Le Tour de France: The Perfect Individual / Team Sport

Like I've said before, I don't have a TV in Freddie. So when I go home for a few days it's actually a very foreign experience to be able to passively sit and take in a form of non-participatory entertainment / information. When I go home I tend to get drawn into things like 24-hour cable news and financial news channels. Watching a story get teased out, detail by detail, throughout the day on CNN is the ultimate suspense-mechanism, and is true brain-candy that those fake reality shows can't even hope to approach.

My other obsession this weekend was the non-stop coverage of the Tour de France on the Outdoor Life Network. Being a veteran of SpeedVision's 24 Hours of Le Mans coverage I'm used to this type of race coverage. But the mundane details of bicycle racing that are never touched on in the SportsCentre reports are what make it incredibly fascinating.

In auto racing they have teams, they can be one, two or occasionally 3 cars in size and are a good way of giving props to the mechanics and pit crews and everyone else involved in making the process come together before the driver even slips into the car.

But in auto racing, teammates are supposed to compete against each other as hard as they do against other drivers. In fact it can be the basis of governing body appeals if one team member is suspected of compromising the integrity of the race to help out his teammate in some way, either by blocking racers behind him to allow his teammate to extend his lead, or by actually allowing his teammate past him in some obvious way. Also, the intra-team rivalries can be even more fierce than any others. Consider Jacques Villeneuve's psychological warfare he waged against a succession of F1 teammates from then-champion Damon Hill and once-promising Heinz-Herald Frentzen, down to BAR minnows like Ricardo Zonta. Also going back to the Prost-vs.-Senna rivalry at McLaren in the 1980s. That's not to say that it isn't the best way to do things in racing, dirty tricks on the part of teams do nothing but subtract from the spectacle and the purity of the sport itself.

But in bicycle racing, the team consists of numerous other cyclists who are under the same banner, wear the same uniforms, and work in consort with each other. Their goal is to help their point man do as well as possible, and they each have their individual strengths that play some part in the overall race.

A Lance Armstrong could never hope to go through an entire race at the front of the pack. The extra work required when there is no one breaking the air in front of you is the main reason for this. Also a front-runner might be a tempting target for a bribed or frustrated backmarker to bump off the track.

So the point man's has his teammates take turns riding in front of him to break the air. They alternate so that they stay fresh and are not holding up the point guy, then fall back when they are done their shift. There is also usually a guy behind the point man ensuring enough space between him and his rivals.

There are also hill-climbing specialists and pacemakers, who pay close attention to maintaining a pace which doesn't tire out the point man too quickly, so he doesn't have to pay attention to his own pace while also being pulled by the desire to push too hard. Pushing too hard is the killer for long-distance athletes, and is the reason most marathon runners prefer to run by themselves and concentrate on their own pace. In bicycle racing they have their teammate to keep them in a good pace.

They have radio communication and move in graceful, coordinated fashion surrounding the point men.

Rival teams even work together when it helps their respective point men. Lance Armstrong's US Postal Service team were alone at the front of the pack at one point, part of a strategy to keep a rival Spanish team in behind. A member of the team motioned behind him at Hans Ullrich's T-Mobile teammates, who were coasting along behind them, to come share the work of being at the front, since they were both benefitting from the Spaniards being held back. The T-Mobile team then moved easily up and interspersed themselves with the Postal Service team to work together.

These kinds of complexities, and shifting alliances, are not found in most other sports, especially in North America, and it adds so much depth to the competition that I was glued to video of men pounding relentlessly on pedals for hours at a time.

The Armstrong-centric coverage on OLN can be a bit tiresome, but he is the favourite so it's not entirely uncalled-for.

Link: Tour de France English Language Coverage.