Unusual Standings

in 523602 20060817 205214 'Ed Sullivan said:

After the 3rd stage of the Tour du Limousin, 15 riders are within a
minute of the lead and everyone else is over 9 minutes back. I don't
think I ever seen such a distribution in GC.

Remember that stage of the Vuelta a few years back when half the contenders
were nearly 15 minutes back? Rominger was one of them.

"Ed Sullivan" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
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Quoted message said:

After the 3rd stage of the Tour du Limousin, 15 riders are within a
minute of the lead and everyone else is over 9 minutes back. I don't
think I ever seen such a distribution in GC.

I think there was one year when only something like 30 guys were in front of
Tirreno-Adriatico. The rest got eliminated due to time delay. The organizers
were pretty strict that year..

Ed Sullivan said:

After the 3rd stage of the Tour du Limousin, 15 riders are within a
minute of the lead and everyone else is over 9 minutes back. I don't
think I ever seen such a distribution in GC.

It's a pretty common pattern for a smaller stage race. A medium sized
break gets lots of time on stage 1, and breakaways are allowed to go in
the subsequent stages to take stage glory but not threaten GC. If
there's no TT, then quite often the guy who wins the first stage wins
overall.

Jeff (has seen results of many smaller stage races)

Mark said:

"Ed Sullivan" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

After the 3rd stage of the Tour du Limousin, 15 riders are within a
minute of the lead and everyone else is over 9 minutes back. I don't
think I ever seen such a distribution in GC.

Quoted message said:

I think there was one year when only something like 30 guys were in front of
Tirreno-Adriatico. The rest got eliminated due to time delay. The organizers
were pretty strict that year..

There was also the 2004 Giro della Provincia de Lucca. Just 18 riders
finished the 3rd and penultimate stage and started the next day - the
rest were all kicked out as they entered the finishing circuit. Petacchi
was one of those disqualified, even though he had won both stage 1 and 2
of the race.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/photos.php?id=photos/2004/feb04/lucca04/stage4/6