Road Bike Racing - Quick question about le TdF

What's the Prologue stage? Does it count? etc?

It's the stage before stage 1. It's typically a short time trial.

Yes it counts. Whoever wins it wears the leaders jersey during the 1st stage.

The times of the stage count just like all of the other stages. They call it the Prologue to make things confusing.

Laggard - you said it's "typically a short time trial". Just curious, has it ever been anything else?

Don can answer this better, but I can't think of a current race where the prologue is something other than a short TT.

I seem to recall a couple tours with a short crit type race as a prologue.

Here's a good definition of a prologue: A short race or time trial that is held on the beginning day of a stage race, such as in the Tour de France.

And believe it or not, there are prologue specialists.

Chris Boardman is one of the best "prologue specialists" I can think of. That dude could fly.

Laggard - you said it's "typically a short time trial". Just curious, has it ever been anything else?

I think last year's Giro had a 100mile-ish flat road stage.

I don't think the 2003 Giro had a prologue.

Ohh, guess not. They called it "stage 1". I just could have sworn that OLN told me it was a prologue, on the day it was televised :)

This year during the giro or the tour of romandie or something, phil and paul were talking about a prologue being a <10km time trial. I think it was 10k because somewhere had an opening time trial of 13 km or something and they were saying how it was technically too long to be called a prologue. I think the top prologue man right now is Brad McGee, the Aussie on the fdjeux team.

So prologue specialists are generally good at sprints I assume, yes?

Some of them. But you won't see McGee outsprinting Petacchi any time soon!

So prologue specialists are generally good at sprints I assume, yes?

Not usually. Cipollini has uncorked a few good prologues, but he started as a world class pursuit rider years ago, which is the discipline that prologue specialists usually come out of. O'Grady is generally considered a sprinter now, but he started as a pursuiter and has shown well in a few prologues. Hondo won a 12k TT this year, so some of them have it in them, but it is usually the TT'rs and pursuit riders like McGee, Honchar, Millar, Ullrich, Armstrong, Hamilton, etc... that win the prologues.

Some of them. But you won't see McGee outsprinting Petacchi any time soon!

McGee is still a good sprinter.
He won a TDF stage in a bunch sprint... can't say he is that bad.

McGee is still a good sprinter.
He won a TDF stage in a bunch sprint... can't say he is that bad.

This is a photo of that finish. The bunch is a little back. McGee had anticipated the uphill finish and jumped in pursuit of the Mapei rider who had also jumped away. They were all given the same time. McGee is a very fast finisher though. As Baden Cooke's leadout man, he has to be.

The idea behind doing a TT prologue is to give you a specific leader, as opposed to a mass-start where you could have a mass finish in which case the top people will all have the same time, you still have a winner of the stage to wear the jersey, but it doesn't look like much of a race when your top 10 riders are all 0:00 behind the leader, plus then you have a bunch of stages before some kind of decisive stage (mountain or TT) to seperate the pack.

It's more of a marketing thing for both the tour and the teams.

Andrew

I think that the main thing is that it would make for a much too crazy race if it started with flat stages. 200 riders all with a chance to grab the leaders jersey through time bonuses probably would make things quite dangerous.