Stupid question abt TDF

Quoted post said:

Originally Posted by novetan [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG]

Still very new to cycling but beginning to enjoy watching TDF.

Some ignorant question
1) if one of the team member injured, can it be replaced?
2) a diff in timing is shown bet breakaway grp and yellow jersey. Is this timing taken as from the 1st rider of the peleton or the yellow jersey rider cause he can be last of the peleton.
3) how many sec is allowed between riders in order to achieve same timing? I understand is within a sec from the front rider. Is tht correct?

1) no, once a rider is injured or misses the time cut, they're out of the race.
2) first rider
3) I'm not sure, I assume it's left to the commissaires discretion

Welcome to the best sport on the planet.

3. Today's road stage timing had 2-second splits minimum between riders FWIW.

Quoted post said:

Originally Posted by ambal [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG]

1) no, once a rider is injured or misses the time cut, they're out of the race.
2) first rider
3) I'm not sure, I assume it's left to the commissaires discretion

Welcome to the best sport on the planet.

Item 3, u mean there is no fixed timing? So race to race differs?

I presume there is an electronic tag onto the bike which can even record diff of micro sec. So just wonder why 1 sec can't be differentiated. Or is it rule is set to ignore diff of 1, 2 or even 3 sec. Sorry, some stupid question but I'm just curious abt this.

Quoted post said:

Originally Posted by novetan [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG]

I presume there is an electronic tag onto the bike which can even record diff of micro sec. So just wonder why 1 sec can't be differentiated. Or is it rule is set to ignore diff of 1, 2 or even 3 sec. Sorry, some stupid question but I'm just curious abt this.

Stage races publish a race technical guiide prior to the start of the racing. The rules of competition are clarified in the tech guide. Most rules such as what defines legal bicycles and expected behavior of riders and teams is already spelled out in the UCI rules but many details are defined for the race in question. This might range to things like whether there will be 30 second or 1 minute gaps between riders in individual time trials or the length of a gap in a pack finish to define gruppetos for timing purposes. One second gap timing is not unusual and I've been on the wrong side of that one a couple of times in a stage race crit finish where I rolled in thinking I was comfortably same time without contesting the sprint only to find out there was a gap ahead of slightly over one second and now I'm several more seconds down on GC even though I thought I was safely tucked in. It sounds like 2 second gap timing was defined for this race.

There are also other on the fly adjustments that happen fairly often. For instance the tech guide almost always states a finishing time relative to the leader's time that all riders must meet or they cannot proceed to the following stage and must withdraw from the race. That will often be 110% of the winner's time or something along those lines. But very often a large group of support riders and often the sprint specialists will gather together and stay together till the finish even though they're far behind the winner. The race officials generally won't enforce the tight timing rule in those situations and allow the entire group of late arriving cyclists to continue even though they're well outside the time limit. It all depends on how many of them are back there together as the officials typically balk at eliminating large groups of riders that are together but well back at the end of something like a big mountain stage.

So there are permanent (they can change annually) UCI rules, there are race specific rules defined in the tech guide, and then there are some judgement calls that happen traditionally in certain situations. It can be confusing but that's the traditional way that rules are handled for races like the TDF.

-Dave

Quoted post said:

Originally Posted by novetan [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG]

I presume there is an electronic tag onto the bike which can even record diff of micro sec. So just wonder why 1 sec can't be differentiated. Or is it rule is set to ignore diff of 1, 2 or even 3 sec. Sorry, some stupid question but I'm just curious abt this.

Unless CampyBob knows something different, I believe it's been a 1 second gap for a long long time. More recently Jan Bakelants would be a good example of that one - there definitely wasn't 2 seconds between his back wheel and Sagan's front wheel.

According to Les Rulz Officiale as specified in Page 27/42 of the Sporting Stakes/Rules of the 100th Tour Of France (English half of the rule book):

ARTICLE 14 Timekeeping
At a finish, all the riders in the same peloton
are credited with the same finish time. At each
clear break, the timekeeper records a new time.
He officiates until the arrival of the “broomwagon”.
He also records the times of riders
who arrive outside the permitted times and
delivers this list, with the corresponding times,
to the Chairman of the Stewards’ Committee. All
times registered by the timekeeper are rounded
down to the nearest second, and only these
rounded times are taken into consideration for
the general ranking. The ranking for time trial
stages is determined by using hundredths of
a second, as several riders may indeed finish
within a second or less of each other.

letour.comTDF13 reglement BD.pdfOpen ↗

With the modern timing chip on the bike, timing can be tracked to fractions of a second. Bike swaps/changes require the use of the camera.

Thanks Dave, Campy.

Good explanation and good read.

Cheers