I Made a Deal in a Bike Race | Hacker News Reader

I Made a Deal in a Bike Race

bicycling.com

231 pointstacon127 comments

Trying to understand the subculture here, and failing. If I understand correctly, during a very important bike race the author made a verbal deal with his competitor near the end of the race, and the competitor broke that verbal deal.

Let me hasten to say that had I made such a deal, I wouldn’t have broken it.

But shouldn’t the author have assumed that his competitor was playing mind games? If I understand correctly there are no rules against deals like this. And I imagine there are no rules against lying to your competitor.

I would feel if I were in the author’s place that I had allowed myself to be taken advantage of, that I had trusted a competitor, which is generally speaking not a good idea in a race like that.

It seems to me this is the author saying he trained physically for the race but got hoodwinked by someone he by nature should not trust.

Or is there something about the subculture I’m missing?

You're not wrong. He is a sore loser who assumed there were certain rules in play and failed because of it.

Yes, he is wrong and so are you, because those rules do exist even if they are unwritten. They are part of the sport, and they have to be because while placements are awarded to individuals, it is impossible for an individual to perform well with cooperating with others.

It's not just the subculture. It's like any trust game. You violate trust, you won't get trusted in the future. There's long-term reputation. And that's just some of the factors behind how subcultures come to basically honor agreements like this. The concept of such agreements would be discarded and laughed at in a context where they were rarely kept. Just knowing that the concept exists is enough to know that it must have gained trust and deference in the subculture.

Listen to the This American Life episode linked elsewhere in the comments to get the context. The guy who broke his promise actually meant the promise when he said it and then felt privately ashamed of breaking it (and breaking the promise was itself a spur-of-the-moment, wasn't-thinking decision). That's not what happens if it's just mind games.

That sounds about right. For whatever reason, the author, who is also the stronger cyclist, agreed to pull his competitor to 2nd place.

The weaker racer also did some pulling. I think the author allows his bias to show too much, because even having a weaker racer pull you for short intervals is a huge advantage compared to riding solo. More importantly, the author obviously factored staying ahead of the pack while agreeing to the deal. As far as I can tell, we wouldn't know if the pack would have caught the author and whether they would have all attacked, leaving him in 8th or 9th place. If the author wasn't likely to get caught by the pack, why even agree to the deal?

> As far as I can tell, we wouldn't know if the pack would have caught the author and whether they would have all attacked, leaving him in 8th or 9th place.

Kind of ruins the story but it's true. They were in a game of oxygen-deprived prisoner's dilemma, not in a death-before-dishonor chivalry contest.

> But shouldn’t the author have assumed that his competitor was playing mind games?

It’s not like a tactical feint as you’re suggesting - it’s unsportsmanlike behaviour in the norms of the game.

It’s like mocking someone’s dead mother during a game - I guess it may not contravene any written rule but you’re a pretty rotten person if you do it and you’d be better off not taking part if that’s your approach to things.

It’s such a basic contravention of civility that it’s cheating.

It's universal to not mock someone's family, but that's pretty universal in everyday life, too.

As for the rest, well, different athletes often have very different ideas of what they consider unsportsmanlike. Runners like Ron Clarke and Steve Prefontaine called it "chickenshit" to not race as hard as you could right from the start, but the cyclists here apparently have no such compunctions.

You won't win a bicycle race with that strategy. Won't even get close. You'll burn up all your energy being in the lead, not able to take advantage of drafting in a peloton, and you'll be far behind in the end. Cycling is a different sport than running. It's a lot faster, and air resistance scales with velocity squared.

And secondly, if Ron and Steve say they're going to race all-out, and then do so, then they're being honorable. They're not violating their word. Big difference between that and then giving your word you're going to take a different tack, but then betray the other person when it's advantageous to do so.

There are a lot of agreements like this in cycling. They're even regularly exercised in the Tour de France.

http://theconversation.com/unofficial-rules-of-the-tour-de-f...

Whether or not they're official rules, they do exist to a degree. While I've never heard of someone brokering a deal to not attack, I wouldn't be surprised if they do happen.

For example the rider with the yellow jersey won’t try to win a stage if other drivers are around that are not a threat in the overall standing. You see that often in mountain stages.

Or, "we'll all take performance enhancing drugs and just not talk about it because anyway everyone does it".

Talking about honor and sportsmanship in the context of pro cycling is just incomprehensible to me.

Both riders had a conscience and were trying to be honorable. That is admirable, but for a one day race like a National Championship, both riders had an obligation to win for their team, not to appease some unwritten code of honor.

A deal in a stage race where both riders win is different because both riders are winning for their team (i.e. Weaker rider gets the stage, stronger rider picks up time in the overall standings).

The thing is: without such a deal, they probably wouldn't have continued cooperating, and the pack would have eaten them. With the deal, both of them ended up on the podium.

Also, making a deal and then not honoring it is not what I call trying to be honorable.

The usual deal is not "you win, I come in second." It is usually, "Let's work together and get to the last 1km or 500m." Honestly, I feel really bad for both the author and subject of the article. Having so much of your life defined by a moment on time where everyone has huge regrets... The author did a wonderful job telling the story.

There is a pretty strong culture in bike racing of making deals like this and sticking to them, because in a break like this, if two people work together, they have almost literally twice as good a chance of winning.

For example, Lance Armstrong and Marco Pantani on the famous Alpe d'Huez in the Tour de France: Lance offered him the stage win if he would work with him so he could make time on his rivals for the overall 23 day race general classification:

http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/armstrong-if-i-was-the-c...

In top level professional riding, if you renege on a deal like this, you will have a seriously hard time making another deal like this in the future and that will seriously impair your professional prospects, because these deals are everywhere because of the multi-goaled nature (stage vs. overall vs. mountain points vs. sprint points) of the sport.

