Breaking records. It’s about the bike, but even more about the athlete. The Flying Moustache is perfectly tailored to Campenaerts' needs, but what can we learn about his time trial position? What makes him and his time trial position eligible for succeeding the challenge? “The lower the handlebar, the faster you go?!”
At least that was Victor’s conviction in his younger years as a cyclist, just like anybody he says. He was convinced because of his results: in the U23 category he won the European and Belgian title. But aerodynamics isn’t that logical. “In order to be able to find your best position you need to test and measure. After those initial tests we raised my handlebar with 7 cm, which is huge! To further optimize I needed to lower my shoulders, pull them to my ears and push my chin to my palms. This position change resulted in a performance increase of 5%!”, says Victor. Five percent aren’t marginal gains, that’s a huge step forward.