‘Best body type for TTS? It’s sink or swim!’
Alex Dowsett, who retired last year, is one of Britain’s most successful ever TT specialists. In 2015 he broke the Hour record and has six national time trials titles to his name. As a teenager his mind was set on being a competitive swimmer, but his body type didn’t get the memo. “I spent many hours training in the pool at swim club before school but I was just so slow,” says Dowsett. “I never made it to the top lane. Younger guys were faster than me, many of the girls were faster than me. I learned much later from Tim Kerrison, the legendary swim and cycling coach, that because I can’t float – my feet drop like a stone – my natural body type was built for endurance, not sprinting. Which makes a lot of sense.” Dowsett’s somatotype is mesomorphic: he’s just above average height and puts on body mass relatively easily – so much so that to reach race weight he would meticulously record everything he ate. How greatly does body type influence roles in the peloton? “TT riders tend to be tall but cyclists like Josh Tarling and Filippo Ganna are exceptional, they’re huge. Other riders, such as Remco Evenepoel and Primož Roglič are significantly smaller, yet still successful. But I would say it leans more towards a bigger rider than a smaller rider – in one-day TTS I’d say 70% of the field are over 70 kilos. “I remember talking with Cav [Cavendish] after the final two stages of the 2011 Tour of Britain. I’d just won the time trial and he’d won the crit. I said to him: ‘Mate, I was on your wheel in that crit with 1km to go, when we were in about 30th place. But you just accelerated forwards, and then sprinted in the last 100 metres to take it. I just could not go any faster. It felt like I was going backwards’. He replied: ‘Alex, during the time trial I gave it everything I had, I emptied the tank but you were pulling three seconds per kilometre out of me. It’s as if you were in a different race’.
“Cav has won short time trials, and he’s a good team time triallist as well. But for longer events I don’t think he could get to the level that I could. Similarly, I don’t think I could even scratch the surface of what he’s achieved as a sprinter. If you look at his body shape, he can assume a natural sprinting position on the bike that’s so aerodynamic it probably shaves 100 or 200 watts off what’s needed in a sprint. Caleb Ewan is the same, as was Chris Boardman: short legs with a long body that just folds over the bike. That’s very hard to train for – I can’t shorten my legs!”