Re Armstrong link; that was a great read, thanks very much. Armstrong comes across with complete honesty, which is great to see - I just like when people write in an unfiltered, open way.

"When you name all the other winners from those days, all the riders, he was geared up in just the same way"!

I agree that candor can be refreshing, but Armstrong (in my opinion) is a bit of a sociopath that knows how to manipulate the truth to cast himself in the best light possible.

It may appear unfiltered and open, but he's obscuring a lot of the truth there.

> sociopath

I assume most people who are world class (in anything that takes practice) and appear honest and/or normal are somewhat "sociopathic."

Driving towards a goal with that kind of monomaniacal focus isn't normal. Ergo, if someone seems to be, they're probably acting the part.

Not that I hold that against them: their achievements are mind-bogglingly amazing, and I imagine it's easier to pretend to be normal in social situations.

I'm referring to his constant lying and rewriting of the truth, not his drive as an athlete.

I don't think the parent was referring to his singular focus, but rather his decades-long history of telling lies. In fact, not only did he lie, but he did everything in his power to destroy the careers and reputations of anyone who tried to investigate him.

For example:

> When Betsy Andreu cooperated with David Walsh on his first book, revealing that Armstrong had admitted using PEDs to his oncologist, he sued her for libel. He has called her a "crazy bitch." He threatened to "destroy" Filippo Simeoni for cooperating with anti-doping officials. After Tyler Hamilton released his book about doping in the world of professional cycling and began to cooperate with law enforcement, Armstrong accosted him in an Aspen restaurant: "When you're on the witness stand, we are going to fucking tear you apart. You are going to look like a fucking idiot. I'm going to make your life a living ... fucking hell." [1]

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/how-aggre...

I wasn't saying his singular focus made him a sociopath.

I was saying his singular focus, world class performance, coupled with managing to appear normal (as another poster mentioned) pointed that way.

Lance Armstrong was one of the most evil protagonsts in sports, ever.

If he only would have cheated for himself that would be one thing. But how he threatened and destroyed others for personal gain is pretty much unforgivable.

Here's something to chew on :

https://deadspin.com/the-ridiculous-saga-of-lance-armstrong-...

Cool, I hate this more than tennis now.

This is the metagame and is one of the appeals of cycling. It's not a bug it's a feature.

...if you're Lance Armstrong.

Just because an anecdote involving Lance Armstrong was illustrative of this tactical cooperation doesn’t mean that it’s only for Lance and other loathsome cheats and bullies.

As the previous commenter pointed out, it’s common practice to work with a few of one’s opponents in order to beat all the others. Road cyclists’ greatest adversary is aerodynamic drag, which cannot be fought alone as long or as hard as it can be fought in a group of riders cooperating with each other. If you’re in a small breakaway with a few opponents, you and your opponents can choose to cooperate with each other or you can choose to not cooperate and end up falling back into the peloton, within which each rider has much less work to do and consequently tires much less quickly.

No, if you're a serious professional cyclist.

There is huge difference between driving in front and driving in second place. Between having one good teammate with you and not having one. Between having a good day and a just-so day.

How can you ensure others do as much of the 'upfront' work as you? How can you try to prevent others from benefiting from your teammates? How can you prevent one just-so day from ruining a multi-day tour?

That all requires communication, negotiation, deals. Sometimes the deal is just the default: every few km we switch positions. Your behaviour is your acknowledgement of the deal. Sometimes the deal is more intricate.

Example: you broke away with two competitors who are in the same team. If you work together you are 90% likely to take all three places on the podium. You can offer them places 1 and 3. If they try to shake you off they will probably succeed, but both you and them are less likely to make the podium at all. What do you do? Take an 90% chance on a second place or try for a maybe 30% chance to become first?

What if second place nets you 50K?

That's a stage race, that happens a lot. Help me win my war and I'll let you reap the spoils of the battle.

But in a 1 day like the national championship I really do not think that such verbal agreements are valid at all. Ok, I've never raced, but I've watched a lot of racing and have literally seen this scenario happen multiple times to just one rider alone (Peter Sagan). He was/is often the strongest rider but was on a bad team and was prone to tactical mistakes when he was younger, so he would do a lot of the pulling and get screwed at the end. Nobody wanted to see Sagan lose, but nobody called the winners cheaters either.

> But in a 1 day like the national championship I really do not think that such verbal agreements are valid at all.

That would be the case if each rider would have the same chance of winning and each rider would be there to win. However, for many riders, the national championship are not their main focus. They might be exhausted from a long program of races in the previous weeks and are not at their best. Or they might be preparing for other more important races in the coming weeks and are not yet on their best, for example when coming from a training camp at height, or are unwilling to take extra risks to prevent injury. And, of course, some races are better suited to certain riders than others.

All these factors mean that there are a lot of riders that know they aren't there to win, but would be willing to help another rider. For example, one who has helped him before, or a team mate, or one would could beat a rival, or one who is an underdog, and so on.

You have said a lot of things that are kind of true and not relevant to this. First of all, I think most of the people at the U-23 USA race in 2001 were not there to be domestiques. For an U-23 rider in a non-European country I think national championship is your big break. We can safely assume that at some point towards the end of the race they were both in it to win it. Then Mike kind of played Ian, but Ian LET HIMSELF get played. This scenario is very common in 1-day races. Like 10-50% of (pro, 1-day) races I would say end up with a breakaway getting away without enough of a cushion to have the luxury of cat and mouse, and in many of these cases 1 rider is stronger than the other. It's 'unfair' to the stronger rider, but this story proves that you can only trust yourself and teammates. So either drop the weak guy or make him help. If he doesn't help, well, actions speak louder than 'verbal agreements.' I still think it is a fascinating story and mad respect for both guys.

