That wasn’t how I read PTN’s take on the T100 allowance this week on the IG story. Jamie Riddle even commented on it, but I also can’t find the specifics that allow it? So I don’t know if (Kyle?) he was just meaning in random instances it’s allowed (aid stations, turns), or if he meant at any time you can “yo-yo” and it be ok for T100.
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- This, but delivering those data is not in the RR remit. Examination of the splits, probably manually, allows such insights. I did a bit, but lost the will . . .
- 2a. Luis yoy-yo’ed into Schoeman for 6:12 of his 9:35 illegal time. One yo-yo was 1:27 long: that is a yo-yo-yo (to misappropriate an adopted malapropism).
- 2b. Luis’ mean time illegal yo-yoing was 14 seconds: tied with Olij.
- 2c. Schoeman managed 11:03 yo-yoing, mostly behind Hirsch (with one egregious 1:39
wheel suckyo-yo-yo).
- Vast majority of those riding in a pack of more than two managed to ride fair which can stand as an example to those who rode in the same pack with apparently less fairness. Hopefully this can be a ‘learning experience’ for the latter.
Part of me wants to ask if there was a light error on some of their Race Rangers. 
I don’t know how you can spend 1:39 with a red blinking light and not do something about it - not just for fair play, but also because a ref could come by and see it.
I can see the odd half-second red as you go out and into the zone as you hit the start of a hill or something. Maybe it barely flickers, or it flickers and you decide that you’re probably safe not making the pass, or it isn’t safe to make the pass, but spending 1:39 suggests that you’re purposefully riding past the line.
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Not one but two "apparently"s.
Who is actually saying this? Is T100 saying this? No.
Would help if you offered links so we can fact check this.
Roth effectively recognised (and briefed) that several zones were excluded from ‘draft-illegal’.
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I don’t need to offer links, you can go look it up yourself based on the information I just provided, if your reading skills are as good as I assume they are. Go run along and check IG if you need to have it verified dude.
False news, then. edit: Or PTN joshing “for comedic effect” parodying the fact that T100 drafting penalties are few and far between when we see lots of yo-yoing/red flashing.
World Tri rules Appx V, section 11.
Not surprised it was ‘news’ to Riddle (edit: NB young boy of limited RR experience). Look forward to watching him try this out in 16 days; I’ll be there. Last year Keulen ‘lived up to his reputation’ almost every time they swept beneath the train station bridge.
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Which is fine it was weird that it came from PTN account with the “false news” narrative. It def caught myself and Riddle off guard with a “really”? But he never expanded further for the time I was reading that text thread. It wouldn’t make sense to legally allow it without also including parameters if they ever did allow that (wouldn’t really be any reason why they would though).
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Thinking it through, maybe what race ranger needs is a new setting.
Currently (as I understand anyway) is that if you go into the zone it goes red, and then if you yo yo out the back, it reverts back to blue, etc based on your distance.
Maybe what it needs then is a new setting - if you yoyo in and then out, it stays red, or maybe blinks blue or something, until you’ve either completed the pass, or backed out the full 25m. Perhaps it alternates between red and the current distance in that case.
That way, it shows that you entered the draft zone, but didn’t make a full pass. Either finish your pass or back off. Now a ref can come by and see your status, as opposed to catching you in the act.
What’s wrong with slotting in? Riding in a pack is a choice and gives an advantage. A bit of frustration jockeying over position is to be expected. Don’t like it? Overtake.
what is the rule about overtake and slot in?
You must have 24m between two riders to slot in ? otherwise continue to overtake ? When you overtake someone, you have 25s to overtake his front wheel, or being 12m behind his front wheel ?
No, if you overtake someone (A) and then enter the draft zone of the rider in front of them (B), you have to overtake that rider.
If A is riding exactly 12 meters behind B, then the only way to pass A legally is to pass both A and B. The moment the leading edge of your front wheel is ahead of the leading edge of A’s front wheel, it enters the draft zone of rider B.
However, if the spacing is, say, 13 meters, then you are still almost 1 meter away from the draft zone of rider B. In such case A must drop back and make 12 meters of space for you, as with any overtake. You’re good to slot in.
There used to be a widely circulated conventional wisdom saying that “slotting in” was legal for age groupers and illegal for PROs, but I think it’s a myth.
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In practice, and with the benefit of Race Ranger, though what you say is iaw rules, the deal is that if rider X overtakes rider A, and rider B (ahead) shows a blue (so rider A is <14m behind rider B) then cutting in risks a penalty and rider X has to get on and overtake front rider B.
This is why, in a train, there’s a motive for keeping the gaps tight (but legal) in blue. but this also risks inadvertent yo-yo (see above).
So rider A has a dilemma:
- ride in amber and ‘encouraging’ rider X to overtake AND cut in, or
- ride in blue, allows him (and it’s always a ‘him’) to shout don’t f*** cut in and wave arms, but sustained risk entering draft zone with red flashing and themself have to get on and overtake (but is there a gap ahead of rider B to cut in?)
Great story bro, as in "the captain said to the mate, tell us a story, so the mate began: "it was a dark and stormy night . . . “”
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When athlete A is overtaken due to X slotting in legally, they will see red on the back of X, but their only responsibility is to drop back within 25sec to turn the light they see on X into blue. It’s not a yo-yo. X doesn’t risk anything either - as soon as their front wheel is in front and they don’t see red on B, they can even hit the brakes to ensure B stays blue.
