Originally Posted by
rebayona
I guess that's designed to avoid reserve teams on cycling. Teams of only 9, not 18. Sounds fair.
On Sunday at the ToC, Daniel Oss, former leadout man for Cannondale, gave Peter Sagan, former sprinter for Cannondale, a leadout for the mid-stage time bonus sprint at a time when Sagan's understaffed Tinkoff team were all too exhausted to raise a gallop after chasing every breakaway all day. In the past, Contador has had former teammates pace him up mountains when he's run out of support himself. You see riders on opposite teams working together all the time to form and/or chase down breakaways, and share food and bottles while doing it. Any of these things had/have a much bigger effect on the eventual race result than a friend helping out a friend behind the peloton in the last kms of a flat stage.
And as said before, the UCI and race organisers the world over constantly pick and choose which regulations to uphold and when. This is a weird time to enforce a rule when they let 30 guys jump a railroad crossing at Paris Roubaix.