Guest Author - Kaye Barnett

In competitive team cycle racing, each member of the cycling team has a very important role toward the team successfully winning the race. Read on in this guide and find out more...

The Team

There are many cyclists in one team, and most of the cyclists are often called in to support the strongest cyclist in their team. Often at a sacrifice of their own individual competitive goals, these cyclists expend their energy during the race to ensure that the best cyclist in their team can have the advantage over the rest of the field in the closing stages. These support cyclists are known as domestiques, whose primary aim is to support the best team cyclists in helping them to achieve race victory.


The cycling team also consists of the team coaches and directors as well as the cyclists themselves. During a race, the coaches and directors keep in communication with the cyclists and often make the alternations in racing strategy as the event unfolds. There are many different racing strategies to implement and here are two of the simplest strategies…

Drafting

Drafting is probably one of the most basic strategies, but also one of the most essential too. Drafting is a technique used to improve riding efficiency and also help to conserve the amount of energy a cyclist uses.


During a race the drafting cyclist deliberately sits him or herself and rides a few inches behind the cyclist in front of them. Cyclists will often do this as a team strategy, whereby the members of the same team deliberately take it in turns to draft each other to manage and conserve energy, and if you see a cyclist drafting an opposing team member, then they are more likely to be exploiting an advantage over them.


This is because thanks to the cyclist in front of them, the drafting cyclist experiences much less wind resistance compared to the cyclist in front, which in turn helps them to save their energy and the same time can more easily maintain the speed.

Pacing

Pacing is another strategy made throughout the race to further conserve and manage their energy and hydration levels more effectively. One example of pacing is when a cyclist may use a moderate pace when climbing an assent, and speed up when reaching a level terrain, and then they could further use a downhill assent to their advantage.

There are many different strategies involved in any one race, and these are just two very simple examples. Cycling strategy isn’t just for the elite cyclists in high profile races, but strategies are for even novice cyclists to implement to improve their riding performances too.