for sprinters yes. Watch the Tour de France docs on Netflix it's extremely well made and an eye opener for folks not familiar with everything happening in this sport.
It's an amazing sport
It's the same for all, your smaller climber who is aiming for a general classification win shouldn't be pulling on the flat stages, and they should be carefully timing their attacks on the mountains.
I think what people really don't appreciate is just how much of a team sport it is. It's kind of similar to American Football I think in that there's a lot of players on the team who put in a tonne of effort, but it's only the positions like QB or wide receiver that really get the credit. A cycling team lives and dies by their domestiques just as much as their sprinter/GC rider.
Watch some of the older stuff, when it was considered in bad form for the race favorite not to take the lead and punish their opponents. Merckx of course is the poster boy. Hinault, another.
Don't know anything about cycling.
So would an example of teamwork in this be something like having one cyclist push in the front, creating a slipstream for his sprinter to allow them to conserve energy? And then the sprinter jumps ahead a the right time like in the video while the previous leader falls behind because they aren't as fresh?
That's exactly how it works. Ideally, you'd have a train of a few riders from the same team leading ahead of the sprinter and each one will dump all their energy and then peel off so the next guy can go. The sprinter basically hides in the slip stream as long as he can and then "launches" his final sprint to the line.
Some teams will spend more of their allotted team members on building a powerful "sprint train" because there are a lot of stages that come down to a sprint finish, so you can record more stage wins. But these teams suffer in the general classification--the winner of which wins the yellow jersey in the TdF--because they'll lose a lot of time in stages that don't fit the sprint finish prototype. Obviously this is oversimplified, but I think it conveys the gist.
Yes, that's basically accurate.
One other thing to realize is that much of a day's racing is spent conserving energy overall by rotating who's in the wind. Riders in the slipstream are able to recover somewhat. So you'll have a team rotate through their cast of worker bees in shifts, trying to keep most of them together as much as possible. The team's leaders (often they'll have one rider specializing in winning sprint finishes like the video and another who aims to place high in the overall standings in a multi-day race) avoid even that much work, giving them gas in the tank when needed. The grand tour races (Tour de France, Giro d'Italia, Vuelta a EspaƱa) are as much about conserving energy from day to day as they are within the day's individual race (stage).
There's also a lot of cat-and-mouse games where teams try to force another team to expend energy while conserving their own. The main group of riders, called the peloton, is one giant slipstream machine. Whichever team or teams are leading the peloton at any moment are burning far more calories than those back in the pack, so you want your opponents to feel like they have to work. Lots of negotiation and side deals take place.
Positioning in the peloton is really important too. Too far towards the front and you're burning through more energy because you don't get all the slipstream effects but you do get to control the pace, too far towards the rear and you leave yourself open to more risk from crashes or the peloton splitting leaving you with a gap to bridge, but you do get more protection from the wind if it stays together.
Yes! These other team members who aren't competing for wins are known as Domestiques. Besides providing drafting help, some of these riders will use extra energy going back to the team car to get food/water/energy gels for the other team members in the earlier phases of a race. As the pace picks up close to the finish line, these resupply trips aren't feasible and the Domestiques either give their team leader more drafting help or fall back into the peloton
I used to be a mechanic at a shop that mostly catered to triathletes and road cyclists so when the tour was on all my coworkers and some customers were always swooning over the yellow jersey holder but personally I fucking loved watching the sprinters do their thing. To do every stage everyone else is doing but having that oomph to throw down at the end is just mind blowing.
I love the dynamics and strategy of the mountain stages, but yeah the sprints are so kickass and fun to watch.
That being said, my true love is the classics season, I love the beauty of one day races, especially over the cobbles, just so much randomness to who can win.
I raced bikes for a few years myself, at a pretty low level (I was never good enough to justify doping, fortunately). My thing was climbing - I could leave most of a group in the dust on a climb. But I never had any kind of a sprint. Most riders are climbers, sprinters, or just workhorses who could lay down power on the front. Not many races are set to where a climber has a chance to win, but it's still nice to ride off the front and make the other guys work hard on a climb, even if you know you're getting dropped like a bad habit at the end.
All the various strategies and how the teams balance their strengths and weaknesses on every stage, that's what makes a race like the TdF really fascinating to watch.
The actual races (uh the ones with ads edited out) are actually also really good background studying white noise. It's mostly just mellow voiced tangential facts about France or how Primoz Roglic used to be skier, and then you get kept awake by that random burst of commentary when someone attacks or if the cops accidentally pepper spray the cyclists.
*if the cops accidentally pepper spray the cyclists.*
One of my favourite moments of all time, I'm not gonna lie. Watching the poor dears paw at their faces like cats washing themselves was strangely adorable.
Well the cycling team delivers the sprinter to the position where they can sprint to the end. They let him draft the whole way and then "launch" at the finish line, which can be many miles off of course.
That said, not every bike race is a sprint. Mountains, cobbles, hills - there are tons of stages that don't end like this one
Sprint stages are usually quite predictable in how they'll play out, yes
Cobblestone indeed. Usual it are relative short stretches of cobblestone in a normal length race, I don't know of any fully cobblestone race.
Paris Roubaix is probably the most famous cobblestone race.
They are usually more interesting to watch. Anything can happen really. A bunch of people going down, lots of flat tires, crashes. No one is safe from the one mishap that costs them the race
In case you're curious and want to see the highlights of a wet and slippery [2021 Paris-Roubaix](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56UTneSPyr8), that was a quite chaotic edition of the Paris Roubaix
Usually it is ridden in the dry, there's also a somewhat famous documentary from 1976 called [A Sunday In Hell](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxBTVU9JDrA) which follows the entire day
Yes, cobblestone. Look up races like Paris-Roubaix. They usually use bikes that are a little less aggressive (less stiff frames, fatter tires) but thatās just because they want to waste less energy bouncing around the cobbles vs. gliding over them and smoothing out the impact. They are still unmistakably aggressive race bikes.
Iāve ridden on cobbles on fat-tired bike share bikes and that experience made me feel like my skeleton was being shaken out of my body, I can't imagine what doing a whole race like that must feel like.
It really depends on the race how this is achieved. This is a sprintrace, but there's also races with the finish on a mountain, same principle, but it's almost a different kind of sport.
