So I’m not suggesting you should not have to pass. That’s 100% what the rules are… I’m just laughing when the same people bit*h about another rule that was properly offiicated is suddenly a “bad penalty”. So I guess I’m more wondering- are we now going to want 100% black/white rules with our rule book. That’s essentially what your saying…and I’m not saying that as a good or bad thing. Just interesting the consistencies we have within what we want to be black and white and what we don’t.
Which is why I think adding some “allowances” (I think ~2 mins) will allow enough discetion that we’ve already been doing for nearly 5 decades instead of 100% being black/white rule.
If you have officials there making judgement calls they can make it. I can imagine a case where Sam Long comes out of the water, finally catches up to the group, he’s the last guy in line and just as he catches them, that red light goes on because they’ve slowed a bit and he’s speeding into them and he goes in and backs out.
It’s a pretty dumb penalty to nail him there because not only is he not getting any drafting benefit, but he’s not affecting the race dynamics. You could argue that he should have approached the group a little more cautiously, which would cost him time he desperately needs to race to the front of the race, and that’s the margin of error he risks by racing so aggressively. Ok, I can see that point, and I wouldn’t go crazy about it. That’s racing.
But really, give the guy some grace and unless he just sits in the back yoyoyoing for the next 3 minutes recovering, you don’t throw the book at him for that single blink and he corrected.
If he hangs out back there, by all means, ding him. But I sure hope everyone else is getting similar treatment in the group.
So in the end your essentially saying the officials should error more with discretion than not. Which is imo my whole point for someone riding an 112mi race and goes in and out of an zone for less than 2 total mins of that entire ride, is then going against your theory of he’s gaining an advantage. That’s why I’ve sorta said hey if we are going to say “it’s racing”, we are probaly going to have to give some allowances with this technology.
Not really. It’s rarely the case that you have Sam Long approaching the train from the back. Well, that’s the case in every race, but it’s rarely the case for every racer.
It’s often the case there is a pack of racers and people sitting in and people passing. If you’re in a pack and using the light to calibrate, you should get penalized if it goes red and you don’t pass.
Right but what I’m getting at- you are saying if the color changes- you must pass…except when you don’t want it to be applied (your Sam Long example). So that’s sorta the point I’m getting at, if we are going to do discretion, well that means what is discretion to me, may be different then me, etc.
So that’s why I was curious of how much actual black/white you want with this. It sorta seems like it’s no where different then what it’s been for the last 50 years, and until RR can penalize you, nothing really will change with yo-yoing. Obviously the # of yo-yos I think will improve over time whether penalties occur or not. But until you can actually penalize athletes for these issues beyond how* we currently do, it’s sorta a shoulder shrug?
Kat Matthews got a penalty for that light going red briefly without passing two years ago. Cam Wurf it happened this year. There’s no shoulder shrugging there.
How many yo-yo’s just went unpenalized from this race, lol. So yeah when your pounding your fist that you must pass or else…nah bro that’s not really what the reality of our sport currently is. Again your only penalized if that blinky changes and you have an official right beside you. We’ve even seen officials right beside athletes and ignore, so yeah, this new technology still is going to need some structure behind imo to have most affect on the racing.
Refs can’t catch them every time, just as they couldn’t before. But the rules don’t change just because there is luck involved in whether you get away with it. Until a fair and instant process for refs to use race ranger data remotely is implemented, this is just some interesting retrospective data, and the refs’ eyes are still the key.
Which is actually why I think like this data being presented by the athletes wanting it public and the 20m being pushed by the pro’s over the last decade. I think it’ll be a given that at some point RR will act in some type of infraction method in addition to the on course officials, and I think the pro’s themselves will be pushing for that. That essentially makes everyone’s actions always observable (and more importantly punishable*), where currently your only getting a penalty if the ref is there AND if the ref pings you.
In your opinion, what distance does an athlete need to hold to avoid yoyos caused by wind gusts, change in inclination, guy in front taking a gel…? If you are “good at it”, uber focused on never going red, what distance do you think you need to ride ?
