Originally Posted by
Duke of Kent
It's been a hot minute since I was a crit rat. Let's get that out of the way.
But, back in the day, when I was racing 100km P/1/2 SuperWeek crits, there were far less crashes there than in the Cat 4/5 races, both in the local scene and at SuperWeek. I'm talking, at a minimum, 100 man fields, with the largest being 160 or 170 guys in the P/1/2. Lots of domestic pros, some Colombian track racers, Milram's stagiares, and plenty of weak sauce CAT1/2 pack fodder like myself. 28mph average for 2:15.
I witnessed one semi-serious crash in the P/1/2 the entire series of 15 or so races. A dude's tire blew out when the field was trying to chase down a break and it took out a dozen guys. Broke my rear wheel. Everyone was fine, though. The few others I saw were guys jumping off the front, hitting a corner they hadn't run through solo yet, and sliding out.
In the lower categories, crashes aplenty. Huge ones.
EDIT: That it took me so many words to explain myself makes it clear I didn't have a well-formed opinion here to begin with. So feel free to disregard everything I've typed in this thread. But if you actually care to understand what I was trying to get at, read on I guess.
Yeah. I think I'd better clarify again what I was trying to say, since it is really much more narrow than how it's being construed. That's my fault, sorry.
It is only this: my experience is that huge stack-ups are rare, PERIOD, and most crashes involve one or two riders across all categories. More crashes at the 4/5 level than 1/2, sure, I'll buy it, that's my observation as well. But the huge crashes that take down a big swath of a field, I just haven't seen a lot of those at all. To any extent that they are more common in lower categories, I think rider skill does play an obvious role there, but I don't think it's in ability to avoid a rider that's going down, I think it's because lower category riders are more likely to crash due to a failure of pack riding skill, period. And that can happen in a situation where mass carnage is difficult to avoid.
Just as an example, I've had maybe two crashes ever that were unequivocally unavoidable for me at the point that they happened. One was a teammate who hit a thick stick on a climb in a curb-to-curb 1/2/3 field. He went down and took me with him. We were the only ones who crashed. Later that same month (2013 was so ridiculous), I was in the qualifying race for Athens Twilight, the Cat 3 field. Tight pack on a slight downhill, a guy maybe three or four wheels up from me in a big pack just loses it and goes down. I'm not sure if he overlapped wheels or tangled bars or what. The result there was a big pileup. At least 10-15 guys in a big heap on the ground, including me. There was just nowhere to go for most of us.
Another example. Category C Men Div 1 at the ECCC UVM Mt. Philo Road Race in 2008. Roughly Cat 4/5. Some dude next to me zoned out while we were cruising down a straight downhill, at maybe 30 mph, not crazy-fast. He hit a gas line head in a hole in the pavement, normally not a big deal but apparently he wasn't really holding onto the bars, because he completely let go of them, flopped down onto his brake hoods and went totally ass-over-teakettle. He hit my back wheel on the way down, but I got clear, no problem. Behind, it was a different story. Big wreck, lots of guys on the ground. Same deal as that Athens crit, the group was spread out across the whole lane because the speed was pretty moderate, so there was simply nowhere for many of them to go.
Each of these crashes happened because of an error that I would chalk up mostly to inexperience - failure of pack handling, failure to pay attention, failure to observe the road ahead. These are crashes that I think are simply much less likely to happen in a 1/2 race. But I don't think they became pileups because 4/5 riders need better skill at avoiding developing crashes. Send a really good rider in a very fast field to the deck under the same kind of circumstances and you'll see the same thing happen. We see it every summer on TV, if you have a lot of people in a very tight space with lots of people close behind them, one rider going down is going to cause havoc. The difference is it takes a lot more to send that experienced rider to the ground to begin with.
TL;DR I'm trying to say that I don't think the most productive way to develop crash avoidance is for inexperienced riders to work on their bunnyhopping skills or other handling abilities. Of course they should, and that helps, but once you've got a crash started in a big pack, plain old luck really does have a lot to do with how that's going to end up for you. These crashes in the lower categories happen mostly because of a failure in basic skills, like overlapping wheels, or tangling bars, or not being ready if you hit a hole or debris you can't see, or failure to hold onto your damn handlebars. So, I guess that it wasn't a useful point to make, since I still think it's smart to work on all of these things, but in the service of trying to be clear on what I was trying to say... there you go.