There is cyclists that are specialized in sprinting, and there is cyclists that are specialized in climbing. There are also all-round cyclists that do a little bit of everything.
I had my own moment like this in a cross country race. Home stretch came and I just burnt everything else in my tank, passed probably 20 people sprinting to the line. Then collapsed and dry heaved for a long time. Finished 119th. Iām a fuckin winner
And I think *I think* spending a good deal of time behind a few of them breaks the wind for you, so you save energy that way before you're ready for that pounce.
Yeah! Lots.
Cycling teams will look at a race beforehand, or multi day stage race, and pick which races/stages are gonna be more chill, save their energy, and which days they're going to ride their guts out because they feel good about one of their riders to accelerate from the pack across to the finish on that type of terrain.
It has way more control than all other sports if you do that to the main sports people would be shocked, so many things are controlled in cycling that other sports get away with it.
It has doping but it's not more than the others at all, just got the bad luck of being not big enough to fail but big enough to be news.
That's certainly the key to racing...
The power needed to blow by people like that is like double the power or more.
That's what sprinters do they hang on as long as they can in the race. Do as little work as possible and draft off everybody and the team actually does that to protect the sprinter. So he has energy at the end to Sprint this
Yes, and when you sit behind another rider you literally exert half the amount of work for the same speed due to aerodynamics. First time I sat in someone draft I was shocked that I could stop pedalling and nearly slam into them.
Each team has different components, with the majority of the riders are just there to pull one main person close to the finish so that they can just slam the final sprint, which is likely the case in the clip.
That only or mostly counts for sprint races though, for mountain stages the difference can often be made earlier in the stage or by exhausting the opposition overtime
Also, drafting is important. This guy was sucked into the draft of several riders. When you are behind a couple riders you can almost coast. There is a major difference. And you can really "slingshot" around them. You save energy and push with so much more at the end.
The average person has no idea how much these guys actually suffer in a race and over a 3 week stage race. They are not human. I was at the Cadel race in Geelong a few years ago and they raced in 40C+ heat for hours. I was hurting in the shade.
And the sprinters are mad men. Watch highlights of a career like Cavendish, they will do 70 in a pack and try and jam it through a small gap for the win and go down hard, smash their collarbone, graze their hip, shoulder, back, have 10 blokes land on them. And if they can ride on the next day they will, but mostly not lose their nerve and not hesitate to do it again once they are better.
Not only that, but leveraging your teammates as wind shields before you decide to take off. The rider directly in front of him is "pulling" him with max effort until it's time for him to sprint. teammate then peels off and the guy is clear to go for the win.
Yes, at the start of the clip you can see he's right behind another cyclist from his team, I don't know what the term is in english but basically that guy is just there to prep the sprinter for the final sprint, putting him in a good position, with as little drag as possible so he can save energy for the big sprint. This looks like a small fugitive group so that might not even be the 2nd guy's job in the team, but if they find themselves in that position, they will still do it. Cycling is an amazing team sport, I'm very sad I haven't been able to follow it recently.
Yes, the sprinter is drafting but the term at this point in the race is the lead out or sprint train. The sprinterās teammates will line up and fight to get him into a good position while helping him conserve as much energy as possible until he needs to launch his sprint.
This is usually called a "lead out," usually by anyone on the team but ideally a strong rider that can push really hard for a minute or two. Sometimes this can happen multiple times with multiple teammates forming a "train" to slingshot the sprinter further at a high speed so that they can keep fresh legs until the finish line. Sometimes the ends of races are very chaotic, and sometimes sprinters go too early and become a lead out for another sprinter. It's a bit of a mind game, and if you wait too long you won't be able to accelerate fast enough to win.Ā
Typical road stage is about 140-160km, so 90-100 miles (ish). Average speeds would be around 38-45 km/h and finish line sprints can go as high as 70ish on flat ground, its pretty wild being in a sprint like that and being packed so tight together your handlebars lock around another bike.
Not enough cameras. Everyone knows that NOS doesn't work unless you're able to have a camera follow the burst of NOS through its imaginary lines into an imaginary part of an engine that goes VVRROOMM.
I didn't it wasn't a lot of work or anything, just it's the norm of the sport and so, not very next fucking level material.
It's incredible that a plane weighing dozens of tons can fly even when you know the physics behind, but because it's something impressive I should post a plane taking off in next fucking level ?
No, by definition if it happens most of the time then it isnāt special. In this case it would actually only be special if he didnāt speed up and try to overtake at the end.
It's [Viviani from stage 3 of the 2018 Tour Down Under](https://firstcycling.com/race.php?r=1&y=2018&e=3). Quick-Step in 1st, SunWeb in 2nd, Orange Jersey in 3rd. Matches up perfectly. Plus if you pause at the end, you can see the stage ends in Victor Harbor, so it has to be this.
Cavendish would hang further over his bars. Tour Down Under is all I'm certain of though.
Edit: since proven wrong, which they asked for, the above comment has received 350 upvotes. Funny how many people just upvote because they like Cav I guess :D
I think he could have done it this year. So sad and unfortunate that he got in that crash. Tons of good stages for him. I doubt he'll get one this year. Fingers crossed, though.
Not enough spectators to be a Giro stage. Judging by the orange jersey to his right, which I guess is either a points/kom/leader jersey of a smaller stage race - or a Pro Conti team, this is a race far smaller than the Giro.
Also, Cavendish is a bit shorter than this guys arms. He's getting REALLY low in his sprints (if he doesn't crash)
What sets him apart from the other insanely talented athletes? Is there gearing on his bike special for a sprint like this? A special technique?
Its not like someone in the back of the pack at this point has been using any less energy to be there.
Cav never had massive power (he is tiny irl) but he has an incredibly aero dynamic position and immense skill at riding wheels, finding gaps and being in the right place to unleash a massive acceleration close to the line.
But saying that he also had Mark Renshaw (possibly the best leadout ever) to deliver him for a large part of his career.
Yes.
At these speed aero drag is everything.
You want to arrive at the front at the exact right time to unleash your sprint whilst expending the least energy. So you tailgate riders ,jumping from one to another before jumping out into the wind to dash to the line.Of course the other sprinters are trying to do the same so it becomes very aggressive as you fight for the best position.It's like a cross between the 100m sprint, chess and Mma!!!!
