mike12

How to teams set up the order of riders during a team time trial? Is it by power, physical size of the rider or something else?

Just curious.

deacon mark

I think it is like the 4 x 100 relay on a track, you save your fastest for the final leg. Just to let you know I have never been on a team or road in a organized TT. I must very well be the expert right?

GhostSS

The order? They don't maintain a static order throughout the time trial, at least from what I've seen, they take turns pulling in sequence. Sacrificial riders that are not expected to finish tend to pull longer and finisher's pull shorter lengths of time.



For track this is generally a simple affair since there's no wind or technical courses, just an oval track. For the road this can get pretty complicated, I've seen in the Quatar team time trial last year, one of the teams got split up on accident because 2 of them took a wrong turn which ruined drafting tactics and energy economy.

mike12

I know they continually rotate, but was curious as to the order in which they are arranged.

I ask b/c folks always complain when behind me in a pace line since I'm normally smaller than the others riding & they feel I don't offer enough of a draft. That made me curious as to what the pros do in an organized team time trial.

GhostSS

Oh. Beats me.

RollCNY

If you are talking team TT's in the Grand Tours, it really depends on the team make up. There is no rotation, guys pull once and fall off, and five members have to cross the finish line. Teams with a single strong TT guy will use that one heavily. Teams with many strong TT'ers, or really strong sprint lead out crews, will rotate out through many guys early on to cover ground fast. It seems like Orica-Greenedge won the TdF team TT that way.

mike12

Thanks. I was actually talking about local team time trial events. I've never been to one but talked to some of the folks that have & they led me to believe that there is a constant rotation at those events. I'll just ask them next time I ride with them about the logic of the order. These type of events must be fairly rare.

I wasn't aware how they did it in the Grand Tours other than I knew that the weaker riders dropped off as only "x" amount of riders actually count for the time.

Homebrew01

Sure about that ??

RollCNY

Relatively, but it depends on the team, and the length of the TT. Usually 6 guys finish the team TT's, and the commentators are usually astounded when the full team does. Granted, the team TT courses have been fairly short in recent years.

Brian Ratliff

Rider order is a pretty important topic when assembling a TTT. There are theories and there are individual riding styles to take into account. Some things to consider... if you have a strong, surge-y rider following a weaker rider, you'll probably lose the weaker rider at some point early in the TT. Coming from taking a pull, dropping back and trying to reaccelerate to get back in line just as the line accelerates will drop that rider like a used tissue.

The best way is probably to line the riders up from strongest to weakest with the strongest rider being well coached to not surge the line to drop the weakest rider. The stronger riders should pull longer than the weaker riders, rather than trying to speed the line up when they get to the front.

Also to consider is that during a longer TTT, not every rider will take pulls. Some will sit in for multiple rotations to save their energy to keep from getting dropped.

As to dropping riders, you'll see this a lot during TTT on the track but sometimes on the road as well: a rider (or maybe two or three) will be assigned to drop off short of the finish. That rider will usually do an extra length of time on the front and burn himself out before coming off. On the track, you'll see the designated drop sit at the front for an extra lap to give his teammates a bit of rest before the big push a few laps from the end. It's a bit of a risky strategy because if someone crashes or otherwise can't finish, the team will have to wait until the dropped rider crosses the line before getting a time.

mike12

Thanks, Brian. I knew there had to be strategy involved, but I wasn't sure what the key points of the strategy were. What you say makes perfect sense & is interesting to me.

Doge

Our team didn't pay so much attention to rider order as how they road as Brian described. They stayed in order.

The pretty common strategy is to be smooth first and ride a team member off the line by 3/4 the way through (You don't have to choose who that is, they choose for you) then the strong rider takes the big longer last pull.

From SoCal States last year: https://vimeo.com/97010373

Homebrew01

So in an 18 mile TTT, if you had 6 riders, each rider would pull for 3 miles at 1 shot ?!?!

RollCNY

I made my comment specific to the Grand tours, and I specifically had in mind the TdF team tt's of the past four or five years (I don't recall one last year). These were very short (my google foo is not finding the specific distances, but I seem to recall them being 18 to 20km). Teams were starting with 8 or 9 remaining members, and typically started out with one of their strongest guys first to get them up to speed as fast as possible. I recall some teams rotating, but teams with strong TT guys used those guys predominantly. So no, not everyone took a 3 mile pull, and I recall some of the GC guys not pulling at all.

The only reason that I remember this was the heavy commentary by the broadcast teams saying that with everyone on a TT bike, many of the teams were more concerned about a crash taking out the squad, and that it was safer to get one max effort out of the strongest guys. In no way have I said that this applies in every case.

Doge

They were bad at it in the TdF. TTT is not a very practiced race. Sometimes they dropped some very good riders so they could rest and help the leader in the next stages.
The best TTTs were the East Germans in the mid-80s and in the Olympics. The team that used the cable to attach their waist to the stem was incredible.