does height matter

I'm 5' 10" and it hasn't made a differance at all.

Most of the top pros (especially the climbers) are on the "shorter" side aren't they?

To a degree it does -- especially for climbers. There's a minimum weight one can effectively get per height, but I think it still comes down to fitness. While its a little harder maybe to get there when on the taller side, Miguel Indurain was 6'2" and he didnt do too bad. 😄

hey cool...there is still hope for me then! 🙂

I'm 6'4" and the only real thing that gets me is the wind.....we tall buggers despise the wind more than anything else....I'll take rain anyday over a strong headwind.

If you look at most of the pros, they're all little fellas, like 5'4" to 5'9"....just keep your weight down and you'll be fine

i guess it depends where you live. Im 6'5", and live in a pretty flat area which unfortunately happens to be the 3rd windiest city in the world!. But generally, i dont have any probs on the flats but am essentially hanging on in the hills, definitely not putting anyone else in trouble thats for sure. I guess if your small, move to the mountains, if your big, move to the coast. I like to think of myself as a "classics" rider 😉, not a "grand tour" rider. Dreams....

hmmm...besides moving to the mountains..what would be an ideal weight if you're 5'7...

Quoted post said:

Originally posted by drifter03
hmmm...besides moving to the mountains..what would be an ideal weight if you're 5'7...

Gilberto Simoni is 5-7 128 lbs. Suppose its hard to get more ideal than that. 😉 That weight, however, is one serious climbing weight, not to mention pro-level fitness.

To compare, in looking at a couple nutrition sites, the average recommendation is 138-145 lbs, but this is simply an average and healthy fairly fit person.

Those are probably the two ends of the spectrum to look at, but my frame's of a different size and I'm also no fitness expert, so really wouldnt wish to comment beyond that.

One of the cylcing magazines had a small article in the back about this exact subject. In summary, if I can remember, yes you do have an advantage if you are taller. The point was you have more leverage when you are taller. The article did not get into climbing at all and weight but more into wind drag. They concluded you have more drag when you are taller but the extra leverage more then makes up for this. The assumption is in general the taller should be better at time trialing. I know this is very general, look at Tyler.

to work out your ideal weight range, use the BMI calculation.
weight / height (squared) = BMI. anything between 20-25 is considered healthy. This formula is for metric, so im not sure if it is the same for imperial (medievil) measurements.

Quoted post said:

Originally posted by tkf
One of the cylcing magazines had a small article in the back about this exact subject. In summary, if I can remember, yes you do have an advantage if you are taller. The point was you have more leverage when you are taller. The article did not get into climbing at all and weight but more into wind drag. They concluded you have more drag when you are taller but the extra leverage more then makes up for this. The assumption is in general the taller should be better at time trialing. I know this is very general, look at Tyler.

That's interesting but it makes me wonder why we don't see many taller riders (6'+) in the pro peleton and why it is that a rider like Indurain was considered very tall at 6'2". This is clearly a case where the data isn't backed by what we see in reality.

The problem with the data is it only shows that leverage is greater with a taller rider. Well the real world also is not all flat and time trials. If that were the case Lance could still be at his pre-cancer weight and win the tour. Since they do have to go uphill, weight becomes a huge liability and taller riders just weigh more. So it becomes a balance of more factors.