On Bicycles, and.... what else is there?

They say fourth is the worst place: the lead medal, just off the podium. I don't agree with this, having gotten more than my share of 4th places in last year's Low-Key Hillclimbs . But the Low-Keys don't put medals around riders necks. The races which notably do so are the Olympic Games and the World Championships. I thought it would be interesting to review who got the 4th places in the individual elite road events at these competitions this year: Olympics Games: Women's Time Trial: Linda Melanie Villumsen, New Zealand Men's Time Trial: Taylor Phinney, United States Women's Road Race: Shelly Olds, United States Men's Time Trial: Taylor Phinney, United States World Championships: Women's Time Trial: Emma Pooley, Britain Men's Time Trial: Tejay Van Garderen, United States Women's Road Race: Amber Neban, United States Men's Road Race: John "Arnie" Degenkolb, Germany Impressive showing here by Team U.S.A. with a remarkabl

After the 2010 World Mountain Bike Championships, I posted a summary of the bikes which had won elite world championships and Olympic races 2008-2010 . The result: overwhelming superiority of 26-inch hard-tails, with only one exception of the races Christophe Sauser's 2008 world championship on a Specialized Epic dual-suspension. Well, since then "29'ers" have become so popular it's hard to even find high-end 26-inch hard tails in shops in the United States. Even the dual-suspension bikes are switching to "29-inch". There's been a move in Europe towards 27.5-inch "650B" wheels, a size which had previously been associated more with randonneuring, and Ritchey just announced a wheel in that size. So one would expect given the ubiquity of these wheels and their claimed performance advantage that surely the winner of these most important races in the world, racers in which the riders have access to almost any equipment they want, 29'ers

The Olympic Road Race shares an otherwise rare trait with the World Championships in that, as a professional bike race, members of the same team don't each ride the same bike. National teams are typically composed of members of more than one trade team, where riders use the bikes assigned by their trade teams. So an analysis of results by bike goes beyond an analysis of teams. I used the following formula for points for a placing, rounding to the nearest integer: points = 21 - place + 80 [ exp([1 - place] / 2] - exp(-10) ] In other words, for places 1 - 20: 100,68,47,35,27,22,18,15,13,12,11,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 The results: despite missing out on the gold and silver, Cervelo takes the top honors over Orbea. With 4 Orbea-sponsored Webcor/Alto Velo women in the women's race, Orbea has a good chance to take the road overall, but Cervelo sponsors the powerful Cervelo-Life Force team including Team USA's top rider Kristen Armstrong, so could well hold onto its top place. Of cou