I don’t want to clog up the main Tour De France thread with a novice question on cycling.
I was very curious about the recent controversy, with a chain coming off and another competitor being harrangued for not waiting for him! What?
I’m aware that many sports have unwritten etiquette to them, that can look strange to an outsider, but this one seems to take the cake to me.
These guys do realise it is a race right? Why would there be an sort of expectation that you should wait if one of your competitors has an equipment failure? Where does the line stop and start? Why doesn’t everyone wait when there is a fall?
Can anyone more familiar with cycling explain how and why there would be any expectation of the competitor waiting? Is it only because they were 1 and 2 in the race. If a rider coming 34th lost a chain would there be any expectation of waiting then?
It’s not the waiting so much as the not attacking. No one is expected to literally stop for the maillot jaune to get back on the road, but it’s traditional not to attack and capitalise on misfortune. Given the fluidity of the race, this can clearly be a grey area. If the MJ stops to take a piss and the second place guy launches himself off the front this would be an egregious flouting of the ‘rules’ - he’d be the pariah of the peleton. What happened on Monday was much more nuanced. Andy Schleck (MJ) attacked, jumped his chain and had to stop, whilst Bert Contador responded and flew past him on a counter attack, which he then consolidated - Andy’s chain fell off, really? Didn’t see it mate.
If you don’t follow cycling then the Tour appears to be 200 blokes racing one another across France, with the leader wearing a yellow T-shirt. It’s actually a lot more structured than that - it’s more like 5 blokes racing one another, and marshalling their teams of support cyclists to attack and defend at the appropriate time. Mix in the races within the race for sprinting and climbing and you have a highly strategic operation in which traditions such as respecting the MJ are embedded.
The unique character of the Tour makes it very hard to draw comparisons with other sports - what other race is 3 weeks long and has similar individual / team tactical depth? You can’t look at a 10,000m athletics race, say, and draw analogies between someone falling on their arse and a dropped chain in the Tour. Motor racing seems a reasonable comparison on the face of it, but here the mechanical dimension is far more of a difference maker. The driver is a (large) cog in the total machine - good driver in exceptional, reliable car always beats exceptional driver in good, not so reliable car. The Tour’s not like this, it’s about legs and lungs and no one ever won the Tour just because they had the best bike.
Yeah, what **Busy Scissors **said - it’s tradition to not attack the race leader if there’s an accident etc. Had Contador basically riden ‘at tempo’ (or merely followed the other two highly-placed riders with him ahead of Schleck), it would have been just fine (ignoring the fact that the only reason they were off the front was because they had to follow Contador).
The problem is that Contador attacked and *maintained *the attack, setting the pace at the front. But he apologized, Andy forgave him, and everyone sat around the dinner table last night singing Kumbaya.
Unless you follow it closely for a while, cycling and the various unwritten rules can be really hard to follow. I remember being confused back when Lemond was racing in the mid/late 80s as to why he was being expected to ride as ‘support’ for Hinault. Surely every rider can ride for himself? What kind of ‘support’ could he possibly give?
Another tradition is that you don’t attack on the last day of the race; the final stage is usually an easy rolling ride into Paris; the only real racing is the last few laps around the Champs-Elysees for the sprinters. I wish they would make the final stage an individual time trial into Paris like they did when Lemond won by eight whole seconds (Contador’s current margin over Schleck, btw).
Baseball also has a bunch of weird, unwritten rules, but it’s still clearly a team sport. Cycling is a team sport inside an individual sport.
Interesting follow up question. If I’m not mistaken, Winning the Tour De France, is the cycling equivalent of say, Wimbeldon for Tennis players, or the US Masters for Golf.
So, if one of the cyclist was < a minute behind the leader, coming into the last day. Would he not say, ‘custom’ be damned, I don’t care if everyone shuns me, I have a Tour De France trophy?
He can try, but will never succeed. The leader (and his team) will never allow anyone near the podium to jump away from the pack (in the last stage). It is pretty much impossible to get ahead of the pack without getting the pack’s ‘blessing’ (this is how it’s commonly called here in holland). A single rider will never ever be able to gain a minute on a hostile pack on a flat stage.
As a related aside, this article from William Fotheringham in The Guardian claims that they’ve not done the final ITT on the final stage in Paris since the Lemond/Fignon ding dong, as they’d never be able to live up to the amazing finish for that race and thus it is better to leave it as a one off. here
Don’t know whether this is right or merely a bit of spin that Leblanc is touting to “increase the legend” but it certainly seems plausible. Given they arrange the route months in advance, you certainly couldn’t predict that the race would provide such a climax. It would be great to have a final day ITT this year - but you wouldn’t have been able to say that it would be this close this late with much certainty back in December.
And just to make it clear why this is so: Drafting. A group can ride up to 20-25% faster than a single man alone because of drafting. Riders will take turns, doing really hard turns at the very front of the group, setting a really fast pace, then moving to the back behind other riders where you can draft and go at the same speed but with much less effort, letting you recover. The guy riding solo faces 100% wind resistance and can never recover.
It’s why some riders will help other riders from other teams, for example - you never know when you may want other teams to either help reel in a breakaway group…or help keep a breakaway stay away (a team can sit at the front and control the tempo, keeping the pace ‘just’ fast enough to ensure that other teams can’t attack while leaving the breakaway free).
In 2003, Lance took a fall after getting tangled up in a spectator’s musette. Both Jan Ullrich(Armstong’s top rival at the time) and Tyler Hamilton waited for him. It certainly cost Ullrich the stage, and maybe even the race.
Was it really that long ago? I am getting so old. Anyway, in that case it was an outside influence and there wasn’t an attack going on. Considering Ullrich’s other misfortunes in those years fighting Lance it was a very gracious move though.
Great to read an article in the Anglo press that gives a fair account of what really happened. The hatred and insults coming at Contador from all algles – 'cept, of course, from cycling experts such as Merckx, Hinault and Saxo’s own DS, Riis plus, obviously, most of the Spanish speaking media – are not simply disgusting but reek of xenophobia…if not flat out racism. Expected from the French really, as they hate to see us win practically all events on their soil (RG, TdF, MotoGP…) but it appears the Anglo press simply can’t stand seeing the making of a legend that could very well, at the rate he is going, surpass Idol Lance in a few short years. Barely 28 and well on his way to his fifth GT…and undefeated at that.
Not only the team of the leader, but also the teams of anyone in contention for the green jersey. You could have 3 or 4 full teams pushing the pace of the pelaton. Even a largish breakaway would have a tough time surviving.
Well, Riise got the strategy right as they managed to drop all of Astana and isolate Alberto by the second ramp. But the two are simply a lock on the mountain – perhaps Andy rode tempo a bit too much, 'cause it sure looked easy for AC to keep his wheel. Than again, perhaps that’s all he had.
