Professional Cycling - Team time trial rules?

On one of the other threads the TdF web address was posted so I went and looked at the rules. No I'm totally lost.

1) Any rider that falls or flats within 3Km of the finish gets the time of the group he was with. But Dave Z. was 1.5 Km out and they said he had to be inside 1 Km.

2) The teams gets it's actual time or if it is more than the standard gets the standard time from the winning team. But CSC got 20 seconds the standard when they we only 2 seconds off DC.

Help!

Thanks
Joe

On one of the other threads the TdF web address was posted so I went and looked at the rules. No I'm totally lost.

1) Any rider that falls or flats within 3Km of the finish gets the time of the group he was with. But Dave Z. was 1.5 Km out and they said he had to be inside 1 Km.

2) The teams gets it's actual time or if it is more than the standard gets the standard time from the winning team. But CSC got 20 seconds the standard when they we only 2 seconds off DC.

Help!

Thanks
Joe

For (2) you get the better of the actual time differential or the "standard" time. The standard time is a formula something like 2nd 10 seconds, 3rd 30 seconds, 4th 50 seconds, ... 20th 2:55, 21st (last) 3:00.

I think that your (1) is the rule for Flat finishes on non-TT stages. In the TTT, the riders get the actual differential if they do not finish with their team. Simoni was pissed at this feature when he slipped in the very last part, finished 5 seconds back from the team, but got a 3-4 minute differential rather than the "standard" time that the time got (e.g., 2:20).

I have not gone to read the rules again, but this interpretation is consistent with the results, so I think I have it correctly parsed.

I believe that if a rider crashes in the last 1k of a TTT he is then credited with the same time as his team.

From what I read Zabriskie missed the amnesty kilometer by less than a half-k.

combine everyone's responses and you have the right answer:

On a road stage, if you crash inside of 3K you get the same time as the group you were with.

In a TTT it's the last K

The timing rules are a Maximum loss of 20 seconds for the second place team and 10 seconds per position after that up to 3:00 for the last team. So, CSC only lost the 2 seconds, but every other team benifited from the loss limitations.

combine everyone's responses and you have the right answer:

On a road stage, if you crash inside of 3K you get the same time as the group you were with.

In a TTT it's the last K

The timing rules are a Maximum loss of 20 seconds for the second place team and 10 seconds per position after that up to 3:00 for the last team. So, CSC only lost the 2 seconds, but every other team benifited from the loss limitations.

You have looked at the updated rules, thanks. Note that the 3K thing is something that the riders have been pushing for to make the sprint finishes less hectic and dangerous, especially in bad weather (it used to be 1000meters). Also, the rule does not apply on an uphill finish, where uphill has some serious component to it, not the last 500 meters with a 3% grade. Finally, the gaps shrink towards the end down to 5 seconds (20 + 13*10 + 6*5) , otherwise the last team would be 210 seconds back (20 + 19*10).