{"id":905632,"date":"2026-09-26T01:30:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T01:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/905632\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T01:30:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T01:30:14","slug":"blinded-by-power-why-watts-is-cyclings-mcnamara-fallacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/905632\/","title":{"rendered":"Blinded by power: Why watts is cycling’s McNamara Fallacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Blinded<\/p>\n

Performance<\/a><\/p>\n

An Escape member’s analysis of Bruno Armirail\u2019s baffling Worlds TT exposes a fallacy in our collective obsession with power.<\/p>\n

\"Ronan<\/p>\n

Cor Vos, data visualizations by Hannes Schenk<\/p>\n

Imagine Bruno Amirail\u2019s confusion as he was asked to reflect on his result in the Time Trial World Championships just moments after finishing 26th. The three-time national time trial champion of France had just done something close to a personal-best average power: 436 watts for 47 minutes. He already knew his position and equipment were good. Given his previous results at a similar level, and having just delivered such power, he surely should have finished higher up the results. His power, alone, had him thinking he was on for a very strong result.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Instead, he was completely baffled by the result. He questioned if his national team skinsuit might explain the inexplicable losses. Armirail was right to be confused as he publicly pondered an explanation.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

That\u2019s exactly what Escape Collective member Hannes Schenk, a data scientist in health tech, has tried to offer (Schenk also graciously provides the TT split graphs we use for major time trial events). Lo and behold, the answer was right there in Armirail’s\u00a0and others’ Strava data and it had nothing to do with power or aerodynamics. <\/p>\n

The potentially surprising part is that close to a minute\u2019s worth of Armirail\u2019s deficit came when every rider was probably doing practically zero power and where being more aero was probably meaningless. Even more surprising is that, blinded by the power data, Armirail hadn\u2019t clocked where his unaccounted-for time losses had arisen. In many ways, Armirail\u2019s reaction and instinct highlights how power meters potentially blind us to the bigger performance picture and why, I believe measurements like power and CdA have become cycling\u2019s McNamara Fallacy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Competitive at high speeds: Armirail\u2019s W:CdA is good<\/p>\n

Schenk approached the mystery in a few different ways. First, he asked the obvious question Armirail himself was searching for an answer to: Was he simply not aero enough?<\/p>\n

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Did we do a good job with this story?<\/p>\n

\n \ud83d\udc4dYep
\n \ud83d\udc4eNope\n <\/p>\n

\n Performance<\/a>
\n Analysis<\/a>
\n Bruno Armirail<\/a>
\n Road World Championships<\/a>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Performance An Escape member’s analysis of Bruno Armirail\u2019s baffling Worlds TT exposes a fallacy in our collective obsession…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":905633,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":["post-905632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=905632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/905633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=905632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=905632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=905632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}