14 ms·

Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion

674 points by billfruit 5y ago

dmix 5y ago
I’m curious how much the extra year has helped some athletes who wouldn’t have won or might not have won until 2024. Or given a few the extra time to show they can compete. For ex: an 18yr old Tunisian was a big upset for gold at 400m swimming. https://ftw.usatoday.com/lists/olympics-swimming-ahmed-hafnaoui-tunisia-gold-medal-400-free https://ftw.usatoday.com/lists/olympics-swimming-ahmed-hafna... https://youtu.be/nkkn9qEnPbE https://youtu.be/nkkn9qEnPbE Not to downplay any of their abilities or achievements.
- rocqua 5y ago
  The extra year was also a year with less competition. That probably allowed some people to train up without being noticed. Normally it would have been noticed how much they improved in the past year in competition. Without competition, you don't know how people progressed the last year.
polote 5y ago
"After Shapira and Plichta were caught by the remainder of the peloton the rest of the riders seemed to believe that they were racing amongst themselves for Gold, unaware that Kiesenhofer was still in front." Not saying she shouldn't had won, but when nobody is pursuing you, it is much easier to win. We have seen in the men race that even when people know there is one person in front, 80% of the riders prefer not to force to prevent the strongest guy of the group to win the sprint. (Who won the sprint anyway)
- zucker42 5y ago
  Tactics are as important as strength in cycling. The strongest person doesn't always win.
- Denvercoder9 5y ago
  The road race at the Olympics is somewhat of an outlier in cycling. It uses national teams as opposed to commerical teams, so riders ride with unfamilar teammates, and in this case the biggest favorites were actually teammates. It also bans radios, so there's no direct communication between the coaches and the riders possible.
  - ossusermivami 5y ago
    world/european championship has the same national structure as the olympics, the radios are present in those races, so in that way the olympics is unique.
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    I didn't see this race yet, and although I enjoy watching it I'm no expert on road cycling. However, ISTR that in every televised race there is a particular motorcycle that stays with the lead rider(s). If a racer thinks she's on the front and doesn't see that motorcycle around somewhere, shouldn't she reconsider her position? Also the racers who had been on the breakaway and got caught knew she was still up there, but they might not have cared to tell anyone about it.
    - Denvercoder9 5y ago
      There's usually motorcycles in front of the chasing groups as well, and I don't think the motorcycle for the leader is specially marked.
  - TomK32 5y ago
    Even with radio, the breakouts might feel confident with the lead but not realize yet that the poursuivants have stepped up their speed.
- freefal 5y ago
  The big difference between typical pro races and the Olympics is that in the Olympics the riders don’t race with radios, which made this situation possible. In a typical pro race, the team director would be telling his riders there is still someone up the road.
- iainmerrick 5y ago
  Not saying she shouldn't had won, but when nobody is pursuing you, it is much easier to win. She certainly benefited from a mistake by the other competitors, but “much easier” is surely a big exaggeration. You could equally well say it’s much harder to win the race when you’re out by yourself, with nobody to chase, nobody to set the pace, and no pack to draft with. If she hadn’t cycled the race of her life, she would have been caught.
  - bandyaboot 5y ago
    I don’t think “much easier” is an exaggeration at all. It is hard to win with no help as you say. Which is why there’s a good chance that she would have been caught if the people who did have help knew there was someone they needed to catch. That being said, good on her for sneaking away getting out in front unnoticed. It’s not always just about pure ability.
    - eCa 5y ago
      > sneaking away getting out in front unnoticed They knew she was in the early breakaway, they just assumed she had been caught.
      - lmilcin 5y ago
        Let's just say, and I know this from experience as amateur runner, when you ride an olympic effort you are probably not the best at counting and remembering things.
        varjag 5y ago
        They were a group, it's no excuse. A better rider won.
- lmilcin 5y ago
  No, the rules are pretty simple. The one who manages to first cross the finish line wins. Everybody knows the rules. The problem is it is not a very simple sport and there is some game theory involved. Riding as fast as possible is not the best strategy, actually it is pretty poor one. The better strategy comes from understanding you don't need to win by a lot, winning by 1s is the same as winning by 10 minutes. Also riding alone or at the front costs a lot more effort than riding behind somebody. Actually, riding at the same speed at the front might be max effort and in the pack might be almost coasting. Together, this means you may have a very valid strategy to try to preserve energy (ie. keep with the pack) and count on your better ability to sprint at the end to get ahead of competitors. That of course as long as you believe there is nobody running away. At the extreme of effort, very small differences of effort can have very large effects on your body. If you look at it, a difference of tempo to run a 5k and 10k is very small. The current world records for 5k is 12:35.36 and 10k is 26:11.00. If you look at difference, 5k is 151s/km while 10k is 156s/km, just 5s or 3% slower. And yet that minute difference lets you run twice as far.
  - hinkley 5y ago
    In professional cycling the Ride as Hard as You Can people are necessary but often don’t achieve any real rank on the team. They might not even finish a tour, either having not budgeted enough for the late stages, or being so new that they can’t understand how tired they’re gonna be later. Their claim to fame may be limited to being on the top team, it might be being on a top 5 team. If you’re lucky you team may place several people in the top 10. If you’re their hedge against the captain being injured, that might even be your name in seventh place. Lemond is famous in small part for being number #2 to Bernard Hinault and feeling it should have been him on the podium. But Lemond is the classic case of the unreliable captain. He was like a race horse. On a good day he was like the wind. But a stiff breeze could lay him up. He lamented the Hinault situation but illness stopped him from winning two others. And then that goddamned duck hunting trip… (I met him a few years later, he did a signing at a bike shop owned by a friend… who he as going to go duck hunting with the next day. I so wanted to ask him why he was crazy.) I never felt he had the sort of lieutenants that Armstrong enjoyed, the way he was to Hinault. I’m racking my brain trying to remember who was on Delgado’s team and coming up completely blank. But I think that just proves my point.
- rocqua 5y ago
  Consider what happened in mens racing. When there is someone ahead, you also get hesitation. No one wants to expend the effort to catch them. Everyone hopes that someone else will put in that effort. It's a classic game theoretical 'tragedy of the commons'. The same could have happened here. The dutch riders were all riding for themselves. The other riders would probably have looked to the favorites to close the gap.