You have to take the long view. Sure, its a one day race, but if you make a deal and back out of it, the rest of the peleton is going to hear about that and you aren't as likely to get one in the next race.

Secondly, coming in 2nd in the National Championship race is still a huge deal. Far better than coming in 122nd, and enough to get you attention, and possibly a professional deal. There are real reasons to make a deal for 2nd.

Some of the sting here was that the guy who won publicly denied what he did at the time. That’s separate from and unrelated to whether you consider breaking an agreement to be acceptable or not.

Your comment reminds me of a great article a few years back from the New Yorker about the full court press in basketball, and how (according to the story) it used to be somewhat socially unacceptable, but teams that pressed aggressively could win. Some other interesting examples of breaking social norms in games in the article too...

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/05/11/how-david-beat...

Very interesting read. It made me wonder if I'd have been happy to be coached to use the press and win or take the easier route when I was at school.

I must get round to watching Lawrence of Arabia…

But shouldn’t the author have assumed that his competitor was playing mind games?

No. Assuming that is why we can't have nice things. If you give someone your word, it has to mean something.

On a practical level, if you are known for being a "wheel sucker", then people wont go on breakaways with you. Likewise, if you are known for breaking promises then you will struggle to make the ad-hoc pacts and deals necessary to win at the pro-level (although u23 is essentially "every man for himself").

It's a coming of age story whether you understand cycling or not. A young man makes a mistake and harms another young man and it haunts them for many years. Growing up they reflect on the moment many times with different mindsets and ultimately meet up and make good as best as they can. It's a timeless story. And it has wheels.

When I was running track in high school, we were doing a workout that was 10 200m sprints. One of my best friends Erik was running in the same group as I was. We were about the same speed. But during these 200's, he was just sitting back while I was going all out. On the ninth sprint, the coach said whoever wins the group doesn't have to do the 10th one. Erik said to me, "Dave, you can win this one" because he knew I was working hard and was tired. And he is also just a quality person. But when we were running that ninth 200, I was just completely spent. I was in slow motion. He had to run past me. I don't recall what we said when he passed me, but something along the lines of him apologizing and that he had to go, and I said it was ok.

I had to run the 10th sprint even though coach knew very well had happened. I didn't have any hard feelings towards my friend. He wasn't trying to take advantage but I am sure he still felt bad. (Now, I may have had some hard feelings toward the coach...)

This is quite a bit different stakes between high school track practice and a national championship cycling race. But I wonder if something similar happened. The author, being trashed from working so hard, may have been going pretty slow and this may have helped the eventual winner say "Forget this I'm just going to go". I'm not saying its OK, I just wonder if it was a factor.

This same race was a topic in a recent episode of the This American Life podcast

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/668/the-long-fuse/act-three...

Thanks! That episode's description in my podcast app sounded pretty uninteresting so I had originally skipped it.

Have it queued up now!

This kind of side deal in bike racing (especially when money is involved) is very common. And accepted by most who race at that level.

It has always bothered me as a fan.

I know one of the riders, and I know of the other. They both seem like good people.

Well-written story about aftereffects, and a reconciliation of sorts.

Having done a lot of bike races you're even making deals with your teammates realistically.

It's an odd artifact of the sport awarding prizes to individuals when it is impossible most of the time to win without teamwork, and only one person on the team that works together can actually win.

I don't fault the racer in this story who reneged on his deal to win.

If making deals is acceptable to begin with, then breaking them is wrong. I can't see any interpretation where Mike didn't do something wrong.

> If making deals is acceptable to begin with, then breaking them is wrong

Making cycling an athletic version of diplomacy actually sounds pretty cool to me.

let me draft for the next mile and I'll support Sil->Ber from Kiel...

It's also arguably not acceptable. There have been allegations of fairly large amounts of money changing hand for in some of the deals, promoters and sponsors tend to frown upon that stuff, as do sports books and it might be against the law (sporting fraud) in a few European countries. The rules and the codes regarding this sort of thing are fuzzy. There is also a class system of sorts in play. When Lance Armstrong went to the media and claimed he let Marco Pantani win on Ventoux in the 2000 Tour, that's against the code too but because Lance was so dominant nobody said much about it. The fact was, nobody could make Lance pay for that on the road. In the romantic ideal world, a bunch of Italian teams would have worked together to prevent Lance's teammates from winning some monuments (maybe Hincapie at Paris Roubaix, but he was never really in it) that they were targeting but the fact was the team was built for one purpose and that never was an option. The ability to enforce the deal is part of it. Likewise, in retrospect, Lance going public with it was a scorched earth psychological tactic that made his image even bigger.

I would say, at least at some levels (u-23 national championship might not be that) that if you can get someone to gift you a win for an unenforceable deal, then you beat them and you did it mentally. It's like all the secret rules of baseball.

I don't think it is that unacceptable. I remember Jalabert giving the stage victory to the other rider at least once in the Spanish la Vuelta the year that he won it (they had been part of a 2-men escape) and more recently Contador did the same thing at least once.

But yet we celebrate the individual, not the team.

I can't think of another sport that is quite so teamwork orientated, but so individualistic in celebrating the winners.

I'm not even sure if the winners are the 'best' riders. I'm reminded of when Bradley Wiggins won the Tour de France. He and Chris Froome had broken away from the other contenders, Froome was leading him up a mountain and Wiggins couldn't keep up, Froome had to slow down for him. Froome was the better man that day, probably that tour.

Formula 1 and most high-level motor racing is similar. Drivers get lots of fame but it is truly a team sport.

Well theres motorsport where they have identical cars. If we take F1 you can still race against your team mate. And team mates are fairly loose concepts in F1. Team orders weren't allowed for a long time, disobeying team orders isn't unusual. But yes most of the time it's the guy with the best car that wins.

