new to bike racing
 

never been into the tdf but thanks to versus I'm hooked. What makes no sense to me is when the hole group finishes they all get the same time. Is this true? No form of racing is like this so it's just weird to me.

See this thread.

http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=557095

In the sprint stages its a whole heck of alot safer to just give everyone the same time than to have 100 riders clawing at each other for additonal seconds.

The mountains will yield massive time gaps. The flats, not so much.

Yes it's true, and it's probably the first thing that's asked about by most people watching the Tour for the 1st time. There are a couple of reasons;

1. To avoid a mad scramble by everyone to gain a second at the end and putting everyone in a dangerous situation in a pack of nearly 200 riders.

2. The difficulty of separating everyone individually to the fraction of a second. Actually this could be done today with electronic timing.

It's generally conceded that everyone finishing in a "group" will get the time of that group. Later in the mountain stages, you'll see riders split by just a few seconds and they will take that into account in the overall timing. I know, it's weird, but not when you've been watching bike racing for 35 years...it's just "normal." :D

What is the gap before a segment is added? Is it 3 seconds or more...i forget.

It seems to sometimes have no pattern. In the mountains, often it's a second or two. Sometimes on flat stages, they don't seem to count it as a split until around 5 seconds or so. Probably depends on how bad a day the head judge has had. :o

thanks!

ok thanks guys as I now see the reasoning for it. Can't wait for the first real mountains tomorrow.

The standard I've heard is two bicycle length gap (of at least one second). In practice, it's rare for there to be a difference of less than 5 seconds between groups though.

Actually it seems to have a lot to do with why there is a split. They seem to not want to count a split that is happening just because of the random patern of a gap when riders are sitting up and coasting over the line.