Pursuit Spaghetti: Elite Pacing

The 2015 UCI track cycling world championships in Saint-Quentin-En-Yvelines, France, have recently concluded and there's been some on-line chatter about the pacing of Silver medallist and former world champion and world record holder Jack Bobridge during the final of the 4000 metre individual pursuit. Seen through the lens of his recent unsuccessful attempt at setting a world hour record, some are wondering "what was Jack was doing going out so fast?".

While he does start too hard and probably needs to reel that tendency in, I don't think it's quite the same as for his hour attempt. While many of the challenges are similar, pursuits are a different beast.

Some seemed to think he set out to catch his opponent in the final, and if you look at how he rapidly gained on his opponent in the early stages you'd think that might just be the case. Except I can't believe that would have been the strategy for various reasons (mainly since it would have required elite level kilo TT pacing to achieve it and so just wouldn't have happened). It also doesn't bear out in the data.

To explain this I thought I'd look at pursuit pacing at the elite level in general, as well as show what actually happened during the final between Bobridge and Gold medallist and winner Stefan Kueng of Switzerland.

Congratulations to Kueng by the way. He was Bronze medallist in 2013, Silver medallist in 2014 and is now the 2015 World Champion. That's a nice progression.

So here are some charts for you viewing pleasure.

The first shows the half lap (125 metre) times for each rider during their qualifying ride. it's a bit of a spaghetti junction, so I'll also show just the finalist's qualifying rides as well. Click the image to view a larger version.

2015 UCI World Championship 4000m individual pursuit qualifying

So what are we to make of this lot?

Well firstly I have highlighted the two lines for eventual winner Kueng (yellow) and Bobridge (red). This was their qualifying ride compared with everyone else (except for the Hong Kong rider whose times were a bit slow for this plot).

Also shown is a straight white line marking a slope representing a fade in pace of one second per kilometre. I use this as a guideline to assess whether a rider's pacing was good or poor. If you faded more quickly, then you started too hard, and the method of energy distribution wasn't optimal for attaining the least time possible.

It's pretty evident that many of those pacing lines are fading much more quickly than one second per kilometre. These are not novice riders but the best from their respective nations and some of the best in the world. This is a world championships and yet this most basic pacing mistake is still made.

That doesn't mean that pacing with more of a "flat line" is ideal either, although it's somewhat less of a sin than starting too hard and fading rapidly.

Pursuit pacing is a complex pacing optimisation problem. Dr Andy Coggan discusses this a little in the 3rd part of his excellent three part series: The Demands of the Individual Pursuit, so head there if you'd like to learn some more.

If you were able to speed up through the event, well it's also likely you've left some speed out there. Nailing this event takes practice and some years.

Let's clear away some of the noodles and look at the finalist's qualifying rides:

It's pretty clear that Bobridge starts hard and fades rapidly. Too hard and as a result, too rapidly. Kueng's pacing shows a negative split/getting faster in the second half, which suggests he left some pace out there.

Kueng had a qualifying advantage over Bobridge (and most of the field) in that Kueng rode in the final heat, while Bobridge rode the second heat. Kueng had earned his final heat advantage due to his Silver medal the previous year. This meant he knew his task to make the gold medal ride off was not to match Bobridge's time, which at that point was still the fastest qualifying time, but rather to beat his heat opponent and to beat the second best time up to that point, which was several seconds slower than Bobridge had ridden.

That meant Kueng's schedule could be more conservative than Bobridge's. This saves precious energy for the final, while Bobridge had to put all he had out there. As it turns out, Kueng's qualifying opponent (Alex Edmondson) faded in the final kilometre, which saw Kueng gaining but not quite catching him. That's pretty much the perfect scenario for a rider as you gain an increasing draft advantage in the final laps just when you need it, but don't waste precious energy passing your opponent. Bobridge caught and passed his opponent with 3 laps remaining, and it shows in his qualifying ride data.

The other two finalists show pretty reasonable pacing, however in the final laps their times blow out and rise rapidly. This is most likely because, like Bobridge, they caught their qualifying ride opponent and had to make a pass. As they approached the other rider they receive the benefit of some draft and that benefit increases the closer they approach, but then they have to make a pass and the acceleration to do that costs energy as well as track position. That's why you see that dip in track time followed by the rise. Once past their opponent, they are back out in the front with no more draft benefit and on fatiguing legs after having upped the power to make a pass - hence their lap times increase rapidly.

Here are the pacing plots for Kueng and Bobridge comparing their ride in qualifying (dashed lines) and in the gold medal final (solid lines):

Kueng and Bobridge pursuits: Qualifier and Final

We can see that Bobridge started his final almost exactly as he had done in the qualifying ride. Too fast again. This time his fade in pacing was even sharper. Kueng started a little harder than in his qualifier but still more conservatively than Bobridge. Kueng also started to fade at the halfway mark, just not as rapidly as Bobridge was dropping pace. It made for a fascinating race. Kueng only took the lead from Bobridge in the final half lap. Exciting stuff.

So thinking back to that first chart  - is this a common theme - that of elite riders starting too hard and riding a slower time than they might have done?

Well here are some more plots for the 2014 and 2013 world championships.

First the 2014 championships which were held in Cali, Colombia. This 250m wooden track, while covered, is exposed to the wind and so we can see the more variable pacing in the half laps times as riders battled slight head and tailwinds as they circulated the track. This undoubtedly makes pacing an even trickier challenge.

The two gold medal finalists are highlighted with the thicker yellow and red lines, yellow for the eventual winner. I'm guessing by looking at these lines that Kueng rides a bit more by feel than by pace and permitted his speed to vary more with the breeze. By and large most riders were fading by around 1 second per km or slightly more, so still some room for improvement.

2014 UCI World Championship 4000m individual pursuit qualifying

Here are the qualifying rides by the four finalists:

In 2013, the World Championships were held in Minsk, Belarus. Again the gold medal finalists are shown with yellow and red lines, but some of the pacing is just bizarre for world level.

2013 UCI World Championship 4000m individual pursuit qualifying

As with before, here are the qualifying rides for the four finalists:

So there you have it, three years of world championship pursuit spaghetti. Delicious.