There’s a rule where if a rider falls or suffers a mechanical in the last three kilometres of a stage then they do not lose time on the overall classification. It’s worth explaining in its own right as it’s invoked many times a year and will come up in a stage race soon.
With Paris-Nice starting this weekend we could see the rule cited which would be appropriate it was this race that invented the rule, first because of a crash to a star rider and then formalised some years later thanks to Eddy Merckx.
Here’s the rule today as used by Tour de France organisers ASO and others but lifted from the UCI rulebook 2.6.027:
In the event that a rider or riders suffer a fall, puncture or mechanical incident in the last 3 kilometres and such an incident is duly recognised, the rider or riders involved are credited with the same finishing time of the rider or riders they were with at the time of the incident.
They are attributed this ranking only upon crossing the finish line. If after a fall, it is impossible for a rider to cross the finish line, he is given the ranking of last in the stage and credited with the time of the rider or riders he was with at the time of the incident. For exceptional cases, the decision taken by the stewards committee is final.
In simple terms if you have a problem in the last three kilometres then you’ll get the same time as group you were riding with when the misfortune struck. Note the rule does not apply to mountain stages.
Where does the rule come from?
We go back to the 1937 Paris-Nice race. The longest stage of the race is 250km from Nevers to St Etienne and soon after the start Roger Lapébie attacks. Away he goes and if Fernand Mithouard wins the stage, Lapébie takes the overall lead in the race, wearing the sky blue and gold leader’s jersey used at the time. But a couple of days later the race reaches Marseille and its famous Stade Vélodrome. At the entry to the stadium Lapébie loses control on a corner, crashes and loses time. But the organisers seem to take pity and the commissaires decide the velodrome is only there to decide the order of the stage finishes and stop the clock on the timing of riders when they entered the stadium rather than when the crossed the finish line. More details on the incident are hard to find but it seems Lapébie got some favourable treatment here. He went on to win the Tour de France in the same year.
Now we jump to 1972 and the year when Eddy Merckx, as was his style, was trying to win everything and as he fought to win the sprint into St Etienne he crashed and lost 47 seconds. But the commissaires again decided not to dock the time and credited him as arriving with the same time as the others he was sprinting with. From this moment onwards officials applied the rule, first to the final kilometre but now was extended to three kilometres in 2005.
Safety vs business
Looking back the 1972 race owners had every incentive to let Eddy Merckx lose time. The Cannibal was winning on every front and if races weren’t a procession, it was often a matter of how Merckx would win rather than whether he’d succeed. In fact in 1972 race boss Jean Leulliot was so frustrated by Merckx winning that, on the eve of the final stage, he privately offered Raymond Poulidor 10,000 Francs if he could win the race. Merckx meanwhile was so confident he started the final stage posing for photos with the motorboat offered as a prize to the winner, as if it was his already. But Poulidor, then 36, took off up up the Col d’Eze to set a new record of 20.04 and claimed the overall win too.
Why the rule?
If Lapébie got some help on the day the rule really appeared as a safety measure so that riders caught by misfortune in the final moments of a race did not stand to lose everything. Earlier in a race a puncture or crash is what the French call un incident de course or part of the race and there’s time to recover from a problem earlier in the race although a puncture with four kilometres to go would challenge the Australian world pursuit squad. But imagine if sprinters are fighting for the win but crash and leave riders caught behind the pile-up, this penalises riders through no fault of their own.
The rule distorts things but it does not give riders licence to sit up and freewheel to the line whilst the sprinters fight for the win. If a group passes the three kilometre point together it can still fragment on the way to the line and so you’ll often see the overall candidates for a race near the front even in the sprint, sitting in, say, 20th place so that if there’s a gap behind it doesn’t catch them out.
But the rule can be gamed. Should a rider puncture with four kilometres to go it has been known for them to plough on stoically only to suddenly make a big deal of the puncture once the three kilometre sign has been passed. Indeed the rule states the problem has to be “duly recognised” and TV images can help establish events. This is why stage results in big races can be issued on a provisional basis and it takes a while to establish what happened during the final three kilometres.
Conclusion
An artificial rule but one that helps rider safety. Lapébie was helped to the win in 1937 although press reports said he still deserved to win and one of his rivals Giuseppe Martano crashed out of the race completely within sight of Nice as he descended the Col de la Turbie. The “Lapébie rule” was applied to the time taken to enter the velodrome. But it was Merckx’s crash that saw it applied universally and for safety reasons when commercially the race might have benefitted from Merckx getting a chronological handicap.
Today riders and teams are well aware of the rule. It’s still an artificial distortion of events but works as a safety measure. It is not applied to uphill finishes and next week it won’t apply when the race climbs the Montagne de Lure.
Does it really help rider safety?
It could be argued that it gives riders license to ride more dangerously in those final three kilometres.
True, it can be an incentive to ride dangerously but the risk here is that if you try this then you crash and are out of the race so there are risks if you try this. By contrast there’s less risk if you just hope to roll in with the bunch.
“Does the Red Flag Rule Induce Risk Taking in Sprint Finishes? Moral Hazard Crashes in Cycling’s Grand Tours” [pdf]
It appears to be the case, yes.
Very interesting although the results are not so conclusive to be definitive, it would be good to see more data.
