Idiots Guide to Pro Cycling?

[oldroadman]

1. Read all you can find about the sport.
2. Watch all the cycling on TV (Eurosport) you can manage. Record following programme because it's live and can overrun.. Listen carefully to the experts (Sean Kelly, Magnus Backstedt, Dan Lloyd) all ex riders who can really read a race, and bring it to life.
3. There are NO silly questions! If you get slapped by anyone on a forum, then that's their problem, not yours. All you have to do is ask and someone will try to answer.
4. Just remember you can't teach experience. watch enough races and you will begin to appreciate tactics, understand team dynamics, work out what's happening, why things happen (well sometimes that can be a mystery to everyone, but that's the joy of the sport).

Fire off the questions in small doses, build up a knowledge slowly, remember there is a big difference between one day races and stage races, and other stuff you may see, like criteriums such as Tour Series on TV.

So, what do you want to know first, race rankings and types, how teams are classified, team structures?
Fire away!

 

[cyberknight]

Series-link anything and everything UCI on Eurosport. To be fair, as a recentish convert to pro-cycling fan myself, I found that the commentators on there are aware that the audience may have a fair few non-initiated and are good at explaining things out.

Can you do this ? whenever i have tried to do it the box says there is no link information even for the TDF so i end up watching that on itv4 as at least i can series link on that channel.

 

[Risex4]

Can you do this ? whenever i have tried to do it the box says there is no link information even for the TDF so i end up watching that on itv4 as at least i can series link on that channel.

Well, I can't speak for every box and set-up and I guess it depends on each box's own EPG, but I have a Virgin Media Tivo box, I set it up to series-link the TDU in January and since then its caught (through no intention of my own I might add, but I'm certainly not arguing) the Tirreno-Adriatico, Paris-Nice, Paris-Roubaix, Basque Tour, Volta Catalunya, Tour of Flanders, All three Flanders classics (well, LBL is in the planner and ready to roll), Milan-San Remo, Crit International... that's from memory but you get the idea. Granted I've had the odd over-run/under-record but it suffices in the main.

I think it helps that on Virgin (at least) it all comes under "UCI Road Cycling", and they don't call each race something different.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

Well so long as you don't disagree with Rich P, Noodley or Flying Monkey, in which case you'll be hounded from this part of the forum for lack of knowledge....

Come now, without the input of the enthusiastic regulars, including the three you mention but also people like raindog, oldroadman and many others, there wouldn't be much of a 'this part of the forum', and most of what happens here happens with relative good grace and good manners.

To the OP, I would also suggest that reading the Inner Ring blog ( http://inrng.com/ ) is a great way to get more into things. It isn't in any way a beginner's guide, but it's so informative and well-written that you if you read it regularly, you will not fail to get more out of following pro-cycling.

 

[The Couch]

Cricket ?!?!? You definitely made the right choice getting interested in cycling

If you want to learn about cycling:
1. Take some (advanced) Dutch "(Flemish") courses
2. Move to Flanders
3. Watch all the cycling races (and cycling specials/documentaries) that are being broadcasted on "Sporza"
4. No matter where you work in Flanders, just talk to your colleagues about the cycling races

It will go faster, if you just get naturalized to Belgian citizenship, then the knowledge will automatically get updated into your DNA

...But either way, you're set

 

[Rob3rt]

Come now, without the input of the enthusiastic regulars, including the three you mention but also people like raindog, oldroadman and many others, there wouldn't be much of a 'this part of the forum', and most of what happens here happens with relative good grace and good manners.

To the OP, I would also suggest that reading the Inner Ring blog ( http://inrng.com/ ) is a great way to get more into things. It isn't in any way a beginner's guide, but it's so informative and well-written that you if you read it regularly, you will not fail to get more out of following pro-cycling.

Also if you click lexicon at the top (or click this link: http://inrng.com/lexicon/), it gives you a load of information on typical terms used in cycling. Such as those the OP wanted clarifying.

 

[Hont]

An idiot's guide to Pro Cycling? Simply tune in to ITV's coverage of the TdF. There are two idiots on there (commentating) who attempt to give you a guide.

Although one of them will refer to it throughout as "the sport of professional cycling"

 

[johnr]

An idiot's guide to Pro Cycling? Simply tune in to ITV's coverage of the TdF. There are two idiots on there (commentating) who attempt to give you a guide.

Although one of them will refer to it throughout as "the sport of professional cycling"

... may also help unravel some of the more straightforward definitions of 'nobber' as alluded to by Thom above

 

[Monsieur Remings]

Well so long as you don't disagree with Rich P, Noodley or Flying Monkey, in which case you'll be hounded from this part of the forum for lack of knowledge....

Nah, I haven't been hounded out yet!

And yes, to the OP, these three posters seriously know their stuff and I've learnt a lot from their insights which are considerably more than my own, along with others...

To the idiots guide, well, racing is so multi-dimensional and strategic and yet each team/rider has to play to their individual strengths to gain the maximum advantage where they can - TT, mountain or sprint to name a few obvious examples. Getting to know what riders excel at is a good start and how their teams will use them and place their domestiques in a position to maximise that rider's advantage.

I also like good commentary and whilst I forget the name of the chappy on Eurosport, IMO he works brilliantly with Sean Kelly because he's always asking what Sean thinks and Kelly is never afraid to give his opinion on what he thinks will happen next. Insight again...

And, do some racing yourself and you'll understand just a bit of that pressure the professionals are under - the fatigue, the constancy in terms of alertness, the importance of keeping the wheel, the calculations which determine whether or how or when you respond to an attack/breakaway, the tactics (at a higher level anyway) which determine who will show their hand and how best to counteract that. Is it best to work on the front and dictate the pace when someone else will do that for you? Etc etc.

Even the Directeur sportifs are still learning...

 

[raindog]

Talking of the OP, I wonder where he went? Did he get hounded off?

 

[Monsieur Remings]

Talking of the OP, I wonder where he went? Did he get hounded off?

He got dropped and retired early.

 

[Crackle]

http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/giro-ditalia-2013-a-beginners-guide-to-the-race

Beginners guide to the Giro