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The Indiana Daily Student

sports

The science behind drafting

Thirty-three riders jockey for a position, inches apart from one another as they turn laps around the Little 500 track in Bill Armstrong stadium.

Riders are in constant movement trying to find the optimal position in the slipstreams the bikes create. The continuous subtle movements of the riders can make the difference in both maintaining speed and conserving energy.

Drafting is when physical prowess meets a science experiment.

The right move in the draft can bring a rider to the front of the field. One wrong move can lead to a rider picking cinders out of his or her skin after a crash.

“It’s a lot of chaos,” Delta Sigma Pi rider Mark Juretschke said.

When drafting, the cyclists form a large group called the peloton. In French, “peloton” literally means “ball” or “platoon.” During Little 500, mastering and controlling the peloton is key for teams to stay up front.

Although from afar, drafting can look relatively simple, the peloton itself has a number of complexities that can be difficult to understand at first.

The front riders of the peloton carry the burden of “pulling” the field. This is oftentimes the brunt of the work. The lead riders cut into the wind, opening a hole in the air that reduces the aerodynamic drag the riders following in close pursuit will face.

The reduction in drag allows for the riders in the midst of the peloton to preserve energy while maintaining speed. Studies on exactly how much energy the riders save vary between 10 and 40 percent depending on the size of the peloton and weather
patterns.

Though the exact amount of energy being saved is hard to pinpoint, riders say the difference in feel is obvious.

“It’s night and day different,” Alpha Epsilon Pi rider Brett Frommer said.. “When you’re in the pack, you can stay on another person’s wheel and just ride. Keeping a good gap in helps save energy and maintain speed.”

Within the peloton, a handful of teams typically stay near the front of the group. Teams will often ally themselves with one another, allowing for riders to switch who is responsible with the weight of pulling.

The front of the pack controls the speed of the race. Depending on a team’s specific strategies, some may want to see the race slowed down, allowing for riders to breathe easily and conserve energy. Others may want to push the tempo and test the endurance of the field from the very beginning.

“There’s a lot of politics behind it,” Juretschke said. “The biggest thing people might not notice is that the top tier teams are always going to be near the front. They work together and control what is going on and who rides up there.”

Although riders can conserve energy in the peloton, the nature of the wheel-to-wheel action creates risk of massive crashes. In last year’s men race, several teams near the middle of the peloton were involved in a crash while entering turn three on the eighth lap.

The easiest way for riders to stay out of trouble and away from crashes is to stay in front of them.

When riders near the front speed up, there is a lag to the back of the peloton. This creates an accordion effect that can lead to trouble for riders who can’t keep up with the speed changes.

Because of the high risk and reward of riding in the peloton, Frommer said the best thing for riders to do is to stay alert on the track.

“The biggest thing that most of these guys work on is just being able to sit in a good position and work on being able to ride safely and not let any gaps form,” he said. “If you can do that, you can be around at the end.”

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