2010 Tour de France

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Tour de France 2010: Chris Carmichael
A Tough Day for Saxo
ByChris Carmichael
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Sorting out the perfect breakaway requires a perfect set of circumstances and aggression by each of the teams in the peloton plays a big part. The pace for the first hour of Stage 12 was high, and there were surges and attacks going off the front all the time. The stage was perfectly suited to a long breakaway, and with several teams in the race hunting stage wins, there were a lot of riders with plenty of incentive to get into the front group.


When the day's final breakaway was eventually established, it wasn't a good situation for team Saxo Bank. It forced them to put their riders on the front of the peloton and chase for pretty much the rest of the day. "It was one of my worst days ever on the bike," said Saxo's Jen Voigt. Stage 12 was destined to be hard, but the break that established made it even harder-than-necessary day for everyone in the pack. The composition of the final breakaway was only ideal for a handful of teams in the race.


Here were the two main problems with the stage 12 break: it was too big and it contained riders who were too high on the leaderboard.


Finding the Optimal Size


On a hilly, twisty, and long stage like today, you need some horsepower in the breakaway in order to have a chance of making it to the finish ahead of the peleton. But too much horsepower - in the form of too many riders - means that the peloton won't back off enough to allow you to build a stage-winning lead. Eighteen men up the road adds up to a lot of power, and a group like that - especially when it contains strong riders like Alexander Vinokourov, Andreas Kloden, Ryder Hesjedal, Vasili Kiryienka, Sandy Casar, Thor Hushovd, and Mario Aerts - can finish 30 minutes ahead if the peloton is not careful.


Partially because the breakaway was so large, the peloton kept them pretty close and the gap stayed within the 2:00 - 3:30 range for most of the stage. But the size of the breakaway was also problematic for the men in the front group itself. With such a large group, you often get riders who are skipping pulls and sitting on the back instead of doing their share of work at the front. Smaller breakaway groups tend to work more smoothly because there's nowhere to hide. You might have a rider start skipping pulls later in the stage, but for the majority of the ride everyone shares the work relatively equally. Today, though, the breakaway group frequently looked disorganized and disheveled because there were just too many riders in it.

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