How to ride a team time trial

It will be a high-speed, high-stakes contest. We will have to race through every corner at the limits of our tyres’ grip, while our hearts pound in our throats, and keep together in aero formation. Every rider will have to do his part, pulling into the wind at maximum speed, staying tight on the wheels, and racing through chicanes without losing a centimetre. In the World Tour, every tenth of a second counts, so we can’t miss a pedal stroke.

“A team time trial is the most stressful situation that you can have in cycling,” says EF Education-EasyPost sports director and former pro Juanma Garate. “You know that you can’t make any mistakes, because for every mistake you pay a really high price. You know that you are going to suffer a lot. You cannot be dropped, because then you are flicking your teammates directly. The first part of the team time trial in Utrecht is really technical, and the boys will be super under pressure.”

Pro bike racers live for that pressure. When it goes right—there are few thrills in the sport like railing a series of corners at over 60 km/hr in perfect sync with your teammates.

“Being together in the TT bars at that speed is scary,” Esteban Chaves says. “You can’t touch the brakes. But I enjoy the TTT effort more than individual time trials. You’re all together, and that makes it interesting. I love it. I’m really looking forward to the race.”

Mark Padun is a little nervous.

“A 20-minute TTT is a lot of stress,” he says. “It’s going to be very technical with the corners, but it’s nice to work as a team, so the result is not only for one rider but for everyone.”

That’s what James Shaw likes about team time trials too.

“A TT is a very individual thing,” he says,” but the TTT just brings everyone and everything together. The race course in Utrecht is pretty flat, so we’re going to go very fast and be charged with adrenaline.”

The key to a fast TTT is to ride smoothly when you’re all on the rivet.

During a team time trial, riders swap turns in front, racing faster than they could ever go for more than a minute or two alone, since their teammates will soon pull ahead and protect them from the full force of the wind.

On a long straight stretch, the team will maintain a continuous rotation, with one line of riders pushing forwards on the downwind side, while their teammates drop back and away from the wind and provide them with shelter.

At the front, it’s important to keep the speed steady. If you surge into the wind, your teammate at the back of the retreating line will have to sprint to close the gap as he switches onto the advancing wheels. That effort will cost him sooner or later. So, stronger riders should take longer pulls, giving their teammates more time to recover, so they can keep up the speed when they do hit the front.

The same is true coming out of corners. On twisty sections of a course, the riders will string out into a single line, so they can navigate the turns faster. The rider in front needs to be sure that all of his teammates are on the wheel before he accelerates after a bend. When the corners come one after the other, he’s just got to trust them. It is up to him to make sure that he pulls off at a moment when he can keep up enough speed to get back into the draft without getting in the way of his teammates. If anyone has to hit the brakes, the whole team will lose time.

“With the team, you have to find a balance between the strongest and the weakest link, EF Education-EasyPost Head of Performance Peter Schep says. “Every rider is doing a number of seconds in the wind and the other guys try to sit in the slipstream drafting, so it’s the perfect balance between pulling hard and recovering. Beforehand, we know the capacity of each rider, so we can find this balance, but the course of the Vuelta’s TTT is very technical, in the middle of a big city, with quite some road furniture on the left and on the right side of the parcours. Strategically, we will try to protect our riders who will compete for the GC, which impacts on the strategy too. The timer stops after the fifth rider crosses the line. This means we’ll have to sacrifice some riders, using their capacity to pull hard, so we can get the best efficiency out of them for the team.”

We roll down the ramp at 18:58 Utrecht time on Friday night. We want to get this Vuelta going with a great team performance.

“It’s a tough challenge, but it’s also exciting to have a TTT again at the Vuelta,” Peter Schep says.