Could 2017 be the year that Ilnur Zakarin finally loses those final few kilos and registers his first negative weight values?
According to his Wikipedia page the slender Russian stands 6ft 2 tall and weighs in at a skeletal 68 kilos. As this NHS healthy weight chart demonstrates, that puts him underweight.
No surprise there; as a pro cyclist, especially a climber, it’s his job to be underweight. If he’s not hungry, he’s not trying hard enough.
When he won Stage 17 of the 2016 Tour de France, a high mountain stage through the Swiss Alps, the TV coverage was memorable for his bony Froome-like elbows waggling around, and a physique so emaciated it was distressing to watch.
Having a keen eye for this kind of thing I knew, instinctively, that Wikipedia had seduced me yet again.
“There’s no way he weighs as much as 68 kilos,” I thought to myself, mentally weighing him, whilst reminding myself that mentally weighing other adult men is something I promised I would stop doing.
I’ve got a cycling friend who weighs (apparently, so he claims…) 68 kilos. Compared to Zakarin my friend is clinically obese.
It seems the Russian has lost weight since the Wikipedia entry. And if he wants to win more races he’ll have concluded that he needs to lose more. And if he hasn’t, his team boss at Katusha has surely sent him e-mails, flagged important, with the subject: “You need to lose more!!!”
There’s only one logical result of this.
A negative weight reading. So thin, he’s transparent. So light, the needle on the scales goes the other way.
The maths is very simple, even if the physics is slightly experimental.
Already, such was his lack of body mass in last year’s Tour de France, he was all but folding in on himself. A few more months existing on sparkling water and strong espresso should do the trick.
It might not be healthy, but since when did healthy win bike races?
(Image: By filip bossuyt from Kortrijk, Belgium (196 zakharin) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons)
ROAD THEORY 
The maths is simple? I get the pretentious use of “maths” being the new hipster thing but the plural needs an “are”, no?
Or am I so insufferably old that I missed that too?!
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Pretentious? That’s a bit harsh.
Math is an American word. In the UK maths isn’t the plural of math just like physics isn’t the plural of physic.
So no. The maths is simple.
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I was messin’ with you, brother. Damn.
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Careful criticising another mans grammar dude 😉
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