This means controlling the peloton and chasing down breakaways to set up a sprint finish. Like the GC team, they might also put a rider in the breakaway to ease the burden on the team, forcing rival sprint teams to chase. These pretenders to the throne tend to be opportunistic.
However, it is advantageous to have a teammate in the breakaway on a key mountain stage when points are up for grabs.
Also, when defending the polka-dot jersey, teammates can contest the climbs and finish ahead of KOM rivals to spoil their attempt to take over the classification lead by scoring points. This strategy requires constant attacking in the early kilometers of the race — something most fans rarely see on the broadcast.
You never know what each stage will hold, but there are a few ways you can plan ahead to catch the action as a cycling fan. Now that you understand the basics of how the Tour de France is raced, what do you, the new cycling fan do?
NBC Sports boasts about hours of Tour broadcast, including live, primetime, and encore coverage. There are daily stages for three weeks. There are some reliably important stages you can focus on to catch the key action. Pick the key mountain stages. There are usually about key mountain stages when the overall race is won and lost. The first few ordinarily come in stages before the first rest day, and the second round is often scheduled for the final week of racing.
Occasionally, another summit finish, such as Mont Ventoux in Provence, will be on the list of important stages. Watching daily? Tune in when things really heat up. On most flat stages, you can wait until the final 20 kilometers to tune in and see the sprinters fight it out.
Some rolling stages might be entertaining in the final kilometers if late breakaways occur. Look for the nuances. Try keeping track of riders who are often making the breakaway. Watch the sprint teams work together — or not — to chase an escape. Who looks to have strength in numbers, and who is not present at the front of the race? Are the GC riders staying out of trouble or tail-gunning at the dangerous back of the peloton?
Usually, at any given time in the race, any given rider is positioned where they are for a specific reason. Look for clues to sort out what is happening. I tried to explain some of the basic terms in parentheticals along the way, but it is tough to know how far to take the explanations. Let me know if you have other terms or concepts that should be covered! Thanks for reading.
It was a very informative article but if it was for novices then why not explain basic words like peloton, break aways, defending or chasing down breakaways, pacing sprinters, defending positions etc. The Tour will take place August 29 — September Stage Winners vs. The Tour de France is a stage race, meaning it takes place over the course of several days with a start and finish each day.
The Tour is 21 stages over the course of 23 days, so the riders get only 2 rest days over the 3 week period. In addition to the overall winner, each stage has a winner as well. Winning even one stage in the Tour de France is extremely prestigious, and is something riders often aspire to do their entire career. The overall winner of the Tour is the rider with the lowest combined time over all the stages.
Although rare, it is possible to win the Tour de France without winning a single stage. Teams generally have one overall contender that they believe has the best chance of winning the Tour. For the most part, the rest of the team is doing everything they can to put that rider in the best position to win.
If an overall contender drops off the back of the peloton the main group of riders from a crash or mechanical problem, his teammates will wait and lead him back to the group. The teams of the overall contenders are often seen at the front of the peloton, pushing the pace. This is often a strategy to keep their contender safe. At the back is a lot of bumping and fighting for position, and if a crash occurs in the peloton, you want to be in front of it, not behind. Not all teams enter the Tour de France expecting to have a rider as the overall winner.
Some teams are built to win stages. Cyclists are specialists, and almost all have skills and physical traits that make them good at certain styles of racing.
Climbers excel on steep mountains. The Tour will most certainly pass through both the Pyrenees and the Alps. Many of these stages finish on the top of mountain peaks, and this is where the climbers shine. Sprinters are capable of rapid accelerations and putting out an immense amount of power over a fairly short period of time.
You will see sprint finishes on relatively flat stages, as mountainous ones tend to break up the group and leave the sprinters toward the back.
Time trial specialists are capable of maintaining a high speed over a very long distance. Then there are the mechanics. The mechanics can often salvage a bad day. Race radio: A one-way feed run by Tour de France organizers. Team cars are stuck behind cyclists with limited visibility, so they rely on race radio to relay information about which riders have been involved in crashes or are pulling away from the peloton. Race radio gives clearance to team cars to break procession order and speed ahead to aid their riders.
Car-to-car radio: A channel open to only the two team cars on the course. Amidst so much chaos, the two race directors must be in constant contact, communicating who will help which riders, and whether to pull over and swap rider-specific equipment based on which rider is in which part of the peloton.
Car-to-rider radio: A channel that puts race directors directly in the ears of team riders. This communication line has been open since the mids, though some want to abolish it, claiming that it has eliminated spontaneity during stages in favor of robotic coordination and tactics. Riders like it, however, and teams insist that the radio is used almost entirely for communicating times and potential hazards ahead, and that little collusion takes place.
Each team has two cars. All of the cars follow the peloton according to the team rankings, from best to worst, meaning that currently the top-ranked team, Quick-Step Floors, has the No. Positioning is important, because any car near the front will be able to get to a down rider much more quickly. The positioning of the vehicles also incentivizes teams to get into breakaways. If a domestique pulls far enough ahead of the peloton, a team car is given a go-ahead to break procession order and drive up near its rider.
From the chefs dedicated to giving riders the perfect mix of simple carbs, proteins, and probiotics to recover from yet another grueling stage, to the communications director who keeps the atmosphere loose on the team bus for three stress-packed weeks, a Tour de France team is made up of dozens of moving parts, any of which could be the difference between success and failure.
Martin , or a strangling performance on the cobblestones of Northern France. Your mountain stage from your flat? If not, Newsround is here to help you enjoy this epic race! He's also the youngest person to win twice, the first person to win twice within 12 months due to the delayed race.
The first person to win the yellow, polka-dot and white jerseys two years in a row. Basically, it's a huge bike race around France! Millions of people line the route that's made up of 21 stages raced over 23 days - that means they only have two days off to rest. Twenty-two teams from right across the world are involved in the Tour, with each having up to nine riders. The riders average around 25mph over the entire course but at some points they'll go a lot faster than that, sometimes over 70mph!
Every wondered why the riders are so thin? Well, it's fair to say it's a good way to keep fit. If you finish the gruelling Tour, you could burn off up to , calories. That's the equivalent of 26 chocolate bars per day! The race is broken up into 21 different parts or 'stages' and it isn't just flat roads. The Tour takes the riders up into the mountains too. The different stages have different names:. Prologue : Each rider races against the clock in a short usually under six miles time trial.
Flat : Despite the name, it doesn't necessarily mean it's perfectly flat. Usually it's big packs of competitors riding together in a big group or 'peloton' for around miles. These end in one of two ways - a 'breakaway' victory by an individual or small group, or typically with a hair-raising bunch sprint. Time trial: A race against the clock. Similar to a prologue but a little longer.
These are shorter stages of around 30 miles as opposed to miles. Sometimes riders do it by themselves, sometimes they ride as a team.
0コメント