Tacit knowledge: When the start of the field is approved, the professional cyclists follow the scenarios that have been recorded. Image: Imago
If you want to understand how the peloton of the Tour de France mostly races accident-free on France’s country roads, you have to look at the sky. A scientist explains why.
peloton. Meanings: Cycling: closed field or peloton in road racing. At the Tour de France such a peloton, when complete, is initially 176 riders (gradually reducing due to injuries and other things). Anyone who has ever seen such a peloton on a flat spot has not noticed much of it. A scurry maybe, a gust of wind. Then the peloton was already up and away.
You can follow it better in front of the television. You can see 176 professionals gliding along at high speed in the smallest of spaces, handlebars to handlebars, shoulder to shoulder, how the peloton changes, sometimes lengthening, sometimes widening. How is that possible? you ask yourself. How does that work over hundreds of kilometers during a Tour de France?
