Merlier’s comments about being popped out of the gruppetto are worth a read.
Anyone who has raced at any level completely understands that moment of dread when you know the day is over. The elastic breaks and it’s bye-bye peloton (*)
Bit different when it’s the biggest race in the world, you are paid to ride, and have won a stage. But the cool thing about cycling is we can relate to the joy and the pain.
(*) As a small guy and pretty good wheel sucker, I’ve not gotten dropped too often. When I do get popped it’s usually a 35+ race where some big boys show up and torture the field. But man, that feeling of dread when you know you are going off the back is just awful.
Ok the commentators just talked about this… apparently this is out of 70something stages total… and if you only take the road stages, she won almost 40% of all road stages she started at that race
The 3k/4k rule is stupid because it only comes into effect IF there is a crash. So guys like Pog still have to ride in the top 10 just in case. He can’t just sit up at 4k and cruise in.
I mean he has to finish in the same group as his rivals. I feel like it’s to some extend also up to the teams to police themselves. If they all let the sprinter teams do there thing, they don’t have to be up there. Also, the jury tends to be quite generous what counts as Peloton on the sprint stages. There really need to be big gaps between groups to restart the clock.
I have been advocating for probably over a decade that the GC times need to be taken at the 3K banner (or whatever distance you want) if you want to make it safer. Then the GC guys (and their teams) can get the hell out of the way.
The fact that the UCI still can’t recognize this basic reality indicates how fooked up that organization really is.
someone slid out on the right side of the road, went down, and then took out the bunch, which sent a bunch of people down the side of a long embankment
It was a stupid unforced error, probably due to fatigue
I honestly think that would be even more dangerous. You would have the same situation as now, where the entire peloton is absolutely blasting it, only that suddenly a part of the field sits up, while the other part is still blasting it… And a big group suddenly moving at two different speeds is pretty much a guarantee for a mass crash.
If you would want to make at safe you would need to take the time way out, before the sprint teams start ramping it up. Which would be like 10-15 km to go or something. And that would be a bit ridiculous. Not really the spirit of a bike race anymore and would also introduce its own set of problems.
Well, I don’t think that riders are just gonna hit the 3K mark and start coasting to drop back. The likely result would be an easing of their pace to slowly drop back.
Agreed that having the cut-off at 10K+ out is ridiculous…At the end of the day, there is no perfect answer, but I’d rather give the GC’s guys 9and their teams) an incentive to drop back in the final KM’s than try and force them to stay up front where they really don’t need to be.
possibly. although that sounds like a difficult task. Also because the finish line is less than 3 minutes away from the 3k to go mark at those speeds.
But it seems the UCI+race organisers+teams are gonna have some discussions about possible changes over the next few weeks. Very curious what they come up with.
The suggestion I heard (TV commentator / podcast?) was to take the GC time at the outskirts of the finishing town, no matter how far out or close in that is. The idea was that it is in the finishing town where things get sketchy.
It will be tough today. DQS burning matches, fatigue building and everyone knows which wheel to be on for the last 500M. Gonna require a special finish to win. But that’s why we watch.
