John Gleaves
What about when the group being overtaken has a break up the road?
What is the responsibility of the slower breakaway when being passed
by the faster group?
Also, I know a couple of times this year a bell has been rung for a
3/4 hotspot when either the 1/2/3 is right behind or right in front
which leads to the enevitable acceleration of the 3/4 and tend to lead
to many of the problems.
I know the officials do their best, so when this is the case, the 3/4
etiquette should be to neutralize to make sure the 1/2/3 field is
completly uncatchable. Perhaps that means a little longer than the
usual overtaking?
I do know the hardest part of the neutralizing is when the 3/4 has a
break up the road and the peleton has to sit there and watch their
break gain an advantage while they are soft pedaling. I guess this
gives a little advantage to the guys willing to try breaks at PIR, but
if they have the guts to try a break that 9/10 times will be pulled
back, then we should be willing, perhaps, to just sacrifice that bit
of frustration.
One other thought is to designate one rider with experience who is
willing to be the guy who goes to the front and holds the 3/4 until he
or she deems it time to let the racing start again? It would kind of
be like a yellow flag at a NASCAR.
On 5/10/07, Ken Finch wrote:
> 1) Candi makes a good point. Always neutralizing to one side or the other has never worked since the peloton snakes from left to right depending on the direction of the turns. I think the over taking group should always determine to which side they pass.
>
> 2) A 500 meter gap between groups before attacking is a bit much. That's well over a quarter mile. That would be very hard to enforce. I think the gap should be big enough to ensure that there is no interaction between the groups and leave it at that. For instance, no attacking into the back of the faster group that just passed you.
>
> One thing that I think needs to be addressed is attacking out of a group that is about to be passed. Some wiley people in the slower groups time their attacks just before they know the group will be neutralized. Or it happens inadvertently, as happened with me a couple weeks ago. I was in a group of 3 who had attacked off the front and had approx a 100 meter gap when the main group got neutralized. After the race it was apparent that they expected us to sit up as well, even though we were well up the course. In my opinion if you've got that big a gap, you're a seperate group and shouldn't have to neutralize with the rest of the pack. But, what should that gap be?
>
> Having set distances for these things will always be hard to enforce though, as estimating distances while racing will always be subjective. I like performance measurments such as "no interaction" or "no effect" much better then "100 meters" or "500 meters".
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