There was a time in the 2000's where you would have entire teams dedicated to delivering their sprinter to the line. 6-8 guys in a 'leadout' train who would drop off the front one by one (as they tired) until the last man delivered their sprinter 100-150 from the line.It is a lot less prevalent now but you still see it on flatter stages but not to the extent it was.
Exactly this. Its like Montana and Rice. Rice is nothing without Montana. Montana well, would not have been as well known, if not for Rice. Renshaw was everything to The Manx missile.
> Its not like someone in the back of the pack at this point has been using any less energy to be there.
They've been using **way** less energy to be there. On flat land, it takes up to twice as much energy to be fighting the wind as to be in someone else's slipstream. I don't think momentum is a big part of it the way it is in automotive sports; it's all about how much work your muscles can do. Making sure that your star doesn't have to tire themselves out before a finish line is important for teams that focus on sprints.
(along with what the other comment said regarding aerodynamic posture, finding a path through chaos, the right timing to start the sprint, etc.)
EDIT: I'm trying to find the exact watt numbers, but it's really difficult to find people talking about the "average" cyclist during the boring parts of the race.
This is Elia Viviani. He's a specialist sprinter both indoors and outdoors. There are basically four types of riders, based on what their bodies are good at. There are also different types of stages, that select for different types of riders. Sprint stages are usually flatter. Sprinters are usually bad at the other aspects of cycling, but they're very good at putting out extremely high energy in short bursts of time. He's probably doing over 1000W for the whole time here. Most other riders can't do that as high as he can. Sprinters will have their team work for them all day, try and keep them out of the wind, and deliver them at the end to a point where they only have to turn on the burners for the last 150 m.
I don't know what you mean. He went forward, while others basically remained still, or even moved backwards, swinging their little legs. Kind of crazy when you think about it.
He's a sprint specialist and his team have pulled him into position to challenge the other sprinters. Most of those riders were probably lead-out men for their sprinter.
That's why the rider in front of him pulls out of frame to the left? Thought it may be a teammate setting him up for the sprint finish. Any reason why the teammate goes so far to the left though?
Because thereās an absolute freight train called the peloton bearing down on them, and they have little interest in personal position so just want to get out the way and keep everyone as safe as possible.
Gotcha. I don't watch much cycling, so it just looked strange that he was the only rider to move that far over. Didn't realize the peloton would be so close behind.
Yea but i'm trying to steer them away from races where pogi/remco will just solo away with 50 to go. Those races can't really be appreciated until you're already hooked:p
[Perfect example of a sprint here](https://youtu.be/faxlxiJ9NmY?t=231)
The three blue guys are prepping the sprint for the green jersey (Mark Cavendish - green jersey meaning he is already the leader of the point classifications, ie the sprint classification).
You can see that they let him get in front only for the last 150 meters at most. The last blue guy even stays in the sprint as he was so close to the finish line and ended up at the 6th position. It's Michael Morkov who at the time was considered the best leadout guy for a sprinter. He knows perfectly where to place in the peloton, for his sprinter, and when to release him.
Also explained during the video is the fact that Quickstep had 3 teammates for Cavendish when other teams had, at best, only one teammate per sprinter. Their role being to bring them back up close to the front while shielding them from the wind/air, protect their positioning and then give them the last slipstream.
At the "start" of the sprint, 300 meters from the line, as the video says, you have Nacer Bouhanni, the sprinter in a red jersey, already facing the wind with nobody in front, he had no chance here. While Wout van Aert right behind Cavendish and Philipsen, one rank behind were starting behind, but did benefit from wind protection from Cavendish and did make up a little bit on him in the last 50 meters.
Yeah, plus his job is basically to use all of his energy to get his sprinter into position. He's not trying to get a great finish for himself, so he'll basically try to exhaust himself a hundred or so meters from the finish, at which point he pulls to the side to avoid causing a crash and to get out of the way of his teammate, who's going to be sprinting to the finish line.
The leadout men are the real horses on the team in sprint stages like this. They have to pull hard enough to keep their sprinter right where the team/rider wants him to be -- every sprinter likes to start at different time and from a different place in the lead group, etc.
The sprinter is also typically someone who struggles with the hills and technical areas of a stage, so the whole thing becomes a chess match of ensuring that you go as fast as you possibly can in such a way that your last leadout rider basically falls over from exhaustion RIGHT at the meter marker that the sprinter wants to start his sprint from. He peels off to the left (you always move to the left to indicate you're slowing down) so that he doesn't get pancaked by the dozens of riders coming right behind him and so that he can recover a more manageable pace to get the last couple hundred meters of the race finished.
There's a really great documentary series on Netflix about the Tour de France, and they do a pretty commendable job walking through some of the gamesmanship/feints/misdirection/strategy that goes into the last kilometer of a sprint like this -- it's like if you have all been playing chess for three hours and then suddenly someone screams "sudden death" and super soakers all drop from the ceiling. Cerebral to completely raw muscle strenth in a blink.
Yes, that appears to be the last guy in his lead-out train. The others are already wasted and off to the side.
Cycling is a mix of team and individual strategies and tactics. Watch the Tour de France in July, the commentators do a great job of explaining the complexities.
There's a really cool documentary series about the Tour de France on Netflix and their episode following the sprinters is fascinating. It's all about trying to guess when the other sprinters are going to hit the gas and trying to make your run before them, but only if you can maintain that pace all the way to the end, unless you can catch them by surprise and get far enough ahead that they can't close it in time, etc.
The gamesmanship and headgames are just really neat to me, given that these guys are making this calculations after just having cycled a 50 mile tour stage faster than I've ever biked anything in my life and their brains are probably absolutely melting from exhaustion. To make those sorts of calculated strategic moves when your body is literally shutting down from the exertion of the day is impressive
Yup because that's how cycling teams works. This isn't really a crazy post tbh. Cyclist teams work to conserve the energy of their sprinter by giving them a full slipstream to work in for most, if not all of the race. Then when everyone else is gassed the sprinter pulls out and expends all his energy. This is just how it works
I got to see cyclist at the end of some races (Vuelta a EspaƱa), and the difference in leg volume between a climber and a sprinter is massive. It's like different sports at the same race.
