“We had a rider in the wind tunnel recently who was able to reduce their drag by over 5%. That’s a huge margin, it’s worth about 15 watts of sustained power,” says Cycling Ireland’s High Performance Director Iain Dyer.
With funding received from the Olympic Federation of Ireland, the benefits of working with aerodynamicist Michael Hutchinson at the Silverstone Sports Engineering Hub have been far greater than just ‘marginal’ gains.
“It would take you a year and a half or more of solid training to get that kind of gain. We’re able to find that in one evening in the wind tunnel so it’s massively impactful.”
Most people know Silverstone as the home of British motorsport, but it is fast becoming an important place for Irish track cyclists who are using a local facility to find their aerodynamic and biomechanical sweet spots. Wind tunnel testing is a technology that professional cycling has been using for decades but it’s new for some of Ireland’s Olympic cyclists.
“Our Team Pursuit riders were getting increasingly competitive but had just hit a bit of a brick wall” Dyer knew the last piece of the puzzle and one that would make a significant impact on performance was studying rider position and equipment.
“Riders are travelling at over 60kph for over 4 minutes so the difference in drag can be massively impactful on your end performance. For a rider travelling at that speed, 90% of their energy is spent overcoming wind resistance so it’s an incredibly technical event to improve in.”
Although the benefits can be huge in terms of performance, it’s not cheap. Dyer jokes that access to these world class facilities and experts “is like shovelling money on a fire” but says it is worth every penny.
“That’s why we’re particularly appreciative to have this funding from the Olympic Federation of Ireland. We made a bid to their ‘Make A Difference’ fund specifically to allow us to get in a wind tunnel.”
The women’s pursuit team have already broken their national record twice in the space of two weeks this year (insert link to article) once at the UEC Track European Championships and again, at the UCI Tissot Nations Cup in Jakarta, Indonesia. The record now sits at 4.17.525.
