Withdrawals in the Women's Tour de France 2023

I warned you all a lot of this year's posts are me catching up on last year's. I'm hoping to have this post and the equivalent for the Women's Tour de France 2024 up shortly. 

In the figures, the race is called the TDFF for Tour de France Feminine to save space. 

From the figures I usually make, the first thing that stood out was that you could see stage 7 happening to the peloton.  

A quick search gave me the answer to "what happenened?". The Tourmalet happened. For those who don't follow cycling, please meet the Col du Tourmalet - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Col_du_Tourmalet 

Stage 7 write up by Cycling News - https://www.cyclingnews.com/races/tour-de-france-femmes-2023/stage-7/results/ 

The Tourmalet effect is also seen in the pie chart of withdrawals by stage, with stage 7 (11 withdrawals) having more withdrawals than the next two stages with the most withdrawals combined (stage 5 = 6, stage 2 = 4).  

For the men's 2023 Tour de France, the breakdown of the withdrawals was 38% did not start the stage (DNS) withdrawals and 62% mid-stage abandonments (https://fulltimesportsfan.wordpress.com/2023/11/18/withdrawals-in-week-3-of-the-2023-tour-de-france-an-overall-round-up-and-confirmation-that-the-olympics-didnt-cause-more-withdrawals/). 

There were no withdrawals due to being outside the time limit (OTL). This is a very different pattern to what was seen in the women's Tour de France 2023.  

The percentage of did not starts is almost exactly the same (38% in the men's vs 34% in the women's), so the over the time limit withdrawals in the women's seem come from the pool that were mid-stage abandons in the men. 

On the other hand, the 2023 men's Tour de France was unusual in not having any OTL withdrawals. 

The one disqualification was Lotta Henttala, who was disqualified for holding onto her team car to get a tow. Interestingly, Demi Vollering, the eventual winner had 20 second added on to her time the day before for excessive drafting (following a team car to reduce wind drag) but I'm going to presume the commissaires's argument is drafting is different from holding. 

You can see the stages, particularly stage 7, happening to the teams in the bar chart of when teams lost riders. Due to the number of teams, the Kaplan Meier chart divided by team is a mess.  

L is trying to encourage me to have actual conclusions to these posts, but the problem is that there isn't enough data to have a conclusion.

Cycling - Does racing the week before predict outcome in the women's Tour de France

When I posted about the 2023 Tour de France withdrawals (https://fulltimesportsfan.wordpress.com/2023/11/18/withdrawals-in-week-3-of-the-2023-tour-de-france-an-overall-round-up-and-confirmation-that-the-olympics-didnt-cause-more-withdrawals/), friend R wondered whether the fact that the teams on the women's tour had fewer resources for recuperation etc might affect which racers completed the Tour de France.

Using the stats from Procycling Stats (https://www.procyclingstats.com/), I wanted to see if there was anything in that theory.

Attempt one - if it is a "recovery problem", I'd expect the riders who raced the week before to be less likely to finish the Tour de France Feminine (TDFF).

	Raced within 1 week of the TDFF	Did not race within one week of the TDFF
Completed the TDFF	32	91
Did not complete the TDFF	7	24

Putting those numbers in a 2 x 2 Chi-Squared table suggested that there was no statistically significant difference as to whether racers finished or did not finish the Tour de France Feminine depending on whether or not they raced the week before.

Okay, so I thought, maybe those were only smaller races.  Maybe a bigger race would take it out of the racers more.  So, was there any difference in whether or not a racer finished the Tour de France Feminine based on whether they'd raced the Giro d'Italia Donne?

	Raced the Giro	Did not race the Giro
Completed the TDFF	34	89
Did not complete the TDFF	9	22

Again, using a 2 x 2 Chi-Squared table suggested that there was no statistically significant difference.

The big thing that surprised me was how small the crossover was between people who raced in the Giro Donne and the TDFF.  I would have expected there to have been more.

Final theory was, hey, maybe cumulative damage would affect this.  So, of the 43 riders who did both races, did finishing the Giro Donne have any effect?

	Finished the Giro	Did not finish the Giro
Completed the TDFF	31	3
Did not complete the TDFF	7	2

Sadly for L's hopes that I will make strong conclusions to my posts, nope, there was no statistical significance there either.

So what are we seeing - if there is any factor that affects likelihood of finishing the Tour de France Feminine, it is not having raced the week before, it's not having competed in the grand tour before it, and it is not completing the grand tour before it.

Further investigations would be whether this extends to the men's Tour de France too, given the greater overlap in competitors between the grand tours.

Formula 1 2025 - Saudi Arabian Grand Prix

In which I have some sympathy for Max Verstappen.

No, I have not been kidnapped by aliens and the sympathy is significantly caveated.

That move was completely illegal, and it's been illegal every other time he's pulled it, but he's got away with it every other time so what's different about this one.