There is nothing wrong with slotting in if you can. What I’m saying is if A and B are 13m apart, C should be able to “slot in”, with only 1m of clearance before he then enters A’s draft zone. So if A suddenly slows or C overtakes B too much he can’t “slot in” he now must also pass A even though B must roll out of C’s now draft zone. So whether A-B is exactly 12m apart or a little bit of wiggle room (to then slot in), “slotting in” still is going to require rider C to be very smart to not then yo-yo or be forced to pass again immediately.
So now that all this data is collecting actual distances it’s my theory that slotting in is still going to likely require immediate passing since it’ll likely at times have them riding into the draft zone of now the rider in front of them and either then be a “yo-yo” or forced to pass (which is what rules require/suggest to happen). So unless you truly have likely 2-3m of extra space, “slotting in” it’s my theory that now we are going to see you still likely must immediately pass since you likely have ridden into A’s draft zone (unintentionally).
This is at 12m draft zone races (essentially non T100)
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This isn’t a realistic way of thinking about what we do in the pro field. If B slows down, putting you as the overtaking athlete in B’s draft zone, then you are going faster and will overtake B as well. B will see you get your wheel in front and must drop back, and so on. It’s not F1
I guess I’m not understanding what your saying. If there are 3 riders in a row A-B-C. If B is 13m behind A, there is 1m of “slot in” zone for rider C to take B’s position. So legal to slot in behind A, but 1m of wiggle room. If your saying that’s enough wiggle room to never worry, cool. I’m saying now that we have RR cataloguing every move, I think we are going to see 1m or less potentially can quickly go away in a real world environment (rider B may still be “accelerating”, rider A may be steady or even slightly slow, and rider C should be falling back…so that the 1m suddenly now has shrunk even quicker)
So in the past when you thought you had that 1m you easily slotted in. Now you may slot in and oops you just now are in A’s draft zone for whatever reason, so now must immediately pass, where 5 years ago you didn’t think/know you were in A’s draft zone because you assumed you were “good”.
So now we know 12.0m = good, 11.99 = bad; for decades no one could know with any preciseness you were actually 11.99 and now in the bad zone. So in the past you could have been at 11.6m thinking (along with the officials) you were at 12m and “good”. Now RR is cataloguing it as your now in the wrong. So the reality is that every piece of real estate is now catalogued so that there is even less margin of errors than when we had no way of knowing it with this preciseness.
So when you say “what we do in the pro field”, this data from this particular race is showcasing a lot of rule infractions that are going unpenalized. Now again I can understand why they are happening because for decades 12m has never been 12.00m, 11.88m has been assumed to be 12.0m just as 12.11m was assumed to be 12.0m (and thus couldn’t slot in at that point). So when a guy quickly corrects himself by yo-yoing, imo he’s not likely trying to break any spirit of the rules; even though he’s now in a penalty. That’s likely been the behavior of pros for decades, and it was never assumed they were actually in the draft zone. Sure an offiical has given a penalty or two in the 40 years for failing to pass, but it mostly was when they obviously went into the draft zone, not 0.13m into the draft zone (which is now being catalogued as rule breaking behavior if you then yo-yo and don’t pass), but more often then not they never did.
So I would be interested in the data from this race where the pro’s knew they were going to be public vs the data from a race that they didn’t know in the last year or so. Is there any “improvement” in behavior in just knowing vs not knowing data would be public this early in the RR process. So that you can kinda know ok now I have to ride at 14m to stay safe from yo-yo’ing etc vs sitting right at the edge and breaking the rules 40 different times, etc.
(and no to me if the data is anonymous I would be fine with that, or atleast to know in 1 year X athlete has “improved” their riding style etc…to me it’s less about getting some ah ha gotcha moment with X pro and more the general behavior of the pro peloton).
Your black-and-white thinking is hard to understand. Pro athletes are humans with eyes and legs and can make decisions based on the whole situation. The relative speed of other riders isn’t an unknown variable. Pros are not spaced at exactly 12 metre gaps, never were, and now we just have handy lights to tell us the if we’re close to the limit. Pros are not thinking “I’ll ignore these lights because I swear 12 metres was closer than this in the old days”. The gap is 14-17m if you’re doing it right and fluctuates all the time which is why we get the yellow light (and blue as an added luxury) to make it really easy to avoid red. The rules are the rules, and any yo-yoing bad enough to show red is cheating. Anyone doing it is gambling on the ref’s mood or not being seen.
Again, slotting in closer than 12 metres was punishable before and is punishable now. If you get overtaken (front wheel), you drop back so the gap grows to accommodate the faster athlete. The illegal time in red already accounts for unintentional drafting.
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It’s not my black and white thinking, it’s that RR is now making it BLACK and WHITE. And now we are seeing data where a bunch of pro’s are now riding illegal, to the point that either “acceptances” need to be made (my suggestion) or you use RR to also penalize athletes beyond only on bike course officials. We can’t keep having this type of data and no penalties being given out, or just a few based on where the official is or isn’t.
Well if I understand you right, you’re suggesting pro B drafting at 13m leaves space for pro C to slot in, but pro C will be a complete chad and slot in and keep peddling at 500watts because he can’t control his bike and then create a need to yoyo.
In reality, unless he’s passing going into a turn or hill, C will slide in just in front of B, who will immediately drop back pissed off, but also benefit from soft pedalling a bit, and C will also execute a perfect soft pedalling as well, apparently contradictory to the laws of physics and psychology and somehow not manage to close the gap on A who is riding in front.
This will lead to more athletes battling for position within the pack so it’s not always the front two taking turns or one heroic, race damaging effort from behind. Because C risks eventually becoming D, E and F and so on, so his place 30s down in the pack coming into T2 suddenly could become 1 minute or more down so he will in turn look to make a pass in the near future and preserve his spot at or near the front.