Dear VeloNews,
For years, I’ve been watching the Tour, the Giro and the Vuelta and can’t understand how people — especially announcers — continually refer to riders having an advantage when they have teammates setting tempo on a big climb.

While I understand that drafting is a big advantage out on the flats, surely that benefit is negated at the slower speeds on a climb. Once the road tips up, isn’t it really just all about the strongest man who wins?
John Pierce
Dallas, Texas

Hello, John,
Of course you’re right that the benefits of drafting make a huge difference on flat stages, but the effects are not entirely eliminated on climbs.

At full speeds out on the flats, a rider tucked in the peloton can save between 25 and 30 percent of his effort by avoiding the full force of the wind. Indeed, in a full-on headwind that effect can only be increased to as much as 40 percent. We all know that and it’s the most fundamental element of all tactics in road racing. The timing of attacks, the use of domestiques to shield team leaders and breaks’ success or failure all depend on that basic rule.

When the slope increases, of course, the speeds drop. That doesn’t entirely eliminate the benefit of drafting, though. The benefits of drafting at 15-20kph can drop to levels of around 5 to 10 percent. Even if the benefit is slight, every little bit helps. But that isn’t the only effect at work here.

On a climb — depending at which point in a stage it appears — other factors, like tactics and psychology come into play, too. Take, for example, the 15th stage in this year’s Tour de France. That stage involved 15,000 feet of climbing over three hors categorie climbs, culminating in the ascent of the legendary switchbacks to the top of L'Alpe d’Huez.

CSC clearly had an advantage over those early climbs, with Frank and Andy Schleck doing much of the pace-setting on climbs like the Croix de Fer before Carlos Sastre launched the attack on L'Alpe d’Huez. Not only did the Schleck brothers offer Sastre some protection from the wind on those big climbs before the finish, they were there to help on the flats between the day’s big climbs. The pace set by the Schlecks and other CSC riders forced several potentially strong riders to ride beyond their own limits, and the effect was to reduce the field to the major competitors.

Surely, other riders from other teams benefited from their work, but Sastre had a psychological advantage, particularly against Cadel Evans, who found himself isolated against a trio of CSCs at the base of L'Alpe. Evans had to calculate his risk, deciding whether to put a big effort into pacing after Sastre or Frank Schleck, who was also a contender at the time. CSC, meanwhile, had the luxury of being able to send new riders up the road whenever one of theirs was caught. Instead, Sastre made an early attack and Evans was left to fight it out with the brothers.

In a 1991 interview, one-time L’Alpe d’Huez winner Andy Hampsten put it best when he described the effect of having teammates with you on a big climb.

"If there are 20 guys left in a group but there are two or even three from the same team, it makes other riders feel isolated," he said. "If the other riders are nervous, thinking 'Should I attack? Do I feel stronger?' and they see three guys from a team, they go, 'Boy. What are my chances if I do attack?’”

Again, those effects have a much, much greater impact on the climbs leading to the finale than they do on the haul up to a mountaintop finish. With the advent of video resources like VeloNews.TV and YouTube, it’s fun and informative to go back and analyze riders’ responses to situations in which they had teammates or found themselves isolated at key moments on killer climbs.

As you will see, it does ultimately depend on who is the strongest climber among the elites. Take, for example, the 14th stage of this year’s Vuelta a España. Alejandro Valverde was delivered in perfect style to the base of the final climb up Fuentes de Invierno. He had the support and had been riding with the protection of his Caisse d’Epargne team, but he couldn’t deliver that important final blow on the last climb. Instead, Alberto Contador - who had his own crew there - took the win and solidified his overall lead in the race.