The effect of strategic resting in professional cycling: evidence from the Tour de France and the Vuelta a España (original) (raw)
Related papers
2018
Purpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate the determinants of breakaway success in road cycling races. Design/methodology/approach – Descriptive statistics were computed, and a logit model of breakaway success was estimated based on a new kind of statistical data describing the development of each of the 268 breakaways that occurred in the 76 regular stages of the Tour de France 2013 to 2016. Findings – Breakaway success partly depends on the physics of cycling: breakaways are more successful when the stage is hilly or in mountain than flat. In addition, the likelihood of breakaway success depends on strategic moves such as attack timing and the percentage of riders with a teammate in the breakaway. Research limitations/implications – Understanding why certain breakaways succeed and others do not is useful to comprehend cycling performance and to help coopetitive temporary organizational forms such as breakaways optimize their strategic behavior. A limitation is the focus on the Tour de France only. Originality/value – The present study adds to the literature on temporary organizational forms, coopetition and cycling performance by analyzing within-stage data in cycling and, as such, enabling to capture its strategic dimension.
Strategic Behavior in Road Cycling Competitions
The Economics of Professional Road Cycling, 2015
Why is there strategy, not just brute force, in cycling competitions? What are the recurring strategic interactions amongst riders? And what can economists learn from riders’ behaviors? Cycling may be one of the most strategically interesting sports, hence its nickname “chess on wheels.” Professional riders’ performances crucially depend on their interactions with other riders, which may not be the case in most sports in athletics, swimming, or skiing. Most interactions between riders are not pure confrontation, zero-sum games, as is the case in boxing, fencing, martial arts, or tennis. In cycling, two rival riders may lawfully ally against some third rider, while such three-player interactions do not exist in football, basketball, or soccer. And cycling being an individual sport run amongst teams, it opens up opportunities of strategic behavior both within and between teams. This chapter provides an overview on (1) the main reasons why bicycle races are strategic, and it then presents several game theory analyses of strategic interactions between riders: (2) attack timing strategy, (3) cooperation and noncooperation in breakaways and in the peloton, (4) sprint strategy and (5) three-player interactions. It is founded on examples of strategic interactions between riders that occurred in the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia, the Vuelta a España, and other races.
The History of Professional Road Cycling
The Economics of Professional Road Cycling, 2015
Why did cycling become professional as early as the late nineteenth century, while other sports (such as rugby) and other sport events (such as the Olympic Games) remained amateur until the 1980s? Why are the organizers of the most important bicycle races private companies, while in other sports such as soccer the main event organizer is a nonprofit organization? To what extent have bicycle races changed since the late nineteenth century? And how does cycling reflect long-term economic changes? The history of professional road cycling helps answer these questions and understand many related phenomena. This chapter provides a long-term, historical perspective on (1) professional road cycling’s economic agents, i.e., the public, race organizers, team sponsors and riders, and the relationships amongst them; (2) cycling’s governing body, the International Cycling Union; and (3) professional cycling’s final product, i.e., the show of bicycle races. More precisely, the chapter mostly focuses on the history of male professional road cycling in Western Europe since the late nineteenth century. It is founded on both an analysis of quantitative time series on the Grand Tours (and, to some extent, the classics) and a review of the existing literature on the history of professional cycling, whether economic history, institutional history, cultural history, or sport history.
Performance analysis of a world-class sprinter during cycling grand tours
International journal of sports physiology and performance, 2013
This investigation describes the sprint performances of the highest internationally ranked professional male road sprint cyclist during the 2008-2011 Grand Tours. Sprint stages were classified as won, lost, or dropped from the front bunch before the sprint. Thirty-one stages were video-analyzed for average speed of the last km, sprint duration, position in the bunch, and number of teammates at 60, 30, and 15 s remaining. Race distance, total elevation gain (TEG), and average speed of 45 stages were determined. Head-to-head performances against the 2nd-5th most successful professional sprint cyclists were also reviewed. In the 52 Grand Tour sprint stages the subject started, he won 30 (58%), lost 15 (29%), was dropped in 6 (12%), and had 1 crash. Position in the bunch was closer to the front and the number of team members was significantly higher in won than in lost at 60, 30, and 15 s remaining (P < .05). The sprint duration was not different between won and lost (11.3 ± 1.7 and ...
