Cycling: Riders open up on Tour de France

With green jerseys, breakaways and time trials, the Tour de France can be confusing. Alasdair Fotheringham asks the professionals to shed some light

Teams normally have one or two leaders, but what are the teammates' roles?

The former Irish national champion Dan Martin is a second-year professional cyclist with the Garmin-Slipstream team and is tipped for future greatness in the major Tours. He was runner-up in this year's Tour of Catalonia - one of Spain's toughest races - but last-minute tendinitis prevented him from taking part in the Tour de France.

"Cycling doesn't come across as a team sport, but every ounce of energy that you can save can be useful in a major stage race and that's where team workers come in, by protecting their leader. If you spend 10 calories of extra energy every day then that adds up on a three-week race.

"All the guys in our team work for one leader, and even if it's just going to get him food or water from the team car and handing it to him while he's racing, or riding in such a position that you protect him from the wind, that's energy saved because it takes so much effort just to stay at the front.

"But the team leader's got to be at the front because of the 'accordion effect' on the corners, where the guys at the back use up a lot more energy because of braking and accelerating unexpectedly. The team leader wants to be at the front so he can dictate when he brakes and how hard. That's what I was going to be doing if I'd done the Tour: protecting our leader Christian Vande Velde in the mountains. But because of my injury I'll have to focus on doing the Tour of Spain."

Why do riders break out of the pack? Do they think they can win the stage?

Pedro Delgado was Spain's leading Tour de France rider in the 1980s, winning the event outright in 1988 and finishing third in 1989. After retiring in 1994 "Perico" now commentates on the race for Spanish state television channel TVE.

"You attack for two reasons - the most frequent being you feel restless and want to stretch your legs a bit. The bunch isn't going as fast as you'd like, you're feeling good, and you think you might be able to have an impact on the race alone rather than in a bunch sprint, which is really for specialists like Mark Cavendish. If you don't win it's a pity but, unless it comes really close like David Millar's attack on Thursday in the Tour, losing isn't the end of the world.

"The other reason is much more simple: your sports director tells you you have to! In this case the objective of you breaking away may be part of the overall team strategy - forcing your opponents to waste energy pulling you back, or simply because he wants the team jersey to appear on television for a few minutes and get the sponsor some extra publicity."

What is the point of time trials in the Tour de France?

The 1992 Olympic gold medallist Chris Boardman is Great Britain's best-ever individual time triallist, with three Tour de France prologue victories and 41 wins in a career spanning seven years. He also made two successful Hour Record attempts (where a rider tries to cycle as far as he can in 60 minutes in a velodrome), in 1996 and 2000.

"Time trials make a stage race more complete because they're a test of physiological strength, without any tactics or strategy. You've either got it or you haven't, there's nowhere to hide.

"In time trials, you can believe in the end result, because everybody competes on an equal footing so there's no hiding behind the team effort. That's why they call it the 'race of truth'. It's you against the clock.

"If you took it out of the Tour de France, for example, then it wouldn't be the same kind of race. It's another element of the rider's overall capability. If you got rid of team time trials from the Tour, then riders such as [the Australian contender] Cadel Evans wouldn't have lost as much time as they did on stage four.

"My favourite time triallist? Rather than someone like Lance Armstrong, who's very effective but not so pleasant to watch, I think Dave Millar is the most elegant of them all."

Why doesn't the race leader try to win every stage?

Five times a Tour de France rider in the 80s, Graham Jones now works as a BBC Radio Five Live summariser on the Tour.

"The overall winner of any multi-day race has always been decided on accumulated time, not on placings. So even if a race leader finishes 65th in the stage because he is at the back of a large pack of riders, he will record the same time as the rest of his rivals.

"Normally the mountain stages are where gaps open up between the riders, because the terrain is that much tougher. So strong riders gain time on the weaker ones. Sometimes it's not the terrain that determines what happens, though. Last Monday's flat stage to Cap d'Agde should have been a stage where most of the bunch finished together, but a group, including Lance Armstrong, powered off the front of the pack and Armstrong gained time on the rest of his rivals.

"There is a competition, too, for the most consistently placed rider on each stage - that's the points competition, which Mark Cavendish led until Saturday, which is why he was wearing the green jersey. Normally it's a sprinter like Mark who has the best chance of winning that because there are more flat stages where the sprinters can do better."

Cavendish is winning lots of the stages in the Tour. Why can't he win it outright?

Raymond Poulidor is France's most popular former professional cyclist. He is known as "the eternal second" because he never won the Tour or even led it, but as the main rival of five-times winner Jacques Anquetil he came agonisingly close on several occasions in the 1960s.

"That's simple: the mountains. He's not a climber, and so he's got no chance of winning overall.

"He's young and he is a pure sprinter, and the fact he's won six stages in the Tour already is simply amazing - don't forget, it's the biggest race in the world and the publicity he's generating is enormous. But he cannot go uphill as fast as he can go on the flat, and he never will.

"So Mark should concentrate on what he can do well. It would really be a great pity if he did not reach Paris wearing the green jersey, that is as the points leader, and win the last stage. I really do think it is more than possible.

"Frankly, I think Mark could become the greatest sprinter of all time. Just look at how easily he's winning - you can't see anybody else in the photo."

- INDEPENDENT