Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast #ICYMI: Extended Classic: The Physics of the Tour de France About this episode Now updated for the 2017 race: Aerodynamics, Newton’s Laws, drafting, power to weight ratio, nutrition, technology and more! Get smarter about the Tour de France with hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly and their guests Lance Armstrong, Neil deGrasse Tyson and John Eric Goff.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Gary O'Reilly? I'm Gary O'Reilly.
0:02 Chuck Nice? And I'm Chuck Nice.
0:03 Gary O'Reilly? And this is Playing with Science.
0:08 Gary O'Reilly? I'm Gary O'Reilly.
0:09 Chuck Nice? And I'm Chuck Nice.
0:10 Gary O'Reilly? This is Playing with Science. Yes, it is today on Playing with Science, we ride. So fill up your water bottle, get your lycra on. It is centuries old and said to be the most efficient means of transport known to humankind. Pretty simple, really. A wheel at each end, somewhere to sit, and something to steer with.
0:29 Chuck Nice? Yes, very simple, but not so simple because, you know, cycling is now one of the most sophisticated sports on the planet. And it's loaded, and I mean loaded, with lots of tech. But don't worry, you're not going to miss out on that. We have a whole nother show that's going to be devoted to the tech of cycling.
0:48 Gary O'Reilly? Oh, yeah, but for now, we'll be exploring the physics of the Tour de France, which is a... Oh, mais oui! It is a test of man's endurance, man's need for speed while not fawning off. And with more twists and turns and devious strategies than an Agatha Christie novel.
1:05 Chuck Nice? I see what you did there.
1:06 Gary O'Reilly? Did you?
1:07 Chuck Nice? Yeah, I like that. That was good, yeah. To explore this lesser-known world, we sent the intrepid Neil deGrasse Tyson to meet with what some might say is a controversial figure in the sport. We know him simply as Lance Armstrong.
1:22 Gary O'Reilly? And to help us dig further into the amazing science of cycling is Eric Goff, physics professor at Lynchburg College, author of Gold Medal Physics: The Science of Sport, and all-round cycling guru. Eric, welcome back to the show!
1:36 Speaker 02 Glad to be here.
1:37 Chuck Nice? Hey, buddy, how are you, man? Thanks for coming back.
1:39 Speaker 02 I'm doing great, how are you?
1:40 Gary O'Reilly? We are good, okay.
1:41 Chuck Nice? You're a big, huge cycling guy?
1:43 Speaker 02 Yeah. Sure, I love cycling.
1:45 Chuck Nice? Okay, all right. You know, we have Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is doing an interview with Lance Armstrong. You're going to be hearing clips of that, Eric, and we're going to ask you to respond to it. But before we go into the show, I think it's important that we do address the fact that we are talking to Lance Armstrong. Some of you out there listening right now are like, "Why? What's up with that? This guy has done this and he's done that." We're not here to litigate those things. The one thing that is for sure, and Eric, you as a huge cycling fan, will either confirm or denounce this, if you're talking to somebody about cycling, you can't talk to anyone more knowledgeable than Lance Armstrong.
2:26 Speaker 02 I agree. You're not going to win seven Tour de France's in a row without knowing something about the sport.
2:32 Chuck Nice? Absolutely.
2:32 Gary O'Reilly? For sure. So Lance Armstrong and doping is a sentence that we have heard over a number of years, but don't think we are going to swerve it. We will be coming back in a future show and addressing exactly that topic. So
2:46 Chuck Nice? Absolutely.
2:47 Gary O'Reilly? don't think primis science has dropped out on that one.
2:49 Chuck Nice? Yeah, we're not dodging anything because we're going to actually talk about doping and performance enhancement.
2:56 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
2:56 Chuck Nice? I like to call it performance enhancement. You know, I'm not a dope. I'm smart enough to enhance my performance.
3:02 Gary O'Reilly? All right. So Eric, every year you model the Tour de France and that must consist of a number of different layers and approaches apart from just saying, that guy there, see him? No, the one on the left, he's the one that's going to win. So how do you go about modeling for a three-week race like the Tour de France?
3:24 Speaker 02 So the Tour de France puts online the stage profiles, the 21-stage profiles, and that's a starting point for us to model the terrain of each stage. And what we're after is the winning time for every stage. We're not trying to model a specific cyclist or team. We want to know what the winning time's going to be, given an elite performance on each stage.
3:44 Gary O'Reilly? Is there a designated algorithm equation that you can just parachute in, that you push through and out comes the answer?
3:54 Speaker 02 Well, there is, but I took a long time to write the code to do it.
3:59 Gary O'Reilly? In other words, you're not telling us.
4:00 Chuck Nice? You're like, yeah, there is.
4:02 Gary O'Reilly? It's your code, you're keeping it.
4:03 Speaker 02 There's nothing to hide. It's that, you know, we use the laws of physics. Newton's laws of physics are pretty good for modeling cycling.
4:10 Chuck Nice? Right, right. Well, you know, one of the most important aspects of cycling, of course, is aerodynamics. And Neil deGrasse Tyson, as we said earlier, sat down with Neil, with Lance Armstrong, not Neil Armstrong.
4:21 Gary O'Reilly? Oh.
4:21 Chuck Nice? That's a whole nother interview that happened
4:24 Gary O'Reilly? Cycling on the Moon.
4:25 Chuck Nice? on StarTalk. Yes, where Neil Armstrong and Neil deGrasse Tyson. But Lance Armstrong and Neil sat down to talk about aerodynamics. Let's hear what they had to say.
4:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? From when you began riding to when you retired, did the aerodynamics of the sport change?
4:43 Speaker 04 Well, yes. I mean, the aerodynamics absolutely.
4:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's still your body.
4:46 Speaker 04 It's still your body, but the biggest thing that changed was in the late 80s, they invented a whole new type of handlebar, which changed, you know, in the late 80s or in the mid 80s, you would have been sitting out like this. They took, which originated in the triathlon, they took the idea of that and they said, "Well, what if we..." And the guy who invented this is a guy named Boone Lennon, and he was an old ski racer. But he also rode bikes. And he worked for Scott, the ski manufacturer, to make poles and skis. And he said, "Well, what if instead of..." I mean, I wouldn't ski down the hill like this. What if, you know, a skier who's tucked like this, like, what if we rode like that?
5:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And that, that...
5:28 Speaker 04 So that just took everything...
5:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Takes away the aerodynamic drag.
5:31 Speaker 04 All this comes...
5:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Of my arms outside.
5:33 Speaker 04 Everything inside, everything inside your body.
5:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And now I'm one thing.
5:35 Speaker 04 Yeah, so you look, it was called the Scott bar. And it looked like a downhill ski racer. Out.
5:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Posing like that.
5:42 Speaker 04 Yeah, you were out a bit.
5:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, which I've seen it.