I’ve seen the negative effects of this rule. I was caught behind a crash with 2km to go in a race but managed to get around it without unclipping, but I was skidding on both tires and barely missed it. I was assessed a 40 second penalty for the split, but the riders who crashed got the pack time. I wasn’t in GC contention so it didn’t matter, but the incentive is there to crash rather than avoid it. Watch any crash in the final 3km in a pro stage race and riders will point to the crash, slow down, and hit it slow enough not to cause any damage but to unclip and restart.
Didn’t exactly this happen to Wiggins in the tour of Oman stage 1? He stayed upright behind a crash and was given a time 1’21” behind the winner. The four riders who hit the ground finished after him and were given the same time as the peleton.
Has it ever had to be applied to a podium finisher in one of the Classics? Say there’s a three man break going into the velodrome in Roubaix, a crash and one falls, gets up and finishes but behind a chasing pack. Does he podium?
No, stage races only I think.
does the rule also apply to time bonuses? i.e.: if a breakaway of 4 riders finishes ahead of the peleton, but one of the 4 breakaway riders suffers a mechanical in the last 3 k, would a time bonus be awarded in addition to the finishing time?
great piece as always, thanks
No mention of this in the rule and the time bonuses are awarded according to the placing on the stage and nothing more.
Roger Lapébie: any relation to Thomas Voeckler?
Interesting application of this in the first stage of the Tour Of Oman this year. Bradley Wiggins appeared to be held up behind a crash that took place with around 2km to go, though he didn’t crash himself. Sky seemed to think he’d be OK under the 3km rule, but he was instead classified last after coasting in with a deficit of around 90 seconds. I’m guessing that establishing who “the riders involved” are in an incident isn’t always straightforward.
The Tour of California officials had a very interesting interpretation of the rule a few years back.
http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/road/2007/feb07/california07/?id=results/california071
I guess the local star can have as many metres in ‘3km’ as is necessary.
One km is ok. 3 is too much. Never saw the reason for extension, and the experience of last year’s TdF should suffice to go back to 1.
The rule does not apply on mountain stages? Or mountain top finishes?
That’s right, any uphill finish where three kilometres is going to take a long time. The decision is up to the race and they announce it in the race manual before things start.
I do seem to remember one of the stages of the 2011 TDF had an ‘uphill’ finish (may have even been stage 1 Mont des Alouettes?) where Wiggins and Schleck amongst others lost time due to 2 crashes (Contador was involved in the first of the two crashes, got held up while chasing by the second crash and thus lost a significant amount of time). The officials decreed that the uphill finish was not ‘steep enough’ or long enough to count as an ‘uphill finish’ so the 3 km rule applied. At the time this took a while to figure out, so it seems the rule can be applied selectively on occasion.
Am I right in thinking that the stage was listed in the race manual as an uphill finish, much like the stage 4 Mur de Bretagne, but they decided to apply the 3km rule post stage?
I remember last year (maybe early in the tour) Mick Rogers taking advantage of the rule on a uphill finish (not MTF) where there was a little crash, however Wiggins was obviously missing a split occurring just in front due to bad positioning as some of the big names started to sprint up hill. Rogers duly (and very smartly showing all his experience) drove around the crash and quite purposely ran into Wiggins forcing him to clip out….and thus held up by the crash and given the same time where he would likely have lost a few seconds
Well there you go. I actually thought this (the extended 3km) was always the “Levi Lepheimer Rule”, created when he stacked it in the Tour of California some years ago, and the race stewards changed the rules so that he would still win.
Prior to that it was 1km, but Levi’s crash meant some ‘creative rule interpretation’ was required…
I wonder whether the next logical step is to just separate the time-finish from the stage-finish and have them 5-10km apart.
It would suit the organisers as they could put the stage-finish in the town – or into a more technical route – and the time-finish at the top of a local incline with the opportunity to gain a few bonus seconds; it would suit GC riders who wouldn’t need to worry about staying at the front once they pass the time-finish; and the sprinters who could wait for the GC riders and their companions to clear out before winding it up.
The current arrangement is a bit of a halfway house. It works in a way, but it is easily exploited and hard to adjudicate on.
I was just thinking along the lies of what Russ said.
Do they measure splits at the 3km flag using the timing chips as well as at the finish line?
Time bonuses and a 3km rule could work against someone really badly, loosing out to a competitor who made a split prior to the 3km line and then gaining a top finish position..with a crash behind him.
Thsi has gotta be amongst the reasons for the really dangerous fast bunch finishes we now see starting at about 5km out if not before. Used to be a late rush due to catching a breakaway, dangling them out there til the end. These guys now get caught at 10km’s rather than 2km.
It depends on the race but the Tour de France uses timing chips at several points on the race like the intermediate sprints and the 3km point.
Hello,
Is it a UCI rule or one that is implemented by each respective race organiser? The post quoted the ASO rule and mentioned two ASO races. Is it all stage races and down to what level (World Tour etc)?
This is the problem with not having Eurosport and relying on ITV4 for my road cycling coverage….
Many thanks
Andrew
It’s a UCI rule so it’s implemented by all. I’ve quoted from the ASO rulebook as the piece here is about how and why the rule came about during Paris-Nice but it applies to all stage races.