Originally Posted by carpediemracing

Watched this, with sound. Maybe I have bad hearing, I didn't hear a lot of talking.

Your teammate fell victim to the most common new racer thing I've seen in teammates - it's the "me too" attack. One teammate goes, another thinks "Oh, hey, I can help out" and tries to go with. PRoblem is that the second teammate ends up the elastic holding the field to the first teammate. This goes for attacks, hard pulls to set up attacks, even splits in a heavily stressed field. If (generically) your teammate is in a strong position then you should not do any work to help the rest of the field defeat your teammate.

As a general rule, unless you're doing an actual leadout for a sprint (prime, finish) or a huge effort to get to a course feature first (real race-defining features, not just a turn, so things like a narrow 180, hard turn into a steep climb up a sidewalk, stuff that's just nutty), a teammate should NEVER directly respond to another teammate's move. Generally speaking teammates should not close gaps caused by a teammate going hard at the front. Whenever one teammate is working in the wind, any effort to keep the group together should be done by non-teammates.

This means: if Chris is the attacker and (I'm going to make a name here) Joe is the teammate, Joe shouldn't see wind after Chris attacks. If Chris just follows Eric (non-teammate) and the two gap off the field then Joe should let someone else pull to close the gap. Joe should never see wind if Chris is working or seeing wind. Once Chris is neutralized - back in the field - then Joe can do work. Then the opposite applies - if Joe is off the front, CHris should only follow moves, never see wind, never help pull. Even if Chris pulls at 12 mph it's 10 watts more than sitting in at 12 mph, so don't pull, just sit in.

I've been in line in a hard race, single file, and noticed my strongest teammates were in front of me, surrounded by riders that I felt they could beat. I'd just ease a bit in a turn, let a gap go. Often it doesn't work, sometimes it does. I've been responsible for helping establish a number of race winning breaks, not because I attacked the field but because I was the one that let a gap go, the rest hesitated a bit before working, and the break was gone. Obviously the break has to work but it's easier to follow wheels, harder to bridge an actual gap. By giving some strong riders that opportunity by giving them a gap I forced the issue with the riders in the field.

This doesn't mean that the follower can't make moves happen. FOr example say Chris follows Eric and the two find themselves off the front. Joe is now the watchdog in the field. Joe can follow the chase, sit on, not work. If the chase starts to fizzle he can launch an extremely sharp counter attack, gap off the chase group, and bridge on his own. Joe won't be able to counter extremely sharply if he does anything beyond the absolute minimum work because any work above minimum will take away from his counter move. This means no wind, no pulling, just following, sheltered, resting, waiting. If Joe starts to feel excruciatingly bored then he's close to going easy enough. It should be absolutely agonizing, it should feel like taking candy from a 3 year old. Then, once the chase fizzles, he can go, if the other guys cook themselves nicely.

Obviously if taken to an extreme the passive teammate can block himself right off the back of the race. I've been in such situations where I'm cooked, I just sit, and suddenly I'm in a group of 4 off the back of what is now a field reassembling itself. I'll think I'm still in a group of 15 or 20 but sometimes they all get gapped/shelled/etc within a few laps and when I turn around I realize there's no one behind me. Then suddenly I'm effectively off the back.