need a lesson in cycling

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could some explain to me how the team concept and strategy works on cycling. When a team "attacks" lance armstrong what does that entail? how does his team "defend" him? Aren't they all just trying to win a race?

thanks

[Victor]

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could some explain to me how the team concept and strategy works on cycling. When a team "attacks" lance armstrong what does that entail? how does his team "defend" him? Aren't they all just trying to win a race?

thanks

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because of physics it is better to behind a few riders. you are in the slipstream and the riders in front of you are doing more work while you are essentially resting. so teams pull their main rider, i.e. lance, ullrich, etc. so long as they have teammates around them they are doing less work and saving their energy for later.

the team with control of the yellow jersey or with riders who have a shot at winning want to keep their leader in contention. so, it is their responsibility to chase down breakaways. so the entire team will ride fast in the front of the peloton doing more work and expending more energy than all the other riders to chase down breakaways.

because of the yellow jersey factor it would be better for lance if he lost the yellow jersey to some frenchie for the next couple days. then, team discovery would not chase down the breakaways but the french team would because of the honor of the yellow jersey (especially for the french)

[Macdaddy Warsaw]

If you watch the coverage on OLN, they usually show a good shot of the front of a pack whether it be the peloton or the chase group, and you should see a cyclist come up to the front and be in the lead for about 3-5 seconds before somebody else comes in front of him and so on. It's pretty cool to watch.

[Arnfinn Madsen]

I guess you refer to the stage of today. I am a Tour de France-freak (watching updates on the internet before the TV coverag starts every day /images/graemlins/smirk.gif).

There are many elements of team tactics and most of them are actually quite irrelevant to Armstrong as tactics plays a bigger role on flatter stages than on the climbs.

But, reasons for Telecoms actions as I see it today. Since staying on an opponents wheel is much easier than being in front the yellow yersey has a benefit. As long as he manages to stay on the wheel of his opponent his opponent will burn more energy than him (which also has consequences for later days). Armstrong has used this tactics a lot, sometimes he has rode whole stages just staying on Ullrich's wheel.

If Telecom lets Lance succeed in this defence strategy Lance will easily win as he already has a lead and probably will beat all Telecom-riders in the time trial.

So basically Telecom needs to get a good rider ahead of Lance in the general classification so that Lance will need to attack (which will cost him more energy).

Today, they sent Vinokourov on the attack. They did this probably since Vinokourov has managed earlier to keep his lead on Lance when he has been ahead. Today's stage also had a downhill finish and Vinokourov is good downhill so I guess Vinokourov's attacks really scared Lance. If Lance had had a team mate, his team mate could have given Lance a wheel and used his energy to catch Vinokourov and it would be 1-1. Now Lance had to catch Vinokourov himself and Ullrich and Klöden could just use Armstrong's wheel, 1-0 to Telekom.

Then Telekom sent Klöden and Lance just had to accept that cat and mouse games with 3 opponents without having any helpers is even beyond his capacity. He thus focused on keeping Ullrich and Vinokourov in check.

Klöden gained important seconds in the general classification making this tactic even more powerful next time.