Monday, 28 April 2025

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. Kaplan Meier chart of withdrawals from the TDFF 2023. It starts at 1, reduces slightly by the end of stage 1, to about 0.975 by the end of stage 2, about 0.95 by the end of stage 3, about 0.925 by the end of stage 4, just under 0.9 by the end of stage 5, then 0.875 by the end of stage 6, followed by a sudden drop to 0.8 by the end of stage 7, and it pretty much stays there by the end of stage 8. 
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 


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). Pie chart of withdrawals by stage. The largest slice of the pie, in mid-blue is for stage 7 with 11 withdrawals. 

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. Pie chart of types of withdrawal in the 2023 TDFF. Blue is did not start the stage withdrawals, at 34%, orange is mid-stage abandonments at 53%, then 10% are outside the time limit (OTL). The one disqualification, in yellow, is 3% of the total withdrawals. 

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. Bar chart showing when teams lost riders. Although a couple of teams lost 3 riders (Arkea Pro Cycling team, Uno-X Pro Cycling team, Liv Racing TeqFind), no team reduced to half or less. Due to the number of teams, the Kaplan Meier chart divided by team is a mess. Kaplan Meier chart. Due to the number of teams no clear shape is visible. You can sort of see stage 2 happening to Israel Premier Tech, and the whole Tour happening to Arkea, but that is about it. 

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.
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