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Comment by tomcam | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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"!

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-...

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 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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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").

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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