On Saturday, the top teams gathered at Milano-Sanremo. Slovenian driver Matej Mohoric from Bahrain Victorious launched a textbook downhill attack before the finish to win the title.
Before the match, Mohoric said in an interview that he would use a "secret weapon" in this game, which made people expect more from his performance in the game.
On the final downhill section of the race, Mohorić, the most downhill ability, immediately attacked! With superb downhill skills, he quickly built up an advantage of nearly 10 seconds. In the process of going downhill, he staged the "Gutter Bending Method", pogacha behind him was shocked by this move, his face was full of disbelief, and then when he turned the corner, the rear wheel slipped, he staged another extreme rescue car, which saved the lead without any danger, and successfully won the championship with this time advantage, harvesting a very golden victory in his career, and also became the first Slovenian driver to win Milan-Sanremo!
In a post-race interview, Moholic said he had been thinking about how to win the race, and then the team gave him a piece of advice – use a lift tube that would help him lower his centre of gravity and gain an edge if he could hold out to the top of Pocho Mountain without falling behind. For a first-rate downhill adept like Moholic, this definitely added to his cake, and this tactical adjustment was a success, and he won! After the victory, he pointed to the lifting seat tube of the car several times, and after crossing the finish line, he specially lifted the chariot to shoot close-ups for reporters.
The use of lifting seat tubes also caused some controversy after the race, and UCI also explained this: Article 1.3.013 of the UCI Regulation stipulates that the seat tube should be at least 5cm backward with the central shaft, as long as the seat cushion meets this condition when it is in the highest and lowest positions.
Mohoridge's lift seat tube is supplied by Merida's partner FOX, model Fox Transfer SL Dropper Performance Elite, this seat tube 27.2 specification is available in 50mm and 70mm strokes, visually Moholic chose a stroke of 50mm. We inquired about the relevant information, the weight of this seat tube is about 327 grams, compared to the conventional seat tube will add more than 100 grams.
Not only the seat tube weight gain, careful riders may also find that his brake discs seem to be different from others, yes, in order to make the braking effect more stable during the race, his brake discs use a combination of the front 180mm and the rear 160mm, and the 180mm disc will also gain about 23 grams relative to the 160mm disc.
Probably for the sake of pneumatic effects, in addition to using a lifting tube and an enlarged disc, we even found that his car was mixed with a Rickdor fork. Although such a magic modification operation may affect the stability and comfort to a certain extent, this attempt does not seem to affect his performance.
After this series of changes, Mohoridge's whole vehicle is probably about 200 grams heavier than the regular version of Stella, and although these weight gains will affect his uphill time, it is all to maximize the advantage on the downhill. It turned out that he had won the bet, and Moholic, who had a super downhill ability himself, was blessed with these changes, and directly threw off the rear drivers in the downhill and won the championship strongly.
The details of lifting the seat tube, enlarging the disc and using the pneumatic fork embody the team and the driver's belief in desperate victory, and after such successes of the Bahrain-Victory team, it is not known whether the previous ineos teams piled up bicycles on the top of the time trial squadron will cause the major teams to follow suit, setting off a new trend.
Edit: Johnny
Image credit: Milan - Sanremo and Bahrain - Victory Racing Official Media