5:44 Speaker 04 So that revolutionized the aerodynamics of triathlon initially, and then it moved into cycling, which was a harder transition because they were so traditional. They saw these bars and these guys, they said, "No way. Ain't no way I'm riding that." Well, it proved so much faster that, actually Greg LeMans was the first one. He won the Tour de France in 1989 on these new aero bars.
6:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's what it takes.
6:07 Speaker 04 I mean, that was the tipping point for that bar.
6:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So then when did the cone head helmets come out?
6:12 Speaker 04 Those, those were around for a long time. Yeah, those were around before the bars.
6:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
6:17 Speaker 04 And then came, and then, you know, people tried to make an aerodynamic frame. I mean, I remember in the...
6:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, the tubes became these, you know...
6:25 Speaker 04 They're very, they're oval shaped.
6:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah.
6:29 Speaker 04 You can even go back...
6:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Almost like the airfoil of a plane.
6:31 Speaker 04 A British guy, when the UCI, when the governing body was a little more lax on the double triangle thing. A British guy in 1996 by the name of Chris Boardman set the hour record, which is on the track. I love the hour record. Which is like the ultimate test. I love that. I mean, you're indoors, there's no wind, there's no draught, it's like the ultimate. And the track is banked, so you just... It's banked at 30 degrees. There's nothing against you. Right. So he set, he broke the hour record on a bike, it's called a Lotus bike. It was not a double triangle. You can look it up, I mean, we can go to the lab. It was a very, this is, to me, if the sport said, "Okay, you guys evolve technology-wise, do whatever you want." That's what the sport would look like. You'd have that, that's what a bike frame would look like. The Lotus frame.
7:16 Speaker 04 The Lotus frame, which your audience will see it. We'll get a picture of it. So, but then they backed off that and went back to the double triangle, but you'll see how radical it looks. So... And obviously, he went, I mean, nobody's ever... What's your best hour? I've never done that. You haven't done it, yeah? Tell me that, you're lying. I've had a lot of great hours in my life, but they weren't on a velcro.
7:38 Gary O'Reilly? Look at that, lad. He liked the track inside, doesn't he? Loves the road. Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting, Eric, that they borrowed from other sports. You listen to that first bit, the Scott Barr comes out of skiing. Lotus is a British car manufacturer, they had a Formula One race team. So cycling's been borrowing from all these different sports in an attempt to get that speed. Get faster.
8:07 Speaker 02 And why not? We all follow the same laws of physics.
8:09 Gary O'Reilly? Right.
8:10 Speaker 02 So, a skier is facing the same kind of error that a cyclist is gonna face.
8:14 Gary O'Reilly? Yes.
8:15 Speaker 02 So, we can learn a lot from other sports by seeing what technologies have advanced in other sports and applying them to cycling.
8:22 Chuck Nice? So now, what, no, I was gonna say, what is the, what is the optimum way to increase airflow for a, for a biker, aside from, you know, the tuck, which makes perfect sense? You ever see a downhill skier? They're, they're actually, not only are they tucked, but they're as low to the ground as possible. So, what is the optimum means of increasing airflow for a bicyclist?
8:47 Speaker 02 Well, we learn about air resistance when we're children and we stick our hands out the car window. We get into airplane mode and the hand is, you know, sideways and we have a very little drag and then we turn it 90 degrees and all of a sudden we're getting smacked by the air and the hand will fall back. So we know that-
9:04 Chuck Nice? Which, by the way, Eric, is why I only have one hand, but thanks for bringing up my pain, sir. Thank you. No, go ahead. I'm joking.
9:15 Speaker 02 If you drive on the other side of the road in England, then you can lose the other hand.
9:18 Gary O'Reilly? All right, Eric, don't encourage him. Please, just don't encourage him. Now, am I right when, and Chuck loves this term, skin friction, is that the technical of the cyclist term for the problem that you face as a competitor?
9:35 Speaker 02 What you're trying to do is reduce the area. So when you get into that tucked position, you are reducing the amount of area that the air can hit.
9:44 Gary O'Reilly? Gotcha.
9:45 Speaker 02 So if you're going really slow, the air resistance might just be a couple of pounds on you.
9:48 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
9:49 Speaker 02 If you're going really fast downhill, it could be 15, 16 pounds. And remember, 15 pounds is the weight of the bike. So you've got the weight of a bowling ball being pulled back behind you in the air resistance. So you can really feel it. It's really slowing you down.
10:06 Gary O'Reilly? So, as Neil said, if we get the cone head helmets, then I get the super slippery Lycra bodysuit, I get really smart booties for my shoes-
10:20 Chuck Nice? Nice.
10:21 Gary O'Reilly? That reduce all of the wind resistance. How much can I gain and lose?
10:25 Speaker 02 In the time trials, they're allowed to wear this very sleek clothing and aerodynamic equipment. They've got the back wheel is covered and you can reduce drag by about 20%. You've got the teardrop helmet.
10:37 Chuck Nice? Right.
10:38 Speaker 02 You know, you get a cyclist like, I think of Tony Martin from Germany on the bike, who just absolutely, almost gets himself completely two-dimensional on that thing, the way he can compress his knees and his body. It's an amazing thing to see, but they could reduce, you know, by 20% or so the drag area that they feel.
10:58 Gary O'Reilly? Okay. One question, Eric. Why only the rear wheel is covered and the front wheel has the spokes or whichever system is preferred?
11:07 Speaker 02 So when the air is coming around the object, think of the water going around a boat. You have a wake in the back and that wake is taking away some energy that you have. So when you close off that back wheel and you have the teardrop shape, you're allowing the air to flow a little farther back and the wake's not quite as chaotic. You don't have quite as many swirls. You don't lose quite as much energy.
11:31 Chuck Nice? Just to clarify, what you're saying is behind the bike, what happens is the air turbulence creates like a curl. And so that curl, that curl of turbulence happens much farther behind the bike itself, freeing the bike to move faster, right?
11:49 Speaker 02 Yeah, if you just have a round object and you got air flowing behind it, you can get all these swirls behind it in the air. And that's taking energy away from the ball, let's say. But if you can teardrop the object, the air will flow much smoother behind it and you don't have quite as many swirls, so there's less drag on the object.
12:07 Chuck Nice? Wow. And now what are the speeds? Have we got to a place where we're kind of reaching an optimum speed? What are the kind of speeds that we're talking about when we look at these aerodynamic advancements?
12:17 Speaker 02 Well, you go back a couple of years and the first stage, you had Rohan Dennis setting a time trial record. Now, this was only about eight and a half miles, but the guy averaged... Yeah, only, I say only, yes. The guy averaged about 35 miles an hour on the bike.
12:35 Chuck Nice? Wow.
12:36 Speaker 02 I mean, that was an incredible speed. We're talking over 55 kilometers an hour, sustained that for...
12:42 Chuck Nice? Ticket. Yeah, that's amazing, that's insane. Wow.
12:47 Speaker 02 Yes.
12:48 Chuck Nice? Super cool. Well, listen, let us jump into the next component, which I'm sure is key when it comes to physics. And Lance Armstrong and Neil chatted about drafting, which I would assume is pretty much the whole day of going sport. But let's hear what they had to say.
13:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So let's talk about drafting.
13:06 Speaker 04 Okay. It's one of the most important parts of the sport.
13:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So presumably there's some speed below which drafting is not useful.
13:17 Speaker 04 Right, that would be like 1 mile an hour. Anything more than...
13:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Anything more than stationary.
13:23 Speaker 04 Keep in mind, the speed is important to talk about, but the wind is... If you say 10 miles an hour, that's not very fast. But if the wind is 50 miles an hour in your face, 10 miles an hour is pretty fast. So your draft, it goes up exponentially. The more intense the wind is, the direction of the wind, right? Obviously, if it's right in front of you, you stay right behind the rider that's in front of you. If the wind is from the left, then you inch over to the right.
13:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, okay.
13:51 Speaker 04 So you just find... This is why I say NASCAR. You find that sweet spot of where that draft is. And then, of course, that just gets multiplied. If there's one rider in front of you, you have a draft. If there are 100 riders in front of you, you're not even pedaling.
14:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's not even... You're just gonna suck the long.
14:08 Speaker 04 Right.
14:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In the partial vacuum behind the moving mass.
14:12 Speaker 04 Right. But all of this meets, Neil, all of this meets... Think about this, right? If there's one guy in front of you, your draft is not as good as if you're guy number 100. But your chances of crashing, if you're 100 deep versus number 2, are much greater. So you gotta figure out how this all plays. How much do I want to sit in this group and get sucked along, as you said? Versus risk a crash? So you have to think about all of these things. And that's what goes into that positioning in the group. One of the most important things.
14:46 Gary O'Reilly? You know what? Love him or loathe him, when Lance Armstrong speaks, we listen. He just talks so sensibly and so intelligently about that. So Professor Eric Goff, is there an equation? Can you calculate the sweet spot for drafting in a cycle race like the Tour de France?
15:06 Speaker 02 Well, you can. It's very hard to predict because you don't know where the wind's going to be, and it's changing. And as the roads turn, obviously their orientation with the wind is going to change. So as Lance said, you're going to slightly move left or slightly move right, depending on how the road and the wind change. But the idea is you're trying to get less air hitting you. So when you tuck in behind somebody else or a couple of other riders, you're going to reduce the amount of air hitting you.
15:34 Gary O'Reilly? How much of a team strategy applies here in drafting? Because this diagonal movement down a road of a whole bunch of cyclists, if you're out there on the front and there's no one there to work with you, you're sucking in the insects and you're taking all the air pressure.
15:51 Chuck Nice? Is there a designated windbreaker?
15:53 Speaker 02 So you are going to have somebody who's going to do the lead. I mean, you're going to see like a Chris Froome sitting in the back enjoying the drafting a little more than some of his teammates. I mean, you're going to get the main cyclist, you know, the Lance Armstrongs, you know, those powerful cyclists are going to be the ones getting help from the teammates. And they'll cycle in and out. If you watch a team time trial, they will change who's at the front in and out throughout the stage.
16:18 Chuck Nice? Interesting.
16:19 Gary O'Reilly? How many punch-ups are there during punch-ups, fisticuffs, fights, breakout during a section of the race where there's drafting? Because there must be the real clamor to get that part of, it's called an echelon, am I right, when it breaks away in that sort of format?
16:39 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, the peloton itself, I mean, all the cyclists who are in the middle are enjoying the drafting in the back. And then, of course, to be fair, I mean, they're going to be wanting to cycle in and out through the front to take their turn, you know, pulling. You know, it's not a free lunch, you know, unless you're just sitting in the back the whole time. Of course, your chances of crashing are higher if you're sitting in the back.
17:01 Chuck Nice? Right. Well, Neil and Lance had some further thoughts on drafting, so let's check out what they have to say in this next clip.
17:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I don't ride bikes or draft off of people, so I know what drafting is intellectually because I can calculate it, but I once tested this. So, and I don't recommend people do this because it was a little bit dangerous.
17:23 Speaker 04 This is gonna be good.
17:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, when I first got the kind of car that tells you what kind of gas mileage you're getting, right now it's standard, but this is a big deal. This is data that I can now see what the car is doing. And so, if you're really flooring it, your gas mileage drops. You're getting 2 miles a gallon now because you're really spewing out the gas. Alright, and if you're coasting down a hill, your gas mileage goes to like infinite because you're moving and you're not pressing the pedal essentially. Alright, so but on level ground, you get the accurate measurement of your miles per gallon and your, okay. So, I decided to pull up behind a truck.
18:01 Speaker 04 Right.
18:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I got closer and closer to the truck. Now I'm kind of an unsafe closeness to it, and while I was there, I just watched the gas mileage go up. I was getting 20 miles a gallon, 30 miles a gallon, 50 miles a gallon, 60 miles a gallon. And there I was on level ground, and I said, "Wow." I felt like I was just floating in the car. It's a fascinating bit of metrics there.
18:26 Speaker 04 Yeah, but think about the times that somebody's been on a road trip, right? And you know, they've passed the exit for the gas station, and the light comes on and all of a sudden, they're not finding a gas station. The smartest thing they can do, and they're trying to figure out, where is the next gas station? They can't turn around because they're, you know, they don't know if it's 10 miles or 50 miles. The smartest thing they can do is do exactly what you just said, just get as close as you can to an 18-wheeler and just get sucked along until you get to the gas station. I mean, I've done that many times.
18:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, I thought I like discovered a new thing.
19:00 Speaker 04 Well, I wasn't trying to figure out the actual effect of drafting. I'm just trying to get to the gas station.
19:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so drafting is so, so blasé to you. Now you just, you use it just for other things, right? Not to win a race.
19:16 Speaker 04 You can draft in running, the Olympic marathon. They're running so fast. Think about that, they're running, look, somebody's gonna run, somebody's gonna run-
19:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's been four minute miles.
19:24 Speaker 04 Somebody's gonna run a two hour marathon.
19:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
19:26 Speaker 04 That's 13 miles an hour.
19:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, it's almost a four minute mile.
19:29 Speaker 04 That is fast. So at 13 miles an hour, I don't care if you're crawling, running, riding, you're drafting. So that you see those guys, they all, there's that pack effect.
19:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it's a pack and it's, they're not running abreast to one another, they're not even running in a line, they're running in like a teardrop shape.
19:44 Speaker 04 That's right, just like, just like a bike race.
19:48 Gary O'Reilly? So we learned one thing.
19:49 Chuck Nice? Yes.
19:50 Gary O'Reilly? If we go on a road trip, Neil is not allowed to drive.
19:52 Chuck Nice? Yes.
19:53 Gary O'Reilly? That doesn't sound like the best road safety I've ever heard.
19:55 Chuck Nice? Yeah, without a doubt, and we've also learned that neither Neil deGrasse Tyson nor Lance Armstrong are good at gauging the mileage of a car. So, yeah.