Lance Armstrong’s era of performance — Part II: Revisiting his time trial wins
American Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, 2014
This archival study (N = 100) compared Lance Armstrong’s time trial wins to victories demonstrated by all former multiple Grand Tour winners (1949–1995; Coppi, Anquetil, Merckx, Hinault, Indurain) and by riders who won similar races in the three major European Grand Tours (Tour de France, Giro d’Italia, and Vuelta a España) from 2006 to 2013, who were either involved in doping affairs or not. Regression analyses yielded a non–significant M = 142 seconds difference between Armstrong vs. the aggregated other riders (∆R2 = .001, p = .20). The effect emerged after controlling for the influence of competition year (b = -12.23 s per year, ∆R2 = .045, p ≤ .001) and trial distances (b = 84.64 s per kilometer trial distance, ∆R2 = .933, p ≤ .001) on the variation in riders’ speed. Furthermore, Armstrong along with other riders who were suspended for doping use or who acknowledged having used doping in the 2006–2013 periods did not outperform riders who were not involved in doping affairs during the same years (M = -68 s, ∆R2 = .01, p = .35). Findings disprove the argument from ignorance, a false logic which refers to the often heard opinion that cyclists’ performances over time (including Armstrong’s wins) are mainly determined by their use of increasingly potent doping aids. However, in contrast to this logic, the distances of the time trials constitute the main determinant of riders’ performances rather than the year in which they competed, and riders engaged in doping affairs did not significantly outperform riders who were not.
Fan–Athlete Interaction and Twitter Tweeting Through the Giro: A Case Study
This case study examines how fans can experience a major sporting event (cycling's Tour of Italy) through a particular new communication technology platform— Twitter. To explore this possibility the authors tracked the " tweets " sent out by a selection of American and English-speaking riders during the 3-wk race. Their analysis of these texts revealed that Twitter served to increase immediacy between athletes and fans. This occurred as athletes provided commentary and opinions, fostered interactivity, and cultivated insider perspectives for fans. These activities position Twitter as a powerful communication technology that affords a more social vs. parasocial relationship between athletes and fans. In the past fans' access to their sporting heroes was limited to what they could observe and consume from television, sports talk radio, and print media. This is no longer the case with the advent of new communication technologies. Internet technologies now provide fans with unprecedented access to professional athletes (Kassing & Sanderson, 2009; Sanderson, 2008b). For fans these technologies present new and novel ways to interact with sports celebrities. Fans can offer advice, display gratitude, and provide consolation to athletes. For sports celebrities these technologies function as a platform for self-presentation (Sanderson, 2008a) and expression of dissent (Sanderson, 2009). Athletes can use them to counter unfavorable media representations, to espouse their particular values, and to contest regulations. We contend that new communication technologies are reshaping fan–athlete interaction. Twitter is one communication technology that has spread quickly and prominently throughout the sports community (Kassing et al., 2004). This case study considers professional athletes' use of Twitter as a means of communicating directly with their fans. Parasocial interaction (PSI) serves as the theoretical backdrop for the case and provides a framework for conceptualizing the nature of interaction occurring on Twitter between athletes and fans. To better understand this phenomenon we examined the messages sent via Twitter from professional cyclists during the 2009 Tour of Italy. The case begins with an examination of PSI and then moves to a discussion of cycling's grand tours. Then
The epo fable in professional cycling: Facts, fallacies and fabrications
Journal of Sports Medicine and Doping Studies, 2014
The massive doping schemes that surfaced in professional cycling suggest that riders’ performances, realized in the controversial ‘epo era’ (>1990), are a cut above achievements delivered by their forerunners. We examined this superior performances assumption (SPA) by conducting six historic studies, which all scrutinized archival records of winning riders’ stage race and time trial performances demonstrated in the three European Grand Tours (Tour de France, Giro d’Italia, and Vuelta a España; 1903–2013), including Lance Armstrong’s wins. Findings revealed that all riders’ wins in the epo years are no exception to the variability in speed progress observed in the three races over time and none of their achievements proved to be outliers. This also holds true for Armstrong’s performances. These findings agree with results of a meta–analysis of epo studies we conducted, indicating that the ergogenic effects of epo and blood doping on riders’ aerobic performances and associated cycling speeds are overrated. In conclusion, we argue that our observations render the SPA doubtful. They also made us realize that arguments used in contemporary discussions about effects of doping in cycling often involve psychological biases, false reasoning, and fabrications. They are presented in the closing sections of this contribution.
What Made the Tour Successful? Competitive Balance in the Tour de France, 1947-2017
Sport in Society, 2019
The Tour de France is the most popular and prestigious bicycle race in the world. Since the 1980s, it has also had increasing economic success. Is such economic success related to improvements in competitive balance among riders, i.e. the degree of parity among opponents and the resulting difficulty to predict the competition's end result? We compute several measures of static (annual) and dynamic (year-to-year) competitive balance for the yellow jersey from 1947 to 2017, both among the top five riders and among team leaders. Our main result is that competitive balance in the Tour de France has not improved much since 1947: the time performances of top riders and team leaders have not become closer to each other-or harder to predict from one year to the next. Therefore, the increasing economic success of the Tour since the 1980s cannot be attributed to improvements in the race's competitive balance. Other factors must have been driving the increasing demand for the Tour, including better-quality television broadcasting of the event.