Quarrel 5y ago
This is incredible, but some of the headlines of "amateur wins gold versus pros" are a little misleading. She was with a pro-team, she is the current Austrian time-trial champion and had devoted herself to making this happen over the pandemic. Meanwhile the Dutch World Champion didn't know she was ahead, so didn't chase her. I love the story, but it isn't a simple amateur beating out all the pros story.
- mkurz 5y ago
  > She was with a pro-team Only in 2017. She quit a Belgian pro-team shortly after she joined [1]. Quote from the linked article: "I noticed that professional sport is too much physical and psychological stress for me and that I prefer to only do hobby sport" > but it isn't a simple amateur beating out all the pros story. IMHO she probably is not really just an amateur, but also not a pro. I mean, she is 30, doing her post-doc at EPFL Lausanne right now... It's not like training is the only thing she spends her time with. Also not sure if she has sponsors. And to everyone here on HN saying that the Dutch riders didn't know there was someone in front: These are professional athletes, competing at the olympics. If the Dutch's claim is true, it's their own fault. Knowing who is/how many are in front is part of the game. And they lost that game. Also Kiesenhofer was ahead 1:15 minutes. It's not like that's nothing. Even if the Dutch would have chased her, is it sure they would have beaten her? I am not sure... The point being: Kiesenhofer won, no matter what. [1] https://sport.orf.at/tokyo2020/stories/3081410 https://sport.orf.at/tokyo2020/stories/3081410
  - rocqua 5y ago
    It is definitely the mistake of the dutch riders, and the dutch team. From reports, it might also be issue with communication between the organization and the dutch team. There were complaints about unclarity of information for the riders. If true that probably is something the organization to do better. But 'our girls' could have done better. My read is that: being used to having communication; hubris and situational awareness mistakes; unclear signaling of gaps to the riders; and a spotty cell connection in the coach's car combined to the Dutch riders making a very bad mistake. What would have happened without this mistake is an unkowanle what-if. My money would be on Kiesemhofer having been caught, given how quickly the gap was shrinking at the end. But that what if doesn't matter as much as the huge mistake that prevented it from materializing.
mikeyouse 5y ago
Seems she's a PhD who studies Partial Differential Equations. Her post-doc research institution is understandably proud: https://actu.epfl.ch/news/epfl-scientist-wins-cycling-gold-medal-in-tokyo-ol/ https://actu.epfl.ch/news/epfl-scientist-wins-cycling-gold-m...
- sdenton4 5y ago
  This was what I came into the comments to find out! I like that the faculty is 'celebrating her result,' a phrase we often use for new discoveries and theorems, rather than race placements. I got excited when I saw 'Catalan' in the original article, but, sadly, as she's in PDE research, she's merely from Catalan, not studying Catalan numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_number
  - enriquto 5y ago
    > I got excited when I saw 'Catalan' in the original article, but, sadly, as she's in PDE research, she's merely (...) angry Catalan noises I'm really happy for her, she did her PhD at my alma mater, in a rather well-known lab. Here's one of the main papers leading to the doctorate: https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.02605 https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.02605
- dls2016 5y ago
  I left the PDE group as a postdoc a few months before she joined. This even further solidifies that I wasn’t quite cut out for that level of mathematics… haha. Congrats on her win!
egeozcan 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_at_the_2020_Summer_Olympics_–_Women's_individual_road_race#Results https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_at_the_2020_Summer_Oly... With more than a minute difference to the rest? She wasn't even in the pack, incredible victory.
- billfruit 5y ago
  In fact initially Van Vleuten thought she had won when she finished and didn't knew that Kiesenhofer had finished ahead of her.
haunter 5y ago
There are no radios allowed at the Olympics, like there are at professional races (ie Tour, Vuelta, Giro etc.) That simple. The last refresh point was ~50kms before the final, if the person there didn't give an info to the riders then they just didn't know how far she was ahead hence the confusion of van Vleuten at the finish
- tokai 5y ago
  No radios really exposed the poor racecraft of the Dutch riders. Seen some commentators criticising the no radios in OL (and WM) races, but I personally I think it is nice that it emphasize the skill of the rider and minimise the impact of SD's. Riders in the van Vleuten group, such as Uttrup, did know that there was a rider up the road. So it does seem that the mishap is truly on the Ducth riders.
endisneigh 5y ago
Her victory is well deserved, but from what I can tell in the Olympics isn't it the case that unless they're right in front of you contestants have no way of knowing if they're even winning? This could be a case of #2 and #3 falling from the lead and not even realizing they're #2 and #3, and rather thinking they're #1 and #2. If they knew their true positions it's possible the outcome could've been different.
- tokai 5y ago
  >if they knew their true positions it's possible the outcome could've been different. That is part of the sport. riders keep up with time gaps on boards from the motos, they go back to their team car for information (and water), count the riders getting brought back, they talk with their team mates or even other teams about the situation. Radioless races are run differently, but the favourites forgetting the road leader is not common and embarrassing.
srean 5y ago
It might be interesting to recall that Alan Turing was an Olympics team contender for 1948~1949
- IceDane 5y ago
  Yes, let's use the opportunity this article about this successful woman has provided us to talk about successful men instead. Great suggestion.
  - srean 5y ago
    No offense intended, it seems my comment has upset you or someone else who has been downvoting unrelated comments. Turing is a person of interest here, for obvious reasons, so did not think it would be out of place. Gender identity was the last thing on my mind. There are some similarities, a mathematician, amateur sportsman in an Olympics, don't you think ? Turing's running mates were quite unaware of his technical and academic contributions, partly due to the secrecy of his wartime contributions. If women athletes with academic accomplishments interest you, you may checkout Corinna Cortes. She is VP at Google Research, known for her foundational work in machine learning, support vector machines in particular. She is Danish, if that matters to you.
  - mmdoda 5y ago
    The fact that she's a woman doesn't make this interesting. (Woman winning women's cycling wouldn't be much news.) The reason this is interesting is because she's a Mathematician and an amateur.
  - hervature 5y ago
    It seems like a pertinent interesting side fact about mathematicians at the Olympics. The list is obviously pretty small.
  - xondono 5y ago
