In cycling, the biggest drag on effort is aerodynamics (up to 90% of drag when travelling at 50km/h). Therefore, you save considerable energy riding in the middle of the peloton. One study suggested that riding in the middle of the peloton can mean you only need 5% of the energy you would if you rode alone. You can be doing 50 km/h, but the effort is similar to 12 km/h. If you ride in the peloton all day, you can get to the last 10 km relatively fresh and ready to make a big effort.

Flowing data

If you ride in a small breakaway, you are making much more effort throughout the day, you will get some drafting benefit, but you will have to ride with your nose in the front for considerably more. When you get to the last 10km – the breakaway riders will be closer to exhaustion than the riders in the peloton. Then in the last 10km, there are fresh riders ready to chase down the breakaway and set up a sprint.

There will usually be many teams with a motivation to chase down the breakaway. The best sprinters will have a team willing to ride and bring back the breakaway. If a team doesn’t have someone in the breakaway, they might as well contribute to bringing back the breakaway – otherwise, they will have no chance of winning.

Secondly, if it is a one day race like the World Championships, the best riders will tend not go in the breakaway. Therefore, it becomes self-fulfilling, weaker riders enter the breakaway – either for tactical reasons or perhaps just to get some tv exposure.

A breakaway would have more chance of winning if there were more people in the breakaway and stronger riders were in it. But, at the start of the race, teams will be looking to control who gets in the breakaway. If a strong favourite tried to sneak into the breakaway, the peloton may chase down the breakaway and bring the favourite back – rather than let the break get established.

A more interesting question is what enables a breakaway to succeed?

What enables a breakaway to succeed?

Miscalculation. Teams may use a rough rule of thumb. For example, a fast-moving peloton may feel that it can bring back 1.30 for every 10km. If there are 20km to go, and the breakaway has a gap of 3.00 – it is touch and go, so they may start making more of an effort to bring it back. However, it may be that the peloton miscalculate the strength of the breakaway and leave it too late.

If everyone waits for someone else to do it. Sprint teams wait for others to take the responsibility to bring it back. If a team of a sprinter works all day to bring back the breakaway – they may have no energy left to set up their sprinter – so they may try to do as little as work as possible during the day – let other teams do the hard work of chasing the breakaway and then be strong in the final 5km. However, if all teams try to get others to work, it can lead to a breakdown in co-operation. All sprint teams are in effect playing ‘chicken’ – seeing if others will crack and be the ones to do the work. There is an unwritten law in the peloton that if you want to be prominent in the sprint, you should at least put one rider at the front of the peloton to help bring back the breakaway. But, sometimes the co-operation of the sprint teams breaksdown and then the breakaway succeeds.

Careful pacing by breakaways. If a peloton is catching a breakaway too quickly – it will sometimes slow down so it doesn’t catch the breakaway too early. This may sound strange, but if you caught a breakaway with 50km to go – it would encourage a second breakaway – and therefore require even more effort. The ideal plan is to catch a breakaway in the last 5km. – Don’t expend more energy than you need. The breakaway can use this to their advantage. Go relatively easy for the first 200km – hoping the peloton will back off – giving them the same gap and then in the last 20km – lift the effort so the breakaway is much stronger than the peloton expected. It is like when Harry Tanfield (riding for Canyon Eisberg) a small UK Pro-Conti team) won Stage one of the Tour of Yorkshire (2018). The peloton probably expected to catch – but Tanfield was very strong on the flat and just held off the peloton.

Small teams. When the Tour de France was nine-man teams, a top sprinter like Mark Cavendish could have eight riders devoted to bringing back a breakaway and setting him up for the sprint. Breakaways are rarely bigger than eight riders so in effect one sprint team should be stronger than the breakaway – and in practise, several teams will contribute. But, in a smaller race like the Tour de Yorkshire, teams don’t have the strength in depth so there isn’t the same dominance of a team to chase down a breakaway. When Mark Cavendish won the World Race Championship in 2011, GB had a team of nine riders to spend all day chasing down the breakaway. They timed it to perfection. At the 2012 Olympics, they tried to repeat their tactics, but this time with a team of five people. It didn’t work.

