The Ronde van Vlaanderen ( RVV) or Tour of Flanders is one of the worlds great bike races and one of 5 one day 'monuments'. Flanders is a cycling heartland and its estimated 1 million people will be on the roadside for this year's race as the worlds' top one day cyclists take on the short sharp hills of the Flandrien countryside I've tried to explain in three charts why this is one of my favourite days of the sporting year. 1. The Hellingen The race is defined by the Hellingen, a series of short sharp hills or Bergs many of which are cobbled. These categorised 17 Bergs start with 150km to go and the final run up the Paterberg is just 13.5km from the finish, these narrow twisting lanes with large crowds have come to define not just the Ronde but cycle racing in Flanders. Each of the Hellingen has its own character as shown in the below chart, with the steepest towards the top right and the longer climbs having the bigger bubbles. The Paterberg (pink the the c...
Bringing together two of my favourite things in life Data Analysis and Sport. This blog is an attempt to try and provide some answers to questions some of which are important, but most are trivial.