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  • schoberer-srm-1
    schoberer

    On the event of the Q36.5 dealer meeting at the beginning of June we took the opportunity to sit down with the legendary founder of SRM and pioneer of the very first cycling power meter, Ulrich Schoberer. Schoberer was in town to share the prototype of his new SRM computer with members of the Q36.5 team and was happy to discuss the important behind the scenes roll he has played in the innovation of modern cycling equipment. 

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    What is your first memory of making an upgrade to your equipment as an athlete?​ 

    To be honest as a young racer I was not interested in improving my equipment so much as improving the quality of my training. And very early in my experience as an amateur racer I had the idea that to improve training quality you had to be able to measure performance. The easiest way to measure performance is to measure power. So, my goal was to create a tool to measure power.

    Can you remember the first time you were able to use your homemade power meter?

    Sure. I put it on my bike at a local race and everybody of course laughed at me and said ‘what is that Gameboy on your bike’. But then during the race I would be on a climb and I would get dropped and I could see how many watts we were doing in that moment. So now I knew the limits of my power but I also knew how many watts my competitors were doing. Knowing this made training easier as I knew what the target was. These days everybody trains this way but I was the first!

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    Who was the first professional athlete who you shared this revolutionary “upgrade” with?

    After university I joined the SportCompany (Sportfördergruppe Köln), the West German military sports team as a coach. Of the athletes I met there about 70% were old school and had no interest, the other 30% wanted all the latest technology.

    When did SRM become a must have for top professionals?

    In 1991 I was contacted by Dottore di Prampero from the Università di Udine who was responsible for the fitness of the cosmonauts on the Mir space station. He was studying what fitness you would need for extremely long space travel. To spend 20 years in space, or to travel to Mars, what does your body need to survive? The essential thing is gravity, you need to create gravity or else eventually you will die. So, his idea was to make a circle on the space station where people could cycle in a circle as this would create gravity and he wanted me to create a power meter that worked in space! After visiting him in 1991 I was then put in contact with Giovanni Grazzi from the University of Ferrara who was at the time coaching Claudio Chiappucci. Through Grazzi and Chiappucci I then suddenly got access to top professionals such as Gianni Bugno, Maurizio Fondriest and Rolf Sørensen.

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    Who was the athlete (or coach) who most influenced your approach to further developing the SRM product? Who pushed you hardest to improve?

    To be honest most athletes do not have the specific knowledge or experience to really make technical demands from the power meter. But there were some athletes who were particularly interested and demanding about equipment and the SRM. Greg Lemond for example was the first athlete who contacted me who wanted to use the SRM during a race. He used it during his return to racing at the Giro d’Italia in 1994 at team GAN. The other big innovator was Bjarne Riis. He was the first guy to win a race with a power meter on his bike during the race. That was the Amstel Gold Race in 1997. He sent me the data, I was able to see the watts he was producing in the last hour when he was riding alone and understood the level needed. I started working with Bjarne in 1996 when he moved to Team Telekom and he told them he wanted to win the Tour de France. They said Bjarne you are living in the clouds. But he was not put off. He made an appointment with Fausto Pinarello, went to visit them to see what bikes Indurain had been using to win the tour the last five years, went to Mallorca with me, did aerodynamic tests… And then he won the TDF 1996. Athletes like Lemond and Riis didn’t necessarily change the way I designed my product but they made it public and made more well known the use of technology to improve training.

    Has there been any other invention or innovation you were involved in that comes from a direct request of an athlete, coach or federation?

    The German federation asked me to create an ergometer that allowed the rider during testing to keep a constant cadence. They wanted this to understand the cadence that allows you to put out optimal power. The results were interesting: for track sprinters cadence for optimal power was 160rpm, for triathletes 95. Another request was to measure oval chainrings versus round chainrings and different crank lengths. But on these criteria we could not see significant differences.

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    Is there any particular special innovation that you are particularly proud of? 

    I was very proud when between 1999-2004, powered by T-Mobile’s new mobile phone network, we were able to achieve telemetry for TV so viewers were able to see live data such as heart rate, speed and cadence of riders during the race. During some of the biggest races in the world such as Tour de France, Tour of California, Tour of Colorado and Tour of Germany you were able to see this data on your home television with written “SRM powered by T-Mobile” underneath. That was cool.

    Today is there some request from athletes that current technology cannot yet satisfy?

    Some athletes have told me they would like to see their lactate level when they ride but this is really not easy. And in theory when you know your power at threshold you should be able to judge this by yourself.

    When did you first encounter Q36.5?

    I first met Luigi [Bergamo, founder of Q36.5] many years ago when he became a client of mine, wanting to use SRM to improve his own training. Then in 2012 when he was getting ready to create his new brand he contacted me to help optimize his clothing. He wanted a device and software that could collect and analyze data reading body temperature and perspiration while on the bike. We helped him improve the technology that recorded this data he was interested in, helped collect the data he produced and to evaluate it. This data was used to understand what fabric was cooling better, heating better, moving sweat away better. This helped improve the function of fabrics he was having made for him and finally to prove that the developments worked.

    What was the first Q36.5 garment you tried? How would you describe it? Could you “feel the difference”?

    My first sensation was that it was very tight! [Everybody in the room laughs] Now of course they are not so tight but the first ones, wow. Seriously though, the feeling I had with the first pieces and which I still have today is that I LIKE IT and that there is much more thought behind the piece of clothing than any other thing I have worn on the bike. It is better engineered and better cut. While maybe some of the brand’s competitors maybe get close to the same level with some items with Q it is the same extremely high level across every item. Today I only ever wear his bib shorts.

    Do you have a favourite item? 

    The Dottore bib shorts. For jerseys I like all the models, but for the bib shorts I really love the Dottore.

    And last question: what can we expect from the PC9… we know release date is imminent and we are excited.

    We have the first prototype of the computer here today… At first, I just wanted to create a new device with multiple sensors able to save large amounts of data. But we kept working and I realized we wanted to create a new computer that was the best on the market in all aspects: best in collecting data, best in user interface and best in improving quality of the training…

    We are looking forward to using the final product! 

    Images: Ulrich Schoberer – private

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