20:04 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
20:04 Chuck Nice? It's like, so what other applications of drafting do you see in other sports, Eric? Or have you, have you studied that?
20:14 Speaker 02 Well, certainly NASCAR, I mean, any kind of sport with cars racing, you're gonna see them tucked very, very close in behind each other. And that's where you can get into some fights.
20:26 Chuck Nice? Right.
20:26 Speaker 02 If someone's drafting too much, they can trade a little paint in their exchange of words, so to speak, to try to get someone-
20:34 Gary O'Reilly? What sort of difference, because we are talking a much shorter circuit than something like the Tour de France, even if you took just one of the stages from the Tour de France, you've got an elliptical, an oval shaped circuit in NASCAR. The speeds are higher, the distances are shorter. How do you begin to calibrate how, when, and using that sweet spot?
20:55 Speaker 02 Well, when you're in a, in an auto race, of course, you've got to time it right for when you're gonna go to a pit stop and refuel. And if you can draft long enough and maybe get one extra lap in before you have to go to a pit stop, that can be the difference between winning and losing the race. On a long stage like the Tour de France, where you're going through mountains and maybe you're burning 7,000 or 8,000 calories during that five hours in the saddle, every little tiny percentage you can pick up in a reduction in drag is gonna make you all the stronger for the finish.
21:28 Chuck Nice? Wow, super cool. Well, you know, up next, we're going to actually explore the power and the output and energy, so we'll have more of Neil and Lance and their interview on Playing with Science when we return.
21:46 Gary O'Reilly? Welcome back, I'm Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Chuck Nice. And this, of course, is Playing with Science. Yes, it is indeed, and today we're discussing the physics of the Tour de France cycling races, featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson's interview with Lance Armstrong and one of our best friends, Professor Eric Goff, author of Gold Medal Physics: The Science of Sport and physics professor at Lynchburg College. Eric, good to have you on board. Now, you've got this modelling for the Tour de France. Okay, we get into the point where power to weight ratio, and I just think, if you want power, just get one of the NFL linebackers on. He's 6'5", 250 pounds, all the power you need, but it doesn't quite work like that, does it?
22:31 Speaker 02 No, it doesn't. When you're on a bicycle, you're not only having to transport the bicycle, you have to transport yourself. So, the heavier cyclists do really well on the time trials that are flat and the flat stages. They've got the big thigh muscles, they can really power for the finish, but they're woefully inadequate when it comes to the climbing and the mountains and the Alps and Pyrenees.
22:55 Gary O'Reilly? Right.
22:56 Speaker 02 The air gets thin, because they have to haul that mass up the mountain. So, the nibblys and frumes of the world do a lot better, they're a lot smaller frames, lower mass cyclists, 65 kilograms or so, and they can get up much better than an 82-kilogram flat-stage specialist.
23:14 Chuck Nice? So, it's kind of like a pull-up contest. If you're a guy, two guys who have relatively equal strength, but one guy's a lot lighter than the other, he's probably going to be able to do more pull-ups.
23:25 Speaker 02 That's right. If they're only doing one, the guy that's pretty strong is going to be okay, but if they have to do, you know, 50...
23:32 Chuck Nice? Right.
23:33 Speaker 02 The one pulling a lot less mass is probably going to do a little better.
23:36 Gary O'Reilly? So, how do you get the little skinny guy and push him all through forward with the power that you're going to need for 21 days in the saddle riding around France?
23:45 Speaker 02 Well, they're certainly going to need to eat a lot. They're burning over 6,000 calories a stage for a lot of these stages.
23:53 Gary O'Reilly? Wow.
23:54 Speaker 02 And they have to consume a lot of those calories and maintain that equilibrium. They don't want to lose too much weight when they're on the Tour de France.
24:01 Chuck Nice? Well, when it comes to power and weight ratio, we have Neil deGrasse Tyson and Lance Armstrong talking about this very thing, so let's check out a clip from their interview.
24:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When you were competing at your peak, how much were you thinking about your nutrition?
24:16 Speaker 04 So...
24:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You would have had coaches telling yourself.
24:18 Speaker 04 Absolutely, yeah. Not so much nutritionists, but we had coaches. The most important thing for us at that time was the power that we could produce, which interestingly enough, early in my career, we couldn't measure power. You measured, you measured heart rate, our rate of perceived exertion, or how, you know, how do I feel? How hard am I going? That's how you measured things. And then the power meter came along, and you could actually measure watts at the crank. That changed everything. So then you knew how strong you were. You weren't guessing, you weren't timing yourself, you weren't racing somebody else.
24:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We have this in rolling, it's called the ergometer.
24:57 Speaker 04 Yeah, so you knew exactly...
24:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know if you're slacking up. I mean, oh my gosh.
25:01 Speaker 04 And literally overnight, the entire peloton sport went from heart rate to watts. And so that changed everything. It changed the training, it changed the rate. It changed it all. And so, but we knew. You knew how much power you could produce, which is number one variable. And you knew how much you weighed in the morning. So you knew how much you weighed, right? So that's just, we call it power to weight. So going up a hill, you can produce 500 watts and you weigh 160 pounds.
25:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it's Newton's laws of physics at that point.
25:32 Speaker 04 That's right.
25:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There is...
25:34 Speaker 04 It is laws of physics, but you always go back to the fact that there's luck. They're all, there's tactics, there's luck. So you have to always think about that. But obviously, if you don't have that magic number on power to weight, then who cares about the luck?
25:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So it matters if you drop a pound without losing the power.
25:52 Speaker 04 Yeah, absolutely. Or you could lose a little power and lose more weight.
25:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Even more weight, so that the power to weight ratio...
26:00 Speaker 04 It's the ratio.
26:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Goes up.
26:01 Speaker 04 That's right.
26:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know, in aerospace engineering, our version of that is, what does it cost to put a pound of anything into orbit? You know what that is? Take a guess.
26:15 Speaker 04 No idea.
26:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? $10,000.
26:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To put a pound of anything.
26:19 Speaker 04 Okay.
26:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In orbit. So your payload, if you shave ounces off that payload, that matters.
26:24 Speaker 04 Gotcha.
26:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And then, you don't want chubby astronauts going into space. Because this is the cost of the, of the, so you just factor all this in. And, and it, it, it's important that you're in good shape.
26:37 Speaker 04 Then you have materials that come.
26:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? With all, all the.
26:40 Speaker 04 With carbon fiber type, I mean, all of these things.
26:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, it's not just your weight, it's the weight of the bicycle too.
26:44 Speaker 04 It's a, it's a package deal.
26:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Package deal.
26:46 Speaker 04 You're going up the hill, attached to the bicycle. So, yes, you could, I mean, you, you could have some guys, say, you know what, I'm gonna have dessert all year long. But I'm gonna somehow find two pounds off my bike, right? But the bikes.
26:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Trade, trade, chocolate cake.
27:02 Speaker 04 Yeah. But, but then the sport.
27:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I got a new carbon fiber bike, I can eat chocolate cake today.
27:08 Speaker 04 But then the sport regulated the weight of the bike. They, they, they said.
27:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's like horse racing.
27:13 Speaker 04 Yeah, they said the bike.
27:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They put lead in the pack, in the pocket.
27:16 Speaker 04 Yep.
27:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Depending on how light the jockey is.
27:18 Speaker 04 I didn't know that.
27:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
27:19 Speaker 04 But the bike could never be lighter than 6.8 kilos, total. So you're looking at, you know, just around 14 pounds.
27:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, that's still really light.
27:28 Speaker 04 That's very light. But you could, you could, you could make a 10-pound bike if you wanted. I wouldn't ride it, but you could, you could theoretically do that.
27:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, I'm kinda heavy, I'd be scared.
27:35 Speaker 04 Yeah, no, I wouldn't either, I wouldn't do that.
27:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
27:38 Speaker 04 But, so everybody had a 6.8 kilo bike. So then, the rider had to get skinnier and skinnier and lighter and lighter.
27:47 Gary O'Reilly? So Eric, do we break the news to Lance that there's no such thing as luck?
27:51 Chuck Nice? Yeah. What does he mean? What is he talking about, by the way? I don't, I don't get what he means when he's like, so, you, you, he was talking about power to weight ratio. Right? And you as a, you, you know as a scientist what that is, okay? Where does luck come involved, since you're a person who follows cycling? What, what exactly could he be talking about?
28:11 Speaker 02 Well, cer- certainly if you're cycling and all of a sudden your tire blows out, you would say you've had some bad luck.
28:18 Chuck Nice? I got you now. I get it now.
28:20 Speaker 02 If you're behind somebody who, you know, clips the cyclist in front of that person and you get involved in an accident, then, yeah, I mean, there are a lot of things that are outside of your...
28:29 Chuck Nice? So what he's talk- what he's talking about is misfortune as evidenced by unforeseen things, okay? Like what you just said. So...
28:37 Gary O'Reilly? Sportsman superstition, hence default process, bad luck.
28:41 Chuck Nice? Bad luck, right.
28:42 Gary O'Reilly? In the mind of an athlete, it would go to bad luck. Professor disagrees because there's no such thing. But in a sportsman's mind, that's where they'll go to.
28:50 Chuck Nice? Okay.
28:50 Speaker 02 Well, if you have some crazy fan on the side of the road who's, you know, streaking across the... You know, yeah, that's, that's bad luck too.
28:56 Gary O'Reilly? The devil with the pitchfork. Remember him that follows the tour? Yeah.
29:00 Chuck Nice? Who's the devil with the pitchfork?
29:01 Gary O'Reilly? Oh, it's a, there's a, there's a guy that comes out in a red devil suit. He's got a three-pronged fork.
29:06 Chuck Nice? Right.
29:07 Gary O'Reilly? And am I right, Eric? If you don't cycle as quickly as he likes, he comes with that fork.
29:11 Speaker 02 And there are superheroes and there are people who are streaking and...
29:15 Chuck Nice? Oh, it's like Times Square.
29:16 Speaker 02 It's crazy, yes.
29:16 Chuck Nice? It's like the dudes begging for money in Times Square, except, by the way, why do they allow somebody in a devil costume with a pitchfork on the sidelines of a race? You know what he's gonna do. That can't be a good sign.
29:30 Gary O'Reilly? Well, it just makes you go faster.
29:32 Chuck Nice? That, well, again, that is motivation.
29:33 Gary O'Reilly? It's an incentive in itself.
29:34 Chuck Nice? I gotta say, that's motivation.
29:35 Gary O'Reilly? So, when Lance is discussing about, hey, I can have... And where was Neil's mind? Straight to chocolate cake.
29:42 Chuck Nice? I don't blame him.
29:43 Gary O'Reilly? Okay, fine. I'm with him right now.
29:45 Speaker 02 Let me, let me put the chocolate cake into a little bit of context here. So, you know, I, I was saying before that you could get six or seven, eight thousand calories burned on a really long uphill, mountain-y type stage. So, think about this. On a 21-stage race, a cyclist might burn over 100, 110,000 calories.
30:04 Chuck Nice? Oh, my goodness.
30:05 Speaker 02 Now, calories is a nice energy unit. A Tic Tac's about a calorie, but let me make it a little bit easier. A Big Mac is 550 calories, so that averages 10 Big Macs per stage. So if you want to know what a tortifrat cyclist burns on average per stage, think 10 Big Macs.
30:24 Chuck Nice? Wow. That's pretty amazing.
30:26 Gary O'Reilly? No, without fries.
30:27 Speaker 02 That's without fries.
30:29 Chuck Nice? That's not the whole meal.
30:32 Speaker 02 That's not what they're using to fuel themselves, but that's gives you a picture of how much they're actually burning per stage.
30:38 Gary O'Reilly? Do you actually sit there when you're modeling the stages and the times, the structures within the power to weight ratios of each team with individual riders?
30:49 Speaker 02 What we do is we take what the elite could do on a given stage. So we're not actually looking at a specific cyclist. We were looking at what the research is telling us that the elite can do on a flat stage, mountain stage, on a time trial. And we're trying to predict the winning time. And I actually put these predictions one day in advance on my blog and we just stick our necks out and see how close we get each day.
31:13 Chuck Nice? That's cool, man.
31:14 Gary O'Reilly? How much further can science take the power to weight ratio? What is it with the osimetric chain rings, the sort of elliptical shape where you're trying to decrease the number of dead spots in the pedaling of a rider to increase the power output? Does that come into play?
31:32 Speaker 02 Sure. I mean, and you also have these really big chain, you know, these ratios where you get, you know, someone like Tony Martin using a big chain where you get a big wheel on the front and a little one in the back to really generate the speed. I mean, he uses a chain ratio. I think if I tried to, I don't know if I could get down the street on a bike like that. I mean, it's got such a huge ratio, but it's very efficient for him. He's not wasting pedal motion on, as you said, this dead swing in the pedaling.
32:04 Gary O'Reilly? Are we going to see the governing bodies allow lighter weight frames with equal strength entering into the mainstream and elite racing?
32:15 Chuck Nice? And is there any detriment to having a bike? Let's say you had a bike that could be three pounds or six pounds. Is there, is there any drawback to having a bike that light?
32:28 Speaker 02 There is, and think about the football tackling, the American football tackling. So if you try to avoid being tackled, you stay low to the ground, you want your center mass to be low. Well, if your bicycle is really light, that's moving the center mass up because you've got your body on top of it.
32:47 Chuck Nice? Right.
32:48 Speaker 02 And that's going to make it less stable. Your chances of tipping over are going to go up. So they may allow it to go down a little bit, but if they start noticing more crashes coming in, then they're obviously going to have to bring it back up again.
