now. Person is dropping now.

[00:11:06]>> Come on. work together with Pogacha on the cobalts. He was for sure not better than you. Come on. You're flying today, bro. Come on. Come on. Patcha is going full. Come on. 50 minutes of suffering.

[00:11:17]Then we are there. Come. We in perfect position. This will be our day today, boys. We fight for it. Come on. Come on.

[00:11:23]Today's your day. We'll make this memorable.

[00:11:27]And also about you know it. Ideally, you start the sprint from the second position and high from the banking. So you can take speed, but you know what to do, right? fan art STOPS TO GO AWAY AND WELL IS PIRING HIS way towards the most incredible victory in Par.

[00:12:04]>> Wow. Uh yeah, a lot to unpack there. a lot to think about, but really wanted to just share with you, holy smokes, the speed differential. And so I think too, it shows how the equipment has really allowed for a change in the strategy that we can now really put the hammer down on the cobbles and accelerate uh and maintain ridiculously high speed rather than hitting it fast and kind of just getting bogged down and trying to get out the other side.

[00:12:33]That is a huge 14k an hour difference.

[00:12:36]That's just wow. Anyway, uh I hope you enjoyed and uh please more comments, more questions below. Um I'm going to go watch the finish of Amstel Gold and uh see how that turned out and I will catch you all next time.