Irish cycling 'braced for best year in two decades'
In the lead-up to the FBD Insurance Rás which starts on Sunday May 23 and runs until Sunday May 30, breakingnews.ie gives you a run-down of the basics of professional cycling.
Like most sports, the professional cycling calendar is organized around a random-seeming sequence of big and small events, events which are all sanctioned by the sport's iron-fisted Vatican, the Lausanne Swiss-based Union Cycliste International (UCI). Those races can be divided into three categories, each of which exists as its own specialty.
; the most storied of which are called classics and where Irish hard-man Sean Kelly made his career. Included here are April’s famed one-day races, century-old contests held in Northern France, Belgium and Holland where cobblestones, freezing rain, and hundreds of thousands of fans line the road. The most famous of these are Paris-Roubaix, Liege-Bastogne-Liege and Fleche Wallonne.
; Each racing day of a multi-day race is called a stage. Each day brings a new setting with two heroes; a daily stage winner and an overall leader - the rider with the lowest cumulative time. Overall standings are tracked in the General Classification, or GC. Short stage races, typically lasting one week, can be thought of as miniature Tour de Frances. Foremost among these are Paris-Nice in March, the Tour of Germany, the Tour of Switzerland and the Dauphine Libere.
; These are three-week stage races and there are three on the calendar. The Tour of Italy (Giro d’Italia), the Tour of Spain (Vuelta Espana) and the Tour de France. These races are everything rolled into one; the equivalent of a marathon a day for three weeks.
With the cycling season slowly gathering pace and blockbuster races like the Tour de France not too far in the distance; Ireland is bracing itself for what could possibly be the best year for the much-maligned sport in over two decades.
Pro-Tour riders Philip Deignan, Dan Martin and Nicholas Roche could all start at this year’s Tour de France and if so, it will be the largest ever contingent of Irish riders at a Grand Tour event.
All three have made remarkable progress from when they were juniors and though all three are still in the fledgling stages of their careers, they have all been tipped for greatness and nothing so far has swayed that opinion.
So to prevent yourself from being caught out of a conversation or to simply educate yourself on the intricacies of the sport, take a moment to read our easy-to-read 101 guide on cycling.
; Teams are led into races by their DS, usually a former rider who picks the line-up and determines the strategy for the day. He follows the race in the team car, calling orders to the team via ear-bud radios.
Riders are cared for by a support staff of soigneurs, who do massage, fill water bottles, and take care of the logistics of hotels, meals, maps, and endless hotel details.
Teams are divided into leaders and domestiques. The leader is the rider designated to have the best chance of winning the race, that is, of accumulating the lowest overall elapsed time.
Domestiques are the support riders. They haul water, shelter the leader from the wind, give up their bikes if his breaks, and in general, sacrifice their overall standing for their leader.
Stages come in two flavours; time trials and road stages.
; for which racers use specifically designed aerodynamic bikes, come in three varieties.
; the rider is alone for a long ride usually 15 to 50 kilometres. Competitors start in reverse order of overall standings. Drafting, riding in another racers slipstream is strictly prohibited.
; the team riding as a unit; all of those who finish together are given the same finishing time - which means the leader is only as fast as his team.
; a short individual time trial usually less than 10 kilometres that serves to kick off a stage.
In a road stage, all the riders start as a group, or peloton. In time trials, riders compete against the clock.
It’s a French word meaning “platoon” that’s used to describe the largest group of riders. The peloton is also referred to as the pack or the bunch.
By riding behind other cyclists — called drafting — on a flat road, a rider uses roughly 30% less energy than he would riding alone. When the speed is extremely high (in chasing a breakaway or in the final hour of a flat stage), the pack stretches into a single line as each rider fights to stay in the draft created by the fast-moving group.
This is the group of riders that forms at the back of the race, usually on mountain stages. They ride at a pace just fast enough to finish within the day’s time limit (a varying percentage of the stage winner’s time). The gruppetto (Italian for “a small group”) is sometimes called the autobus, the bus or the laughing group — but this is no laughing matter. Riders at the back are often sick or injured and struggling just to finish the stage.