    Let’s ignore talking about mathematicians who participate in the olympics and focus on their genitalia, because that’s clearly what’s important here.
manquer 5y ago
Being a pro athlete competing and winning at an event like Olympics and pursing a post doc in a tough field like mathematics is an achievement lot more interesting than whether she is really amateur
pythko 5y ago
Some additional context for those who don't follow professional cycling: the Dutch women's team was incredibly strong coming into this road race. All 4 riders on their team are stars in their own right, and the only reason there wasn't a clear favorite for the race overall is that people weren't sure which Dutch rider would win. So you have a complicated group dynamic, where the majority of the peloton has no interest in pulling the group to catch the break, since they would just get beat by one or more of the Dutch riders, and the Dutch riders didn't seem to have a clear plan on how to control the race and who would sacrifice their chances and work on the front for the rest of the team. As others have said, there were no radios allowed for riders in the race, so all information about the breakaway came from the race director's car trailing the peloton. This was a well known fact about the race coming in, and it's the same way that the annual World Championship race is run. It's normal for riders to drop back to the team car to get information about the break, and the lead moto for a group of cyclists will occasionally show time gaps on a whiteboard. At least one of the Dutch riders claimed to have known about the lone rider off the front [1], but somehow that information didn't make it to the rest of the team. It seems that most of the peloton didn't know (or didn't care) how many riders were up the road, and the Dutch team failed to communicate amongst themselves and establish a plan. All that leads to Kiesenhofer's solo move working out. All credit to her for an extremely strong ride. [1]https://netherlandsnewslive.com/miscommunication-and-underestimation-vos-knew-that-kiesenhofer-was-driving-ahead-van-der-breggen-did-not-olympics/205489/ https://netherlandsnewslive.com/miscommunication-and-underes...
- Ostrogodsky 5y ago
  All this is true but it doesnt stop painting the Dutch riders (and the rest of the peloton) as very amateur. It is not about resources, people like van Vleuten or Voss receive resources (money, sponsorship,equipment) than 99.9% of cyclists in the world will never see (both men and women) and yet they made a schoolboy mistake here. When you compare that to the men's event it could be practically be a different sport.
  - deleted 5y ago
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tosh 5y ago
Interesting preparation twitter thread by Anna Kiesenhofer on body temperature https://twitter.com/AnnaKiesenhofer/status/1411359208524726274?s=20 https://twitter.com/AnnaKiesenhofer/status/14113592085247262...
- TomK32 5y ago
  Interesting, the race taking place on a hot day and she doesn't feel hot when her core peaks at 39.3 degrees.
- dillondoyle 5y ago
  Especially with global warming I wish they took climate into more account with deciding locations. It becomes borderline unsafe I think the US track trials were too hot if I remember right? For training though the US climbers have a small space in their gym that is enclosed in plastic with heater humidifiers for this reason. pretty funny. Temps + humidity - or 'condies' as the kids say - are really important to climb at the top level. Cold and a breeze is usually best.
tosh 5y ago
Great performance, thrilling race, well done!
shayankh 5y ago
in germany every1 has a phd; no surprise really
- mkurz 5y ago
  Except that she is from Austria, studied in Vienna, which is also in Austria. She has absolutely nothing to do with Germany.
- Tainnor 5y ago
  A PhD in mathematics is not the same thing as a ghostwritten PhD in some other disciplines that are notorious for this sort of thing.
deleted 5y ago
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pjbster 5y ago
This isn't the first time something like this has happened: cycling aficionados will remember the tale of Robert Millar and the "stolen" 1984 Vuelta [1]. I personally love it when races are run without radios. The UCI tried to ban them in 2010 but the pro teams rebelled, claiming that they were essential for safety reasons; the number of crashes at the 2021 Tour de France would suggest that they aren't succeeding very well at that core function. Radios make the races formulaic. Not necessarily predictable but certainly a different event. I can't think of any other sport where pros are held to different rules (i.e. allowed technical assistance) compared to amateurs. [1] https://crankpunk.com/2012/11/09/robert-millar-the-case-of-the-stolen-vuelta/ https://crankpunk.com/2012/11/09/robert-millar-the-case-of-t...
- rocqua 5y ago
  If you don't have radios, you still need to tell riders about the gaps. Perhaps a radio channel that just tells riders the state of play without input from the teams themselves.
  - mijamo 5y ago
    Before radio you had a moto putting the latest gap to display in front of the peloton. This is very simple and would not cause trouble. Note that they do not have that for the Olympic games for some reason.
    - rurban 5y ago
      Wrong. Anna was constantly informed by the moto of her lead. We will have to hear from others, like Longo or Brennauer if there were informed or not. But I'm pretty sure they were.
  - frereubu 5y ago
    Why do you need to tell riders about the gaps?
    - rocqua 5y ago
consp 5y ago
Don't know where to add it to so I'll add it in response to the OP as some discussion is about it: Quotation from the Dutch TV (interview with van Vleuten, silver medal winner) [1]: > "Onderschatting van de tegenstander, in combinatie met heel veel miscommunicatie en ook slechte communicatie vanuit de organisatie." Which roughly translates to () is mine: "Underestimated the opposition (singular), in combination with lots of miscommunication and bad communication (with the team) from the organization." Though it looked like she was contend with the performance of Anna Kiesenhofer vs her eventual performance. [1] Source: https://nos.nl/tokyo2020/artikel/2390838-38-jaar-en-ze-had-m-dacht-ze-de-bewogen-dag-van-van-vleuten https://nos.nl/tokyo2020/artikel/2390838-38-jaar-en-ze-had-m... Video is country restricted for some stupid reason as it is a interview ... stop whining about rights ...
bijant 5y ago
The Dutch Cyclists didn’t even need a phd in PDEs, they could have gone for gold if they had been able to count to three.
j7ake 5y ago
What an amazing effort from Kiesenhofer. I imagine being alone in the front for that long would be many times more effort than staying in the peloton. Heroic effort. I am curious how this upset compare with other upsets in previous Olympics? Has there been bigger upsets than this one? If this were a tennis event, would this be like someone who was ranked top 50 or top 100 in the world beating Novak Djokovic to win gold?
- eitally 5y ago
  Think of it more like this: "cyclist who is very good at riding all-out on her own has chance to ride all-out on her own; peloton that has potential advantage of strength in numbers doesn't use advantage; to some surprise, lone rider wins." This doesn't happen in stage races because of radios and professional teamwork, but I'm this race the technology and incentives aligned to open the door for a breakaway win. The fun part is that the cyclist who won isn't even optimized to compete in the same way as the others. She's literally a time trial specialist who rejected a pro team offer because she didn't want to compete on anything but personal cycling performance, and then she beat those teams.