Everyone lent on Great Britain to do the chasing, but they ran out of steam and the 4 GB riders couldn’t bring back a breakaway of 10-12 riders. It was also a disadvantage for GB to be such strong favourites – no-one else wanted to chase the breakaway because they felt Cavendish would win the sprint – ironically having such a strong sprinter tilted the balance towards the breakaway. Other countries thought – we don’t want a sprint, so we might as well try a breakaway (which went away quite late on Box Hill.)

Middle of a Grand Tour. In a prestigious one day race like the Tour of Flanders, early breakaways ver rarely succeed. Everyone is 100% motivated to ride for their team leader. However, in the middle of a Grand Tour like the Vuelta Espagne teams are tired, and many riders are concerned with GC (General classification) If Chris Froome is in the yellow jersey and a large breakaway goes up the road, then his team will not work too hard. They are quite happy for the breakaway to win the stage – it makes life easier for them. If the stage is a little hilly, sprinter teams may not bother working all day to chase – as they are not sure their sprinter will make it. So there is no-one to chase breakaway really hard – so many teams think breakaway is the best bet of winning the stage – so if fifteen teams have a rider in the breakaway – there’s no one left to chase it down.

Medium hilly stages. If a stage is flat – like the final stage on the Champs Elysees, everyone knows the sprinting teams will be fully committed to chasing the breakaway down. Therefore, the chances of a breakaway staying out are extremely slim – it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But, if the stage is quite hilly – and with twisty and windy roads, it makes it easier for a breakaway to succeed as sprinters teams will not be so motivated. In stage 4 of the 2018 Tour de Yorkshire, a breakaway went at the start of a very hilly stage. It was so hilly, teams were very conservative in riding, so they allowed a small breakaway to get 10 minutes by the foot of Park Rash, then Stephane Rossetto (Cofidis) rode away to win a very rare kind of all day breakaway – the reason was that teams were happy to let him go so early. They didn’t want to ride too fast at the start of such a hilly and difficult stage.

Unexpected weather. If there are strong cross winds, the peloton is likely to split up as riders ride in echelons to get protection from sidewind. A peloton split up into small parts is more likely to see breakthrough win. If there is a strong tailwind for the last 10km – this benefits the breakaway. The benefits of drafting in the peloton is less when there is a tailwind. It is often a strong headwind that kills the chances of a small breakaway.

Get lucky In 2016, Matthew Hayman won from a breakaway in Paris-Roubaix after leading riders (and pre-race favourites) caught up with the breakaway and no-one was really looking at Hayman in the five-man sprint. In 1988, a breakaway also won Paris Roubaix when relatively unknown rider Dirk Demol won. Demol was only a domestique (who had to ask his Director Sportive to pick him). But, somehow the peloton misjudged, Demol benefitted from the hugely powerful Thomas Wegmuller driving the breakaway and then Demol won a two-up sprint against Wegmuller – there is a good account of race here.

Breakaway specialists. In Grand Tours, everyone has different objectives. Several teams will be concentrating on the overall; some riders could solely to try and win a stage. Breakaway specialists include riders like Stephen Cummings (GB) and Thomas De Gendt (BEL). These are very strong powerful riders, who could, in theory, be contenders for the overall. However, for various reasons, they prefer the role of seeking individual stages – rather than the more pressured role of fighting for the GC – which means riding at the front of the peloton and watching your position for the entire three weeks. A breakaway specialist like Cummings often rides at the back of the peloton – the least stressful place – it means if there is a crash, he could lose time on GC but they don’t mind. In fact, if they lose time, it makes it easier to get in a breakaway as they are not considered a threat. In stage 8 of the 2019 tour, Thomas De Gendt was in a breakaway until the last 10km – when he simply rode away from the breakaway and held off the peloton. Very few riders could have done what he had done – he displayed the power of a GC winner. The breakaway was unexpectedly strong.

