The cycling world was abuzz with a seeming technology breakthrough on Saturday. Milan-San Remo, the 293km Italian monument, was won by Slovenian Matej Mohoric of Bahrain-Victorious thanks to his savvy use of a dropper seat post. He attacked on the descent of the Poggio de San Remo, a narrow, twisting descent that is the last obstacle of the race.
The dropper post is a mountain bike innovation, first appearing in the 1980s, that has been played with on the road for several years, This finally seemed to be proof of concept in 2022.
I have my doubts.
Mass start bike racing is complicated. It’s often referred to as a “chess game on two wheels,” but the saying doesn’t do bike racing justice. It is far more complicated than chess. In chess, there are only two players, who have transparent rules circumscribing movement for all the pieces, and it’s only in two dimensions. Chess pieces don’t think, don’t have good and bad days, aren’t influenced by psychology, and don’t gain an edge from training or equipment or doping.
Mohoric apparently planned to attack the descent. He played psychological games with his competitors, asking about where the hospital was, and telling people not to follow him. Right after he attacked, he rode off the road, then back on, possibly by accident, but it appeared to be enough to have the guy on his wheel, Tadej Pogacar, to back off enough to let a gap open. Pogacar is a fellow Slovenian and apparently a friend, and he was the beneficiary of Mohoric’s advice not to follow earlier in the race.
He also seemed to benefit from the reluctance of the leading group to chase. Everyone up front played a part, but Alpecin-Fenix’s Mathieu van der Poel in particular, soft-pedaled at two critical moments–first at the front with 4.1km to go just as Mohoric was taking off, and again when passing the flamme rouge–which was part of his tactical game, but also could have been more than enough to make the winning difference.
On the descent, Mohoric seemed to be drafting the camera moto at least a few times. There is research strongly suggesting that these race motorcycles, which are there for safety, for officiating, for photo and video coverage, can provide a real, measurable draft as far away as 30 meters when pedaling at 54kph. At 30 meters, testing and modeling suggest the benefit is 2.6 seconds in a kilometer. Of course, one could argue that the motos slowed Mohoric down in the turns.
Mohoric definitely seemed to be riding on the edge of control. Besides riding off the edge of the road and back on early in the descent, he came out of corners virtually rubbing his elbows on stone walls a few times. And on the last tricky left-hand corner of the descent, he lost traction on his rear wheel twice, and nearly hit a concrete planter on his exit.
Once on the gentle drop from the Poggio to the finish, Mohoric ground a huge gear while the chase was disorganized.
Mohoric, sure of his victory in the final meters, sat up and pointed to his seatpost to call out the success of the technology and thank his mechanics and equipment sponsors. He won by two seconds from a fast-closing Anthony Turgis of TotalEnergies.
Any time humans are playing with so many variables as one finds in a bike race, it’s really hard to tease out that a single component could make a winning difference. Especially one that is nearly 300km long. There are relatively few examples where we can point to a single component making a winning difference. Fabian Cancellara choosing to ride Zipp 303’s at the 2010 Paris-Roubaix might be one; few riders chose deep-dish wheels in that race. Another might be Greg LeMond using aero bars on his time trial bikes at the 1989 Tour de France; none of LeMond’s top challengers had adopted the use of aero bars at the time.
But the dropper post?
Mohoric, in post-race interviews, was quick to attribute his success to the dropper post. He and his team had thought about it, talked about it, he trained with it, tested it, and seemed certain of its benefit.
Should we doubt Mohoric?
Yes and no. No, because mindset is so important. If he went in to the race believing that it would help him win the race, that should be enough to convince us it benefited him. Yes we should doubt him because there are just so many variables that contribute to success and failure, especially when we’re looking at 6:29:49 of racing.
How could a dropper post help?
The reason it would help is that, with a dropper post, his center of gravity is lower, making him more stable on the bike on the tight turns of the Poggio.
Might it hinder?
There are a bunch of ways it might hinder. One is that the post adds weight to the bike, and adds that weight at the highest part of the bike, the seat post. So, theoretically, the extra 130g or so cost on every acceleration and every climb, though at the speeds they were climbing at, the weight probably isn’t nearly as important as the aerodynamics of the bike and rider. Six-and-a-half hours of riding, small differences can add up.
At the same time, to use the dropper post, he had to ride the lighter, less aero Merida Scultura, which works with a round seatpost, rather than the more aero Merida Reacto. The switch might have eaten up the weight penalty, but the removal of an aero post for a round one added drag and cost watts for most of the race. In the wind tunnel at least, the entire bike switch cost him effort over the entirety of the race, though it’s hard to know how signficant the aero penalty was for the last 4.5km of the race. It certainly could have been more than a few seconds, as he was basically descending the whole time.
A second possibility is that the Poggio gets pedaled most of the way. While the dropper post can revert to the high position quickly, it’s possible that he wasn’t always pedaling in his normal position and that might have resulted in slower accelerations if he was in the saddle and possibly less power.
A third possibility is that it gave him too much confidence in his abilities. His traction loss at the end suggests he was thinking that his bike had powers it did not actually possess. Or new power he didn’t know how to work with. The traction loss could be from another culprit; he had 180/160mm rotors on his bike, rather than the usual 160/140mm rotors. More braking power was the reason he had mechanics install larger rotors, but it could have given him more braking power than he was used to, and he possibly grabbed them too hard.
Is there a way to find out how fast Mohoric descended?
Yes there is. Mohoric keeps at least some of his race data public on Strava.
Turns out, Mohoric’s descent of the Poggio de San Remo was 3:30 for the three-kilometer descent, tying him for the 108th fastest descent. That’s a speed of 51.5kph (32mph). The fastest was by Simon Clarke in 2021, averaging 56.7kph (35.2mph). The second-fastest was by Vincenzo Nibali in 2019 (he finished eighth). In 2022, Michal Kwiatowski of Ineos Grenadiers holds the fastest publicly-available time on the descent, which puts him tied for overall, at 3:14. Also in 2022, Second-placed Anthony Turgis rode 3:16. And Mohoric’s teammate Jan Tratnik did 3:15, good for 10th place since times have been recorded and made available on Strava.
It’s not even Mohoric’s fastest descent of the Poggio. That was in 2020. And is currently the 22nd fastest recorded public time, tied with Wout Van Aert, also in 2020. In 2020, Van Aert chased down Julian Alaphilippe on the Poggio descent,caught him, and the two worked together to hold off the field, with Van Aert winning the two-up sprint.
Keep in mind that Mohoric was the fifth rider in 2022 to start the descent, so he had to make up a few seconds just to get to the front. If we could start a segment from where he attacked, we might be able to figure out how he did relative to others. But even then, it probably wouldn’t reveal much. As Kwiatkowski, Tratnik and Turgis were all behind him by at least a few seconds when they started the Poggio descent.
Mohoric was away for 2.2 of the 3km on the descent. If he rode Clarke’s average pace for the time he was solo, he’d have ridden the 2.2km distance in roughly 2:20. Then, for the 800 meters at the top when he was with the others, he’d need to average 41kph to get to his time of 3:30. To have gone faster than Clarke’s average speed for 2.2km, he’d have had to average less than 41kph for the 800 meters he was with others. Which seems possible, but unlikely, as the average speed for the race was 45.3kph and they were descending. (here’s the calculator I played with).
So his descent wasn’t all that fast.
But that doesn’t mean the dropper post didn’t help him.
It just isn’t why he won. Don’t go out and buy a dropper post thinking it’s going to help your road descending. It seems that less flashy descents without dropper posts were faster. Skills are more important.
Your expertise is highly regarded.