Sport
America’s Cup: Saddling up on the high seas – the life of a cyclor
The races take place across head-to-head events that are split into two parts.
The first part – the Louis Vuitton Cup – determines which of five challengers will face this year’s defending champion Emirates Team New Zealand in the second, the America’s Cup itself.
Races take approximately 25 minutes and this year start in August and end in October.
Endurance is the key metric for cyclors, who need to be able to consistently produce a high wattage during the races themselves and maintain their form across 10 weeks.
“We just want a huge reliable engine for the three months that we’re going to be racing,” Van Velthooven says.
“Big days are big days and easy days are still big days because they still need heaps of power. It’s relentless.”
The UK’s Ineos Britannia team, led by Sir Ben Ainslie, might not have recruited professional cyclists to their crew like some of their rivals but they have the next best thing – an affiliation with the Ineos Grenadiers cycling team, formerly Team Sky and winner of seven Tours de France.
Matt Gotrel is part of Ineos Britannia’s crew. This year will be his second America’s Cup, but his first as a cyclor rather than grinder. A former Olympic gold medal-winning rower, having been part of Great Britain’s eight at Rio 2016, Gotrel has found it a “big challenge” to train a different muscle group, even if recreationally he considered himself a cyclist already.
“As rowers, we had an upside-down pyramid [body shape] before, but it’s flipped around now,” Gotrel says.
As grinders, his crew would aim to produce 400 watts of power over 20 minutes. As cyclors they are now “well north of that”.
Training for the past two years has predominantly taken place on the road or in the gym, rather than on water. Volume blocks can consist of four to six-hour-long rides, three times a week, interspersed with high-intensity intervals on a static bike and weight training.
Gotrel, from Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, compares powering the boats in a race to a cycling time trial, but with repeated sprint efforts throughout.
“You want to have a really good aerobic base where you can sit at as high a power as possible without producing too much lactate, and then you have your big spikes and need to be able to recover from those,” he says.
The connection to Ineos’ cycling team has been a “massive” resource for Gotrel and his fellow cyclors, enabling them to share training and nutritional insight on a training camp in Spain together.
“I had a chat with [sprinter Elia] Viviani about some sprinting technique, and then there are Filippo Ganna and Dan Bigham who have been really good on some of the strategy and fuelling things and what they did to push on the hour record,” says Gotrel
We’ve picked out 10 of the best Champions League goals of the week – and want you to pick your favourite.
We are getting close to the end of another County Championship cricket season, but who have been your top performers?
Surrey may be closing in on a third successive Division One title but in 2023, only one of their players featured in a team picked by you.
This year will you choose Haseeb Hameed or Alex Davies? David Bedingham or Jordan Cox? Ben Coad or Kyle Abbott?
Pick your own XI from below and we will collate all the votes before publishing an overall team of 2024 during the final round of County Championship matches, which begin on Thursday.
Just to get you started, here are the sides selected for the last two seasons:
2023: Alex Lees (Durham), Jake Libby (Worcestershire), Josh Bohannon (Lancashire), Tom Westley (Essex), James Rew (Somerset), Leus du Plooy (Derbyshire), Liam Dawson (Hampshire), Simon Harmer (Essex), Jordan Clark (Surrey), Brett Hutton (Nottinghamshire), Jamie Porter (Essex).
2022: Ben Compton (Kent), Keaton Jennings (Lancashire), Tom Abell (Somerset), Harry Brook (Yorkshire), Cheteshwar Pujara (Sussex), Ben Foakes (Surrey), Ed Barnard (Worcestershire), Simon Harmer (Essex), Toby Roland-Jones (Middlesex), Kyle Abbott (Hampshire), Matthew Potts (Durham).
Your team needs to include two openers, three middle-order batters, one wicketkeeper, one all-rounder, one spinner and three seam bowlers.
Players needed to have featured in at least six games this season to make our shortlist and all statistics are correct up to and including 12 September 2024.
Voting will close at 13:00 BST on Thursday, 26 September – during the first day of the final round of matches this summer.
Chris Sutton, Nedum Onuoha and Nicky Bandini take a look at how ‘free spirit’ Antoine Griezmann led Atletico Madrid to a win 2-1 win over RB Leipzig in the Champions League.
Gimenez’s late goal helps Atletico beat RB Leipzig
Available to UK users only.
Nedum Onuoha looks at how Bayer Leverkusen full backs Alejandro Grimaldo and Jeremie Frimpong starred in their 4-0 win over Feyenoord in the opening Champions League game.
Watch highlights of every Champions League match on iPlayer
Available to UK users only.
Chris Sutton, Nedum Onuoha and Nicky Bandini take a look at how Arsenal goalkeeper David Raya executed his “wonderful” double penalty save that halted Atalanta from taking a 1-0 lead.
Watch highlights of every Uefa Champions League game on iPlayer
Available to UK users only.
The one all-Premiership tie – and probably the least predictable – takes Dundee United to Motherwell on Friday evening in a meeting of two clubs looking to end a decades-long League Cup drought.
United have not lifted the League Cup since beating city rivals Dundee in the 1980 final, while Motherwell’s wait is even longer, having last won the trophy back in 1950, when they defeated Hibernian.
Indeed, neither side have gone beyond the quarter-finals since they last progressed to the final.
Motherwell defeated Aberdeen 3-0 seven years ago, before knocking out Rangers in the semi-finals and falling short in their bid for an Old Firm double against Celtic.
Two years earlier, United beat Hibernian on penalties after a 3-3 draw, overcame Aberdeen in the last four but also lost to Celtic in the final.
Celtic were also Well’s nemesis when the Lanarkshire side and United last reached the quarter-finals two years ago, the Glasgow visitors easing to a 4-0 win while the Tangerines were losing 2-1 in Kilmarnock.
The current sides go into Friday’s quarter-final looking to recover from top-flight defeats that ended three-game winning runs.
Stuart Kettlewell’s hosts fell 2-1 away to Aberdeen, while Jim Goodwin’s United had their impressive eight-game unbeaten sequence brought to an end by Rangers’ single-goal win at Tannadice.
Recent meetings are also no guide to Friday’s outcome considering United have spent a season winning the Championship since losing 3-2 at Fir Park in their last meeting – with United having won there a month previously.
Their knock-out meetings tend to be tight affairs too, with United winning 2-1 at Fir Park in the Scottish Cup fourth round in November 2014, while Alan Gow’s goal was enough to take hosts Motherwell through to the League Cup semi-finals in October 2010.
Another close game is in prospect under the Fir Park lights.
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