How Team Tactics Shape The Tour de France, And Vice Versa

How Team Tactics Shape The Tour de France, And Vice Versa

In yesterday's story, How To Watch Cycling, I wrote offhand that the Tour de France was "poker on two wheels." That poker game is an important element of tactics, but it's not the only one. With the Tour so close and so much more coverage to come, it seemed worth addressing the principles of team tactics a little more thoroughly. How do the teams fight each other? What are they fighting for? And why is that interesting? A team's primary weapon i…