Why Was Today's Stage Harder For Lance?

email hidden said:

Why was it harder for Lance alone today than T-Mobile?

It's all idle speculation.

Could be both Kloden and Vino are now more tired than Lance.

Or not.

In article <[email hidden]>,

Quoted post said:

Why was it harder for Lance alone today than T-Mobile? I could understand
Lance's disadvantage if I looked at the T-Mobile riders and they were
drafting each other or something like that. But from what I could see,
Vinkourok, Kloden and Ullrich were each doing their own thing, as was Lance.

From a physical point of view, the idea was that each T-M rider could
attempt an attack, and see if Lance responded. Ullrich was specifically
and obviously shadowing Armstrong.

First, Vino made a few attack attempts, all of which Lance tracked
closely. Then, after he had had to respond, Vino sat in while Kloden
took a shot. Lance didn't respond, so Kloden got away.

So, let's look at the situations that didn't occur: had Lance chased
Kloden down, T-Mobile could have then let him catch Kloden, and then
they could have sent Vino again, or Ullrich. Had Lance's chase been a
little slow to start, they could have done two deadly things: U and V
would have sat on his wheel as he pulled them towards Kloden, and Kloden
could have sat up early to give himself a rest. Guess what happens as
soon as Lance catches Kloden? U or V (or even K, since he's been
noodling) counterattacks!

All of this, mind, on a slope where they were reportedly climbing at 40
km/h, which means drafting was a greater concern than usual.

Quoted message said:

I couldn't see how today's race was any easier for Lance than, say, for
Ullrich. Could someone explain this?

The biggest deal is that dramatic changes in pace, such as accelerations
or pulling at the front, hurt more than a steady, in-the-pack pace. By
forcing Lance to chase not one, but every escape, only to find that they
were mostly doomed, but still cost him effort. In this stage, Armstrong
(and by Armstrong, I mean Team Discovery, and by Team Discovery, I mean
Johan Brunyeel) made the sensible tactical choice to let Kloden go,
since he wasn't really a GC factor.

But the thing that was given up was that Kloden gained so much time that
he has become a GC factor, albeit one mitigated by what is apparently
mediocre TTing. At worst, the long-term outcome of this stage is that
T-Mobile has burned up Kloden, if he really did make too much of an
effort.

Meanwhile, Jan is riding a steady pace, and really hasn't burned any
matches. This was a success for T-Mobile.

The other counter-scenario is the question of what would have happened
if Lance had a teammate around. Very possibly, the teammate could have
been tasked with shadowing Kloden, for several reasons. One important
function would be to draft him up the hill, then poach a race position
to rob him of bonus time. Another important function would be to serve
as a counter-GC threat.

I think it was 2004 or 2005 that USPS got a rider into a break, and
other teams looked at Lance Armstrong, MJ bearer, to go to the front and
chase down a break which threatened to get away. He and his declined,
the tactical reason being that the team had a member in the break, so if
the break did get away, it just meant transferring the yellow jersey to
the other rider!

The break got caught, and USPS did no work.

The micro version of this is the rude and simple Cat 4 Crit tactic best
described as "my team wants to hurt all of you." If you have several
reasonably strong riders on your team, and doubly so if you have another
very strong sprinter, you can very ably shell the pack by sending out
attack after attack. First, you get one rider off the front. Then some
part of the pack does the work to chase them down. This chase may also
eliminate some of the weaker riders, which is all good. Any time a rider
who isn't on your team goes out the back door, that's one less rider who
can beat you or crash you.

The real trick is to use this tactic at its maximally demoralizing and
fatiguing, by constantly counterattacking. If one of your riders is off
the front, the work to chase him back is likely being done by one or
more strong opponents. But because of the game-theory nature of working
at the front of the pack (most notably, the fact that every time a rider
chases down a break, he's making it less likely that he himself will
either be able to escape or sprint; the converse is that for the good of
the pack, somebody should chase the break down...), riders are not very
happy about working.

When you counterattack immediately, the whole pack gets no rest. All of
a sudden the riders at the front don't feel like working, because they
just chased something down. So you get away, at least until some new
sucker/opponent/triathlete can be sucked into doing the pack's work for
it.

Eventually you either tire out or smarten up all the suckers. The pack
is depleted by the accelerations, your riders have mostly been
free-riding, and the strong men on the other teams have been chasing you
down all day. That's when the next attack comes, and that attack
succeeds.

Racing is more complex than that, and you still have to be stronger than
your opponent, but for Cat 4, that will probably do.

--
Ryan Cousineau [email hidden] http://www.wiredcola.com/
"I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics
to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." -Paul Erdos

Well explained thanks.

-T

Quoted message said:

.................
--
Ryan Cousineau [email hidden] http://www.wiredcola.com/
"I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics
to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." -Paul Erdos

email hidden said:

Why was it harder for Lance alone today than T-Mobile? I could understand
Lance's disadvantage if I looked at the T-Mobile riders and they were
drafting each other or something like that. But from what I could see,
Vinkourok, Kloden and Ullrich were each doing their own thing, as was Lance.

I couldn't see how today's race was any easier for Lance than, say, for
Ullrich. Could someone explain this?

Jason

Lance ok to chase Kloden.
Not too tired.
Just don't want to catch.
Or Vino attack again.
No chase biggest time gap.
Then no have to chase closest time gap.
Plenty of late chase to do again today.

D