Obviously, as I’ve never raced with the device we are theoretically talking about the principles of the rules though and how the device ought to be used. If an athlete is using it to ride up to the limit, they should be responsible for going over that limit. Reward should always be balanced against risk.
If the athlete goes red and its safe to do so, they should make the pass.
Extending the draft zone to 20m is not necessary with this tool. Instead, they just need to advise the athletes – ride at 14-15m where you see the light warning, and if you ever get into just under 12, that’s where you must pass.
That’s the way this should be used. If athletes want to take the additional risk of riding between 13-12m, they should know they are playing a fine line and will need to pass more frequently if they yoyo.
The reason why athletes will hate this style of racing is because it will leave a gap for someone to slot in and as I’ve pointed out they are racing very tactically to prevent that. So if you want to race a certain way that’s going to prevent a pass from legally slotting in because you leave no gap – you take the risk of a penalty.
From the data, its very clear that there are some athletes taking the cautious approach, and there are some athletes riding as fine a line as they can and hoping that the ref doesn’t see.
For example Stephan Benedikt had 251 yoyos for 19 mins time in zone. That’s more than one per minute. Sure, he’s back of the pack, but its clear that he’s riding as fine a line as he can.
As another example, you can see a chain in the data of Vincent Luis, Henri Schoeman, Willy Hersch, and Arne Leiss who all have elevated yoyo counts and are following each other.
The part here that isn’t shown is what % of time is the athlete within 15, 20, 25 meters. Not that it matters on race day - since rules are rules, but the part we’re missing is whether or not all the egregious athletes just simply happened to be in a group the whole day, and the less egregious athletes just happened to be on their own. But adding in a “time in group” metric would also show if everyone yoyos when they’re in a group, or just these guys.
Yes, the data show it is possible to ride cleanly. As I mentioned earlier, almost half the women’s field had no illegal time. That doesn’t mean 0 should be the limit above which punishments are meted out, but it does indicate the limit can be set pretty low.
I say go the “name and shame” route for a while, allow the pros to air their views and concerns and to adjust, and then decide whether and how to use the data for sanctions.
I wonder if the RR tool can be used to change the way non drafting races work, rather than just arguing over draft zones. That’s where I see the benefit of the technology – in designing it into the race product itself.
You’ve got the zones where you ride, and the zones where you must start a pass, and the zone where you ride leaves a specific gap for someone to slot into. Would that be better or worse for racing if someone could leapfrog into the middle of the group?
So this theroretically could allow more “slotting in” if your sitting at 14m vs 12m (and getting the associated blinky colors). However in reality, if you pass someone and slot in, the chances you then suddenly get the blinky pass required color, I’d guess would likely be more often then not once you add in the reality of real world racing dynamics. So even if you legally slot in, you may now be forced to pass because you now suddenly “yo-yo’d” inside that blinky color and so even if everyone is trying to ride to the rules, you pretty much have to pass again, so slotting in is going to be very likely hard unless you have athletes sitting waaay back.
In this race there was only 1 slot in reported out of all the athletes, all the passes, all the moves, etc.
You actually see this somewhat regularly in T100. There’s enough of a gap that an athlete can slot in.
My feeling is it would lead to faster bike times as the group would no longer have the prisoners dilemma of most of the pack sitting back unwilling to go all the way to the front.
I just learned this a few days ago on IG as did apparently Jamie Riddle as well (he was 1st comment to reply to PTN noting yo-yo is legal in T100). Apparently in T100 you can “yo-yo” legally. To what the parameters of that are, I have no clue.
It should be noted that T100 is 20m zones and this data was from 12m zones. So dynamics will play out differently within each race zone, so it’s slightly complicated when we talk about x race or y race that have different dynamics at play.
It wouldn’t surprise me that the officials who fixate on goggles in boxes are missing the forest for the trees on this issue.
There’s a reason why athletes desperately try to close that gap, and it’s not only because they want to keep with the group, get a little extra drafting from 12 vs say 12.5 or 13m. It’s because they want to ensure no one else slots in. It forces a potential penalty on a competitor if they fail to pass, or ensures just one more match gets burned and their run legs are that much heavier. So, ya, officials making the wrong judgement calls about a small but very consequential tactical detail seems par for the course.
