Team Time Trial - Team Time Trials in Stage Racing

Team Time Trials in Stage Racing

In a Stage race, teams usually consist of several members. Each member of the team is credited with the time of the N-th team member to cross the finish line; this is usually after the median member of a nine-person team (e.g. the fifth out of nine members of a team in the Tour de France). However, if a rider is dropped from the team's main group on the course, finishing separately in (N+1)-th position or later, then the dropped rider will get his actual time, not that of the fifth rider. This means there are often difficult decisions to make regarding hanging back for a team leader, and chaos can often ensue if ground rules have not been made by the team's manager.

The '(N+1)-th rider' convention also prevents a team leader who is far stronger than his teammates from riding by himself and setting a pace that would give his weaker teammates an unfair boost in the general classification. Traditionally, each team received the exact time it recorded in that stage.

For two years, starting with the 2004 Tour de France, the only team that received its actual time in the Tour de France was the winning team; the trailing teams at worst received set time penalties based on their placings in that stage - for example, riders in a team that finished six minutes behind the winner might lose only three minutes in the general classification. According to this rule any team that finished within 30 seconds of the winning team would earn its actual time. This happened in 2005, as Team CSC finished two seconds behind Lance Armstrong's Discovery Channel team in that year's team time trial. Some viewed these 2004 changes in timing practice as an attempt to prevent members of the US Postal Service team, led by Lance Armstrong, from gaining too much time against their competition on weaker teams; the organizers have categorically denied these allegations. With the team time trial returning for the 2009 Tour de France, this rule change was not retained. The team time trial in 2009 is almost 30 kilometres shorter than the one in 2005 edition.

If a stage race starts with team time trial, the leader's jersey is given to a rider who finishes first of the winning team.

The fastest team time trial in the Tour de France was by Discovery Channel in 2005. The team rode the 67.5 km stage Tours-Blois with an 57.324 km/h average. However, the team time trial was not held in the tour from 2006 through 2008. The 2009 Tour De France included a 39 km team time trial.