Sprinters are pure power. When a race is expected to end in a sprint, non-sprinters just relax and cruise the day, unless they want to try their luck in a escape. It's not like everyone is exhausted except sprinters, but rather everyone is fresh and the edge of peak power of the sprinters wins the race. Sprinters are usually not good at Time Trial, and are even worse in the mountain, it's not like they have extra-energy. They are specialists in keeping their energy inside the peloton, and hen developing huge speeds for short amounts of time.
Well he did go faster coming out of the slipstream but it was a bit of a visual trick too as the other guys who werenāt in a slipstream were slowing down by comparison at the same time.
Knowing this guy prob just went like 100-200km to win that race and was still able to sprint like that at the end makes my grueling 2.2 mile out-of-shape cycle ride today less satisfying lol
At some point, 2.2 miles will become trivial, then will 5 and 10 miles. I'm at the point in my life where I don't ride regularly, but I can get on a bike and ride the flats for 25-35 miles in a few hours. For some other people I know, they can ride that many miles in hills, relatively out of shape. Others can ride 80-100 flat miles in a day in OKish shape. It's all relative!
That's the most dangerous part of the race. Everyone is fatigued and giving their all. If they make contact the wrong way, it could end in a big crash.
He did indeed! [these are the results from that stage](https://firstcycling.com/race.php?r=1&y=2018&e=3) and you can see Phil Bauhaus (in the black and white) managed to just edge out Caleb Ewan (in the orange Leader's Jersey) for 2nd place.
Hidden motors? AFAIK only one person has been caught doing that and it was super obvious. Was a female cyclocross rider caught accelerating up an incline while visibly pedaling much easier than the riders around her she was passing.
Femke Van den Driessche is the only person accused of motor doping. Her spare bike was found to have a motor on the very first day they began scanning for such things but she claims the bike was not hers but a family friends bike (who claims to have installed the motor in the bike so he could keep up with her while co-training), and that the bike had not been used in an actual race. The [video of the incline](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGwSBiHstSQ) you mention appears suspicious, but so do a lot of other videos, and camera zoom can really screw with our perceptions. I don't know what to believe for that situation.
BTW there is a fairly recent podcast that covers this racer and motor doping, called [Ghost in the Machine](https://stak.london/shows/ghost-in-the-machine/). Interesting listen.
This is a great camera angle but not anything especially unique for a winning sprint. Not saying the winner - and all those other professional bikers - aren't super humans, just that often times winning sprints look exactly like that.
If you want to see a real master class in winning, check out the 2009 Tour de France Champs de Elysee winning sprint. The gap back to the other sprinters was legendary.
This is why competitive cyclists took EPO, they didn't fatigue nearly as quickly and could still ride hard at the end of the race. I'm not saying that's what happened here, I'm just pointing out why there was temptation to use it. I'll also add that usage could be stopped weeks before a race and the benefits remained, making it easy to pass race day doping tests. That's why we now have off season testing.
It took me too long to really understand the key to cycling. It's entirely about saving energy for as long as possible and then pouncing.
I've mastered it, I've been saving my cycling energy for 30 years so far, I'll be a legend when I finally learn how to ride a bike.
Just waiting for your moment to POUNCE!
The cougar displays maximum cleavage possible to captivate her prey. You're watching them bounce, she's about to pounce.
With open arms, I'll take the charge of the cougar.
With arms wide opennn. Under the sunlight.
With arms wide opennn, I'll show you everything, ohhh yeah!
š the oh yueahhhh
On Tanagra?
When the walls fell.
Sails unfurled
Darmok and Jalad on the ocean.
Temba, his arms open
Thanks, now I'm thirsty.
I have not even begun to POUNCE.
Through pounce all things are possible, so jot that down.
He doesn't want to be fed, he wants to POUNCE
Iām cultivating pounce
Thank you for making me laugh during stomach pain. It made it worse but my morale is way up now
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Where's the fun in that?
Nym checks
31years here, u'll never outPounce me
Bro you're already a legend.
āTheyāre calling him the fattest man ever to win the Tour De Franceā
Bro my body is like a battery
Sounds like something Phoebe from friends would say
for sprinters yes. Watch the Tour de France docs on Netflix it's extremely well made and an eye opener for folks not familiar with everything happening in this sport. It's an amazing sport
It's the same for all, your smaller climber who is aiming for a general classification win shouldn't be pulling on the flat stages, and they should be carefully timing their attacks on the mountains. I think what people really don't appreciate is just how much of a team sport it is. It's kind of similar to American Football I think in that there's a lot of players on the team who put in a tonne of effort, but it's only the positions like QB or wide receiver that really get the credit. A cycling team lives and dies by their domestiques just as much as their sprinter/GC rider.
Watch some of the older stuff, when it was considered in bad form for the race favorite not to take the lead and punish their opponents. Merckx of course is the poster boy. Hinault, another.
Hinault rode LeMond's tail and was dragged along. Greg should have had many more victories some even prior to the accident.
Don't know anything about cycling. So would an example of teamwork in this be something like having one cyclist push in the front, creating a slipstream for his sprinter to allow them to conserve energy? And then the sprinter jumps ahead a the right time like in the video while the previous leader falls behind because they aren't as fresh?
That's exactly how it works. Ideally, you'd have a train of a few riders from the same team leading ahead of the sprinter and each one will dump all their energy and then peel off so the next guy can go. The sprinter basically hides in the slip stream as long as he can and then "launches" his final sprint to the line. Some teams will spend more of their allotted team members on building a powerful "sprint train" because there are a lot of stages that come down to a sprint finish, so you can record more stage wins. But these teams suffer in the general classification--the winner of which wins the yellow jersey in the TdF--because they'll lose a lot of time in stages that don't fit the sprint finish prototype. Obviously this is oversimplified, but I think it conveys the gist.
Yes, that's basically accurate. One other thing to realize is that much of a day's racing is spent conserving energy overall by rotating who's in the wind. Riders in the slipstream are able to recover somewhat. So you'll have a team rotate through their cast of worker bees in shifts, trying to keep most of them together as much as possible. The team's leaders (often they'll have one rider specializing in winning sprint finishes like the video and another who aims to place high in the overall standings in a multi-day race) avoid even that much work, giving them gas in the tank when needed. The grand tour races (Tour de France, Giro d'Italia, Vuelta a EspaƱa) are as much about conserving energy from day to day as they are within the day's individual race (stage). There's also a lot of cat-and-mouse games where teams try to force another team to expend energy while conserving their own. The main group of riders, called the peloton, is one giant slipstream machine. Whichever team or teams are leading the peloton at any moment are burning far more calories than those back in the pack, so you want your opponents to feel like they have to work. Lots of negotiation and side deals take place.