An F1 driver is also part of team leadership and responsible for building the team. That was schumacher’s strength and a weakness of Alonso from what I have read.

The extent of the drivers role in the team varies drastically. Sure, as Schumacher move on in his career this was true. When a team brings on an experienced driver to a young team this is probably very true, such as Kimi this year. But even Hamilton, with several championships, is probably only somewhat involved in decision making, not leading it. And younger guys like Le Clerc are probably not involved in team decisions beyond the tech setup of their own car in any meaningful way. That's not to say either of them is not capable of contributing in that way, but they are on teams with plenty of proven experience at all levels, so it's just not as necessary. Alonso was on a team that struggled for several years at McClaren with a lot of leadership turnover, so they would have probably benefited from that quality, although I don't really know whether their failings had anything to do with a weakness of Alonso's in that regard, but I generally got the impression he was not the personality to really get everyone motivated or inspired.

Read about Schumacher. He made a point of shaking hands with every mechanic, he knew about their personal lives. Pretty much like a politician. He also was also able to take the best people with him. Like Ross Brawn and others.

I don't think the team aspect is as much about the two drivers who are on the same team as it is about the rest of the crew. The two drivers generally share most of the other personnel on a team, but even with the same car and the same crew, one driver on the team usually out-performs the other consistently. In some cases, especially as the season matures, one of the drivers becomes a support driver and will sacrifice his own race outcome to benefit the teammate with a better championship total, but it doesn't come into play all that often. Even when Botas let Hamilton by during a race last year because Hamilton might have had a better chance of catching the Ferrari ahead, Hamilton gave him the spot back after being unsuccessful, rather than taking the higher point finish for himself while he was battling the Ferrari for championship lead. So while they will cooperate if they can increase the overall team position, they try hard not to just hand position over to a team mate to benefit the individual championship points total. That kind of collusion would be heavily criticized even though probably not illegal under current rules.

The drivers aren't identical though, and that makes a huge difference. Skill matters a lot in racing.

I very much like and appreciate what goes on in cycling, due to physical differences one even does deals if just riding with mates, for instance, some people have the stamina to tow everyone home at the end of a long ride, some have the hill climbing skills, some can better cope with attrition, some can sprint, some can fearlessly descend. So much of it is actually due to energy conservation, and, in the sport these inherent things are part of the recipe that makes it so fascinating. No sport has the depth of tactics and intrigue that the Tour de France has, and yes that is a different event to the rest of cycling.

One common thing is to have the bulk of the team reign in a breakaway group so their sprinter can take the stage on the line. Or if the team have their man in the breakaway then they can slow down the peleton so the breakaway succeeds, there are so many goals to be gone for.

In F1 there are none of these advanced team tactics going on. Every driver wants to win, none of them are there to just win the 'high speed flat circuits' or just the 'street circuits', or to be a support rider, towing their team lead to the finish line to give way to them and let them get the points.

The fascinating bit of F1 is that every driver first and foremost has to beat their team mate on the other side of the garage. This is where the rivalries are. Teams can mitigate this by not having two Senna grade drivers (as if there is such a thing). Common patterns include having a junior rookie driver to partner with the gifted established star driver. Or, further down the grid, to have a pay driver who 'pays' for the team to have a premium commanding established talented driver. Sometimes the pay driver has something to do with the sponsor, so there was that Nakajima chap that Lotus partnered up with championship winning Piquet, keeping engine supplying Honda happy.

Moving on to today, Honda supply both Red Bull teams - Red Bull and Toro Rosso. Now you would think that there could be deals done to make the B team - Toro Rosso be a mobile chicane, maybe creating incidents to get the red flag and safety car out, or just tying up those Mercedes drivers during pit stops (where they don't have to be blue flagged to let the Mercedes guys pass). But there is none of this.

Or when Renault were supplying Red Bull they could have had deals with other Renault powered teams to achieve similar goals, keeping McLaren at bay (they were winning then).

Anyway, when you hear the excellent Lewis Hamilton talking about the team, he really means it. But the team is his side of the garage, not the Bottas side. Fortunately for Lewis, Bottas is a nice chap and he has respect for the guy that he never had when it was Rosberg (who has developed into a really nice guy now he has quit F1 and got into Formula E ownership).

One other difference in the team-ness of it all is that the cars are different. You ain't going to win in a 2018 Williams even if you are a born again Ayrton Senna. But in cycling it doesn't matter what bike you ride. Clearly my sit up and beg 3 speed won't cut it, but it makes no difference if you are riding Shimano, SRAM or Campagnolo parts. Even having a carbon fibre bike isn't a guarantee of performance over a hydroformed aluminium frame. What will make a difference is performance enhancing drugs, and, for most of the sport's history riders have been chasing prize money just so they can pay for the drugs. Sad but true.

There is irony in that cycling is so much dirtier in this regard compared to F1. F1 should be filthy with big oil and tobacco sponsors, million dollar salaries for starters and so many vested interests. But it is squeaky clean compared to cycling. It is also quite boring in comparison to the show that cycling puts on, I write this as a lifelong fan of F1. Cycling just takes so much to extremes in ways that no other sport can match.

>Anyway, when you hear the excellent Lewis Hamilton talking about the team, he really means it. But the team is his side of the garage, not the Bottas side.

Not sure on that. Either way, Hamilton, Bottas and Wolff often refer to the 100 or so Mercedes staff at the races and the 1000 at the factories.

Some of the teams are good at certain types of race track but it's often accidental or unavoidable. Red Bull (and before that Mclaren) had Adrian Newey designed cars which do well at slower speeds but both teams equally obsessed about engine power, with varying success, to compete at the faster circuits.

> I'm not even sure if the winners are the 'best' riders

That's part of what makes it interesting, because there are so many tactics and ways of winning. It's not purely about athletic ability, but also about racing smart.

