Tour de France time-trial stages are often decisive in confirming a rider’s general classification ranking. Riders battle against the clock to win, or lose time against their competitors. The two time-trail stages of the 2017 Tour de France are notable for being relatively short in distance thereby limiting the possible time gains or losses. Stage […]
It was time to see if we could set a world record speed for a gravity racer. The weather was 21ºC in nearby Avignon and the wind on the 2 km road section was light. Feeling buoyant from the previous day’s 81.8 mph and having a number of further changes up our sleeves — we were optimistic. […]
Mont Ventoux — In the Provence region of southern France — is the mountain mecca for road bike enthusiasts. Jam-packed with glorious, sweeping, alpine roads and stunning scenery, “what a location!” I hear you say. Believe me, the selection of a location was no easy task. Mont Ventoux (Photo – Channel 4) To give us an idea of […]
The gravity racer was designed and constructed by the team at CSER (Heather Driscoll, Terry Senior, Alice Bullas, John Hart and Christina King). As with most engineering projects, we did not have an unlimited budget or time, so where possible we tried to use and modify bought in components. Modify is the key word though; […]
When we accepted the challenge of designing a gravity racer we were inundated with offers of help: tips on what we should do, recommendations for which parts we should be using etc. It seemed that nearly everyone we spoke to was an expert! While some of their advice was gratefully received we decided to spend a bit […]
Following our successful Speed with Guy Martin challenge last year (where we smashed the gravity sled record at a whopping 134.368 kph / 83.49 mph) North One TV decided to get in touch again and see if we would help to set the gravity racer record with Guy Martin (http://www.guymartinracing.co.uk/about-guy/racing/) at the helm? Hmm let me […]
The speed skating events in the Olympics this weekend kicked off with a fully orange podium in the men’s 5k event. The woman’s 3k golden medal was also awarded to the Dutch. What is it with this little country that makes them so good at speed skating?
Sometimes you get a phone call and someone asks you for help: they get you on a good day, at a positive moment and you think “yeah, why not? That sounds like fun”. Later, you realise you’re committed to helping to break a world record — the fastest speed for a gravity powered sled — and people […]
After a regrettably lengthy hiatus from the blog, this article was inspired by the excellent aerodynamics segments of the ITV’s tour de France coverage (in collaboration with Southampton University). Cycling aerodynamics in the 1980’s A few years ago my colleague Dr Richard Lukes wrote a review paper titled “The understanding and development of cycling aerodynamics” […]
This July sees the next biannual conference on Sports Engineering, held at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. The conference always has a lot of interesting papers on the subject of engineering and technology in sport. Thanks to the internet age, the papers at this conference are also available online for anyone to read. Before the […]
Engineering Sport 