The year of the team time trial – How teams have prepared for the Tour de France opening TTT from January to July

Much like the appearance of mince pies on supermarket shelves, it seems that races that are nominally Tour de France warm-ups get earlier every year. Even with this preparation creep, I cannot remember a year when any race before Opening Weekend had the eyes of the world on it, viewed through the lens of La Grand Boucle.

The Tour this year starts with a team time trial, a format that according to Alex Dowsett, Performance Engineer at XDS Astana, has been on the decline for the last half decade. Choosing to open the biggest race of the year with this underutilised discipline, rather than slotting it at, say, the end of the first week, allows teams the chance to bid for the coveted yellow jersey immediately, and as such there has been renewed focus from many teams on specific preparations.

Paris-Nice featured a TTT, flying the flag for the unorthodox newer timing format where each rider gets an individual time, rather than the whole team given the time of the fourth or fifth rider, and not to be outdone the Critérium du Dauphiné (or the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, if you must) also featured one this year, no doubt in a bid to lure the biggest riders to its roads for a final tune-up, though an unsuccessful one.

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The preparations for many teams, however, started in January, at a small series of one-day races in Mallorca, one of which was a TTT. I've already brought you a tech gallery, housing details of three unreleased (at the time) TT bikes, but I also took the opportunity while I was on the ground to sit down separately with Alex Dowsett, and Jonny Wale, Technical Performance Manager at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe to take a deep dive into the format, dynamics, and preparation needed to do justice to this most specialist of disciplines.

A resurgent discipline

Sitting in a hotel lobby in an out-of-season beach resort, I asked Dowsett his thoughts on the demise and recent resurgence of the TTT as a discipline.

"I think the reason TTTs took a back step was because it really showed the difference in rider rosters between teams in strength and depth, the depth of strength. And a team time trial really accentuates that," he said.

"You could say it's more like if you have a climbing team with riders more predisposed to be riding at 350, 400 watts on the front, because they're between 50 and 60 kilos, and you've got all of those versus a team who are 70 to 80 kilo riders who are riding 500 watts on the front… That, in a team time trial, is going to be a huge difference in time. And I think the reason that they took a back step is they were having almost too much influence on races, in terms of overall race results and the individuals who would win or lose races."

The ebb and flow of the popularity of the TTT seems to have been on Wale’s mind long far in advance of his joining Red Bull, along with Dan Bigham. A relative drought in the usage of the format, much like a suspicious lack of earthquakes in a tectonic zone, likely means something seismic is on the way.

"It's kind of why, when me and Dan first came to the team, we did put this big emphasis on it because you kind of see there's been nothing for three or three four years now…so oh, we're probably going to get one," Wale said. "I don't want to feel like an oracle, but one appeared. I'm almost certain this year and next year we'll have quite a few, and then it'll probably die back down again."

A new format

Usually the team time for a team time trial (try saying that fast three times) is taken on the fourth rider to cross the line, or a similar point back in the roster, and all the riders who finish get that time (those who were dropped earlier would still lose time).

This year, though, for the opening stage of the Tour, the format has been shaken up, with each rider receiving an individual time rather than a collective one. The team that wins is the team whose first rider finishes the fastest.

The popularity of this as a format varies from team to team, with Dowsett being in favour.

"I like the concept… I do think that's better than the minimum finishing requirement. It encourages a little bit more creativity too with pacing, which is nice, and with less consequence and less risk. So yeah, I think it’s a good thing. I think it eases the pain of the difference between big teams and small teams."

Wale, on the other hand, is less of a fan, and is of the opinion that it reduces the ‘team’ part of the discipline.

"Personally I'm not a fan of the rider time taken on the first rider approach. I think it's a spectacle, but I think the beauty of team time trialing is you have to finish with four or five, or however many they want to finish with, but you know, it's that you have to strategically, tactically maximise the seven or eight riders."

Team selection

As the TTT occurs on stage 1 of this year's Tour, the reward is not just the stage win, but the yellow jersey too. This, surely, will have an impact on team selection, though perhaps as times are individual it may be a case of simply delivering one's GC leader to the foot of the final climb for the short-ish sprint to the summit.

Team selection for the Tour is as much a factor of budget as it is the ideal squad. Dowsett outlines the difficulties of trying to factor a TTT into signings and rider development.

"Some of that then comes down to budget as well; [rider] salaries are the highest cost, and we've seen, now more than ever, that the salaries of a lot of riders are going up. Not all teams could afford this and sometimes have to be really smart with their signings; targeting youth, targeting potential rather than heavy hitters… Expensive hitters," he explained.

"And what then happens and when you must finish with four, you might have two super talents, and then they might be carrying two riders, whereas you might have another team with four super talents that can run to the finish. And the reality is, if you are at the final quarter or third of a team time trial, and you are those two really strong guys, you would likely be faster by yourselves than having to carry the other two."

For Wale, who likely has access to a greater number of 'expensive hitters' at Red Bull, Tour selection will be based to a not-insignificant degree on TTT performance, but it’s not the be-all and end-all.

"Yes, team selection will be dependent on team time trialling performance. If you've got two guys, they both do the same role equally as well for the 20 days, but the first day one guy will do a better team time trial, then you would bring him," he said. "But it's also a motivating tool once these guys understand what the demands of the event are, and what we're going to expect of them, then they've got six months to do their homework."

Curiously, despite having Remco Evenepoel in the squad, the focus appears to be primarily on the riders lower down in the roster. Riders who, it seems, can make or break the result.

"It's your, I'll call them 'second tier' riders within time trialing in these Tour squads, they're the guys that almost win it for you, because it's seven or eight guys.

"If you put Remco with seven, eight climbers who never ride a time trial bike, you're not going to win. So that was initially, when we came in, we really put that big focus in, even last year. That was all towards the Vuelta team time trial. It's aero testing these second level guys, and building the culture of it as well."

Collective benefits

Having a TTT on the cards from a long way out, with several opportunities to practice, means team selection (the long list at least) takes place further in advance of the Tour than usual to allow time for practice, be it in training or in these warm-up races.

While this has additional challenges in terms of rider management, according to Wale it also presents a brilliant opportunity to truly build a team atmosphere, rather than a collection of individuals working towards a collective goal.

"When you add that team element to it it really bonds emotionally with a lot of people. It makes them do the dirty work they don't want to do. They don't want to do a team time trial session on the turbo and in the rain, or they don't want to ride it two, three times a week. If you give them a purpose, because it's their mates, it's that collective bringing people together.

"It's not as simple as having the right watts per kilo; in the Tour you need eight boys that really believe in each other. And opportunities like these [in Mallorca] are the training sessions. Even the little things like spending extra time together in the cafe, in the restaurant, in their rooms, you know? It brings them together and builds that team culture."

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