elijaht 5y ago
I recently started watching road cycling with this years Tour de France and now the Olympics and it's pretty interesting. A lot of tactical depth and it's a perfect WFH background noise- it plays out over hours so you don't have to be watching every minute Both mens and womens road race in the Olympics were excellent too, a lot of drama and interesting mind games
- milleramp 5y ago
  Welcome, I am also addicted! http://www.cyclingtorrents.nl http://www.cyclingtorrents.nl
  - SyzygistSix 5y ago
    Any chance you have an invite?
PuddleOfSausage 5y ago
(More related to the comments than the article) I've seen tons of takes on this since watching the end of the race this morning and, although it certainly played a part in deciding the outcome, it's a shame that more focus has seemed to be on making excuses or how the Dutch riders messed things up instead of Dr Kiesenhofer's incredible story and ride. Kiesenhofer was on a fantastic day: van Vleuten's earlier attack from the peloton made no inroads to Kiesenhofer, assuming the time gaps shown on the TV were correct. Watching on the TV we knew there was still a rider out front and, even if the race "ardoisier" (blackboard holder) wasn't the best, team management should have figured out a way to get that information to the chasing pack. I mean, the race finished on a motor racing circuit with pit lanes containing team helpers! It's not like it was like stage 16 of this year's Giro, where poor weather stopped race images being broadcast[1]. [1] https://cyclingtips.com/2021/05/gallery-amazing-images-from-the-giro-stage-we-never-saw/ https://cyclingtips.com/2021/05/gallery-amazing-images-from-...
- Sergiu37 5y ago
  In giro they have radio communications from the team manager. In the Olympics they don't have that, they can't tell them the differences. Also winning when the opponents are not really trying to catch you it's not really a story either. It happens a lot even when they know a rider is upfront in order to save energy for second place and not give a free ride to other cyclists -see how Carapaz won in men events where only Wout tried to catch him. The real story is the mistake from the dutch team that could have catch her but missinterpreted the situation.
- Rapzid 5y ago
  Oh, "they" knew. Cyclists talk amongst themselves. Shapira and Plichta fell back to the peloton and they knew. Not everyone knew, but then they let a group break away and build an 11 minute lead at one point. If you weren't keeping track of every rider in that group you are probably just trying to hang on to make a play amongst the rider left around around you later and not thinking about Gold.
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
Revenge of the nerds! You go, math geek! Reminds me of an old "Nerds vs. Jocks" joke, from the last century: http://www.spiegl.org/humor/jordan_gates.html http://www.spiegl.org/humor/jordan_gates.html
sanguy 5y ago
Fantastic ride and if you follower her Twitter she's been doing a lot of very detailed exploration of her endurance limits in preparation. When the lead group fell to 3 they had an 11 minute lead. She broke free and went solo with 40km to go. When she finished that lead had eroded to 2 minutes as the front group she dropped had been caught. So in those 40km she lost 9 minutes of lead she had built with the help of the breakout group. This was all strategy and then a tremendous physical performance on her part. Dutch team needs a serious kick in the ass for underestimating an "amatuer" in this regard. It was obvious she was in it for the gold or nothing; and they fatally assumed it would be the later. Fantastic win when you consider training, strategy, and performance all came together to pull it off. This is what olympians are all about!
- TomVDB 5y ago
  It’s easy to underestimate a break-away rider when you don’t know that there is one. The silver medal winner thought she had won the race. They need a kick for not communicating amongst themselves.
  - headmelted 5y ago
    I heard something early on about a communication failure, not sure how much truth there is in that. Nonetheless, it was an incredible performance - right down to her collapsing to the ground victorious in tears at the line. I laughed a little when I saw the Danish competitor come to congratulate her with a big smile while the Dutch team two meters away wouldn’t even acknowledge she was there - no point being bitter about it afterwards when you’ve already been beaten that badly by a “nobody”. I wasn’t even sure if Anna even realised because she was so exhausted (and elated!). 40KM without the help of a peloton. Incredible.
    - deleted 5y ago
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    - ubermonkey 5y ago
      Yeah, just an amazing performance. FYI, the pros got caught out here a bit. The Olympic road race is probably the last one running that doesn't allow radios.
sb8244 5y ago
I'm just about to watch this, very excited to see it play out. I'm listening to the very start of the race right now and it's very funny how things work out: "[The smartest racer will win, not just the strongest. Well who are we kidding, you need a good bit of luck too.]" That's certainly true given the sheer luck on display (peloton lost track of breakaway) and how smart Kiesenhofer is. I also think it's interesting how much she dislikes riding in the peloton. She's 10ft off the back in the starting roll-out.
sydthrowaway 5y ago
All that's remaining is to become an Astronaut.
wanderingmind 5y ago
Nothing to take away from Anna Kiesenhofer. It is an absolute brilliant win. But an amateur winning a sporting event supposed to be for amateurs has become news. It's sad how much Olympics has lost its original meaning and intent.
i_am_new_here 5y ago
<Women>: Does incredible things, that typically men are way better at (math and sports) and: She even does 2 of them, at the same time and to the very best. Incredible. Bravo! How plausible/believable. And what an adorable women and a role model for other girls. And we need so many more female role models to inspire as many young girls as possible (ideally: All of them). Having kids and a family (with a man,... a protector?!) is really lame and needs to be avoided. Top notch careers are much more important. I mean: Who doesn't want to be remembered by the random name that was given to you - First name by your parents, last name by people in the middle ages struggling to keep people apart during rapid population growth. I feel very inspired now. Thank you journalist (w/m/d) for writing this article. It is clear that men are all grabbing for these enviable positions just for the sake of it (and not as a means for anything else) and we need to get women there, too.
wanderingmind 5y ago
For some reason this story reminded me of the French winning 4x100 freestyle relay in London 2012. They went in as the underdogs but trounced the Americans with Yannick Angel who swam the final leg absolutely trouncing Phelps and co. He was also an athlete who had a hobby of reading and was quiet a good student at that time. There is something mesmerizing about athletes who also embrace intellectually stimulating activities.
scrumlord 5y ago
big whoop.