A very big breakaway – big breakaways can happen in grand tours when GC teams are happy to let people go stage hunting. This means you can ride in the breakaway and do very little work. Teams may have three riders in the breakaway – they will then choose one rider to do no work but sit on the back of the breakaway – then in the last 10-20km, the protected breakaway rider is fresh to make big effort. In a big one day race, the peloton wouldn’t allow a big breakaway – it would be chased down.

Type of roads. If you have flat wide open roads – it favours the fast-moving peloton. However, if the roads are twisty and windy, it favours smaller breakaways. This is due to the ‘whiplash effect. When you go round a narrow corner the peloton loses its momentum; if you are riding 30th wheel you have to really slow down and then accelerate around a corner. It is easier to manoeuvre a small group of 4 than a group of 100.

Slower speeds. If you are racing on a slow road surface – often called ‘grippy’ or cobbled roads, then the benefits of drafting are less and it slightly favours breakaways and less so the peloton. Aerodynamic drag increases exponentially with speed. If you are travelling at 40km/h – there is a benefit to being in the peloton. But, if it is going at 50km/ – the benefits is substantially more than 50km/h.

Do breakaways ever win the World Championships?

The World Championships are rarely won by the breakaway. The strongest riders save themselves for the final stages and rely on team mates to control the breakaway.

The post Why are breakaways nearly always caught – and when do they succeed? appeared first on Cycling uphill.

I’ve been following the tour for many years now, but this year marked a decline in the rancour and bitterness which have been there even since the innumerable drug busts, Armstrong’s fall from grace and TUE sagas. It will never return to the days of innocence (or head in the sand attitude), but it’s at a stage where the pendulum of believability and trust has swung quite significantly to a couple of decades ago. There’s now a new generation of riders who have an opportunity to race without quite the same mists of cynicism which have blighted the sport for so long.

As much as I liked to see the French do well, at the end I was disappointed Geraint Thomas couldn’t bring home another British win, but he acted like a model sportsman in happily passing the baton on to a team mate and accepting his fate with good cheer. If I was in his shoes, I would really have liked to know what I could have done on final climb which got cancelled due to the landslip. At the end of the day, 2nd place in the tour, is a huge achievement for a rider, who had a difficult season.

Egan Bernal looks like a real champion and perhaps could dominate for many years. But then people were saying that about Nairo Quintana several years ago. Poor old Movistar, three riders in the top 10, and the last mountains stage seemed to sum them up. I don’t know how they managed to contrive not to win the stage. Still, it was great to see Quintana roll back the clock and literally shoot up the mountain for at least one day.

After such an intriguing tour, next year, we’ll be hoping for more of the same. I somehow doubt we’ve seen the last of the Team Ineos mountain train. Next year there’s the distinct possibility Ineos could end up with a rider on every step of the podium – Froome, Bernal, Thomas. But, on the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if the French organisers try to replicate the drama of this year, I feel short sharp climbs near the finish may become more popular than Alpine passes of over 2,500m altitude.

I watched the race mainly on Eurosport. Bradley Wiggins was good value as the dude on a motorbike. Last Sunday, I think they were all demob happy, with Wiggins slipping in a comment about our new PM. I think I’ve enjoyed watching the tour so much I may even kind of miss Carlton Kirby. I always look forward to his annual joke about how he looks closely at the Arc de Triumph, but can never find any mention of Waterloo.

Pictures of Tour at Guardian

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It has always been a shame that the Tour de France is usually the ‘flattest’ of all Grand Tours. The Giro and Vuelta rarely fail to give real interest in the GC, but – despite the odd edition, the Tour de France GC usually ends up being fairly predictable. But, this year it is all up in the air and there seems to be a lot more positive energy around the tour. Crashes are down; there isn’t even any doping saga hanging over the tour.

I think the organisers are finally cottoning on to the idea that seven flat sprint stages don’t make for great tv. I expect for the next few years; there will be a lot of Alaphillipe style stages with short viciously steeps climbs just before the finish. If the Tour is short of ideas, I would recommend going back to Yorkshire for a good week!

