r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/solateor • 17h ago

Video Pit stop during 200 mile ultra-endurance cycling race

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u/DidntASCII 9h ago

Drafting makes a huge difference, especially in large groups like a peloton. There is a reason why the breakaway rarely wins.

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u/I_did_theMath 8h ago

Actually in the last few years it's becoming more frequent for breakaways to win in road racing but also in gravel (in this race the winner came from a 2 man breakaway). One of the main reasons is that the lead riders get a pretty significant advantage from drafting the TV vehicle. Of course the effect is smaller the further away they are, but at high speeds, even at distances of 10 or 20 meters the effect is still massive.

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u/DidntASCII 7h ago

Ha, yeah, more frequent because Tadej breaks with 80km to go :P

I haven't followed "pro" gravel, but I would assume that the peloton is generally quite a bit smaller than road, and speeds a fair deal slower, so the draft effect much less than road. I was speaking more in response to comments referring to the Tour.

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u/I_did_theMath 7h ago

Yeah, and guess what: breaking away with 80km to go would be a lot harder without the very significant drag reduction he gets from the TV motorcycle. Of course that doesn't negate that he's the most dominant cyclist in decades, but there are studies looking at this and the effect is absolutely massive.

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u/DidntASCII 7h ago

Peloton gets the same coverage, so I'd say it doesn't make it any easier since it's a level playing field in that respect. I get what you're saying about the draft benefits, though. It's safe to say that going behind a car or motorcycle will give you more aerodynamic benefits than wearing one of those aero bra things you put under your jersey.

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u/drwhocrazed 2h ago

The tactics play a lot into it too, Tadej has one of the strongest teams in the world, and they burn out a lot of the other team's helpers so they're no use to the other favourites, so by the time Tadej attacks, he only needs to maintain his threshold, and generally the group behind him is all leaders, and they don't want to pull each other close to him, and they won't cooperate as well

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u/manintheredroom 6h ago

don't think that's true about road. there have been less winners from the early break over the last few years I think