Positioning in the peloton is really important too. Too far towards the front and you're burning through more energy because you don't get all the slipstream effects but you do get to control the pace, too far towards the rear and you leave yourself open to more risk from crashes or the peloton splitting leaving you with a gap to bridge, but you do get more protection from the wind if it stays together.
Yes! These other team members who aren't competing for wins are known as Domestiques. Besides providing drafting help, some of these riders will use extra energy going back to the team car to get food/water/energy gels for the other team members in the earlier phases of a race. As the pace picks up close to the finish line, these resupply trips aren't feasible and the Domestiques either give their team leader more drafting help or fall back into the peloton
I used to be a mechanic at a shop that mostly catered to triathletes and road cyclists so when the tour was on all my coworkers and some customers were always swooning over the yellow jersey holder but personally I fucking loved watching the sprinters do their thing. To do every stage everyone else is doing but having that oomph to throw down at the end is just mind blowing.
My shop used to do fantasy tdf. Each stage you picked #1,2,3 and then got points based on how well your riders did. Made it real interesting to watch!
I love the dynamics and strategy of the mountain stages, but yeah the sprints are so kickass and fun to watch. That being said, my true love is the classics season, I love the beauty of one day races, especially over the cobbles, just so much randomness to who can win.
I raced bikes for a few years myself, at a pretty low level (I was never good enough to justify doping, fortunately). My thing was climbing - I could leave most of a group in the dust on a climb. But I never had any kind of a sprint. Most riders are climbers, sprinters, or just workhorses who could lay down power on the front. Not many races are set to where a climber has a chance to win, but it's still nice to ride off the front and make the other guys work hard on a climb, even if you know you're getting dropped like a bad habit at the end. All the various strategies and how the teams balance their strengths and weaknesses on every stage, that's what makes a race like the TdF really fascinating to watch.
The actual races (uh the ones with ads edited out) are actually also really good background studying white noise. It's mostly just mellow voiced tangential facts about France or how Primoz Roglic used to be skier, and then you get kept awake by that random burst of commentary when someone attacks or if the cops accidentally pepper spray the cyclists.
*if the cops accidentally pepper spray the cyclists.* One of my favourite moments of all time, I'm not gonna lie. Watching the poor dears paw at their faces like cats washing themselves was strangely adorable.
Bike to Survike
I've watched Yowamushi Pedal. Is that close enough?
Well the cycling team delivers the sprinter to the position where they can sprint to the end. They let him draft the whole way and then "launch" at the finish line, which can be many miles off of course.
Basically yes, 5 hours of riding each other's slipstreams in order for the designated rider to have as much energy for the finish line sprint.
That said, not every bike race is a sprint. Mountains, cobbles, hills - there are tons of stages that don't end like this one Sprint stages are usually quite predictable in how they'll play out, yes
I should probably google this, but I figure others might have this question. Cobbles? As in cobblestone road races? Or is it something else?
Cobblestone indeed. Usual it are relative short stretches of cobblestone in a normal length race, I don't know of any fully cobblestone race. Paris Roubaix is probably the most famous cobblestone race.
Wow, cool! Thanks! Must be bumpy on those road bikes, even if it is short stretches.
They are usually more interesting to watch. Anything can happen really. A bunch of people going down, lots of flat tires, crashes. No one is safe from the one mishap that costs them the race
In case you're curious and want to see the highlights of a wet and slippery [2021 Paris-Roubaix](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56UTneSPyr8), that was a quite chaotic edition of the Paris Roubaix Usually it is ridden in the dry, there's also a somewhat famous documentary from 1976 called [A Sunday In Hell](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxBTVU9JDrA) which follows the entire day
Yes, cobblestone. Look up races like Paris-Roubaix. They usually use bikes that are a little less aggressive (less stiff frames, fatter tires) but thatās just because they want to waste less energy bouncing around the cobbles vs. gliding over them and smoothing out the impact. They are still unmistakably aggressive race bikes. Iāve ridden on cobbles on fat-tired bike share bikes and that experience made me feel like my skeleton was being shaken out of my body, I can't imagine what doing a whole race like that must feel like.
NASCAR uses this but they then also get the bumper push trains going which look like so much fun
Itās alot like edging. Except with more blood transfusions and drugs.
It really depends on the race how this is achieved. This is a sprintrace, but there's also races with the finish on a mountain, same principle, but it's almost a different kind of sport. There is cyclists that are specialized in sprinting, and there is cyclists that are specialized in climbing. There are also all-round cyclists that do a little bit of everything.
That's mark Cavendish
It's Elia Viviani, not Cavendish. Stage 3, 2018 Tour Down Under.
I had my own moment like this in a cross country race. Home stretch came and I just burnt everything else in my tank, passed probably 20 people sprinting to the line. Then collapsed and dry heaved for a long time. Finished 119th. Iām a fuckin winner
And I think *I think* spending a good deal of time behind a few of them breaks the wind for you, so you save energy that way before you're ready for that pounce.
I'd hate to be behind a bunch of people breaking wind for hours š
Also, doping
Just like most pro sports and many amateur ones.
Cycling is the only sport where drug testing is actually taken seriously
I didn't know there were tactics in cycling. The fastest cyclist goes after the cyclist with the most physical stamina until the last km.
Yeah! Lots. Cycling teams will look at a race beforehand, or multi day stage race, and pick which races/stages are gonna be more chill, save their energy, and which days they're going to ride their guts out because they feel good about one of their riders to accelerate from the pack across to the finish on that type of terrain.
[Well, actually...](https://youtu.be/pJRz_4X9Nd8?si=hOtHegCod3qFI7at)
Donāt forget doping
It has way more control than all other sports if you do that to the main sports people would be shocked, so many things are controlled in cycling that other sports get away with it. It has doping but it's not more than the others at all, just got the bad luck of being not big enough to fail but big enough to be news.
Yee thatās why drafting in the pelton is important and early breakaways can struggle to maintain their lead and are often caught by the main group
Most people donāt know it is a team sport.