33:02 Chuck Nice? So when you talk about this power to weight ratio and the fuel that these guys need, how is it that they're able to get, are they fueling on the go? Because here's what I'm thinking. If you need 6,000 calories to get through a stage, all right, like you're killing yourself, literally. You're a drive-through, aren't you? Yeah, I'm thinking like, let's stop at a Burger King. You know, do they have that on the course? Like, can we just drive through? But no, you're definitely, you're like, literally, you're killing yourself with this kind of exertion. How do you get calories back in you before you get to the end of this thing?
33:40 Speaker 02 Well, when you watch the Tour de France, you see that they go through these feed stations and they'll get bags with these various, you know, energy bars, protein bars, various drinks that they have that supply them, very high-calorie bars in some cases. And you'll see them eating while they're cycling. They're taking their food with them, they're getting the bags with the food in it, and they're eating all throughout the race. I mean, sometimes they'll tuck a bar into their jersey and then eat it, you know, in an hour's time or something. So they're trying to pace when they're eating as well.
34:10 Chuck Nice? Okay, nice.
34:11 Gary O'Reilly? Has there been anything the governing body has done to give the teams and the cyclists themselves an opportunity to improve things within this particular spectrum?
34:23 Speaker 02 Well, certainly when the teams employ more science, then they have to go to the governing body and say, you know, we've developed a new helmet, or we've developed a new shoe, or, you know, if you watch the time trials, you don't even see a traditional set of handlebars. So every time something's improved, they have to go to the governing body and say, you know, what do you think about this? And if it makes the cycling faster and more entertaining to watch, the cycling body is likely to say, sure, go for it.
34:49 Chuck Nice? So, but you just can't come up with something on your own and say, like, you know, hey, this is what we're gonna do, you know, like, I just, I had the newest shoe, I'm gonna wear it myself, like, it looks like the Pope shoe, it's red, it's very fashionable, and I'm just, I'm throwing that on, like, you can't do that on your own.
35:07 Speaker 02 No. Well, that shoe's gonna work great on a popemobile, but probably not a bicycle.
35:12 Gary O'Reilly? Okay, from popemobiles to the break, we're gonna take one. Up next, we'll hear more fascinating science, and we will get into strategy and the unpredictability.
35:35 Gary O'Reilly? Welcome back, I'm Gary O'Reilly.
35:37 Chuck Nice? I'm Chuck Nice.
35:37 Gary O'Reilly? And this is Playing with Science. Yes, it has, and we'll be discussing the physics of the Tour de France, featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson's interview with the one and only Lance Armstrong, still with us. The video call is Professor Eric Goss, author of Gold Medal Physics: The Science of Sport. So there's one element of the sport you can't really predict with science.
35:58 Chuck Nice? Yes.
35:59 Gary O'Reilly? Can you? We'll see. That is team strategy.
36:01 Chuck Nice? Right.
36:02 Gary O'Reilly? So, Eric, can you predict with science a team's strategy or not?
36:07 Chuck Nice? Is that part of your modeling, too?
36:09 Speaker 02 It's not a big part of the model, because we don't have access to the teams, and we don't have access to their strategy. So, where our model does better, it will be on mountain stages, where the cyclists tend to get more isolated.
36:23 Chuck Nice? Gotcha.
36:23 Speaker 02 So, the strategy's much more important on the flatter stages, when they're in the peloton, when they're cycling in and out, there's a higher chance of a crash.
36:32 Chuck Nice? Right.
36:33 Speaker 02 Once they get on their own, we're doing a little better with the model, when we're talking about an individual cyclist, kind of alone on the mountain.
36:40 Chuck Nice? Well, speaking of strategy and unpredictability, let's check out this clip with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Lance Armstrong on this very topic.
36:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Forgive me for not thinking about bike racing as a team sport because you and select others rise up and you're the marquee poster boy for whatever it is. Tell me how important team strategy is because I have no way to even think about it.
37:08 Speaker 04 Let me just give you a stat. If the Tour de France is 2,500 miles, let's just roughly say that's roughly what it is. I'm alone.
37:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's like New York to LA.
37:18 Speaker 04 Right, it's a long ways, but I'm alone, right? So people think about an individual winner of the event. But I'm actually alone for probably, of the 2,500 miles, 80 miles? So in the individual time trials and maybe in the off chance that you're alone in a breakaway or you win alone on the top of a mountain. So whatever percentage that is, you are just tucked in with your guys. And when I would say with your guys...
37:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When you say alone, you mean isolated so the camera sees you and no one else?
37:48 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's that heroic shot, you're all alone, look at him winning the Tour.
37:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And in the long shot, there's the...
37:53 Speaker 04 There's eight dudes back there.
37:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The pack is a half a mile back.
37:56 Speaker 04 But when I say tucked in with those guys, I do mean drafting. But I could say, I need a water bottle. I need my raincoat. I need some more food. I get a flat tire, the car's not close, I'm taking your wheel. So it's just, they do, you know, I mean, you really just kind of sit back there and...
38:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So the team is an organism?
38:20 Speaker 04 Yep.
38:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Keeping itself alive?
38:24 Speaker 04 I could take, if I know which teammate, I know which teammate's bike fits me the best, so if the bike breaks and the car's not close, I'd take his bike. He's standing on the side of the road alone.
38:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I didn't know this. Oh, now that's because you're the man.
38:39 Speaker 04 That's because you're the team leader, but every team has a team leader.
38:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So if Arnold Schmednick, that happened to him, you're not giving your bike to him?
38:47 Speaker 04 He just has to wait. He just waits there.
38:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I didn't know that, I'm sorry.
38:54 Chuck Nice? Okay, let me just say, that sucks, okay? That is awful. There is no way. That is not a team sport, by the way, Eric. I know this is like your favorite sport, man. I know you're totally into this. But that is not a team sport where one guy gets to be a prima donna and everybody has to do his bidding. "I need a water bottle." "Why don't you get your own water bottle, biot?" You know, that's what I'm saying. I don't get this. I don't... Why is... Why is it that this is set up so?
39:21 Gary O'Reilly? Because some are better than others.
39:23 Chuck Nice? Ooh.
39:24 Gary O'Reilly? And some are there to serve, some are there to lead. You have a lead rider. See, you're not cut out to be a team butler.
39:29 Chuck Nice? No.
39:30 Gary O'Reilly? This is a definite.
39:31 Chuck Nice? You are absolutely right.
39:32 Gary O'Reilly? If you're not alpha, you're not playing.
39:34 Chuck Nice? And it has nothing to do with me being black either.
39:36 Gary O'Reilly? Absolutely not. But there are... There's nine... There's nine members of the team.
39:41 Chuck Nice? Okay.
39:41 Gary O'Reilly? Is that correct, Eric?
39:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, that sounds right.
39:43 Gary O'Reilly? And if you're not team leader, like Lance, you're a domestique.
39:49 Speaker 02 Yeah, so you're... You have a role to play and...
39:52 Gary O'Reilly? Ooh, you're gonna love this.
39:54 Chuck Nice? Oh, you guys are pissing me off right now. Go ahead, please continue, continue.