You can cope with bad referees/umpires/stewards, it's hard to cope with inconsistent ones.

Last year I suspected Piastri might be the one to bring the biff to Verstappen and it's going to make for interesting racing when there's that and the potential for intra-McLaren strife.

I doubt the strife and the biff will be enough to lead to a Ferrari victory, but hey, at least there's finally been a Ferrari driver on a race podium (no, we still aren't counting sprints). The only plus point to how mediocre that Ferrari is is that people are finally realising Leclerc is a good driver.

Yes, I am clutching at straws.

Formula 1 2025 - Japanese Grand Prix

 This time, I was only a day late listening to the race. It was a nice sunny day out, so I thought I'd walk home and listen to it.

Did anyone else feel that, as a race, it was lacking? (Some wag on social media phrased it as "this race could have been an email, which is damningly true.)

It's a shame, because Suzuka is a good track.

A couple of years ago, someone, I think it was Mark Gallagher, made a joke that like the rest of us, F1 cars have developed a middle aged spread, and the cars are just too wide for the tracks. I was hopeful that having Ross Brawn involved might have made them fix that problem. Ross Brawn is a very smart man, and if I can see something is a problem, he must be able to too.

Obviously, the next wave of regs haven't come in yet, but all I'm hearing about them is about engine specs, nothing about width, and I'm worried that the increasing ERS/KERS/whatever the energy retrieval system is called this time requirements are going to make the cars even bigger and heavier.

The weekend after (so Bahrain Grand Prix for the F1 and Qatar for the MotoGP) I was reminded exactly how much that potential to have overtakes matters to racing, and how much of it is due to size.

Sure, MotoGP has gone back to being Marquez GP*, but there was definitely racing and overtaking (and the Moto3 boys were terrifying me by going 4 abreast into corners). That the bikes can overtake each other means that when I hear that there is a Jerez Grand Prix in the MotoGP, I am excited because "ooooh racing". The idea of an F1 Grand Prix at Jerez fills me with dread, because nothing would happen. There wouldn't be a single overtake, it would all be pit nonsense and DRS (the DRS button is not overtaking, and it kills joy).

No circuit designer can build around cars that can't go two abreast around corners!



*Nothing against either Marquez brother but I screamed when I heard Vinales has been booted to 14th for an infringement.

Saints Ahoy - Game 23 and the 2024 season to date

Saints's game 23 was an unnecessarily close match that Moses Mbye won for Saints with a drop goal in golden point extra time (https://www.saintsrlfc.com/2024/08/08/saints-down-the-red-devils-in-golden-point/). 

The matrix of players playing together when Saints concede for the game isn't particularly informative, other than showing the people interchanging in and out, but it does look pretty.

   

Over the season, there are now 178 point scoring moments for Saints, compared to 104 point-scoring moments conceded. The chart of when Saints score continues to look like a skyline full of skyscrapers.

   

Percival still has the most point-scoring moment, because he is the kicker. He is now up to 60 point-scoring moments.  

Waqa Blake is the Saints player present for the most point-scoring moments.  

The matrix diagram of which players are together when Saints score is a lot more diffuse than it used to be.

   

The network diagram still has a clear central blob.  

This Salford team had the third most point-scoring moments against Saints.  

There is no pattern to when Saints concede

Waqa Blake is present for the most point-concessions.  

The matrix chart of players present together when Saints concede has two areas of darker red standing representing combinations often together when Saints concede. The first patch, Blake, Welsby, Clark, Sironen, Dodd, Lomax, Bell, Hurrell, Makinson, Percival, Mbye, Lees, Whitley and Delaney. The second is where those players cross over with Mata'utia. I believe this is because, before his injury, Mata'utia was in the main cluster.

   

The network graph for point-concessions is less blobby than the point-scoring one.

Formula 1 2025 - Chinese Grand Prix

 And the weekend started so well with Hamilton's sprint victory (https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/hamilton-storms-to-sprint-victory-and-first-ferrari-win-in-china-ahead-of.2VzfSIOQeFC6y2Kskxkpz9)

Just a note, Ferrari victories still don't make sprint races a good idea.

But I didn't get my hopes up because I have been *here* before. And I was wise not to because ...

Ferrari somehow managed to get both their cars disqualified, which is a special kind of ridiculousness (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/articles/cn0j7gvnk89o).

I can, to an extent, forgive the Leclerc disqualification, because there is a chance it was related to how the car drove after losing it's front wing end-plate. Which was knocked off in a collision with his teammate ... and whose loss improved performance.

Meanwhile, the undamaged car got pinged for having undersized skid blocks!

How do you miss something like that?!!!

I hate being a Ferrari fan sometimes.

(I have learnt my lesson from the BBC taking the Chinese Grand Prix off the Sounds app after less than two weeks and will be listening to the Japanese Grand Prix replay tomorrow.)