Whenever you count down a start, racers are gone by the time you say "Go!", like "3, 2, 1... oh, they're already gone".
At Tour of PA and at Harlem (different promoters, I think some shared staff/officials, not the same announcers), they'd shoot the start gun in the middle of some nondescript sentence. Like "Okay, we're ready for our start! The racers will be doing someteen miles today around *BANG!* the something park.... and they're off!"
Guys were literally unclipped etc at the first stage of Tour of PA. But no one jumped the gun.
cdr