Watching the tour go up the Tourmalet was a great experience. It is one of the few Alpine* style climbs I’ve ridden – what an amazing amphitheatre for sport. In terms of drama, it couldn’t match Sunday and other previous stages, but I was just enthralled by the spectacle and scenery. How I would like to be climbing up the Tourmalet on top form.

Nobody can predict with any certainty how the next week will unfold, but there is an old adage in the tour, that the best guide is a rider’s record in previous Grand Tours. Form and panache are one thing, but does the rider have the staying power for three weeks? With this in mind, I would put my money on Geraint Thomas – but not very much. He’s still struggling to gain the leadership of Team Ineos. But, a big thing in his favour is the proven ability to stay strong for a whole three-week tour. It is possible that the Alpine climbs (which are not quite as steep as the Pyrenees, will suit Thomas more than the Pyrenees.

Bernal, Alaphillipe, Buchman, Landa and to a lesser extent Kruijswijk all look very good, but as of yet, they don’t have a strong track record of winning a Grand Tour. If Alaphillipe cracks in the Alps, it will be easy to say we all expected it. But, if he doesn’t crack we will also say – well he had such good form why would he crack? It always looks obvious after the event. Anyway, the school holidays are here. A rest day today, Tuesday flat stage, but who knows a strong wind could make it very interesting.

(* I know the Tourmalet is in the Pyrenees, but I always find Pyreanean an intimidating word to spell.)

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I particularly like the men’s time trial course. A flat 40km and then a proper climb at the end. I’ve always fancied time trial courses like this. But, in the UK we seem to do them the other way – descent at the start and then flat to the finish. But, it was fantastic to see so many spectators on the last climb. And mostly they were very well behaved. The odd one who misbehaved got properly treated by the Norwegian Police.

The Tour de France should invite those policemen over. If every idiot running up Alpe d’Huez in a mankini got similar treatment, the sport would be so much the better.

The women’s road race was good, and so was the men’s. Even the footage going blank for the last 3km had its own kind of drama. Relying on a fixed camera is like watching the race in person. You wait for ages, excitement building, and then for a few fleeting seconds, the race passes by. It’s good up to a point, though I have to say it’s not how I would choose to watch every race.

Last 4km via helicopter you probably missed on telly

Soon the world champs will come to Yorkshire (2019) and it is a mouth-watering prospect. I hope the organisers pick up the good points from Norway. It’s a tough act to follow, but if anyone can, Yorkshire can.

Now for a bit of shameless self-promotion.

Regular readers of the blog may know my main ‘job’ is writing about economics. In fact, readers with a long memory may remember a few years ago, when rather bizarrely they temporarily saw here a post published on the French current account deficit. (I had got confused between my cycling and economics blogs.)

This year has been lamentable on the cycling front, but I have published a book on economics. In the UK it is called “Cracking Economics”

It’s a ‘cracking read’ full of well – economics, with pictures and diagrams to make it a bit more readable. Just in case, you’ve always wanted to know about the paradox of thrift and the impact of higher interest rates …

• Cracking economics at Amazon.co.uk – Hardcover £14.99 (Kindle edition £6.99)
• Cracking Economics at Waterstones – £14.99

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If any cyclist epitomises the spirit of British cycling it is Chris Boardman.

• Domestic time triallist, multiple national champion – from national hill climb to national 25 mile TT competition record holder.
• Olympic track cyclist. Gold medal in 1992 Barcelona Olympics (Britain’s first gold on track for 72 years).
• Three times world hour record holder.
• Multiple world champion on road and track.
• First British wearer of yellow jersey since Tom Simpson in 1968.

Even post-retirement Boardman has hardly stopped.

• Key figure in development of British Cycling as dominant force in track cycling post retirement. Worked in British Cycling’s ‘Secret Squirrel Club’
• Founder of Boardman bikes.
• Leading spokesperson on cycling advocacy.

Boardman has an impressive CV, and one thing you pick up from autobiography is a restless, inquisitive chap with boundless energy. The book could have been labelled the ‘many lives of Chris Boardman.’

