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few sports test the limits of
professional athletes like cycling but
it's not just human endurance on the
track that delivers the winning formula
it's human ingenuity often it's the
world's fastest bike in elite sport the
difference between success and failure
is often the finest of margins this is
base camp for one of the most successful
teams in global sport Great Britain's
track cyclists have topped the medals
tables at the past three Olympic Games
and it's a team that keeps churning out
winners we want to be the fastest in the
world we don't just want to win the
Olympics you wanna win in the fastest
time ever in a sport where races are
decided by as little as one thousandth
of a second Emily and her teammates are
obsessed with one thing marginal games
and little margin and half-a-percent
will make that difference on the day and
one of the best places to find those
tiny margins is on the by the teams key
man for this is an aerodynamics expert
an X Formula one motor racing engineer
my job is simply to use technology and
engineering in any way I can to make the
team go faster
Cambridge University professor of
engineering Tony Purnell designed the
world-renowned T 5gb bike with
manufacturer Shyvana by dramatically
reducing air resistance it helped the
British team enjoy its most successful
Olympics ever it's the world's fastest
bike the way those layers of carbon
fiber are constructed all makes for a
lighter and a stiffer bike without
compromising the aerodynamics
all-important milliseconds were shaved
off performance times by making the
tiniest of design changes even down to
the chain
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when you cycle a little bit of the power
you produce gets lost in friction in the
chain if you can reduce that loss it
translates into the athlete being that
little bit more powerful using that
chain would have made the difference in
the games between the silver and the
gold medal it's not just the bike we're
aerodynamic perfection is relentlessly
pursued it's also the person on it
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the precise position of the rider can
make all the difference
always ahead of schedule he was 45
seconds up after 40 kilometers in 1996
Olympic gold medalist Chris Boardman
broke the one-hour world record as
Boardman settled into the Superman
position armed stretched in front of his
head a smoother aerodynamics by
pioneering his legendary Superman
position today this legacy lives on at
the state-of-the-art Boardman
Performance Center and evesham England a
bike design can absolutely help but we
see that the most significant portion of
the aerodynamic effects and the drag is
coming from the ride of themselves they
sit down tell me a little bit more about
the direction we want to take whatever
wanna look at today Jamie is helping
professional cyclist Dan Bigham decipher
his optimum body posture for an upcoming
Team Pursuit race in the wind tunnel Dan
is battling winds of over 60 kilometres
per hour
to simulate the drag conditions he'll
face on the track his performance and
ultimately success could depend on a
series of almost imperceptible tweaks to
his position on the bike okay then let's
go for our first change we'll do this on
the fly let's move the hands please
by moving his hand slightly forward and
adjusting the gap between them by just
millimeters Dan speeds up by nearly half
a second per kilometer operating at
world-record pace here so we found some
gains there particularly from the hand
open position which is absolutely worth
having come race day subtle changes like
this could add up to a big advantage for
Dan's team me personally I'm about 4/10
quick adjust for my turn and if that
game was for everybody in the team then
with one and a half two seconds quicker
overall
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cycling's reputation has been damaged by
doping but its pursuit of legitimate
marginal gains still sets the pace for
many other disciplines Britain's
world-beating cyclists face ever more
intense competition from rivals who are
quickly learning how to innovate the
pursuit of marginal gains is about to
get even more marginal