When a strong wind is blowing from the side on a flat road and the racing is fast, the riders form an echelon — an angled line of single riders — to gain the maximum amount of draft from each other. The echelon rotates as the riders on the leeward side move forward and those on the windward side move back (a little like flying geese). The echelon can only be as wide as the road, so a field of 180 racers may split into five or six echelons, angled into the wind.
Although an individual will win the Tour of Ireland, he could not do so without the help of his eight team-mates. The duties of a team rider (or “domestique”) include:
• Riding “tempo” at the front of the pack to control the pace and prevent riders from rival teams from advancing up the road
• Riding in front or to the side of the leader to protect him from the wind
• Slowing down or dropping behind the field of riders to fetch fresh water bottles or food from the team car and taking them up to the leader
• Stopping when the leader has a puncture, crash or mechanical problem, and helping pace him back to the peloton
• Giving the leader one of his wheels (or his entire bike!) if the team car doesn’t arrive quickly enough to help
• Pacing the leader up to a threatening breakaway
• Pulling the leader up a mountain climb as long (and fast) as he can, to split up the group, to protect the leader from the wind and to discourage attacks by his rivals
There are no set rules on how the organizer can categorize hills or mountains. This is how the Tour de France climbs are defined:
• The easiest is a Category 4, which is typically less than 2km long and about 5% grade, or up to 5km at a 2-3% grade.
• A Category 3 can be as short as one mile with a very steep grade, perhaps 10%; or as long as six miles with a grade less than 5%.
• A Category 2 can be as short as 5km at 8%, or as long as 15km at 4%
• A Category 1, once the highest category, can be anything from 8km at 8% to 20km at 5%.
• An hors catégorie (“above category”) rating is given to exceptionally tough climbs. This could either be a Category 1 whose summit is also the finish of the stage, or one that is more than 10km long with an average grade of at least 7.5%, or up to 25km miles long at 6% or steeper.
This is awarded to the rider with the least overall time after each stage. The rider with the least cumulative time at the end of the three days is crowned the winner of the yellow jersey.
This is awarded to the leader of the An Post Points Competition. Points are awarded at intermediate sprints on each stage and at each of the stage finishes. This gives the sprinters, like Mark Cavendish something to fight for. The rider with the most points after the three stages takes home the green jersey.
The King of the Mountains (KOM) jersey is awarded to the strongest climber. Points are awarded to the first riders over the top of the categorized climbs on each stage. This year there are 11 categorized climbs. The rider with the most points is the KOM champion.
This is awarded to the best placed rider less than 25 years. Many of these go on to be top international stars.
Time trial tactics are simple; go fast. Riders who produce the most power with the least aerodynamic resistance win.
Road tactics, on the other hand, are a chess game that stems from a single truth; it’s easier to ride just behind someone than in front. A lot easier in fact. At 25 mph on flat roads, the trailing rider uses roughly 30% less power than the leader. To ride at the front is the equivalent of attaching a sizeable parachute to your bike; the faster you go the more air it catches. The peloton is always faster than smaller groups of riders, because they have more power (more legs) pushing relatively less air.
The second truth about bike racing is that somebody always tries to defy the first truth and break away; or attack. The heroic impulse that sets up two questions that lie at the heart of every race; who is going to get away and who is going to spend the energy required to bring him or them back?
On the Tour’s flat stages the answer to the first question is often Joe nobody - a rider who is not thought to be a threat in the overall. Contenders rarely attack on the flats - it’s too easy for another contender to tag along and follow them, or wheel-suck.
Steep hills and mountains however are prime places for contender attacks. The steeper it is the more efficiently an attacker can gain distance. Among two climbers of equal power, the lighter one has a large advantage. Being skinny is not a body type, it’s a tactical necessity.
Who’s going to chase the breakaway? Usually the team with the most to lose. In the Tour de France, it’s often the team with the yellow jersey, which wants to preserve its status. In other races, it’s often the team with good sprinters who won’t get a chance to show their stuff unless the breakaway is reeled in.
Attacks in the mountains are frequently unanswerable; and where Tours are won and lost.
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