The Tour de France consists of many races and tactics within the overall race for the Yellow Jersey. Each of the competitions has it’s own colored jersey. The Yellow Jersey represents the rider who has completed the race to that point in the shortest amount of time, also called the general classification or GC.
The White Jersey represents the fastest rider under age 25. The Green Jersey, sometimes called the sprinter’s jersey, represents the rider who has the sprint points. Sprint points are accumulated by crossing the predetermined points in 1st, 2nd or 3rd place. Riders also get points for where they finish at the end of the stage. Finally, there is the Polka Dot Jersey for the rider who crosses the mountaintops first. This competition is similar to the Green Jersey completion, but points are awarded for topping the mountains first. The harder the mountain, the more points. If that is not enough, there is also a team competition. The times of the three highest placed team members are added together, the lowest total time wins. The team team leading this competition wears yellow numbers.
In addition to the jerseys mentioned earlier, there is a lot of prestige in leading a stage, or winning a stage, without regard to any of the overall competitions. This causes riders to break away from the main group (the peloton) and make a dash for the finish. Many times, as long as the riders in the breakaway are not threatening any of the overall competitions, the breakaway may be allowed to win by the teams supporting the main contenders.
In addition to the race compactions, some teams have internal competitions to decide who the team leader will be. Normally, a team decides who the leader will be before arriving at the tour, and that rider is given the number 1,11,21,31 etc. Only one person can win the tour, and if a team like Astana has 2 or even 4 very strong riders, each may all think they are the strongest and able to win. In the modern tour, it takes a team to win, and if there is a split in a team like Astana, everybody loses. The variety of competitions means that there is always something going on during the race.
This leads us to the life lesson that can be exemplified by the tour. For a breakaway to succeed, the breakaway riders must cooperate and share the workload to keep the main group from catching them. However, only one can win the stage, so at some point, they go from cooperating to competing. Start competing too early, and the main group catches everybody, wait too long, and you don’t win.
That’s pretty clever how the race organizers make little competitions throughout the big race.
I really admire these tremendous athletes. It seems there are specialists in just about everything.
Yes I think organizers dont get enought credit for being open to new ideas to keep the race interesting.