Chris Boardman ‘Superman position’

Obssessive sportsman

It’s not all about listing off achievements. You get an insight into the difficult years, poor results and also Boardman’s obsessive sportsman personality. The most interesting thing in book is how post-retirement, he became more aware of different perspectives of approaching life – a more rounded approach than obsessive self-oriented goals of a sportsman. For the many sporting obsessives who get sucked into their own career and performance would benefit from reading Boardman’s perspective. One important aspect of the book is Boardman’s attempt to find balance in life – something he’s not always been successful in doing.

***

My favourite part of the whole book is the confession that – the night after his wedding – he got up at 5.30am to do a hill climb on ‘Nick ‘O Pendle’. It wasn’t even a national championship – it was an open event but the only chance to ride course before the big event later in the year. This is dedication to the hill climb cause. A few weeks later (1988) Boardman who the first of his three national hill climb titles on the Nick O Pendle.

***

Boardman rode through one of the darkest eras of professional cycling. Turning pro in 1993. Leaving the sport in 2000. It was an era of insufficient drug controls, and and explosion in the use of new drugs like EPO. I’ve read so many ‘confessional drug autobiographies’ I took a vow – after reading Tyler Hamilton’s book – I would never read another. I’ve had my fill of doping confessionals for a lifetime, so it is kind of rare to read an autobiography from that period where you can have faith in the athlete. Boardman writes very little about doping per se. He briefly mentions the unpredictability of results and how in late 1990s, unexpected riders could suddenly start to produce very impressive time trials. Boardman noted how it got harder and the speed in the mountains was something he could never live with (despite obsessions over weight). Boardman’s main point is to describe how (after he crashed out of 1998 prologue) the Festina crisis exploded a few days later. He writes this directly after ‘the unpredictability of results’. But, that is about it. It would have been interesting to hear more thoughts on this subject, but from what I’ve heard Boardman always said he didn’t want to risk his health, and that’s about it.

***

Conclusion

I read the book in a few days, and it is worth buying. It provides an interesting and humorous look at Boardman’s life and career. It also provides a good overview of the development of British cycling from the late 1980s to the present day. Although, it comes from one person’s point of view, it is as good as any for understanding the evolution of British Cycling.

Related

• Chris Boardman on hill climbs
• Chris Boardman’s autobiography at Amazon
• Chris Boardman autiobiography at Waterstones

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At least this week, there were none of the completely flat 200km stages. Some individual stages were quite interesting and, even if the GC battle didn’t completely fire on all cylinders, at least the small time gaps were sufficient to give hope.

Overall, I thought it was a good race. Compared to watching the tour 15 years ago, I like the cyclists involved. I haven’t followed the recent furore of TUEs too closely, but it seems the peloton is very different to the bad old days of ‘he must not be named.’

I like seeing French riders do well, and it was a good tour for the French, who have the most exciting crop of new cyclists. This year Froome showed fewer signs of invulnerability, and a future French winner in a few years looks a real possibility. Whether it is Bardet, Barguil, Lilian Calmejane or Pierre Latour – they have a lot to choose from.

L’Equippe evaluated that if you only included the mountain stages, Froome would have finished 3rd. With the winner being Uran or Bardet (can’t remember which). In the last time trial, Bardet did look completely out of place fighting his time trial bike up the steep hill; from my armchair, he looked more like a club rider doing the Buxton Mountain Time Trial – than a Grand Tour winner. Chris Froome went up the climb like he was completely in control. After the stage, Steve Cummings admitted he thought his team had got their gearing wrong and were over-geared making the climb too difficult. It seems such an elementary mistake of getting the wrong gearing is something that every team is capable of – every team – except Sky of course. Whatever you think of them, they always seem to be the best prepared. Though it does help when you have the talent to go with logistics. You could have had a pretty good Tour de France GC battle, just between members of Sky – Geraint Thomas, Mikel Landa, Michael Kwiatkowski all seem to have the capacity to win a Grand Tour.

In the end, Bardet’s dire time trial (dire in relative terms, of course) was just enough to keep the podium place by one second. If Sky’s Landa had pushed the Frenchman off the podium at the last minute, the atmosphere might have soured even more.