674 points by billfruit 5y ago

dmix 5y ago

I’m curious how much the extra year has helped some athletes who wouldn’t have won or might not have won until 2024. Or given a few the extra time to show they can compete. For ex: an 18yr old Tunisian was a big upset for gold at 400m swimming. https://ftw.usatoday.com/lists/olympics-swimming-ahmed-hafnaoui-tunisia-gold-medal-400-free https://ftw.usatoday.com/lists/olympics-swimming-ahmed-hafna... https://youtu.be/nkkn9qEnPbE https://youtu.be/nkkn9qEnPbE Not to downplay any of their abilities or achievements.

rocqua 5y ago
The extra year was also a year with less competition. That probably allowed some people to train up without being noticed. Normally it would have been noticed how much they improved in the past year in competition. Without competition, you don't know how people progressed the last year.

polote 5y ago

"After Shapira and Plichta were caught by the remainder of the peloton the rest of the riders seemed to believe that they were racing amongst themselves for Gold, unaware that Kiesenhofer was still in front." Not saying she shouldn't had won, but when nobody is pursuing you, it is much easier to win. We have seen in the men race that even when people know there is one person in front, 80% of the riders prefer not to force to prevent the strongest guy of the group to win the sprint. (Who won the sprint anyway)

zucker42 5y ago
Tactics are as important as strength in cycling. The strongest person doesn't always win.
Denvercoder9 5y ago
The road race at the Olympics is somewhat of an outlier in cycling. It uses national teams as opposed to commerical teams, so riders ride with unfamilar teammates, and in this case the biggest favorites were actually teammates. It also bans radios, so there's no direct communication between the coaches and the riders possible.
- ossusermivami 5y ago
  world/european championship has the same national structure as the olympics, the radios are present in those races, so in that way the olympics is unique.
- jessaustin 5y ago
  I didn't see this race yet, and although I enjoy watching it I'm no expert on road cycling. However, ISTR that in every televised race there is a particular motorcycle that stays with the lead rider(s). If a racer thinks she's on the front and doesn't see that motorcycle around somewhere, shouldn't she reconsider her position? Also the racers who had been on the breakaway and got caught knew she was still up there, but they might not have cared to tell anyone about it.
  - Denvercoder9 5y ago
    There's usually motorcycles in front of the chasing groups as well, and I don't think the motorcycle for the leader is specially marked.
- TomK32 5y ago
  Even with radio, the breakouts might feel confident with the lead but not realize yet that the poursuivants have stepped up their speed.
freefal 5y ago
The big difference between typical pro races and the Olympics is that in the Olympics the riders don’t race with radios, which made this situation possible. In a typical pro race, the team director would be telling his riders there is still someone up the road.
iainmerrick 5y ago
Not saying she shouldn't had won, but when nobody is pursuing you, it is much easier to win. She certainly benefited from a mistake by the other competitors, but “much easier” is surely a big exaggeration. You could equally well say it’s much harder to win the race when you’re out by yourself, with nobody to chase, nobody to set the pace, and no pack to draft with. If she hadn’t cycled the race of her life, she would have been caught.
- bandyaboot 5y ago
  I don’t think “much easier” is an exaggeration at all. It is hard to win with no help as you say. Which is why there’s a good chance that she would have been caught if the people who did have help knew there was someone they needed to catch. That being said, good on her for sneaking away getting out in front unnoticed. It’s not always just about pure ability.
  - eCa 5y ago
    > sneaking away getting out in front unnoticed They knew she was in the early breakaway, they just assumed she had been caught.
    - lmilcin 5y ago
      Let's just say, and I know this from experience as amateur runner, when you ride an olympic effort you are probably not the best at counting and remembering things.
      - varjag 5y ago
        They were a group, it's no excuse. A better rider won.
lmilcin 5y ago
No, the rules are pretty simple. The one who manages to first cross the finish line wins. Everybody knows the rules. The problem is it is not a very simple sport and there is some game theory involved. Riding as fast as possible is not the best strategy, actually it is pretty poor one. The better strategy comes from understanding you don't need to win by a lot, winning by 1s is the same as winning by 10 minutes. Also riding alone or at the front costs a lot more effort than riding behind somebody. Actually, riding at the same speed at the front might be max effort and in the pack might be almost coasting. Together, this means you may have a very valid strategy to try to preserve energy (ie. keep with the pack) and count on your better ability to sprint at the end to get ahead of competitors. That of course as long as you believe there is nobody running away. At the extreme of effort, very small differences of effort can have very large effects on your body. If you look at it, a difference of tempo to run a 5k and 10k is very small. The current world records for 5k is 12:35.36 and 10k is 26:11.00. If you look at difference, 5k is 151s/km while 10k is 156s/km, just 5s or 3% slower. And yet that minute difference lets you run twice as far.
- hinkley 5y ago
  In professional cycling the Ride as Hard as You Can people are necessary but often don’t achieve any real rank on the team. They might not even finish a tour, either having not budgeted enough for the late stages, or being so new that they can’t understand how tired they’re gonna be later. Their claim to fame may be limited to being on the top team, it might be being on a top 5 team. If you’re lucky you team may place several people in the top 10. If you’re their hedge against the captain being injured, that might even be your name in seventh place. Lemond is famous in small part for being number #2 to Bernard Hinault and feeling it should have been him on the podium. But Lemond is the classic case of the unreliable captain. He was like a race horse. On a good day he was like the wind. But a stiff breeze could lay him up. He lamented the Hinault situation but illness stopped him from winning two others. And then that goddamned duck hunting trip… (I met him a few years later, he did a signing at a bike shop owned by a friend… who he as going to go duck hunting with the next day. I so wanted to ask him why he was crazy.) I never felt he had the sort of lieutenants that Armstrong enjoyed, the way he was to Hinault. I’m racking my brain trying to remember who was on Delgado’s team and coming up completely blank. But I think that just proves my point.
rocqua 5y ago
Consider what happened in mens racing. When there is someone ahead, you also get hesitation. No one wants to expend the effort to catch them. Everyone hopes that someone else will put in that effort. It's a classic game theoretical 'tragedy of the commons'. The same could have happened here. The dutch riders were all riding for themselves. The other riders would probably have looked to the favorites to close the gap.

