If the UCI were open minded...

Well, even with a fabric-faired bike the recumbent team would have at least a 25% speed advantage - that would be a lot of time advantage for the others to catch up in the mountains.

NickM wrote: Colley wrote: Would a recumbant be a bit slower up the likes of l'alp d'huez (probably spelt wrong) though, as you cant really stand up on the pedals on a recumbent. And they do say le tour is won in the mountains... On the other hand, any long, straightish descent would immediately give a recumbent a big time gap...

Don't forget that if you're 20% slower up a hill then being 20% quicker back down the same hill does not make up the difference because you will spend way more than half the total time on the climb.

E.g. a 10 mile climb at 10mph = 60 minutes;
Coming back down those 10 miles at 30mph = 20 minutes.

This gives a combined time for the first bike of 80 minutes.

If the second bike climbs at 8mph it would take 75 minutes.

Therefore, to match the same time for the hill as a whole the second bike would need to complete the 10 mile descent in 5 minutes - 120 miles per hour!

GeoffBird wrote: don't all competitors have to finish within a certain time difference to the leader or face disqualification? In that case all the other teams would probably be eliminated by the second or third stage!

By the rules, each stage has a cut-off time, yes.

However, when this actually happened a few years ago the rules were ignored.

It was a relatively short, flat stage with a big climb at the end. Anyone having problems on the flat section found that the delay was a sizeable chunk of their total stage time, and they missed any chance to go with the attacks on the hill. A massive proportion of the peloton finished outside the cutoff time and lots of teams complained and got the rule ignored, otherwise they'd have lost half or more of their riders.

Then the teams who'd gone all-out to ensure they were within the times complained because they'd be more tired for the following day.

Hindesight is great, but even the TV commentators had realised this was a distinct possibility before the stage so what excuse the race organisers had is not entirely clear...

KevinJ wrote: I think that you are missing something here.  You are not comparing a DF with a recumbent, you are comparing a group of such.  The advantage of a recumbent is aerodynamics.  However - when you look at a Peloton, rather than an indivdual bike, the aerodynamics (at least per bike) improves considerably.  In a faired recumbent you might find it a bit mroe difficult to ride so close.   So given the 'group' considerations I am not sure that the advantage of a recumbent, if any would be that great.

Cant a peloton form of recumbents? Presumably at least your team would be using a similar bike.

I seem to recall there was a 400 mile event in Norway over very hilly terrain which was won by Bram Moens(?) by a considerable distance on a faired M5(?). Despite the organisers stopping him riding at some point for some obscure reason and returning him to the start line to start last.  He then had to ride through the entire field.  When he crossed the line he was ignored and they gave the prize to the first upright bike to cross the line.

I'm aware of the hill calculation but I'm not sure how well it applies to a streamliner over a long course.  The fastest streamliner in the 2 hour race at Castle Coombe (albeit very flat) was 30k in front of the fastest unfaired rider.

I have seen a calculation that the Varna if given a sufficiently long 1 in 10 downhill slope would reach some 150 mph, so given a straight enough course and rider with nerves of steel....

Finally with regards to not standing up on the pedals, I don't think this is a big deal 

Check out these videos on this page for some fast climbing and descending recumbents.  http://www.lightningbikes.com/cyber.htm

GeoffBird wrote: I've also noticed that my racing bike (streamliner) will accelerate a lot faster despite weighing 23 kg - I have easily out-accelerated Legs Larry (on a lightweight, tail-faired low-racer) from the Darley Moor hairpin (18 mph?), despite having probably less than half his power.

So if racing in a mixed field of uprights and recumbents, faired recumbents would have enough "jump" to be able to form breaks which unfaired uprights couldn't get into, and groups of them would just ride away on flat stages.

The riders on uprights might get their own back on the very long, demanding Alpine and Pyrenean (sp?) climbs, but to extract the maximum weight advantage there they would need to be unfaired, which would cost time everywhere else. Maybe.