(Other key point...

...is that different riders have different specialities.

So for example, there are some sprinters going - most famously our own Mark Cavendish. Those guys can produce amazing speed right at the end of a 6 hour stage. But to exploit that and win a stage, they have to be near the front of the race when the stage ends.

So they have a whole team dedicating to try and ensure that, on stages where it's relatively flat and so this is possible, the team - working with other 'sprint teams' - will chase down any small group of riders who have escaped he bunch early on. To try and make sure that the whole bunch finishes together, so the sprinters can do their stuff.

And they want to try and time this right, so that the bunch catches the escapers with only a few kilometers left. If they catch them too early, then another group of riders will probably try and escape, and they'll have to do the whole thing again (when they may be too tired to do it).

Then there are time trial specialists, and also 'breakaway specialists' - riders who are skilled at escaping the bunch and somehow holding them off for the whole stage.

So those are just a couple of examples of the tactics going on within the race on different days.

Hopefully made a bit of sense, and might help you understand and enjoy it a bit more. Let me know if didn't make sense....

Posted By: Tricky Hawes, Jun 29, 08:46:31