But you still need to be very close to the top in athletic ability or you'll never get into the top races at all. Good bargaining strategy will only get you so far; you still need to be a great cyclist. No one's winning medals who isn't one of the top cyclists in the world (although they might not be the top cyclist).

But being at the top requires so much more than just physical fitness and races are routinely won by riders who are strictly inferior to 80% of the participants in every physical aspect of racing except for that one final 20 seconds all-out. And within that subdiscipline, marginally faster legs will always lose out to superior split-second situational awareness and positioning.

Roadbike races are inherently not experimental setups to identify the strongest rider, they identify the rider who passed the finish line first no matter how he got there.

It requires a shitload of physical fitness too, though. Yeah, the person who wins may not be the most fit, but they're still at roughly the same level as all the others who are in the final. That still makes one of the best cyclists in the world. It's not like you could possibly have someone not good enough to get into the top tier of competition somehow win a top tier race. Athletic ability plays into it way too much for that to happen.

It does - but the other guy could have ignored the deal too. That happens a lot too

Holding money in escrow might have been an effective way to enforce this deal.

Deals like this, as the article discusses, are not made before a race, they are made during a race.

Typically (but not always) this happens toward the end of a race, where competitors race prisoner’s dilemma of sorts: by working together, they can have a higher chance of clinching the 1 and 2 spots, but when one racer is demonstrably stronger than the other, the stronger rider might reasonably worry that the weaker rider will “defect” and sprint for first place. Working together improves their chance of a first-or-second finish, but might decrease their chance of a strictly first-place finish if the weaker rider defects and sprints for the finish. If the stronger rider defects and drops the weaker rider, they risk getting caught by the pack and not making a podium at all.

The deal is that the weaker rider will take second, giving first place to the stronger rider and ensuring mutual cooperation that increases both their chances of a podium finish.

In this instance, the weaker rider promised to cooperate and later defected.

I realize you already know this, but just to add to what you've said...

It also makes a lot more sense in stage races. The win for the day's stage is not the only win to be had. The overall race win is based on combined time across all stages. Often someone who is in the running for the overall race win will make a deal with someone who isn't. By not attacking each other, their average speed can be higher. One rider gets to win the stage and the other gets the benefit of working together to finish the stage in the quickest possible time. This allows them to gain on their rivals for the overall win.

In a single stage race, the win is mostly the only thing that matters.

In that case aside from missing a stage win, it really doesn't hurt the stronger rider at all when the weaker rider defects. Wouldn't call that a prisoner's dilemma.

Of course it does.

Assume Rider A believes (rightly) that they're stronger in the break than Rider B. If they don't bring Rider B along, they might have a 50% chance of making first place and a 50% chance of getting caught and losing in a bunch sprint (time-trialists don't generally make good sprinters and vice versa). If they do bring Rider B along, but Rider A does more work (perhaps Rider B is holding back a little bit, knowing they will try to steal the first-place finish) they might have an improved 75% chance of staying away from the pack but there's a 50% or greater chance that Rider B will sprint and win the finish.

If they cooperate, Rider A has a 75% chance of first place and Rider B has a 75% chance of second place, with both having a 25% chance of a pack finish. If Rider A defects, Rider A has a 50% chance of a first-place finish and Rider B has a 0% chance of a podium finish. If Rider B defects, both Rider A and Rider B have a 37.5% chance of a first-place finish and a 75% chance of getting a podium. If Rider B values a 75% chance of second place higher than a 37.5% chance of a first place finish, they'll offer this deal. Note that this isn't strictly a Prisoner's Dilemma becuase there's no concept of a double-defection: if Rider A defects, Rider B won't have a chance to.

Obviously in a real-world situation you won't know these percentages, but hopefully it illuminates how both sides benefit from cooperation but lose if they want to cooperate and but the other side defects.

Sorry I'm not following the way you laid it out. Here simply is how I think of it:

A deal is made. If the weaker rider defects and wins the stage (as in OP story), the stronger rider still has a better time than he would have without the deal - thereby reducing his overall total time for the multi-stage race.

The only thing he has to avoid (obviously) is making a deal with the SAME weaker rider for every stage.

If the stronger rider doesn't care about their podium position, he won't lose much because of the weaker driver defecting. But if he does care, then he does lose.

I think you have the riders confused. The rider going for the overall win (general classification or GC rider) would be the one agreeing to not go for the stage. He may be the stronger rider with a 90% chance to win the stage in an all out battle. But, since the race win is much more prestigious than any one stage, he may value the potential time gains over that 90% chance of a stage win and agree to give it up.

The defector would then be this GC rider deciding to take the stage win AND the time gains. This leaves the other with only time gains which he may not value at all since he is not in contention for the overall race. In grand tours like the Tour de France or Giro d'Italia, 95% of the riders have no hopes of winning the entire race. They are there to help their teammates who do have a shot and/or attempt to win individual stages. Because of this they often lose lots of time on stages they aren't going to win and thus don't care about winning some trivial amount back.

Ok that makes sense. Then, in the OP story, isn't the guy who won the weaker rider? So the type of deal we're talking about here is irrelevant - the stronger rider just made a bad deal.

Did you make a bad deal if the other party reneges? If you pay someone for something and they don't deliver was that you making a bad deal? No way!

The weaker/winning rider offered the deal. It was mutually beneficial. If they fight, they likely get caught and neither gets 1st or 2nd. If they make a deal and cooperate, the stronger/losing rider would get 1st and the weaker/winning rider would get 2nd.

I don't think that's a bad deal for either rider. To then break the deal is where the problem is. The weaker/winning rider would have had no shot to win without lying first. Thats unsportsmanlike in a sport where these deals are considered ok (which they are).