Quarrel 5y ago

This is incredible, but some of the headlines of "amateur wins gold versus pros" are a little misleading. She was with a pro-team, she is the current Austrian time-trial champion and had devoted herself to making this happen over the pandemic. Meanwhile the Dutch World Champion didn't know she was ahead, so didn't chase her. I love the story, but it isn't a simple amateur beating out all the pros story.

mkurz 5y ago
> She was with a pro-team Only in 2017. She quit a Belgian pro-team shortly after she joined [1]. Quote from the linked article: "I noticed that professional sport is too much physical and psychological stress for me and that I prefer to only do hobby sport" > but it isn't a simple amateur beating out all the pros story. IMHO she probably is not really just an amateur, but also not a pro. I mean, she is 30, doing her post-doc at EPFL Lausanne right now... It's not like training is the only thing she spends her time with. Also not sure if she has sponsors. And to everyone here on HN saying that the Dutch riders didn't know there was someone in front: These are professional athletes, competing at the olympics. If the Dutch's claim is true, it's their own fault. Knowing who is/how many are in front is part of the game. And they lost that game. Also Kiesenhofer was ahead 1:15 minutes. It's not like that's nothing. Even if the Dutch would have chased her, is it sure they would have beaten her? I am not sure... The point being: Kiesenhofer won, no matter what. [1] https://sport.orf.at/tokyo2020/stories/3081410 https://sport.orf.at/tokyo2020/stories/3081410
- rocqua 5y ago
  It is definitely the mistake of the dutch riders, and the dutch team. From reports, it might also be issue with communication between the organization and the dutch team. There were complaints about unclarity of information for the riders. If true that probably is something the organization to do better. But 'our girls' could have done better. My read is that: being used to having communication; hubris and situational awareness mistakes; unclear signaling of gaps to the riders; and a spotty cell connection in the coach's car combined to the Dutch riders making a very bad mistake. What would have happened without this mistake is an unkowanle what-if. My money would be on Kiesemhofer having been caught, given how quickly the gap was shrinking at the end. But that what if doesn't matter as much as the huge mistake that prevented it from materializing.

mikeyouse 5y ago

Seems she's a PhD who studies Partial Differential Equations. Her post-doc research institution is understandably proud: https://actu.epfl.ch/news/epfl-scientist-wins-cycling-gold-medal-in-tokyo-ol/ https://actu.epfl.ch/news/epfl-scientist-wins-cycling-gold-m...

sdenton4 5y ago
This was what I came into the comments to find out! I like that the faculty is 'celebrating her result,' a phrase we often use for new discoveries and theorems, rather than race placements. I got excited when I saw 'Catalan' in the original article, but, sadly, as she's in PDE research, she's merely from Catalan, not studying Catalan numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_number
- enriquto 5y ago
  > I got excited when I saw 'Catalan' in the original article, but, sadly, as she's in PDE research, she's merely (...) angry Catalan noises I'm really happy for her, she did her PhD at my alma mater, in a rather well-known lab. Here's one of the main papers leading to the doctorate: https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.02605 https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.02605
dls2016 5y ago
I left the PDE group as a postdoc a few months before she joined. This even further solidifies that I wasn’t quite cut out for that level of mathematics… haha. Congrats on her win!

egeozcan 5y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_at_the_2020_Summer_Olympics_–_Women's_individual_road_race#Results https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_at_the_2020_Summer_Oly... With more than a minute difference to the rest? She wasn't even in the pack, incredible victory.

billfruit 5y ago
In fact initially Van Vleuten thought she had won when she finished and didn't knew that Kiesenhofer had finished ahead of her.

haunter 5y ago

There are no radios allowed at the Olympics, like there are at professional races (ie Tour, Vuelta, Giro etc.) That simple. The last refresh point was ~50kms before the final, if the person there didn't give an info to the riders then they just didn't know how far she was ahead hence the confusion of van Vleuten at the finish

tokai 5y ago
No radios really exposed the poor racecraft of the Dutch riders. Seen some commentators criticising the no radios in OL (and WM) races, but I personally I think it is nice that it emphasize the skill of the rider and minimise the impact of SD's. Riders in the van Vleuten group, such as Uttrup, did know that there was a rider up the road. So it does seem that the mishap is truly on the Ducth riders.

endisneigh 5y ago

Her victory is well deserved, but from what I can tell in the Olympics isn't it the case that unless they're right in front of you contestants have no way of knowing if they're even winning? This could be a case of #2 and #3 falling from the lead and not even realizing they're #2 and #3, and rather thinking they're #1 and #2. If they knew their true positions it's possible the outcome could've been different.

tokai 5y ago
>if they knew their true positions it's possible the outcome could've been different. That is part of the sport. riders keep up with time gaps on boards from the motos, they go back to their team car for information (and water), count the riders getting brought back, they talk with their team mates or even other teams about the situation. Radioless races are run differently, but the favourites forgetting the road leader is not common and embarrassing.

srean 5y ago

It might be interesting to recall that Alan Turing was an Olympics team contender for 1948~1949

IceDane 5y ago
Yes, let's use the opportunity this article about this successful woman has provided us to talk about successful men instead. Great suggestion.
- srean 5y ago
  No offense intended, it seems my comment has upset you or someone else who has been downvoting unrelated comments. Turing is a person of interest here, for obvious reasons, so did not think it would be out of place. Gender identity was the last thing on my mind. There are some similarities, a mathematician, amateur sportsman in an Olympics, don't you think ? Turing's running mates were quite unaware of his technical and academic contributions, partly due to the secrecy of his wartime contributions. If women athletes with academic accomplishments interest you, you may checkout Corinna Cortes. She is VP at Google Research, known for her foundational work in machine learning, support vector machines in particular. She is Danish, if that matters to you.
- mmdoda 5y ago
  The fact that she's a woman doesn't make this interesting. (Woman winning women's cycling wouldn't be much news.) The reason this is interesting is because she's a Mathematician and an amateur.
- hervature 5y ago
  It seems like a pertinent interesting side fact about mathematicians at the Olympics. The list is obviously pretty small.
- xondono 5y ago
  Let’s ignore talking about mathematicians who participate in the olympics and focus on their genitalia, because that’s clearly what’s important here.

