Race tech: Planned bike swaps for California time trial

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The Stage 6 time trial of this year's Tour of California is throwing riders for a loop with a rolling (and windy) profile for the first 30km of the course but then a nasty uphill kick for the final 3km. Several teams have planned to swap riders from aerodynamic TT bikes to lightweight road racing ones.

Team officials were mixed on how beneficial such a strategy would be due to the lower bike weights with estimates ranging from 10-30 seconds saved. However, that doesn’t factor in the time required for the swap itself, nor the energy expenditure to reaccelerate back to racing speed.

Moreover, racers and team mechanics aren't necessarily well versed in such a procedure, the US-style roof racks installed on the team cars aren’t as quick to use as compared to the custom setups used in Europe, and race rules don't allow the team car to jet ahead of the rider to prepare for a swap.

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Trek team liaison Jordan Roessingh told BikeRadarthat it's a tricky strategy for sure and that the Radioshack-Leopard-Trek team would likely experiment with riders who sit lower down on the GC to see how well it goes. Given the small reward – but very large risks – Roessingh doesn't expect the top GC riders to take the chance.

That being said, Lars Boom (Blanco) has already proven that the strategy can work, having won a similar time trial at the Tour Méditerranéen back in February in exactly that fashion so don't be surprised to see more of this practice in the future.