Steve Tilford

Okay, by now, many of you have seen the self-inflicted carnage the BMC team suffered at last Sunday’s Tour of Flanders. 5 guys down at once, Van Avermaet out with a broken collarbone. It was pretty ugly.

This could have, and has happened, in race after race, to virtually every professional team riding World Tour races the past decade. This isn’t unique to BMC. I can’t stress enough that this tactic of riding in team formation throughout the race doesn’t work and is stupid and dangerous to the whole peloton.

I don’t really know who came up with this idea? Whoever it was, did a real disservice to bicycle racing worldwide. And why the other teams tried to emulate the practice I’ll never know? Now everyone, from juniors to elite teams, watch it on television and think that is how it is supposed to be done. I can’t understand how everyone involved can’t see that it is a losing proposition if done throughout the season.

When Marcel Kittel wrote a Facebook post about safety in the peloton, he didn’t even mention the riders, or probably more accurately, the team directors, telling the riders to ride dangerously. Trying to follow a team mate’s wheel is tough. Try putting 5 of those guys in line and then say that you have to never leave your wingman, it will always cause conflict. And when there is conflict in the field, everyone is twitchy, and riders fall. Fighting for position, when it isn’t important to fight for position is one of my pet peeves in the sport. Elbowing for no other reason than to elbow is idiotic.

The video below isn’t the best example of what could and does go wrong when a team lines up. The BMC guys are on the side of the field moving up in the wind. This is over 100 kms. from the finish of the race. More than 2 hours from the finish. How many guys does it take to escort a rider to the front of the field? Look at the field, it is 10 across, it isn’t close to going full gas.

Remember a few years ago at the Giro when virtually all the contenders of the race crashed and lost time early in the race. Cadel had his team position him at the front the last hour of each stage and it seemed to pay off. But in reality, he was the last man standing. All the other teams were trying to do the exact same thing, but their GC rider fell. So one guy staying upright and 5 riders losing time through crashing doesn’t make Cadel’s tactics correct. The announcers kept saying that Cadel was so good at positioning and staying out of trouble, when in reality, it was just blind luck that he wasn’t one of the casualties.

And I hate to say it, once again, but radios play a big role in this problem. What are the chances that the BMC guys would have all gotten together at this point in the race and decided to move up to the front independently? Virtually zero. Someone was talking into their ears telling them to do this. I think one riders would have been sufficient to escort Greg up to the front of the peloton. When I hear riders saying the radios are there for safety, I laugh. 99.9% of the chatter going on isn’t anything about safety. Much more of it is about doing stuff that is unsafe for the peloton. Information that makes riders make stupid moves.

There is so much collateral damage when these teams do this. No one mentioned the Astana guy or the others that fell here. It isn’t only the team that is riding in formation that falls, tons of other guys. This just makes the peloton more twitchy, from the start, thus the race less safe.

You can’t regulate this tactic. No rule will cover who a rider chooses to follow during a mass start bicycle race. The teams came up with this on their own and they need to quit doing it own their own. They need to quit fighting for position when it isn’t important. They need to think that they have the right to put their whole team at the front of the field when they aren’t riding in the wind.

If they want the benefit from not being exposed to other riders from other teams, then they need to be at the very front of the field riding hard. Not riding at the edge or in the middle of the pack getting the benefit of the drafting. It is lazy and stupid bicycle racing and the practice needs to stop. I don’t see that happening though.

Look in this screenshot of the video how many teams are riding “in formation” on the interior of the peleton, riders on both sides of them. How impossible is it to follow one rider through the field for the whole race. Really impossible.

Tucker adores Hawkeye.

He is growing into a dog.

This is the time of the year that the state is ablaze. Kansas is fairly unique in the fact that for some reason, I very much fail to understand in this day and age of pollution control and health, we decide to set the whole state on fire for a couple months. We burn the fields for weed control and so the cattle gain weight through more nutritious greenery.

I do this every year. If you have never experienced, you wouldn’t believe it. It is sometime like England must have been back in the 1600’s when they were burning peat and coal for heat and cooking. Most nights and morning I walk outside and it smells like there is a fire in the neighborhood. We took Tucker and Hawkeye out west of town to walk and we could see numerous plumes of smoke surrounding the whole city of Topeka.

I wither in these conditions. I’m normally in a slump and my throat is raspy nearly all the time. Even the advertising on the radio warns of the hazards of the “wildfires”.

These aren’t wildfires. These are set by man to make money. I wonder if someone could actually tally up the health costs compared to the money for the cattle, if it would be a wash.

Most of the burning around Topeka isn’t for cattle. It is ditches, fields with no fencing, nearly anywhere that will burn. These people are pyromaniacs and don’t understand the burning is for a reason and not for fun.

They aren’t supposed to burn if the wind is over 15 miles per hour, but these people totally ignore that law. I just went and saw the Segwick County burning permit. It is free. Maybe if it cost something, less people would do it for fun. On the permit is says – YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR FIRE, AND ITS SMOKE. If that is the case, then someone owes me a plane ticket to leave here for awhile, because their smoke is going into my lungs.

Yesterday it was pretty windy. Over 30 mph. But they still burned. The fires west got out of control and they were talking about evacuating a town of 1000 people. The governor declared a state of emergency and 15 fire districts responded. WTF? We’re starting fires and burning down our own towns so cattle get heavier? Photos from the Topeka paper.

Man, if my house burnt down because of a grass fire that was set on purpose, then I would be pissed. I wonder if they called and told them that they were going to burn. I could hardly ride my bike, why would someone light a fire.

Anyway, this is going on for another month. Eventually someone is going to address the situation. But our political bodies are so fucked up, it won’t be for a long while. In the meantime, the beat goes on.