Le Tour, Duex

The "Let Them Eat Cake" blog category was started long before we had met Nicolas Sarkozy (or Carla Bruni) and was put in place to collect all our bashing of France. I come once more to praise her.

I admitted that I enjoyed watching the Tour for the excitement of sport, the beauty of the French countryside, and the preternatural athleticism of the riders. This all holds. But I am going to add that Le Tour de France represents classical liberal economics and individualist values better than any other sport.

I say this because it captures the hybrid of team and individual dynamics of the real world. Typical team sports blend individual and team achievement in a good way, it's healthy for young boys and girls and I have no objection. In cycling, though, you end up working with other teams when your interests match.

This happens all the time without any forethought between individuals, individuals and teams, or among multiple teams. Stages three and five were dominated by breakaways: in the first kilometer of Stage 3, four riders broke off the front on a very long stage. "Again, Bullwinkle? That trick never works" sneered the peloton in their smug little European accents. "The four of you cannot possibly sustain the power that the 174 of us can. When we feel like it, we will flex our collective muscle and bring you back. Mon Dieu, and all that..."

Only they did not. The audacious four held on and Samuel Dumoulin crossed the line first, followed by America's Will Frischkorn, Frenchman Romain Feillu and Italy's Paolo Longo. Their breakaway held for almost the entire 208km course. These guys are not on the same team, but they created an ad hoc partnership that garnered them glory and time (Feillu got the yellow jersey). Stage 5 was the opposite. The peloton allowed an early break to stay just out front, with multiple teams keeping the peloton close enough to snap it away in the last 300m.

Sometimes a team's second best sprinter may try to play off another team while his team sets up their star. This sounds an awful lot like business to me. You partner with a competitor to achieve a certain goal, go outside your team to achieve an individual goal, or even team up with a rival to smash somebody else.

All riders use the power of the group to advance their individual goals. Adam Smith would be proud (though he might wonder about those Lycra® shorts).

Let Them Eat Cake Posted by jk at July 11, 2008 5:25 PM