Not that it seemed to bother Froome. In responding to the challenges of a Brit riding in France, Froome frequently shows a degree of emotional intelligence and maturity which is rare in top sportsman. Another sportsman may have been peeved, but to his credit, Froome laughed it off as inconsequential. It is an attitude which gains the admiration of many – maybe even the French on the quiet. To put in perspective, Merckx and Anquetil (a Frenchman) both were booed – their crime to be the dominant rider of their generation.

I think Bardet should come over to the UK for a few months and learn how to ride time trials. A few times up and down the V718, getting beaten by 45-year old amateurs and he might learn to keep his head in the right place.

The other interesting thing is whether the organisers of the Tour de France would dare to remove all flat time trials and make it a tour for the French climbers?

Tour de France 2018

Looking forward to 2018, there is a bewildering range of possible challengers to Froome.

• Tom Dumoulin (Giro winner and top TT)
• Richie Porte (shame he crashed this year)
• Nairo Quintana (who presumably will not do another four Grand Tours in succession.
• Romain Bardet (if he can get better at TT’s)
• Rigoberto Uran (who crept up anonymously into second place, refinding the form of a few years ago
• Warren Barguil. Whose ability to climb away from GC riders on the last stage was quite impressive.
• Fabio Aru. (yellow jersey wearer who might need to practise riding in Chris Froome’s wheels a little)
• Mikel Landa (as long he doesn’t stay at Sky)
• Dan Martin (maybe doesn’t quite have the legs, but he deserves to be up there for his attacking attitude.

Then there is the next generation of riders, who may or may not be able to make the next leap forward. From this list, you could pick from many of the Yates brothers, Pierre La Tour, or Louis Meintjes

There are even possibility of riders who won’t be able to challenge because they are super-domestiques, a la Geraint Thomas and Kwiatkowski.

The post Tour de France 2017 review appeared first on Cycling uphill.

I spent more time watching Tour de Yorkshire than the Tour de France. On Saturday I enjoyed seeing Lizzie Deignan and Anne van der Breggen fly up the Cote du Lofthouse, that was a good race. The third stage on Sunday was great because it went past my old school Bradford Grammar, up Hollins Hill and past Menston all the way to Burnsall. Yesterday, there was tremendous interest in the page on Shibden Wall – the 21% cobbled climb.

Watching tv, I thought the Peleton weren’t going at full flight on Shibden Wall – perhaps not but when I saw the times on Strava I knew that looks can be deceptive – it was still pretty quick. I have ridden it once and now want to go back and have another go.

In the end, after 10,000 ft of climbing, it was a good finale to the race with Serge Pauwels hanging onto a slender advantage and taking the first win of his pro career.

I took some shots of my tv, but it doesn’t do justice to some of the crowds in the road.

Shibden Wall

Shibden Wall

Holmfirth

Related

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The Vuelta is squeezed into a difficult slot in the calendar – September, just before the World Championships – but it often provides the most drama for the general classification battle, something that often eludes the Tour de France. The recent editions of the Vuelta have all provided great racing, intrigue and a see-saw battle between the top contenders. The organisers have thrown the rule book for grand tours out of the window and created stages which seem to create more attacking racing. Shorter stages, innumerable mountain tops. The sprinters union may complain and the likes of Cavendish, Greipel have voted with their feet – preferring the Tour of Britain. But, whilst it is good to see the top sprinters in full flight, the excitement lasts perhaps for the final 1km – it’s all over before you can work out where everyone is. What we really want to see is epic battles over mountains.

Yesterday’s Queen stage in the Vuelta was gripping, with three races for the price of one. The race for the stage win (won by R. Gesink), the daring attack by Orica Bike Exchange, which saw three Orica domestiques up the road come back to help Simon Yates gain over a minute on his main rivals and move up from 7th to 4th place in the GC. But, this was all trumped by the ongoing battle between Quintana and Froome. A dual which has been building up for the past two weeks. Usually, the red jersey wearer is the one who defends, but Quintana knows he needs a bit more time before the flat time trial which will favour Froome. The result is the constant attacks and efforts to drop Froome. Earlier in the race, when Froome was sticking rigidly to his power meter level, he allowed Quintana to gain time, but yesterday he stuck much closer. Perhaps Froome will try to attack today.

