A Twist On The British National TT Results

The dust has started to settle on the 2019 British National Time Trial Championships, so we thought we’d present a bit of a twist on the results. Everyone who raced has probably taken a good amount of time to reflect on their performance and wondering where they can find the time to move up to where they want to be. The clock gives the only number that matters on race day, but how about if the results were presented as distance behind the winner? Or how fewer watts you produced relative to the winner? Or even how many kilos heavier the winner would have to be to ride your time? We’ve fired up the bespoke WattShop performance simulation software to have a look at what the results might look like.

We’ve taken typical physical variables (CdA, Crr, mass and drivetrain efficiency) and physiological variables (critical power and anaerobic work capacity) for the winner in each category, along with the course profile and atmospheric conditions on the day to model their baseline performance for the win. From this we have then calculated how far behind each rider was when the winner crossed the line, how many fewer watts each rider would've produced if they had the same physical variables (CdA, Crr, mass, drivetrain efficiency), and how many kilos heavier the winner would’ve had to be to ride each time. This is more of a tongue-in-cheek joke at how pointless it is to focus on losing weight for a time trial, even for what is quite a rolling course!

The Men’s Elite and Women’s U23 were both won and lost by around 2 watts. Although John Archibald (Ribble Pro Cycling) had a little mechanical in the final kilometre, and it looked neck and neck with Alex Dowsett (Team Katusha-Alpecin) until then. It could’ve been a very tight margin! The Women’s Elite was won by 4.2w, a more secure winning margin for Alice Barnes (CANYON//SRAM RACING), possibly fuelled by narrowly missing out on two podiums at the European Games last week, where she was only 0.8 seconds off the podium in the TT and finished 4^th in the road race. The ride of the day goes to Charlie Quarterman (Zappi Racing Team) who won the Men’s U23 with a resounding 20w margin over Ethan Hayter in 2^nd place!

I hope you enjoy this twist on the National Time Trial results.