39:58 Speaker 02 So each team, obviously, is gonna have, you know, its leader. You're gonna have a crisp room for one team, you know, Team Sky or something. And you're gonna have cyclists who are gonna be helping him. And they're gonna be in the peloton. If there's a cyclist that takes off, who's gonna try to get ahead of the peloton, maybe one of your teammates has to chase him down. And the thing is, they're trying to set you up. If you're a mountain cyclist, for example, to get into that last big climb. They wanna get you down there. You wanna be, you know, plenty of calories in you. You've got your water, you've gotten there safely. You got there in good time. And now you're the stud who's gonna go up the mountain and get that big finish, the big climb.
40:40 Chuck Nice? Okay. I mean, listen, don't get me wrong. I understand everybody has a role to play on a team. But what I'm trying to figure out is how do you establish this hierarchy where, you know, I'm king of the team and everybody else has to do what, you know, for me?
40:57 Gary O'Reilly? Imagine my stopwatch.
40:58 Chuck Nice? Okay.
40:59 Gary O'Reilly? My time, your time. Whichever's fastest gets to be team leader. It's all about speed.
41:04 Chuck Nice? Is that what it is? Is that how they determine?
41:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, you know, to pick up on Gary's point, I mean, let's start down at the bottom of Alpes Dues. I mean, you got this famous mountain in France with these 21 hairpin turns. Put a couple cyclists down there and say, go to the top, and then you're going to figure out who your team leader is in a hurry.
41:22 Chuck Nice? Okay, I got you. So, basically, I have, I've established myself as the alpha. I'm better than everybody on the team. Is that it?
41:31 Gary O'Reilly? No, what we've done is allow you to have that because you won't stop moaning. So to stop your moaning, we've given you the team leader. How's that sound?
41:39 Chuck Nice? See, that, well, you know, in my case, that's the way it would be. You know, maybe like, just let Chuck be the team leader. Can you just let the guy be the, can you, will you shut up if we let you be the team leader?
41:50 Gary O'Reilly? That'll be it. That'll be it. So, I mean, Eric, what you discussed there is a very defensive team strategy in terms of you protect the team leader at all costs. You get the tyre, you get the energy bar, you get the water, you get the raincoat, you get silver service.
42:05 Speaker 02 But it's a three-week race. I mean, you've got to keep in mind that they have to survive.
42:10 Chuck Nice? Well, you know, they're right. Go ahead.
42:11 Speaker 02 They have three weeks to do this, and they have to survive in all kinds of conditions. And keep in mind, the, you know, the cyclists who are typically winning are the ones who win in the mountains.
42:21 Chuck Nice? Gotcha.
42:22 Speaker 02 I mean, the cyclists who win this thing may only win one or two stages in any given race. You know, they're not winning every single stage.
42:29 Chuck Nice? Right.
42:30 Speaker 02 Their teammates are keeping them close on the flat stages. They're not losing any time against their main competitors, the alpha males and the other teams.
42:38 Chuck Nice? Right.
42:39 Speaker 02 So they're all getting close to the same time on these flat stages. And then they get up to this massive mountain stage, and then they try to take a couple minutes from a competitor.
42:47 Chuck Nice? And so that's when they, that's when they have to shine. So, you know what, I forget that this is a three-week. Now, actually, I'm going to take it back. It's actually really fascinating now.
42:57 Gary O'Reilly? Absolutely.
42:57 Chuck Nice? Because this, I forgot completely, as we were having this conversation, that this race takes over three weeks to actually happen.
43:06 Gary O'Reilly? Eric, am I right? They get two days' rest.
43:09 Speaker 02 Two.
43:09 Gary O'Reilly? But then they're not back-to-back. They get two rest days over the course of...
43:13 Chuck Nice? Two days' rest over the course of three weeks.
43:15 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
43:15 Speaker 02 That's right. You get 23 days for this race. 21 of them are cycling, and two of them are resting.
43:20 Chuck Nice? And during the resting days, am I allowed a conjugal visit?
43:24 Gary O'Reilly? No.
43:24 Speaker 02 You can, but your legs may not be there for the mountain.
43:29 Gary O'Reilly? I'm not sure how I interpret that, but let's go geographically. Do the teams, thanks for introducing that. Yeah, listen, I'm just saying. Do the teams, apart from that defensive strategy of protect the king, have an aggressive strategy when it comes to taking out opponents? We talked about, touched upon it, maybe during the drafting, there were some bumping and some nudging. But do the teams aggressively attack other teams' riders?
43:54 Speaker 02 Sure, if one rider's ahead and you might want some teammates to try to string the peloton up a little bit and break away. And then another team's gonna have to send someone to chase him down. And you can lose some teammates that way. And you can lose a little protection that way. So, yeah, I mean, there's all kinds of jockeying for position on the flat stages. And then trying to set up a good climb on the bounce stages.
44:18 Chuck Nice? So Eric, let me get this straight. Would your job be at that point to chase the guy down? And then to slow him down to try and get in front of him? And maybe impede his progress? Is that part of the strategy?
44:30 Speaker 02 Well, you might actually just get up behind him and start drafting. I mean, he's gonna have to do a little extra work to hold you behind him.
44:37 Chuck Nice? Right, okay, I got you, wow. So now with that in mind, okay, here's what I'm thinking. So it's, since it is so dependent upon all of these different variables coming together, what is to stop me from having a bunch of fans on the side of the road?
44:54 Gary O'Reilly? You see?
44:54 Chuck Nice? Who are a part of my team, who are going to do some stuff. All right, guys, once we get by, you know those guys behind us? Make sure you get out the slingshots, let's get out the eggs. Like, what's to stop that from happening?
45:05 Gary O'Reilly? You're dickishly, aren't you?
45:06 Speaker 02 Oh, you see the police cars?
45:07 Chuck Nice? What's that?
45:08 Speaker 02 You see the police cars riding with the cyclists? Those people are gonna be going to jail pretty quick.
45:13 Chuck Nice? Oh, okay.
45:14 Gary O'Reilly? Jean-Domme's have the firearms.
45:16 Chuck Nice? Okay.
45:16 Gary O'Reilly? So, but it doesn't stop it, does it Eric? I mean, wasn't it Sir Bradley Wiggins who had a bottle of urine thrown over him in recent years?
45:23 Speaker 02 Uh, yeah, I mean, that's one of the pee tapes we're allowed to see these days, I guess.
45:27 Chuck Nice? That's awesome. Okay, by the way, all I'm gonna tell you is this, yo, that is my kinda cheating, okay? If you're gonna cheat, I'm just saying, having somebody throw a bottle of urine on your opponent, uh, that's some gangster R. Kelly stuff right there, and I'm all for it, okay? I'm just saying. Alright, I'm joking, guys.
45:43 Gary O'Reilly? Alright, okay. Let's, let's go back to the strategy. Because quite often when you watch the Tour de France, yes, you see the peloton, but someone said, "I've had enough," and they've gone. And they've opened up 500 yards, a mile, and they're off and going. I mean, what kind of strategy is that if it's all about team success?