In the Tour de France, the number of summit / hill finishes seems to be strictly limited, giving climbers only a limited number of opportunities. But, the Vuelta has thrown in a record number. Why not have four summit finishes in six days? There’s no one to say otherwise. Like the Tour, the Vuelta has some epic scenery – especially in the north. The Basque country  has a Yorkshire feel. Up and down all day, short steep hills to make the terrain more unexpected. Perhaps they should try run the Tour de France in Spain – which is ironic because the best stage of this years Vuelta was run through France.

More than the course

Of course, it’s more than just the course design. The Tour de France has sought hard to vary the racing, copying many of the tactics of the Vuelta, but ultimately race organisers can’t organise the form of the top riders. If Quintana hadn’t been off form in the Tour, we may have been saying this years Tour de France was the best race of the season. Also, another factor is that the most financially strong team in the peloton (Sky) approach the Tour de France with the same kind of focus GB give the Olympics. To the Tour they take their top riders in top form. To the Vuelta, Sky still probably have the strongest team, but it’s not quite the disparity we saw in the Tour. Also, there is no question of Froome peaking for the Vuelta. It’s not an afterthought (Froome does have unfinished business with the Vuelta), but it’s been a long-season with a draining trip to Rio.

Perhaps the secret of a more successful Tour de France is to give Froome a one minute handicap – perhaps breaking his bike and making him run up a mountain on one stage. That would level the playing field and make it really exciting. Alternatively, they could hold the Tour de France in Yorkshire. Just go endlessly around the Yorkshire Dales with summit finishes on Fleet Moss – that would probably upset the apple cart.

Meanwhile viewing figures for the Vuelta are starting to rival that of the Tour, and who can blame the viewers. It may not have the same global media coverage, but those who like pro-ycling, know the Vuelta is something not to miss.

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Great Britain has made a great start to the velodrome; in fact to an outsider it can appear winning a gold medal is almost taken for granted, but GB men’s sprint team was 15/1 at the start of the games. The last time they won a major championship was in 2012.

Chris Hoy makes a good person to have in velodrome. He is is articulate and passionate, with a certain gravitas – not always present with BBC presenters. Though, last night, he kept looking over his shoulder trying to watch the racing going on behind – rather that answering endless questions on Bradley Wiggins’ frame of mind. I must admit I would have rather watched the racing too.

Still in the end, the 4km pursuit final was a real epic contest. Defying the pundits predictions, Australia ran GB very closely. When the third man of GB got slightly detached on the last lap, it was really touch and go. It was an epic moment of the Olympics, for both Wiggins’ 5th gold medal, but also the closeness of the contest.

Confidence

It was interesting to hear the real confidence many in the GB squad have in themselves. After losing the worlds in March (by very small margin to Australia), Bradley Wiggins seemed utterly confident in saying “But, we will definitely win the Olympics”. If it had been someone else, it may have come across as bravado, but it was said with the real conviction, that they knew more was to come.

In another era, Ed Clancy’s 3rd consecutive gold medal would be headline news. But in the Olympic gold rush, post national lottery funding, he can, like Steven Burke, fly under the radar. But, I get the impression the likes of Ed Clancy, Jason Kenny and others are quite happy with their relative low profile.

Peaking for the Olympics

In my own cycling career, I have spent quite a few years trying to peak for national hill climb at the end of October. It is all a bit hit and miss, and surprisingly difficult to do. But, GB do seem to have perfected the art of not just an annual peak, but a peak for a four year Olympic cycle. It helps when you have such clarity of purpose – Olympic medals above all else.

***

I was watching an interview with a British shooter (Steven Scott) who won a bronze medal in the double trap, by beating his own club member. He was so sincerely happy at the experience of getting a bronze medal it was quite humbling. This is the kind of thing I like about the Olympics, it’s not just the number of gold medals, but seeing people have a great experience after years of hard work.

