June 22, 2016

The Tour Preparation Puzzle

2016 Tour de France Prep

Nobody knows. You don’t know. I don’t know. Christian Prudhomme doesn’t know. Chris Froome doesn’t know. Even David Brailsford doesn’t know.

Nobody knows who is going to win the 2016 Tour de France.

My day job is in sports betting. Even if you have solid mathematical models taking all of the previous 102 editions of the Tour into account you’d still be nowhere near knowing who will win. If you had the results of every cycling race ever, the performance data from every training ride of every rider, analytics on tactical performances of every team and the biological passport data from every rider in the race, you still wouldn’t know.

~ Continue reading ~

• • •

February 17, 2016

The Attraction of Uncertainty

Vuelta

By losing the race on the last day, Sevilla was following an established Vuelta tradition in which the outcome remains uncertain until the final day. It’s a pattern that distinguishes the Spanish race from the Tour de France, where the winner nearly always has a very clear, unassailable margin.

As is written by Adrian Bell and Lucy Fallon in the book Viva La Vuelta. The race referred to is the 2001 edition where Ángel Casero managed to overhaul the Colombian Óscar Sevilla in the final time trial to win the Vuelta without winning a stage and without ever wearing the leader’s jersey.

~ Continue reading ~

• • •