manquer 5y ago

Being a pro athlete competing and winning at an event like Olympics and pursing a post doc in a tough field like mathematics is an achievement lot more interesting than whether she is really amateur

pythko 5y ago

Some additional context for those who don't follow professional cycling: the Dutch women's team was incredibly strong coming into this road race. All 4 riders on their team are stars in their own right, and the only reason there wasn't a clear favorite for the race overall is that people weren't sure which Dutch rider would win. So you have a complicated group dynamic, where the majority of the peloton has no interest in pulling the group to catch the break, since they would just get beat by one or more of the Dutch riders, and the Dutch riders didn't seem to have a clear plan on how to control the race and who would sacrifice their chances and work on the front for the rest of the team. As others have said, there were no radios allowed for riders in the race, so all information about the breakaway came from the race director's car trailing the peloton. This was a well known fact about the race coming in, and it's the same way that the annual World Championship race is run. It's normal for riders to drop back to the team car to get information about the break, and the lead moto for a group of cyclists will occasionally show time gaps on a whiteboard. At least one of the Dutch riders claimed to have known about the lone rider off the front [1], but somehow that information didn't make it to the rest of the team. It seems that most of the peloton didn't know (or didn't care) how many riders were up the road, and the Dutch team failed to communicate amongst themselves and establish a plan. All that leads to Kiesenhofer's solo move working out. All credit to her for an extremely strong ride. [1]https://netherlandsnewslive.com/miscommunication-and-underestimation-vos-knew-that-kiesenhofer-was-driving-ahead-van-der-breggen-did-not-olympics/205489/ https://netherlandsnewslive.com/miscommunication-and-underes...

Ostrogodsky 5y ago
All this is true but it doesnt stop painting the Dutch riders (and the rest of the peloton) as very amateur. It is not about resources, people like van Vleuten or Voss receive resources (money, sponsorship,equipment) than 99.9% of cyclists in the world will never see (both men and women) and yet they made a schoolboy mistake here. When you compare that to the men's event it could be practically be a different sport.
- deleted 5y ago
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tosh 5y ago

Interesting preparation twitter thread by Anna Kiesenhofer on body temperature https://twitter.com/AnnaKiesenhofer/status/1411359208524726274?s=20 https://twitter.com/AnnaKiesenhofer/status/14113592085247262...

TomK32 5y ago
Interesting, the race taking place on a hot day and she doesn't feel hot when her core peaks at 39.3 degrees.
dillondoyle 5y ago
Especially with global warming I wish they took climate into more account with deciding locations. It becomes borderline unsafe I think the US track trials were too hot if I remember right? For training though the US climbers have a small space in their gym that is enclosed in plastic with heater humidifiers for this reason. pretty funny. Temps + humidity - or 'condies' as the kids say - are really important to climb at the top level. Cold and a breeze is usually best.

tosh 5y ago

Great performance, thrilling race, well done!

shayankh 5y ago

in germany every1 has a phd; no surprise really

mkurz 5y ago
Except that she is from Austria, studied in Vienna, which is also in Austria. She has absolutely nothing to do with Germany.
Tainnor 5y ago
A PhD in mathematics is not the same thing as a ghostwritten PhD in some other disciplines that are notorious for this sort of thing.

deleted 5y ago

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pjbster 5y ago

This isn't the first time something like this has happened: cycling aficionados will remember the tale of Robert Millar and the "stolen" 1984 Vuelta [1]. I personally love it when races are run without radios. The UCI tried to ban them in 2010 but the pro teams rebelled, claiming that they were essential for safety reasons; the number of crashes at the 2021 Tour de France would suggest that they aren't succeeding very well at that core function. Radios make the races formulaic. Not necessarily predictable but certainly a different event. I can't think of any other sport where pros are held to different rules (i.e. allowed technical assistance) compared to amateurs. [1] https://crankpunk.com/2012/11/09/robert-millar-the-case-of-the-stolen-vuelta/ https://crankpunk.com/2012/11/09/robert-millar-the-case-of-t...

rocqua 5y ago
If you don't have radios, you still need to tell riders about the gaps. Perhaps a radio channel that just tells riders the state of play without input from the teams themselves.
- mijamo 5y ago
  Before radio you had a moto putting the latest gap to display in front of the peloton. This is very simple and would not cause trouble. Note that they do not have that for the Olympic games for some reason.
  - rurban 5y ago
    Wrong. Anna was constantly informed by the moto of her lead. We will have to hear from others, like Longo or Brennauer if there were informed or not. But I'm pretty sure they were.
- frereubu 5y ago
  Why do you need to tell riders about the gaps?
  - rocqua 5y ago

consp 5y ago

Don't know where to add it to so I'll add it in response to the OP as some discussion is about it: Quotation from the Dutch TV (interview with van Vleuten, silver medal winner) [1]: > "Onderschatting van de tegenstander, in combinatie met heel veel miscommunicatie en ook slechte communicatie vanuit de organisatie." Which roughly translates to () is mine: "Underestimated the opposition (singular), in combination with lots of miscommunication and bad communication (with the team) from the organization." Though it looked like she was contend with the performance of Anna Kiesenhofer vs her eventual performance. [1] Source: https://nos.nl/tokyo2020/artikel/2390838-38-jaar-en-ze-had-m-dacht-ze-de-bewogen-dag-van-van-vleuten https://nos.nl/tokyo2020/artikel/2390838-38-jaar-en-ze-had-m... Video is country restricted for some stupid reason as it is a interview ... stop whining about rights ...

bijant 5y ago

The Dutch Cyclists didn’t even need a phd in PDEs, they could have gone for gold if they had been able to count to three.

j7ake 5y ago

What an amazing effort from Kiesenhofer. I imagine being alone in the front for that long would be many times more effort than staying in the peloton. Heroic effort. I am curious how this upset compare with other upsets in previous Olympics? Has there been bigger upsets than this one? If this were a tennis event, would this be like someone who was ranked top 50 or top 100 in the world beating Novak Djokovic to win gold?

eitally 5y ago
Think of it more like this: "cyclist who is very good at riding all-out on her own has chance to ride all-out on her own; peloton that has potential advantage of strength in numbers doesn't use advantage; to some surprise, lone rider wins." This doesn't happen in stage races because of radios and professional teamwork, but I'm this race the technology and incentives aligned to open the door for a breakaway win. The fun part is that the cyclist who won isn't even optimized to compete in the same way as the others. She's literally a time trial specialist who rejected a pro team offer because she didn't want to compete on anything but personal cycling performance, and then she beat those teams.

elijaht 5y ago

I recently started watching road cycling with this years Tour de France and now the Olympics and it's pretty interesting. A lot of tactical depth and it's a perfect WFH background noise- it plays out over hours so you don't have to be watching every minute Both mens and womens road race in the Olympics were excellent too, a lot of drama and interesting mind games

milleramp 5y ago
Welcome, I am also addicted! http://www.cyclingtorrents.nl http://www.cyclingtorrents.nl
- SyzygistSix 5y ago
  Any chance you have an invite?

