The 2012 London Olympic Games

[ryanman]

I had a look mate and yes I know fuck all about cycling.

But for me I still don't get it. I am presuming one of the guys in the breakaway group went onto win right ?

So he covered the distance quicker than Cavendish ?!?!? So why is Cavendish mopaning about not being able to reel them back in.

If you can't reel them back in then you can't catch them and they have done the course quicker than you ? So what's the beef ?!? If someone goes into the lead and manages to keep the lead then it's everyone else's problem for not catching him ?!?

Yeah the guy that won deserved to win - no problem there.
But -

In road racing any particular race can suit different types of rider. Cavendish is a 'sprinter', whereas Wiggins and Froome etc are more all rounders. But they still compete in the same events. Hence Cavendish wins more stages of the Tour de France than anyone else yet finishes around 150th overall. He wins some stages by a few seconds (those that end in a sprint finish) but then loses the mountainous stages by around half hour. The tour winner is the lowest aggregate time - hence Wiggins winning it with less stage wins.
The Olympic road race is the same as one stage of the Tour de France.
Some years it may be quite mountainous - in which case Cavendish wouldn't even be in the team.
Other times (like this year) it is a flat(ish) stage and so expected to end in a sprint finish. (Flat stages are easier for everyone to stay together - So the sprinters, who are powerful athetes with less endurance, can stay with the pack and burst out to win at the end. In hilly/mountainous stages they can't keep up and won't be there at the end).
If a stage ends in a sprint finish Cavendish will be favourite to win everytime. If it does not end in a sprint finish he has ZERO chance of winning.
This was expected to end in a sprint finish. Therefore the whole team would work for Cavendish (basically letting him sit in their slipstream to keep him with the pack til the end). If the course was different the tactics may have been for Wiggins or Froome to attack and try to win. It is a team that compete but individuals that win the medals. If say Wiggins burst off and won that's fine - great - but it would have been unlikely to work. The best chance of gold was for the team to sacriface themselves to set Cavendish up for the sprint.

So, on a flatish stage like the one they had it would normally go like this -
The pack stay together and the teams with good sprinters protect their sprinter to keep him out of trouble and keep him with the pack. Occasionally, one, or two, or however many riders from teams without a sprinter (and therefore do not want the pack to stay together) will breakaway early to try to get the win. The main pack (the Peloton) will then work together to bring them back in (working together just involves taking a turn to ride at the front to set the pace and shield the others from the wind). 9.5 times out of 10 the breakaways will be brought back and everyone finishes together (on flat stages).
On this occasion a large breakaway group went away. Great Britain started to work to bring it back but the other teams refused to do a shift too. Obviously the teams that had a man in the breakaway had no incentive to bring it back and so would not be expected to help. However the other teams that did not have a man in the breakaway should have put work in to bring it back otherwise they had effectively given up - which is what they did.
Now, Britain had a 5 man team. But only 4 that could do the work (Cav couldn't work at the front - that woud defeat the purpose). So GB's 4 men took turns driving the pace on to catch the breakaway but had no help. The breakaway had 20+ riders all working together and thus it was not possible for 4 men to catch them. Key point - You save up to 30% of your energy riding behind one or more other riders. The Germans, who had no man in the breakaway, and a good sprinter of their own also wanted a sprint finish and should have worked, however, they felt they could sit behind GB and GB would bring the breakaway back on thier own and would then leave the Germans fresh to win the sprint at the end. They felt GB could do this because it is exactly what GB did at the world champs last year. But a key difference is at the worlds it is a 10 man team and only 5 at the Olympics. GB is the only team in the world that can control a race on their own, but even they cannot control a 150 man race with just 5 people.
Having said all this it isn't really the other teams fault as such. They fucked it for themselves just as much as they fucked it for Britain. But Cavendish, given the way the race went, had absolutely no chance.
In short, its not that any team is to blame really, but it is also a million miles away from it being GB fucking up. In fact, that they will able to hold the gap to the breakaway group on their own is remarkable.

It was always the danger though -
No team without a good sprinter wants to get to the finish anywhere near Cavendish - hence the breakway.
Once the breakaway went everyone else, due to the strength of GB, was happy to leave all the work to them - an impossible task.

Thats it in a nutshell.
It took me a couple of years of watching the tour to get my head round it properly and still learning now.
@marktko @Fenster