Do you even enjoy Time Trials?

I don’t really like time trials.

I understand why some people love them. The rider at one with their machine. The cyclist against nobody else but themselves, pushing, turning, breathing, heaving. I understand there is beauty in the task at hand but also beauty in the tools for the task too, despite the recent propensity for Spaceballs helmets. Sadly for me, I’ve never been that interested in bicycles. It’s the racing that does it for me.

None of that beauty is why I watch cycling. I watch it primarily for the tactics. I watch it to wonder why riders and teams are doing particular things. I form my own opinions and theories as I watch the race and then I see those opinions either backed up or obliterated by commentators or journalists. Every race is different and the tactics are an ever-changing constantly shifting ball of intrigue. I also understand that there are tactics at play in a time trial, pacing strategies and all that, but that’s very different. For me, time trials are just something to endure throughout the course of a Grand Tour (the less time-trially riders, I’m sure, would agree).

This is how I feel about time trials within stage races. Stand alone time trials are even worse. At least with a stage race, there is context and a general classification which is being redrawn constantly as the stage progresses. For stand alone time trials like the Olympics or the Worlds, there is none of that context. Nothing existed before the time trial begins and nothing will endure once it’s over. The talking points are minimal and the tactics are mundane.

However… HOWEVER!

My one exception to my chronic disgruntlement is an opening stage Grand Tour time trial.

I believe the origins of this exception began at the 1993 Tour de France. This was the first Tour I watched properly and watched repeatedly. The reason I was able to watch it repeatedly was because my Dad would very diligently tape each half hour Channel 4 evening coverage of the race on to a series of VHS tapes. He even pressed pause for the ads (and most crucially, pressed unpause after they were over, just in time to see the Kronenberg-bike-riding-through-a-puddle clip). This was also in the days where there only a handful of channels on telly and especially during the day on long summers off school, there was fuck all to watch. So the 1993 Tour de France would have to do.

More often then I can remember I’d start watching it from scratch. I sometimes got as far as the middle when Tony Rominger dominated the Alps. And every now and again I’d get to the end when Tony Rominger famously defeated Miguel Indurain in a time trial. Starting again to watch it from the beginning so often meant that the stage I watched more than any other, by far, and probably the stage I’ve watched more often than any other stage in Tour history, is the opening prologue time trial of the 1993 Tour de France.

I can remember who started first down the ramp on the course around the Puy de Fou. I remember Phil Liggett telling us that it was Frank Pineau wearing the atrocious kit of the Chazal team (which would eventually morph into AG2R). I can remember snippets of the commentary word for word even now - Roche the “grand old man of Irish cycling” not getting too far away from the early best time of Alex Zülle and then when Indurain rounded the final corner Liggett gasping and imploring that we “LOOK AT THE CLOCK…. he’s gonna do it again!” Erik Breukink also rode the Lotus bike that day, the one made famous by Chris Boardman on the track. They’d adjusted it for the road and (I think, remember I’m not really into bicycles) it was the first time electronic gears had ever been used at the Tour.

This over familiarity and obsession with such a niche stage in Tour history, I’m sure, has made me fond of this type of time trial and this type of time trial only.

Catching that first glimpse of each and every rider as they are all given their turn individually. Following the startlist times just like a trainspotter would with a railway timetable or those weird people who park up beside runways and confirm all the planes are coming and going correctly.

One tangible difference between opening time trials of a Grand Tour and any other time trial is that the starting order is not strictly defined. If a time trial is any stage other than the opening one, the starting order goes in reverse general classification order. But on opening day, the best time triallists can be quite scattered throughout the day. Remember when Team Sky analysed months of weather data before the 2010 Tour de France and they decided it was going to rain in the evening so they sent Bradley Wiggins out in the morning and then it rained all morning and Wiggins lost nearly a minute in 9km… plonkers. Anyway, having the big guns peppered throughout the start list gives it a different feel.

There can also be a fascinating intra-team power struggle where two riders (or more - all hail the Movistar trident) within a team are told that they have co-leadership. An opening time trial is an instant opportunity to smash your teammate to the side and claim team leadership for yourself. For instance, have we just seen McNults wrest control of UAE from João Almeida and Adam Yates? Has Thymen Arensman put any talk of co-leadership with Carlos Rodriguez to one side?

After a while, you start to really get a sense of the course and what constitutes a good time, when a rider is a good bit back so clearly must have had some kind of mechanical or when an unexpected rider is on an unexpectedly good day. The times and the splits start to mean something. Just as we all get sucked into watching obscure Olympic sports like slalom kayaking or high diving and become couch experts for a day, once a year or so when there is an opening time trial of a Grand Tour, I become a temporary expert in time trialling.

Then instantly after it’s finished I become a wilful idiot again and return to wishing they’d banish them from stage races. I don’t actually think they should banish them, they are absolutely required to bring balance to the Grand Tour force. But I don’t have to watch them, and I don’t really.

Do you watch them? Do you actually? Be honest? Let me know in the comments section down below.