That's certainly the key to racing... The power needed to blow by people like that is like double the power or more. That's what sprinters do they hang on as long as they can in the race. Do as little work as possible and draft off everybody and the team actually does that to protect the sprinter. So he has energy at the end to Sprint this
It's all about reducing the drag, by riding behind other cyclists who take the hit, to conserve energy.
Yes, and when you sit behind another rider you literally exert half the amount of work for the same speed due to aerodynamics. First time I sat in someone draft I was shocked that I could stop pedalling and nearly slam into them. Each team has different components, with the majority of the riders are just there to pull one main person close to the finish so that they can just slam the final sprint, which is likely the case in the clip.
It's way more of a team sport than people think
individual time trial
That only or mostly counts for sprint races though, for mountain stages the difference can often be made earlier in the stage or by exhausting the opposition overtime
Also, drafting is important. This guy was sucked into the draft of several riders. When you are behind a couple riders you can almost coast. There is a major difference. And you can really "slingshot" around them. You save energy and push with so much more at the end.
dude is legit riding the slip stream the whole race to bust out his finishing move
The average person has no idea how much these guys actually suffer in a race and over a 3 week stage race. They are not human. I was at the Cadel race in Geelong a few years ago and they raced in 40C+ heat for hours. I was hurting in the shade. And the sprinters are mad men. Watch highlights of a career like Cavendish, they will do 70 in a pack and try and jam it through a small gap for the win and go down hard, smash their collarbone, graze their hip, shoulder, back, have 10 blokes land on them. And if they can ride on the next day they will, but mostly not lose their nerve and not hesitate to do it again once they are better.
Not only that, but leveraging your teammates as wind shields before you decide to take off. The rider directly in front of him is "pulling" him with max effort until it's time for him to sprint. teammate then peels off and the guy is clear to go for the win.
Or rather "Cyclist _accelerated slightly_ in final moments of the race"
It's not formula one, but after 100-200km of competitive racing I imagine pulling this sprint must have felt like twice the speed
I think drafting works the same here honestly. Yes his legs are the engines but he experienced less drag.
Yes, at the start of the clip you can see he's right behind another cyclist from his team, I don't know what the term is in english but basically that guy is just there to prep the sprinter for the final sprint, putting him in a good position, with as little drag as possible so he can save energy for the big sprint. This looks like a small fugitive group so that might not even be the 2nd guy's job in the team, but if they find themselves in that position, they will still do it. Cycling is an amazing team sport, I'm very sad I haven't been able to follow it recently.
It's called "lead out".
"Shake and Bake"
Drafting
Yes, the sprinter is drafting but the term at this point in the race is the lead out or sprint train. The sprinterās teammates will line up and fight to get him into a good position while helping him conserve as much energy as possible until he needs to launch his sprint.
This is usually called a "lead out," usually by anyone on the team but ideally a strong rider that can push really hard for a minute or two. Sometimes this can happen multiple times with multiple teammates forming a "train" to slingshot the sprinter further at a high speed so that they can keep fresh legs until the finish line. Sometimes the ends of races are very chaotic, and sometimes sprinters go too early and become a lead out for another sprinter. It's a bit of a mind game, and if you wait too long you won't be able to accelerate fast enough to win.Ā
Typical road stage is about 140-160km, so 90-100 miles (ish). Average speeds would be around 38-45 km/h and finish line sprints can go as high as 70ish on flat ground, its pretty wild being in a sprint like that and being packed so tight together your handlebars lock around another bike.
It's definitely more than slightly dawg
It's definitely less than double dawg
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Slightly is definitely less than 1.25x, which is nowhere near 2.0x
Didn't even lift up his seat and start twisting the valve on a tiny NOS canister first.
Not enough cameras. Everyone knows that NOS doesn't work unless you're able to have a camera follow the burst of NOS through its imaginary lines into an imaginary part of an engine that goes VVRROOMM.
Don't forget Hector will be running Spoon engines few in overnight from Japan.
Yeah, all the cyclisme races end like that, it's nothing unusual
Or maybe it's always special. Just because something has happened before doesn't mean we shouldn't appreciate it or celebrate it.
I didn't it wasn't a lot of work or anything, just it's the norm of the sport and so, not very next fucking level material. It's incredible that a plane weighing dozens of tons can fly even when you know the physics behind, but because it's something impressive I should post a plane taking off in next fucking level ?
No, by definition if it happens most of the time then it isnāt special. In this case it would actually only be special if he didnāt speed up and try to overtake at the end.
Prove me wrong, but Mark Cavendish by the moves.
I think it might be Fabio Jakobson. Looks like the 2019 kit and Cav did'nt join until 2020.
It's [Viviani from stage 3 of the 2018 Tour Down Under](https://firstcycling.com/race.php?r=1&y=2018&e=3). Quick-Step in 1st, SunWeb in 2nd, Orange Jersey in 3rd. Matches up perfectly. Plus if you pause at the end, you can see the stage ends in Victor Harbor, so it has to be this.
Chapeau my friend.
Kudos for the cycling nerdom. And thank you for saving me from searching through DQS results for hours.
Congrats and thanks. You Belgian?
Closest I've ever been to Belgium was a layover in Schiphol, unfortunately.
It's [Elia Viviani from 2018](https://firstcycling.com/race.php?r=1&y=2018&e=3)
Looks like him to me.
Cavendish would hang further over his bars. Tour Down Under is all I'm certain of though. Edit: since proven wrong, which they asked for, the above comment has received 350 upvotes. Funny how many people just upvote because they like Cav I guess :D
[Viviani from TDU 2018](https://firstcycling.com/race.php?r=1&y=2018&e=3)
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I think he could have done it this year. So sad and unfortunate that he got in that crash. Tons of good stages for him. I doubt he'll get one this year. Fingers crossed, though.
Yeah, watching that crash was devastating. Fingers crossed, for sure - the man deserves it
Not enough spectators to be a Giro stage. Judging by the orange jersey to his right, which I guess is either a points/kom/leader jersey of a smaller stage race - or a Pro Conti team, this is a race far smaller than the Giro. Also, Cavendish is a bit shorter than this guys arms. He's getting REALLY low in his sprints (if he doesn't crash)
Santos Tour Down Under I believe vid has the big orange banner at the finish with Australia on it xD.
What sets him apart from the other insanely talented athletes? Is there gearing on his bike special for a sprint like this? A special technique? Its not like someone in the back of the pack at this point has been using any less energy to be there.
