TDF - how does it work?

Can someone explain this to me....

Watching the TDF coverage over the past few days, Petacchi has won 4
out of the 6 stages. Apart from the time trial, where his team did
well, Armstrong, on the other hand, has been conspicuous by his
absence in any of the stage finishes.

And yet the overall classification shows Pena at the top, Armstrong
second and Petacchi nowhere to be seen in the first 8 or 10 riders,
the last of which was 38 minutes off the pace on the chart I saw.

I know they have a points system for the green jersey, which Petacchi
is leading (or at least he was until he pulled out this afternoon),
but how can Armstrong and 8 or 10 others possibly be that far ahead of
him on time?

Thanks

H

On Sat, 12 Jul, Oliver Jones wrote:

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Any chance you can fix your posting software Oliver?

I _can_ speak html, but I rather speak english.

regards, Ian SMith
--
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|o o|
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On Sat, 12 Jul, Oliver Jones wrote:

!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"
META http-equiv=3DContent-Type content=3D"text/html; =
charset=3Diso-8859-1"
META content=3D"MSHTML 6.00.2800.1170" name=3DGENERATOR
STYLE/STYLE
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BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"
DIV"bigbrian" <A=20
"harry8611@ho tmail.com/A> =
wrote in=20
message A=20
=
href=3D"news:d3ccf315.0307120608.7748d230@posting. google.com"news:d3ccf3=
/A.../DIV

Any chance you can fix your posting software Oliver?

I _can_ speak html, but I rather speak english.

regards, Ian SMith
--
|\ /| no .sig
|o o|
|/ \|

I think you will find that your 38 minutes was in fact 38 seconds. Pettachi
lost time in the prologue time trial, that is why he is not in the top ten.
Most of the riders will have been within a minute or two or three until the
mountains started today. So it is possible to win the tour without ever
winning a stage. Just add the daily times up for each rider, deduct a few
time bonuses and you have the GC !

Keep watching - I suspect Armstrong was quite pleased to be within three
minutes of Virenque on Saturday evening. He will pull it back in the time
trial stages and perhaps some of it at Alpe de Huez on Sunday (ITV 1 if you
do not have Eurosport)

Andy Howes
"Steve McGinty" wrote in message
...
On 12 Jul 2003 07:08:19 -0700, (bigbrian) wrote:

Can someone explain this to me....

Watching the TDF coverage over the past few days, Petacchi has won 4
out of the 6 stages. Apart from the time trial, where his team did
well, Armstrong, on the other hand, has been conspicuous by his
absence in any of the stage finishes.

And yet the overall classification shows Pena at the top, Armstrong
second and Petacchi nowhere to be seen in the first 8 or 10 riders,
the last of which was 38 minutes off the pace on the chart I saw.

I know they have a points system for the green jersey, which Petacchi
is leading (or at least he was until he pulled out this afternoon),
but how can Armstrong and 8 or 10 others possibly be that far ahead of
him on time?

Thanks

H
See

http://www.cyclingnews.com/road/2003...d=features/FAQ

for a TdF FAQ.

Regards!
Stephen

I think you will find that your 38 minutes was in fact 38 seconds. Pettachi
lost time in the prologue time trial, that is why he is not in the top ten.
Most of the riders will have been within a minute or two or three until the
mountains started today. So it is possible to win the tour without ever
winning a stage. Just add the daily times up for each rider, deduct a few
time bonuses and you have the GC !

Keep watching - I suspect Armstrong was quite pleased to be within three
minutes of Virenque on Saturday evening. He will pull it back in the time
trial stages and perhaps some of it at Alpe de Huez on Sunday (ITV 1 if you
do not have Eurosport)

Andy Howes
"Steve McGinty" wrote in message
...
On 12 Jul 2003 07:08:19 -0700, (bigbrian) wrote:

Can someone explain this to me....

Watching the TDF coverage over the past few days, Petacchi has won 4
out of the 6 stages. Apart from the time trial, where his team did
well, Armstrong, on the other hand, has been conspicuous by his
absence in any of the stage finishes.

And yet the overall classification shows Pena at the top, Armstrong
second and Petacchi nowhere to be seen in the first 8 or 10 riders,
the last of which was 38 minutes off the pace on the chart I saw.

I know they have a points system for the green jersey, which Petacchi
is leading (or at least he was until he pulled out this afternoon),
but how can Armstrong and 8 or 10 others possibly be that far ahead of
him on time?