46:05 Speaker 02 Well, don't forget, if you win a stage of the Tour de France, you get up on the podium at the end, you get a nice check, uh, you get prestige for your team, which also has a sponsor. Uh, I mean, there's a, there's a financial benefit, of course. Uh, you help your own image as a cyclist, which could lead to endorsement deals. I mean, there's a lot of things that, I mean, not everybody can win a Tour de France stage, so, you know, to be able to do so is a, is a pretty fantastic and special thing.
46:32 Gary O'Reilly? So there is an "I" in team?
46:33 Chuck Nice? Yeah, without a doubt. So, um, is it for the three weeks, is it overall time? Is that how you determine the winner? The overall time for the team, overall time for individual riders? How exactly do they come up and say, "You are now the winner of the Tour de France"? And within that, how do they say, "Okay, we're gonna put the laurel leaf on this one dude"?
46:57 Speaker 02 So after each stage, we know who's got the lowest, this, you know, the lowest time, and that general classification is known after every single stage. So the yellow jersey's going to the cyclist who's completed the stages in the, the shortest amount of time. And that's the one who wins it.
47:13 Chuck Nice? Okay, so my point is this, if I am the team leader, okay? And we are winning all these stages, but I have only won two of the stages, but I'm the team leader, do I win the Tour de France?
47:26 Speaker 02 You sure do, and in fact, the one or two stages you probably are gonna win are gonna be in the mountains, and your teammates may be like 25 minutes behind you.
47:35 Chuck Nice? Ah!
47:36 Speaker 02 They might get you to the ma, the bottom of the hill, but you're gonna pick up a lot of time on them getting up that hill.
47:42 Chuck Nice? I got you, I got you.
47:43 Gary O'Reilly? Then you have individual time trials during stages? Where the, the individual sprinters on the team come to the fore?
47:51 Speaker 02 That's right. Sometimes you have a team time trial, sometimes an individual time trial. Those are fun to watch because you get some really fast speeds on those things.
48:00 Gary O'Reilly? So the speed are we up to on a time trial?
48:03 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
48:03 Speaker 02 Well, I mentioned before that Rowan Dennis had set the record about 35 and a half miles an hour.
48:09 Chuck Nice? Yes, but what, give us an average, give us an average. If you were to take the average speed, what would it be?
48:13 Speaker 02 That is his average speed.
48:15 Chuck Nice? Holy crap!
48:17 Speaker 02 Well, I mean, look, look last year at Chris Froome. I mean, he averaged nearly 25 miles an hour for the entire race.
48:24 Chuck Nice? Wow.
48:25 Gary O'Reilly? All three weeks?
48:26 Speaker 02 All three weeks.
48:27 Chuck Nice? That's insane. Wow. So let me ask you this, because I'm going to say, first of all, guys, let me just say, I have a new respect for the Tour de France. I will say that. I'm not going to hate. These guys are incredible athletes and this is an amazing physical feat that they are accomplishing. That being said, I know for a fact that I am never going to watch the Tour de France. So what I'm trying to ask you is, have you ever watched the entire Tour de France, Eric?
48:59 Speaker 02 Uh, yes, I have. It's nice to sit in my office and prop my feet up and watch it and tell people I'm working.
49:08 Gary O'Reilly? Secrets out.
49:09 Speaker 02 That's right. I mean, you know, keep in mind, you know, when I was a kid, I wanted to play baseball and I could probably go into a batting cage and hit one out of 100 pitches for a nice single. But not on my best day could I wake up and go do a stage of the Tour de France. I mean, this is an incredibly elite sport. You know, very few people can do something like that.
49:32 Chuck Nice? Now, with that in mind, and we're not going to get into doping at all, but with that in mind, is there any wonder that these guys are doing performance-enhancing drugs? After all the stuff that we just talked about, I'm sorry, but I don't mind if they take steroids or anything that makes them stay awake, or I don't care if they're smoking crack. These guys, it's insane what they're doing. Why do we care that they're doing drugs? Why?
50:02 Speaker 02 Well, I guess if you have rules in place and rules are being broken, then you care. I mean, you just have to decide if you really don't care that they're doing the drugs, then just make them legal. I mean, you just have to decide what you want the rules of your sport to be.
50:15 Chuck Nice? Gotcha.
50:15 Speaker 02 You know, they're not going to make the bikes lower in mass than 6.8 kilograms. If you want to change it, change it. You know, the drugs can have harmful effects to the people, so there's kind of an ethical reason why you might want the rules in place to ban those substances.
50:31 Chuck Nice? Okay, all right. Listen, I mean, those are all good and salient points that you just made, but I'm just saying that I understand. You see it?
50:40 Speaker 02 I do, too.
50:41 Chuck Nice? That's all I can say is I... You have the vision. Right. You have the vision. I understand why somebody might quote-unquote cheat during the Tour de France after this conversation we have had.
50:52 Speaker 02 And if I'm 25 years old in a locker room and my only way to make a living is on a bicycle and I need a little edge to compete with the other people that I see also getting a little edge, it's hard for me to fault their temptations.
51:06 Chuck Nice? Right, right on.
51:07 Gary O'Reilly? But we love the sport anyway.
51:09 Chuck Nice? Yes.
51:09 Gary O'Reilly? We hope and pray that it is clean. Is that right, Eric?
51:11 Speaker 02 Well, I at least hope it's being followed. The rules are being followed. I would like to think that's true.
51:17 Chuck Nice? Without a doubt. Well, this has been fascinating, man.
51:19 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah, it has.
51:20 Chuck Nice? I gotta tell you, Eric.
51:21 Gary O'Reilly? Eric, thank you so much for your time. Professor Eric Goff from Lynchburg College, professor of physics and author of Gold Medal Physics. And thank you to Neil.
51:31 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
51:32 Gary O'Reilly? Undergrass Tyson and his time with Lance Armstrong. I think, as I said before, love him or loathe him, when Lance Armstrong's talks, well, you know what? We listened because there's an awful lot of sense in what he says in terms of the science and the way he explains it.
51:44 Chuck Nice? The guy knows the sport. That's all there is to it.
51:46 Gary O'Reilly? Sure, yeah.
51:47 Chuck Nice? You know? I'm glad he took the time to talk to us. Man, this has been great, Gary.
51:50 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah. So, we've learned one thing after another, and the most important thing is that if Chuck doesn't get his way, he will have a tantrum. So, you are lead racer.
52:00 Chuck Nice? [laughing]
52:01 Gary O'Reilly? I'm Gary O'Reilly.
52:02 Chuck Nice? I'm Chuck Nice. Wah!
52:05 Gary O'Reilly? And this has been Play Great Science. We look forward to your company soon. Take care.
Previous Cosmic Queries: Primatology Next The Science Behind “Game of Thrones” Page updated September 29, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