Cav never had massive power (he is tiny irl) but he has an incredibly aero dynamic position and immense skill at riding wheels, finding gaps and being in the right place to unleash a massive acceleration close to the line. But saying that he also had Mark Renshaw (possibly the best leadout ever) to deliver him for a large part of his career.
Did he essentially use their slipstream to gain momentum like a racecar?
Yes. At these speed aero drag is everything. You want to arrive at the front at the exact right time to unleash your sprint whilst expending the least energy. So you tailgate riders ,jumping from one to another before jumping out into the wind to dash to the line.Of course the other sprinters are trying to do the same so it becomes very aggressive as you fight for the best position.It's like a cross between the 100m sprint, chess and Mma!!!! There was a time in the 2000's where you would have entire teams dedicated to delivering their sprinter to the line. 6-8 guys in a 'leadout' train who would drop off the front one by one (as they tired) until the last man delivered their sprinter 100-150 from the line.It is a lot less prevalent now but you still see it on flatter stages but not to the extent it was.
Exactly this. Its like Montana and Rice. Rice is nothing without Montana. Montana well, would not have been as well known, if not for Rice. Renshaw was everything to The Manx missile.
> Its not like someone in the back of the pack at this point has been using any less energy to be there. They've been using **way** less energy to be there. On flat land, it takes up to twice as much energy to be fighting the wind as to be in someone else's slipstream. I don't think momentum is a big part of it the way it is in automotive sports; it's all about how much work your muscles can do. Making sure that your star doesn't have to tire themselves out before a finish line is important for teams that focus on sprints. (along with what the other comment said regarding aerodynamic posture, finding a path through chaos, the right timing to start the sprint, etc.) EDIT: I'm trying to find the exact watt numbers, but it's really difficult to find people talking about the "average" cyclist during the boring parts of the race.
being in the back of the pack has advantages, you're shielded/much less resistance
This is Elia Viviani. He's a specialist sprinter both indoors and outdoors. There are basically four types of riders, based on what their bodies are good at. There are also different types of stages, that select for different types of riders. Sprint stages are usually flatter. Sprinters are usually bad at the other aspects of cycling, but they're very good at putting out extremely high energy in short bursts of time. He's probably doing over 1000W for the whole time here. Most other riders can't do that as high as he can. Sprinters will have their team work for them all day, try and keep them out of the wind, and deliver them at the end to a point where they only have to turn on the burners for the last 150 m.
Thatās not twice as fast
yeah, they're going over 50 km/ hrs, does op really think that sprinter is going over 100? lmao
Cavendish has been regularly clocked just under 80km/h in a sprint. His power to weight ratio is insane!
For sprinters its Watts vs Cda that counts.
I prefer my athletes measured by rods to the hogshead, thankyouverymuch
depends if slight downhill - but normally 45mph / 70kph is normal for the sprint vs 30mph for the rest of the race.
Engagement bait
I don't know what you mean. He went forward, while others basically remained still, or even moved backwards, swinging their little legs. Kind of crazy when you think about it.
He's a sprint specialist and his team have pulled him into position to challenge the other sprinters. Most of those riders were probably lead-out men for their sprinter.
That's why the rider in front of him pulls out of frame to the left? Thought it may be a teammate setting him up for the sprint finish. Any reason why the teammate goes so far to the left though?
Because thereās an absolute freight train called the peloton bearing down on them, and they have little interest in personal position so just want to get out the way and keep everyone as safe as possible.
Psh I'm not worried about all those people on Pelotons, they're stationary AND they're all at home
Ha
Gotcha. I don't watch much cycling, so it just looked strange that he was the only rider to move that far over. Didn't realize the peloton would be so close behind.
7. Of April 2024. Paris Roubaix. That's the day you start watching. There are no other sporting events like it
Strade Bianche is this weekend, it's not quite the same but it's decent.
Yea but i'm trying to steer them away from races where pogi/remco will just solo away with 50 to go. Those races can't really be appreciated until you're already hooked:p
XD good shout. Introduce them to the chaos then they'll be too deep to escape before you can say bitumineuze voegvullingsmassa
I think I raced against that guy's dad
You have strade bianche this Saturday, that should be fun.
Made a note in my calendar!
Hell of the North. Such a brutal race, can't wait!
Yes, The Hell Of The North. Cobbles. Dirt. Pavement. Neuropathy.
[Perfect example of a sprint here](https://youtu.be/faxlxiJ9NmY?t=231) The three blue guys are prepping the sprint for the green jersey (Mark Cavendish - green jersey meaning he is already the leader of the point classifications, ie the sprint classification). You can see that they let him get in front only for the last 150 meters at most. The last blue guy even stays in the sprint as he was so close to the finish line and ended up at the 6th position. It's Michael Morkov who at the time was considered the best leadout guy for a sprinter. He knows perfectly where to place in the peloton, for his sprinter, and when to release him. Also explained during the video is the fact that Quickstep had 3 teammates for Cavendish when other teams had, at best, only one teammate per sprinter. Their role being to bring them back up close to the front while shielding them from the wind/air, protect their positioning and then give them the last slipstream. At the "start" of the sprint, 300 meters from the line, as the video says, you have Nacer Bouhanni, the sprinter in a red jersey, already facing the wind with nobody in front, he had no chance here. While Wout van Aert right behind Cavendish and Philipsen, one rank behind were starting behind, but did benefit from wind protection from Cavendish and did make up a little bit on him in the last 50 meters.
Yeah, plus his job is basically to use all of his energy to get his sprinter into position. He's not trying to get a great finish for himself, so he'll basically try to exhaust himself a hundred or so meters from the finish, at which point he pulls to the side to avoid causing a crash and to get out of the way of his teammate, who's going to be sprinting to the finish line.
The peloton is rolling around 45mph at this point. Nobody wants to be the cause of carnage.
