When most sporting events begin, you often have a pretty good sense of who is going to come out on top. Put my poor Detroit Lions against the New England Patriots and you can be pretty assured that the pats will win handily. The same goes for basketball, soccer, and even other endurance sports, like running. Given a list of teams or athletes and their respective records or PRs, you can usually make a really good educated guess of who will end up winning.
I would argue that this is less true in cycling. One big reason why is luck.
I raced the Topsfield Circuit Race earlier this week. About 35 or 40 miles in, I got a flat on my back tire, and was forced to stop, switch in a new wheel, and then attempt to catch the main field. Unfortuantely, when the main field is moving at 26-28 miles per hour, there’s not much hope for catching back on. I might as well have been riding on a flat tire.
I’ve been pretty lucky for the most part. This is the first race I’ve flatted in and I didn’t have any chance of contending for the win anyhow. But this danger always exists. You can do everything right, be the fittest rider, and still come up short. Take, for example, David Millar in the 2003 TdF prologue. He threw his chain and lost the prologue by less than a second. Had he not had a mechanical, he would have won easily.
Technology is making luck less and less a part of cycling. Wheels and tubes are becoming increasingly puncture-resistant. Electronic derailleurs are making shifting faster and more precise. Stiffer and stronger components mean that you’re less likely to have your front crack during a hair-raising descent. At the same time, technology has found yet found a solution to the hapless racer who can’t handle his bike to save his life and takes down half the field. Until this problem is solved, luck will always play a big role in deciding who finishes first (or, really, who finishes at all).
I think it was Clint Eastwood, one of my heroes, who best explained how luck works, so I won’t try to improve on his quite compelling argument. I’ll just say that you already have enough to worry about- your competitors, the pothole just in front of you, and the epic climb just up the road. Don’t bother worrying about the things that are out of your control.
