Читать книгу Tour Climbs: The complete guide to every mountain stage on the Tour de France - Chris Sidwells - Страница 15

Why should this be? Why are mountain climbs so important in shaping the outcome of the Tour de France? Part of the reason is to do with wind resistance. As a cyclist’s speed increases linearly, the air resistance that cyclist has to overcome increases exponentially. So bike racers have to overcome far more air resistance to increase their speed by one mile per hour when travelling at 25 mph than they do when travelling at 10 mph. This means that when they are travelling fairly fast, on a flat stage for example, the riders find it very difficult to break away from each other. The whole field can slipstream each other, saving energy, and will often finish virtually together.

Going uphill though, involves a different set of physics. It’s the force of gravity rather than air resistance that has to be overcome. No cyclist can travel faster uphill than on the flat, so the reduced speeds mean that air resistance and slipstreaming have less of an effect when climbing. In the mountains a rider has to fight against his own weight, so the mountains favour riders with the highest power to weight ratio.

But that isn’t the whole story. Cycling is a complicated sport, and long stage races like the Tour de France are its most complicated arena. A good mountain climber might have a phenomenally high power to weight ratio, but that could be because he is incredibly light and his absolute power is quite low, which is a limiting factor in a time trial. So although a Tour de France winner must excel in the mountains, and climbing specialists have won the race, he must still be able to ride a fair time trial. In fact, broadly speaking, there are two kinds of Tour winners; time trial specialists who can limit their losses in the mountains, and climbers who can do the same in a time trial.

There are also differences in the way overall contenders go about racing uphill. Some riders, the ones who are good at time trials and can climb well, favour setting a high average pace in an attempt to slowly burn off all the others. Whereas climbing specialists will make violent changes of pace, attacking and being caught before attacking again until their rivals are exhausted by chasing them.

They are the riders who win the King of the Mountains title in the Tour de France, The competition started in the 1933 Tour de France, and is based on points awarded for the first riders over each climb of the Tour. The number of points and how far down the field they go depends on the severity of each climb. They are ranked from third category for hills and small passes, to first category for bigger climbs. Then there is a category the French call Hors Categorie, or beyond category, for the real giants.

The leader of the King of the Mountains competition wears a distinctive red and white polka-dot jersey. The design for that came from the fact that when it was first awarded as the symbol of leadership in this section of the race, the sponsor of the mountains competition was a chocolate manufacturer, whose wrappers were white with red polka-dots on them.