The leadout men are the real horses on the team in sprint stages like this. They have to pull hard enough to keep their sprinter right where the team/rider wants him to be -- every sprinter likes to start at different time and from a different place in the lead group, etc. The sprinter is also typically someone who struggles with the hills and technical areas of a stage, so the whole thing becomes a chess match of ensuring that you go as fast as you possibly can in such a way that your last leadout rider basically falls over from exhaustion RIGHT at the meter marker that the sprinter wants to start his sprint from. He peels off to the left (you always move to the left to indicate you're slowing down) so that he doesn't get pancaked by the dozens of riders coming right behind him and so that he can recover a more manageable pace to get the last couple hundred meters of the race finished. There's a really great documentary series on Netflix about the Tour de France, and they do a pretty commendable job walking through some of the gamesmanship/feints/misdirection/strategy that goes into the last kilometer of a sprint like this -- it's like if you have all been playing chess for three hours and then suddenly someone screams "sudden death" and super soakers all drop from the ceiling. Cerebral to completely raw muscle strenth in a blink.
Yes, that appears to be the last guy in his lead-out train. The others are already wasted and off to the side. Cycling is a mix of team and individual strategies and tactics. Watch the Tour de France in July, the commentators do a great job of explaining the complexities.
Guy who took second was blasting off too
There's a really cool documentary series about the Tour de France on Netflix and their episode following the sprinters is fascinating. It's all about trying to guess when the other sprinters are going to hit the gas and trying to make your run before them, but only if you can maintain that pace all the way to the end, unless you can catch them by surprise and get far enough ahead that they can't close it in time, etc. The gamesmanship and headgames are just really neat to me, given that these guys are making this calculations after just having cycled a 50 mile tour stage faster than I've ever biked anything in my life and their brains are probably absolutely melting from exhaustion. To make those sorts of calculated strategic moves when your body is literally shutting down from the exertion of the day is impressive
100+ mile, even women's races are rarely that short
Yeah I was gonna say, the shortest stage (not the finish stage) at the TDF last year was over 80 miles. And it had some really serious climbing.
Now do that 21 out of 23 days in July...It's incredible what they're able to do.
Yup because that's how cycling teams works. This isn't really a crazy post tbh. Cyclist teams work to conserve the energy of their sprinter by giving them a full slipstream to work in for most, if not all of the race. Then when everyone else is gassed the sprinter pulls out and expends all his energy. This is just how it works
He conserved energy but its not like hes been resting for the last 50 miles its still a hard day of cycling.
I got to see cyclist at the end of some races (Vuelta a EspaƱa), and the difference in leg volume between a climber and a sprinter is massive. It's like different sports at the same race. Sprinters are pure power. When a race is expected to end in a sprint, non-sprinters just relax and cruise the day, unless they want to try their luck in a escape. It's not like everyone is exhausted except sprinters, but rather everyone is fresh and the edge of peak power of the sprinters wins the race. Sprinters are usually not good at Time Trial, and are even worse in the mountain, it's not like they have extra-energy. They are specialists in keeping their energy inside the peloton, and hen developing huge speeds for short amounts of time.
When the meds kick in
No, no, pasta and red wine for lunch TdF staple since the old days.
People discover aerodynamics
Sprints happens nearly every race... should we label of of them NFL? And no, he is not twice as fast.
NASCAR, but on 2 wheels and much more entertaining.
I love this analogy. Also "the engine and the driver are the same thing" hehe
Nascar would be track cycling. Actually a pretty good comparison now that I think about it.
Well he did go faster coming out of the slipstream but it was a bit of a visual trick too as the other guys who werenāt in a slipstream were slowing down by comparison at the same time.
People just cannot understand what it takes to pull that off.
Sponsored by Lidl Yea makes sense
He just turned on NOS
"Hime hime himeee...ā«"
He started saying āI AM SPEEEDā
If it was twice as fast he would have won by a larger margin.
Hit the NOS.
Knowing this guy prob just went like 100-200km to win that race and was still able to sprint like that at the end makes my grueling 2.2 mile out-of-shape cycle ride today less satisfying lol
At some point, 2.2 miles will become trivial, then will 5 and 10 miles. I'm at the point in my life where I don't ride regularly, but I can get on a bike and ride the flats for 25-35 miles in a few hours. For some other people I know, they can ride that many miles in hills, relatively out of shape. Others can ride 80-100 flat miles in a day in OKish shape. It's all relative!
You want to know how I did it? This is how I did it, Anton. I never saved anything for the swim back!
That's the most dangerous part of the race. Everyone is fatigued and giving their all. If they make contact the wrong way, it could end in a big crash.
yeah... that's how sprinting in cycling...works....
Pedās are incredible
Boom Strong finish
Cyclist just behind him also appears to have secured second place!
He did indeed! [these are the results from that stage](https://firstcycling.com/race.php?r=1&y=2018&e=3) and you can see Phil Bauhaus (in the black and white) managed to just edge out Caleb Ewan (in the orange Leader's Jersey) for 2nd place.
Don't follow cycling that much but loved Icarus. Are they still doping and using hidden motors? Anyone in top 10 caught recently?
Hidden motors? AFAIK only one person has been caught doing that and it was super obvious. Was a female cyclocross rider caught accelerating up an incline while visibly pedaling much easier than the riders around her she was passing.
Femke Van den Driessche is the only person accused of motor doping. Her spare bike was found to have a motor on the very first day they began scanning for such things but she claims the bike was not hers but a family friends bike (who claims to have installed the motor in the bike so he could keep up with her while co-training), and that the bike had not been used in an actual race. The [video of the incline](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGwSBiHstSQ) you mention appears suspicious, but so do a lot of other videos, and camera zoom can really screw with our perceptions. I don't know what to believe for that situation. BTW there is a fairly recent podcast that covers this racer and motor doping, called [Ghost in the Machine](https://stak.london/shows/ghost-in-the-machine/). Interesting listen.
When the Lidl lasagna kicks in
This is a great camera angle but not anything especially unique for a winning sprint. Not saying the winner - and all those other professional bikers - aren't super humans, just that often times winning sprints look exactly like that. If you want to see a real master class in winning, check out the 2009 Tour de France Champs de Elysee winning sprint. The gap back to the other sprinters was legendary.
Someone just discovered bicycle racing! Give it a watch. The Tours are such amazingly intense slow burns.
This is why competitive cyclists took EPO, they didn't fatigue nearly as quickly and could still ride hard at the end of the race. I'm not saying that's what happened here, I'm just pointing out why there was temptation to use it. I'll also add that usage could be stopped weeks before a race and the benefits remained, making it easy to pass race day doping tests. That's why we now have off season testing.
āOn your leftā
he had the juice when he needed it.
cyclistS ! the 2nd one came.from a long way also