I hear you. If both riders held up their end, it would have been mutually beneficial. But by "bad deal" I mean, notwithstanding the deal being mutually beneficial, there was really no reason for the weaker rider not to defect and sprint at the end.

In OP story, the stronger rider is expecting to finish first. Contrast that with the case you described in parent comment, wherein the stronger (GC) rider is expecting to finish second under the terms of the deal. Very different setup.

In the article it's clearly stated that breaking the deal haunted the weaker rider for the rest of his career (and life). There was plenty of reason not to defect, and he regretted it immediately and never stopped regretting it. Giving your word and then violating it, and being called out publicly for it in an area where your word is important, is highly damaging to you. Guy ended up divorced partly because his wife kept throwing it back on him that his entire career was built around breaking a promise.

If they cooperate fully, Rider A has the strongest chance of winning the race. If Rider A defects, he has a lesser chance of winning the race. If Rider A cooperates and Rider B defects, Rider A has the worst possible chance to win the race. I’m not sure how you see this as being a better situation for Rider A.

Note that in my example I am, for the sake of simplicity, assuming a single race and am not talking about a stage race where one rider might be stronger but would happily agree to take second because the stage win is of lesser value than the overall time. When I refer to a stronger rider, I mean one who has a solid chance of holding off the pack solo, whereas the weaker rider would almost certainly be unable to be. When the two reach the finish line, I assume they would be reasonably well-matched for a sprint, just for the sake of providing a simple example.

In reality, it’s rarely so clear. But if someone knows that cooperating and getting second place is a better result for them in practice than fighting tooth and nail for first and potentially throwing it all away, they’ll make this kind of offer. Likewise if the other cyclist strongly values first place but thinks it’s too risky to cooperate with someone who might be try to snatch victory away at the finish line with a sprint, they’ll be relieved to hear the other person give this offer. Making this offer and reneging is considered poor sportsmanship, and it rarely happens because (presumably) racers expect that doing so will prevent them from being trusted to cooperate in the future.

Winning without a deal is preferable to winning with a held deal, which is preferable to winning with a broken deal which may or may not be preferable to getting caught by the chasers die to lack of a deal (or due to a weakly trusted one).

A similar hierarchy can be made for a stronger rider in a stage race who has a time preference (over points) and who therefore grants the stage win: granting without an explicit deal is a better investment in future cooperation prospects than an explicit deal (because it can influence all future co-breakists), an explicit deal is preferable to coming in second due to being weaker, which is still greatly preferable to getting caught by the chasers.

> In a single stage race, the win is mostly the only thing that matters.

You're right that this happens mostly in stage races, but it definitely happens in single-stage races too! If a rider is trying to get a category upgrade—say to Cat 1—they might make this offer knowing that it will help them get over the threshold even if they don't get first. Especially if they know they need these points in the next few races, they might make this deal rather than take the risk of not getting enough to qualify.

Perhaps a blockchain?

I thought the author was far too harsh on Mike and the whole article comes off as extremely self-serving.

Mike was harsh on himself. Neither you nor I get to define Mike's personal standards.

As for the author, I think (speculation) he would have gotten over it if his racing career had not been cut short due to injury.

I think it probably haunted Mike more than Ian judging by his actions.

I'm glad the story ended in forgiveness. People make mistakes, especially in critical moments when the stakes are high and emotions are surging.

If you read to the end he admitted it was cheating - it wasn’t a mistake.

It's common to look back in life and see that what was once a deliberate action was in fact a mistake. Not a mistake in the sense of an accidental occurrence, but in the sense that if one could do it over again, one would do it differently.

That's how the term "mistake" is used in this article.

Any mistake worth writing an article about is probably something where there's culpability.

People commit crimes and describe them as mistakes. There's nothing confusing about that phrasing.

Cheating was the mistake. For some personalities cheating and using others is a way of life and it would not have been a big deal. For others it may have been somewhere in between. But for Mike, cheating probably violated his own sense of morality. It was a mistake, and he only found that out by doing it.

I mean this is purely semantics at this point, but I would certainly argue that deliberate and intentional actions can be mistakes.

If you read to the end, you realize that it’s more complicated than that. It truly and legitimately felt like cheating, and yet under the written rules, it was not clearly cheating.

That’s part of what makes this such a great story. He knew it was cheating, even if it wasn’t cheating from a these are the rules perspective. That is, cheating exists within a cultural context, not just a written context. I feel like this is a weird place in American law: the law is an interpretive endeavor, and yet it is treated as a “rule” where loopholes are “ok” even if it’s not in line with the spirit of the law.

I tried reading the article, but the paragraphs of npr style fluff got to me.

But from the comments it's less cheating (breaking the rules) as it was craven betrayal and fraud.

This one weird trick lets you win any race! Competitive cyclists hate this!

This happens all the time. Julian Alaphilippe basically did that in one of the classics and at Amstel Gold, the rider he tricked the last time around (J. Fuglsang) didn't give in and neither won (although Fuglsang got 3rd). Cycling is filled with ways to get others to work more than others.

Amstel Gold was pretty amazing, but unless you heard differently, that was just tactics rather than any kind of 'deal'. Fuglsang played that one right - to win you have to risk losing.

Yeah, it's tactics but in the same vein where he says his legs are 'fu&ked' and wants someone else to pull more and then outsprints them in the end. This is a quote from Fuglsang: “From when he attacked, I was still the one who was putting in the most effort because he always said that he was fucked. But he did the same at Strade Bianche, and there he still got me, so that's the game – that's the tactic."

I just got done racing the La Crosse Omnium and my favorite stage by far was the uphill time trial. No drafting, just going straight up the bluff for 2.3 miles climbing 530 ft.

Reminds me a bit of the old advice on “Playing to Win” http://www.sirlin.net/ptw

I am flummoxed as to how anyone would consider any kind of verbal communications during a cycling race to be "cheating". There are no rules governing informal collusion agreements made during a race, as far as I know.

