Do all the participants stay at the same general area ,hotel, etc for the night, & then start out the next day with “timed starts” in order of their standing in the race?
I have never seen this mentioned, & found nothing here.
Different stages are run differently. In addition to the regular stages, there are individual and team time trials in which teams and riders start out every 30 seconds or a minute and race against the clock.
I’m not sure how they order the riders at the start of a regular stage, but they basically all start together, not based on their times in the standings. It’s the total elapsed time that determines the winner of the race, so the leader only has to stay near the second place person to ensure victory at the end.
As to where they riders stay, the teams arrange for accomidations in the towns along the race course.
For non-TT stages, they all start together. It is expected that the team with the Yellow Jersey will be at the front of the pack.
Keep in mind that it’s not necessary good to be at the front of the pack. You get to set the pace, more or less, but you have to do more work breaking the wind for those who are drafting.
For the most part if you look at the map of the TdF, the town where a stage ends is rarely where the following stage begins, so the teams need to travel to the next stage town after the previous stage wraps up. Of course, typically it isn’t that far, though this year the final few stages are separated by quite a distance from each other.
Stages also tend to start very leisurely as well, sort of like a parade rather than a race. It seems whenever there is a breakaway sprint, it usually doesn’t begin until ten or fifteen kilometers into the stage. I’m not sure if a breakaway from the start line is bad form (one of cycling’s unwritten rules) or simply bad strategy
There is also a mandated “neutral zone” (no Romulan cyclists allowed) at the start of each regular “road” stage. This is a set point between the stage start and when the race really begins. The peloton gets ordered while travelling theough this area.
It’s bad strategy.
You have a stage that’s, say, 125 miles long and a breakaway occurs with 4 or 5 riders. Each of those riders will have to spend a roughly equal amount of time at the front, creating the slipstream for the others. It’s the worst place to be, in terms of expending your energy. Being in such a group and not spending time at the front is bad form, btw.
Behind them is the peloton (the main body of riders) that has a far greater number of riders. The riders who do spend time at the front spend far less of it, so the peloton as a whole does not tire as quickly as the breakaway - there’s always someone fresh to take the front. The peloton will let a breakaway get away from them because they know that they can pour it on and reel in the breakaway at will, and often they don’t reel in a breakaway until they have to, at the end of the race, which is when you have these dramatic breakaways getting swallowed up within sight of the finish line. Of course there are exceptions, and some breakaways do succeed.
A breakaway strategy seems to work much better in mountain stages (but still, no one breaks away from the very start) because a great climber is a different beast than a great sprinter (a lot of sprinters drop out in the mountain stages) and gravity is a more persistent foe than the wind. You can have a peloton break the wind for you, but you can’t have it break gravity.
sorry if I got a little long-winded there
…You can have a peloton break the wind for you…
Somehow, the thought of the whole peloton breaking wind… 