Thanks

H
See

http://www.cyclingnews.com/road/2003...d=features/FAQ

for a TdF FAQ.

Regards!
Stephen

"bigbrian" wrote in message
om...
Can someone explain this to me....

Watching the TDF coverage over the past few days, Petacchi has won 4
out of the 6 stages. Apart from the time trial, where his team did
well, Armstrong, on the other hand, has been conspicuous by his
absence in any of the stage finishes.

when the peleton crossed the 1km to go flag, they all get the same time as
the winner (if the winner is in the peleton)
therefore armstrong does not have to be fighting to win the flat stages, as
there is no time gain (or only a small time bonus of a few seconds), all he
has to do is sit in the peleton......they are left to the sprinters to win


And yet the overall classification shows Pena at the top, Armstrong
second and Petacchi nowhere to be seen in the first 8 or 10 riders,
the last of which was 38 minutes off the pace on the chart I saw.

I know they have a points system for the green jersey, which Petacchi
is leading (or at least he was until he pulled out this afternoon),
but how can Armstrong and 8 or 10 others possibly be that far ahead of
him on time?

Thanks

H

lbockhed wrote:
"bigbrian" wrote in message
om...

Can someone explain this to me....

Watching the TDF coverage over the past few days, Petacchi has won 4
out of the 6 stages. Apart from the time trial, where his team did
well, Armstrong, on the other hand, has been conspicuous by his
absence in any of the stage finishes.


when the peleton crossed the 1km to go flag, they all get the same time as
the winner (if the winner is in the peleton)
therefore armstrong does not have to be fighting to win the flat stages, as
there is no time gain (or only a small time bonus of a few seconds), all he
has to do is sit in the peleton......they are left to the sprinters to win


It also makes the race safer as only the front riders will be sprinting
to get points/time bonuses - everyone else can ride safely in the
bounch. It's also easier just to give everyone in the bunch the same
time, rather than trying to work out exactly when each rider crosses teh
finishing line.

eat (out on the bike for the first time in months this afternoon

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On Sat, 12 Jul 2003 19:40:58 GMT, "Tenex" wrote:

I've ski'd at Alpe d'Huez and it took some time on the way down in the
coaoch before I realised why there were markings on the road ... Damn it's
steep even in a vehicle.


Memories, Tenex

My second ever skiing holiday was in Auris-en-Oisans. I discovered
after a day or two that the far vaster area of Alpe d'Huez was just
beyond the ridge - well, it was close enough. So I spent a fair chunk
of my pizza/beer money and bought a couple of one-day passes for Alpe
d'Huez.

Even though I had dry slope skied many, many times and had snow-skied
the previous year, I was too inexperienced to take full advantege of
those lift passes but I enjoyed my d'Huez gentle trundling
nonetheless.

In my latter sliding days, I tended towards L'espace Killy and Les 3
Vallées. I never did revisit Alpe d'Huez.

FWIW, I wouldn't like to cycle up any of those access roads either. As
you say, they are bad enough for coaches.

James

--
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On Mon, 14 Jul 2003 13:41:11 +0100, "Dave Larrington"
wrote:

snip very informative post on the hilly bits...

Thanks very much for that - very interesting.

I've wondered for many years why the tv companies don't put more of
this info on the screen.

IANATVEngineer so I'm probably talking complete Belokis, but would it
be so difficult to put an inclinometer on one of the motorbikes and
show the resulting slope on the screen? I think it would add a lot to
what is already brilliant entertainment...

David

Dave Larrington wrote:

One last note. I think it is inappropriate to compare the ascents of
climbs by the European pros with the efforts of us mere mortals. I
have said this time and time again and I will repeat it now. It is
very, very hard for the average person to comprehend just how fast
the pros climb the big passes. Pace makes all the difference. Riding
a climb is very different than racing it."


I'll second that, as a young lad I went on a Sunday ride with the Leeds Uni
cycling club, "just 50 miles or so round the back of Otley"

I didn't realize untill we got past Otley that the two skinny blokes on
fixies were entering the national Hill climb champs the next week.

Real serious climbers just don't slow down, you get to the bottom of Norwood
bank and they accelerate, its inhuman.


--
Andy Morris

AndyAtJinkasDotFreeserve.Co.UK


Love this:
Put an end to Outlook Express's messy quotes
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