If there is any kind of problem here, it's that two or more colluding racers that take turns drafting each other can race faster together than each of the individual racers cycling alone, and that cycling features many different competitions including some of the same competitors. This creates a trust-dependent metagame.

So the correct game theory play against someone reneging on a false promise would be for someone to seek out and draft the renegade racer in the next national championship competition, without ever giving them the opportunity to draft, thus punishing the betrayal in a tit-for-tat fashion. Seems like an inconvenient and bloody-minded thing to do, though.

The business with handing over the winner's trophies to the runner-up just seemed bizarre and awkward to me.

The 2-rider break are at a massive disadvantage compared to the riders in the peloton doing far less work and getting a much better draft, conserving far more energy.

Of course, at some point, some riders may choose to try to bridge the gap, which is difficult.

But typically, breakaways get swallowed up by the much more efficient peloton.

> If there is any kind of problem here, it's that two or more colluding racers that take turns drafting each other can race faster together than each of the individual racers cycling alone, and that cycling features many different competitions including some of the same competitors. This creates a trust-dependent metagame.

This "problem" is basically the whole strategic aspect of road racing.

> So the correct game theory play against someone reneging on a false promise would be ...

To be public about the false promis removing the ability of the rider to make future deals thus removing their ability to compete on equal terms with other competitors and seriously damaging their carriers. If you want to model the real world using game theory, then you have to include the fact that players can communicate outside of active competition, and that players have reputations, tarnished by their bad faith actions.

Players can also lie in out-of-competition communications.

Deals happen in lots of bike races, both in pro and amateur/youth categories. But word gets around fast in the peloton if you make a deal and do not honor it. If you pull a stunt like this especially in a big race like a national championship you can be sure that practically no one will ever make another deal with you and often riders won't even enter a breakaway with you. They might even ask you to drop out of the breakaway or they stop pulling.

Paraphrasing Jean-Paul Sartre here: We are condemned to have a free will. Everything we do, we own and are entirely responsible for the cause and the effect. But more importantly, what we do shows other people how they should act.

Ipso facto, despite whatever culture exists in the cycling world, making deals is cheating. Then again that sport has a long sordid history with that subject.

I can't help to see similarities between this article and the recent phenomena of competitive battle royale games. Currently, Fortnite is in the midst of perhaps the largest open-entry tournaments in history[1], and seems to be establishing these sorts of norms very quickly. Although "teaming" (direct collusion, such as the event featured in this article) is explicitly prohibited with serious consequences, most players implicitly acknowledge that the competition isn't truly "winner takes all," at least at the individual match level, since there are incentives for placing in the top 5, top 25, etc.

As someone who does not play Fortnite but is interested in the social aspects of the game, one term I noticed being thrown around a lot in the competitive subreddit was "w-keying" and its impact on the competitive aspects of the game. "W-key" is a reference to the "W" on a QWERTY keyboard, or "forward" based on WASD movement, and refers to (overly-)aggressive players in Fortnite's competitive scene[2]. This term is derogatory; being called a "W-Keyer" implies a lack of tactical awareness and immaturity as well as a degree of unsportsmanlike behavior.

At first I thought this was sort of weird. "Aggression" in competitive games generally refers to a tactics-level decision, and is thus is generally accepted as part of the game, keeps other tactics in check and makes a better spectator sport by encouraging proactivity. Think zerg-rushing in Starcraft, Mono-red Aggro in Magic The Gathering or Serve-and-Volley in tennis. But most competitive games are zero-sum at the match level (one wins, one loses, or both tie), whereas Fortnite is not. In Fortnite's competitive mode, certain types of aggression is akin to "defecting" in the Prisoner's Dilemma, reducing the overall likelihood of both parties placing (due to one party being eliminated, both parties using up a significant amount of resources, and a reasonable likelihood that a third party swoops in).

I'm not going to go any deeper into the game theory aspects since I would quickly go beyond my comfort area. However, that it's essential that such phenomena are explored more deeply. E-Sports figures are the newest celebrity class, and "people famous for playing video games" has gone from a Wikipedia stub to an ecosystem that mirrors "traditional" star athlete culture. If W-Keying becomes an unwritten taboo, how will punishment for breaking this taboo be meted out? Will those who play the game The Right Way seek to ostracize these players or seek retribution inside/outside the game? Will exceptions be made for star players or would said players face even more scrutiny? What degree of governorship do the companies that put on these competitions have over this type of behavior?

[1]https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/22/18235132/fortnite-world-c... [2] I am not 100% sure if this term is specific to Fortnite, Battle Royale-style games or WASD-controlled games in general, I've just only encountered it in this context.

Very interesting example! Another might be in Formula 1 racing.

Certain driver's (Senna [1]) have been known to force passes by putting the other driver into a no-win situation. The passing driver might dive to the inside of a turn with no hope of slowing enough to avoid hitting the car they are passing. Their only hope is that the other driver will decide to avoid an accident, allowing the pass.

If they don't make way then both drivers are out of the race. Maybe the aggressive driver receives a penalty for reckless behavior. If they do make way though, the aggressive driver now knows that they can do this again and again to this same competitor without being punished for it. Some of the greatest drivers in history (Senna, Schumacher, Earnhardt in NASCAR) had reputations for this.

Another example could be unspoken collusion between poker players in a tournament. When one player is all in with their tournament life on the line they may be called by multiple other players who have more chips than them. These other players can still bet against each other in a side pot, but often won't and may consider doing so bad form. If one does continue to bet it may force the other to fold. This improves the betters chance of winning this hand, but it also improves the all in player's chance of winning and staying in the tournament. By not betting the two callers increase the chance of knocking this player out increasing their expected winnings for the tournament.

