How does the team time trial work?

If it is the same way it has worked in th past, everyone that is still in the race for the team races together and everyone gets the time of like the 5th person across the line

Rules changed because in previous years they tried to reduce the damage caused by a TTT, some of the weaker teams with maybe one quality rider could lose a huge chunk of time waiting for that 5th guy or whatever to cross, vs. someone like astana or Columbia that has a full team of quality riders.

Used to be you could only lose but so much time, I forget how much but now if you finish 10 minutes behind the leader, you lose 10 full minutes...

Edited by dalessit 2009-07-06 11:59 AM

All the riders on each team race.  The time the riders get is taken after the 5th man crosses the line, so obviously there is no point in 4 of the riders dropping the rest.  If a member of the team does not finish with the rest (eg. they crash or just can't keep pace) then they will get whatever time they finish in, not the same as the rest of the team.

It's the first TTT in 4 years at the Tour.  In the few years before they dropped it altogether there was a limit as to how much time a team could loose, 2 minutes I think.  This is not the case this year so GC riders with weak teams (eg. Evans) will loose out big time tomorrow.

I can see Evans loosing 2-3 minutes on the likes of Contador and Armstrong which he'll almost certainly never make up.  A shame in a way but... c'est la vie.