The Official Tour De France discussion thread.

[meehs]

Wow! You resurrected an old thread with this question!

When a rider is referred to as being "dropped", it simply means that he is no longer able to maintain the pace of the peloton (or whatever group he may be riding with) and thus falls off the back, no longer able to keep up.

 

[Robear]

Wow! You resurrected an old thread with this question!

When a rider is referred to as being "dropped", it simply means that he is no longer able to maintain the pace of the peloton (or whatever group he may be riding with) and thus falls off the back, no longer able to keep up.

And if he rides faster and catches up, he can be back in? This is not an end to the man's ride, is it?

 

[meehs]

And if he rides faster and catches up, he can be back in? This is not an end to the man's ride, is it?

No, it's definitely not the end for a dropped rider. They can pull it together and catch back up to the group if they have it in them. It seemed as though Voekler was dropped a dozen times last year only to regroup and make it back to the peloton!

 

[Robear]

No, it's definitely not the end for a dropped rider. They can pull it together and catch back up to the group if they have it in them. It seemed as though Voekler was dropped a dozen times last year only to regroup and make it back to the peloton!

Thanks, Meahs.

 

[meehs]

Thanks, Meahs.

No problem. One caveat I just thought of though. There is a time limit that's calculated for each stage. It's some weird percentage of the finishing time of the peloton or something like that (some coefficient they use based on the difficulty of the stage, etc...). Anyway if a rider is dropped and subsequently falls so far back that he fails to finish the stage within the deadline, the rider is out of the race. So in that instance being dropped can mean the end for a rider. That's what happened to Jens Voight this year. Yellow jersey one day, out of the race the next. Poor *******!