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Yesterday, I was meandering  home on the back road from Bolton Abbey to Ilkley, trying to shake off some tight muscles.  Unexpectedly, I caught a brief glimpse of Lizzie Armitstead – resplendent in her World Champions jersey.

I was cycling in one direction at 20mph, and she was cycling 20mph in the opposite direction. It was just enough to get a short glimpse of the famous white jersey and rainbow stripes. It is the first time I’ve seen a World Championship jersey in the flesh, and I have to say it gave a real inner thrill. She seemed pretty happy chatting to a fellow cyclist, which was good to see after a difficult few weeks for her.

Lizzie Armitstead comes from Otley, two miles from Menston. Otley CC was my first cycling club. I’m 99.9% certain it was Lizzie Armitstead, otherwise there is someone doing a very good impersonation, plus wearing a proper World Champions jersey.

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During the Tour de France I tried to limit my viewing time to 30-50 mins a day. I don’t have time to watch a whole stage. But, I made an exception for the Olympic road race, and watched the last 3-4 hours live. It felt like a three hours well spent. The scenery was beautiful, the setting epic and the racing high quality. It was helped by a good performance by the GB team, with a medal a possibility all the way until Thomas crashed out on the final descent. Everyone had a good race – Stannard and Cummings chasing the early powerful breakaway and then Thomas slipping into the first chase group as the race hotted up. Yates latching on to lead group, but not quite having legs. Froome didn’t have the climbing legs of the Tour, but considering his one day history, had a reasonably good race.

The race was finely poised throughout the last couple of hours with the Italians and Adam Yates sneaking into the lead group on the penultimate ascent / descent. It was a shame Yates and Froome didn’t have quite the legs. But, they weren’t the only Tour de France climbers to struggle on the ‘climbers course’ Other pre-race favourites Like Woet Poels, Valverde, Dan Martin all finding the course unbelievably hard. Of 144 starters, 63 made it to the finish.

For a pure climbers course, it didn’t quite play out like that. The racing was so unrelenting, it became more of a course for those who could endure rather than the pure speed of a mountain goat.

The only downside to the enjoyment was the sight of riders crashing out on the treacherous descent – almost falling like flies. It reminds me of that early Tour de France quote by a rider disgusted to be riding up mountains on mud tracks – “You’re assassins.” shouted Octave Lapize to the organisers.

Nibali looked the strongest rider in the race. Yet on this occasion, perhaps the dare-devil descender took one risk too many. You can’t help but feel sorry for all the riders who crashed on the very difficult descent. But for those who have won races on the basis of taking risks on descents – there is always going to be a flip side to pushing the limit.

Overall

Nasty crashes excepted, it was a wonderful showcase for one day cycling. After the drama of the cycling road race, it felt a bit of a let down to go to other sports like swimming which seemed flat in comparison. With the right course, the cycling road race is one of the flagship events outside the Olympic stadium

It was also another good argument for smaller teams. Smaller teams tip the balance more to break-aways forcing more aggressive racing and rewarding risk taking.

Like many others have said, if Greg Van Avermet could get over the climbs, Peter Sagan must be thinking what he could have done on the course. Still it will be interesting to watch Sagan in the mountain bike event.

Given it didn’t work out for GB, I was glad to see a cycling nation with long history – Belgium – claim the gold medal.

GB finished 11th, 12th and 15th. It was a good performance and it was great to see the GB on the front foot for all the race. Even with the benefit of hindsight it’s hard to see a better result.

TV coverage was OK. It would have been good to have better information about gaps, though the fact they appeared and then disappeared kind of added to the uncertainty and drama. The live commentary was a bit different to the high octane Eurosport version of Carlton Kirby. There were even lengthy pauses where nothing was said. But, I didn’t mind – just very different.

Women’s road race is today. Unfortunately, due to recent events I don’t have same enthusiasm for watching for three hours. But, maybe I will change my mind when I start watching.

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