PuddleOfSausage 5y ago

(More related to the comments than the article) I've seen tons of takes on this since watching the end of the race this morning and, although it certainly played a part in deciding the outcome, it's a shame that more focus has seemed to be on making excuses or how the Dutch riders messed things up instead of Dr Kiesenhofer's incredible story and ride. Kiesenhofer was on a fantastic day: van Vleuten's earlier attack from the peloton made no inroads to Kiesenhofer, assuming the time gaps shown on the TV were correct. Watching on the TV we knew there was still a rider out front and, even if the race "ardoisier" (blackboard holder) wasn't the best, team management should have figured out a way to get that information to the chasing pack. I mean, the race finished on a motor racing circuit with pit lanes containing team helpers! It's not like it was like stage 16 of this year's Giro, where poor weather stopped race images being broadcast[1]. [1] https://cyclingtips.com/2021/05/gallery-amazing-images-from-the-giro-stage-we-never-saw/ https://cyclingtips.com/2021/05/gallery-amazing-images-from-...

Sergiu37 5y ago
In giro they have radio communications from the team manager. In the Olympics they don't have that, they can't tell them the differences. Also winning when the opponents are not really trying to catch you it's not really a story either. It happens a lot even when they know a rider is upfront in order to save energy for second place and not give a free ride to other cyclists -see how Carapaz won in men events where only Wout tried to catch him. The real story is the mistake from the dutch team that could have catch her but missinterpreted the situation.
Rapzid 5y ago
Oh, "they" knew. Cyclists talk amongst themselves. Shapira and Plichta fell back to the peloton and they knew. Not everyone knew, but then they let a group break away and build an 11 minute lead at one point. If you weren't keeping track of every rider in that group you are probably just trying to hang on to make a play amongst the rider left around around you later and not thinking about Gold.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

Revenge of the nerds! You go, math geek! Reminds me of an old "Nerds vs. Jocks" joke, from the last century: http://www.spiegl.org/humor/jordan_gates.html http://www.spiegl.org/humor/jordan_gates.html

sanguy 5y ago

Fantastic ride and if you follower her Twitter she's been doing a lot of very detailed exploration of her endurance limits in preparation. When the lead group fell to 3 they had an 11 minute lead. She broke free and went solo with 40km to go. When she finished that lead had eroded to 2 minutes as the front group she dropped had been caught. So in those 40km she lost 9 minutes of lead she had built with the help of the breakout group. This was all strategy and then a tremendous physical performance on her part. Dutch team needs a serious kick in the ass for underestimating an "amatuer" in this regard. It was obvious she was in it for the gold or nothing; and they fatally assumed it would be the later. Fantastic win when you consider training, strategy, and performance all came together to pull it off. This is what olympians are all about!

TomVDB 5y ago
It’s easy to underestimate a break-away rider when you don’t know that there is one. The silver medal winner thought she had won the race. They need a kick for not communicating amongst themselves.
- headmelted 5y ago
  I heard something early on about a communication failure, not sure how much truth there is in that. Nonetheless, it was an incredible performance - right down to her collapsing to the ground victorious in tears at the line. I laughed a little when I saw the Danish competitor come to congratulate her with a big smile while the Dutch team two meters away wouldn’t even acknowledge she was there - no point being bitter about it afterwards when you’ve already been beaten that badly by a “nobody”. I wasn’t even sure if Anna even realised because she was so exhausted (and elated!). 40KM without the help of a peloton. Incredible.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ubermonkey 5y ago
    Yeah, just an amazing performance. FYI, the pros got caught out here a bit. The Olympic road race is probably the last one running that doesn't allow radios.

sb8244 5y ago

I'm just about to watch this, very excited to see it play out. I'm listening to the very start of the race right now and it's very funny how things work out: "[The smartest racer will win, not just the strongest. Well who are we kidding, you need a good bit of luck too.]" That's certainly true given the sheer luck on display (peloton lost track of breakaway) and how smart Kiesenhofer is. I also think it's interesting how much she dislikes riding in the peloton. She's 10ft off the back in the starting roll-out.

sydthrowaway 5y ago

All that's remaining is to become an Astronaut.

wanderingmind 5y ago

Nothing to take away from Anna Kiesenhofer. It is an absolute brilliant win. But an amateur winning a sporting event supposed to be for amateurs has become news. It's sad how much Olympics has lost its original meaning and intent.

i_am_new_here 5y ago

<Women>: Does incredible things, that typically men are way better at (math and sports) and: She even does 2 of them, at the same time and to the very best. Incredible. Bravo! How plausible/believable. And what an adorable women and a role model for other girls. And we need so many more female role models to inspire as many young girls as possible (ideally: All of them). Having kids and a family (with a man,... a protector?!) is really lame and needs to be avoided. Top notch careers are much more important. I mean: Who doesn't want to be remembered by the random name that was given to you - First name by your parents, last name by people in the middle ages struggling to keep people apart during rapid population growth. I feel very inspired now. Thank you journalist (w/m/d) for writing this article. It is clear that men are all grabbing for these enviable positions just for the sake of it (and not as a means for anything else) and we need to get women there, too.

wanderingmind 5y ago

For some reason this story reminded me of the French winning 4x100 freestyle relay in London 2012. They went in as the underdogs but trounced the Americans with Yannick Angel who swam the final leg absolutely trouncing Phelps and co. He was also an athlete who had a hobby of reading and was quiet a good student at that time. There is something mesmerizing about athletes who also embrace intellectually stimulating activities.

scrumlord 5y ago

big whoop.