[1] https://youtu.be/9U_K76vPGYo?t=371

I saw a listing a while back of the number of winners of the Tour De France that had been disqualified for drug releated cheating - I think it was fully half since 1990.

This is not one bad apple. This is an entire orchard.

At some point, where the proven drug users are merely fractions of percents ahead of the others, (The Tour is usually won by dozens of seconds over hundreds of hours of racing) should we not think that no-one can compete at that level without drug use. And just try a reboot. Or stop the whole thing.

I am totally in favour of encouraging fitness - but most olympic level athletes are frankly ignoring their bodies screaming at them to stop. cf the biographies of any marathon runner.

That seems unhealthy

This is the closest article I can find to my memory : https://www.smh.com.au/sport/cycling/tour-de-france-the-hall...

What is your commentary on the article specifically, here? That both riders were probably cheating anyway?

Cyclists have been using drugs for a long time -- Tom Simpson was doped to the gills when he died on Mont Ventoux in 1967. EPO, HGH, blood doping, etc. may only be worth a few percent, but at the elite level a few percent matter. For cycling, you can look at the power output on Tour de France climbs before and after they developed an effective test for EPO.

Elite level anything is unhealthy, because you're pushing the limits of what humans can accomplish, at the expense of everything else.

I don't believe there is even a single person competing at the top percentile of professional sports (household names) that is doing so without one or more forms of artificial assistance such as EPO, HGH, blood doping, etc.

I wonder, is this a controversial statement?

Controversial? Yes.

Wrong? I can't speak for all sports, but I know an ex-professional cyclist. Doping is less prevalent in the States than in Europe, but even in the States you see amateurs doing it occasionally. Plenty of Euros dope, but more ride the fine line of "therapeutic use" exemptions for drugs that just happen to improve their performance by a percent or two.

They're not all doping, but at least in endurance sports, many are.

> Doping is less prevalent in the States than in Europe,

That is certainly a strong statement, seeing that Armstrong, Landis or Tyler Hamilton are all from the States. Yes, most of the European riders are also not clean, but there are huge exceptions, like France.

I was a bit hesitant to write it, but that was just my friend's experience on the MTB circuit over the last 15-20 years. US Postal and Armstrong were awful and shameless, but I think they were an outlier among American pro teams. Also, there's less money in mountain biking, and it's not really a team sport, so the kind of organized team doping Armstrong created is much less likely to happen.

Anyways, I don't follow cycling as closely as I used to, in part because the pervasive doping was just so discouraging. Hopefully some combination of out-of-competition testing and biological passport will finally make the sport relatively clean.

From what I understand its a cultural thing, and accepted practice until recently. Essentially the racing circuit is too intense to survive A. Without informal rules like in the article. B. Drugs so you can carry on with minor injuries etc.

I suppose you could differentiate between some domestique in the 70s not making much money, needing to make a living and taking stronger pain killers to carry on cycling, and a modern well funded international team.

That's without getting into the morality of it. I hope that culture has now changed.

No witty comment here. That story is a great read.

Its kind of gross how cut and dry this is painted from the perspective of the guy who feels he was cheated. I have to imagine this happens all day every day- at least I know similar situations happen in the professional world and are common. Raises, promotions, projects, etc. You can make hallway deals sure, but someone's gonna sprint and get that prize.

And here I thought it was interesting from the opposite side. Mike made a choice that was within the rules of the game but not the spirit of the game, which already existed within morally dubious territory, and was punished with a lifetime of regret, even though he won the prize. I don’t even remember the name of the other character.

I am 100% in favor of people lying about their deals in these cases, just as I am 100% in favor of a future class of ransomware attackers who collect the ransom and then destroy the key without ever decrypting the victim's data.

In both cases it improves the bottom line of the endeavor. For cycling you get more dynamic races and race endings. For computers it means hospitals and power grids actually go ahead and get rid of their Windows XP machines.

Well that was a huge waste of words.

> Mike looked back. He saw the pack getting closer to catching us. He panicked. He offered a deal.

> A rider who is weaker or at a tactical disadvantage will sometimes offer a promise not to sprint for the win if the stronger rider will promise to stop trying to get away.

> Near a sign that said there was one kilometer to go, we rounded a left hand turn. I looked back at Mike. I said to him, “You remember our deal?”

> But Mike can’t remember if he acknowledged the other racer. He can’t remember if he nodded yes, the way I remember it, or if he didn’t do anything at all. He remembers only that when he saw the finish line, a banner across the road at the top of a short abrupt hill, he suddenly was sprinting.

> And as Mike drove, he made a call he’d long wanted to make. Long needed to make. He said into the phone that he had that jersey with him. He said, I cheated. I’m sorry.

Some people enjoy the details. It lets you immerse yourself momentarily in bike racing culture which is incredibly interesting.

After reading Lord of the Rings:

"Well, that was a huge waste of words."

> Bilbo gives long lost evil ring to son Frodo

> Frodo goes on a long journey with friends to destroy the ring

> A few friends die; a lot of enemies die

> Frodo can't destroy the ring in the moment of truth because it has corrupted him

> It gets destroyed anyway

There, saved you from reading 1000+ pages of literature

And some people don't so I provided the key parts. Surely someone else will appreciate it, but if not it doesn't in any way prevent you from reading each and every sentence.

I would also very much appreciate a summary if someone posted a 1000+ page piece to HN.

No one is faulting you for posting a summary, but for calling the article a huge waste of words.

You can use a service like this if you just want the summary (works pretty well most of the time): https://www.summarizebot.com/

This is why I think many people find they enjoy reading the hobbit more than the lotr trilogy. It's much more concise.

Sometimes details don't worth it.

Spoiler alert!

Thanks!

I know, just like Romeo and Juliet. They both die. The end. What a waste of words.

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