Transcontinental Race (TCR) will roll out of Trondheim, Norway later today (20:00 CEST) and the map will quickly fill with diverging dots. Gaps will open, routes will split, and the temptation to draw firm conclusions from the leaderboard will begin.
TCR rarely rewards quick judgements. The rider furthest ahead may have spent more energy getting there. The shortest route may be slower in reality. A long stop can look like weakness, even when it is setting up the strongest riding of the following day.
Before TCRNo12 begins, this is a chance to look back at what last year’s race can teach us about reading the one ahead. Using route, speed, control-point, and stationary-time data from TCRNo11 (kindly provided by FollowMyChallenge), these three key lessons examine what separated the front of the race – and why the obvious explanation wasn’t always the right one.
They tell us something about how to race Transcontinental.
1. The quickest route wasn’t the shortest
By the time the riders reached the finish, the routes taken by the official top ten differed by almost 440 kilometres.
Martin Moritz covered the most ground – 5,051 kilometres – and finished second. Manuel Rudaz rode 4,648 kilometres and finished fourth. The shortest estimated route belonged to the rider in seventh, at 4,611 kilometres.
Victor Bosoni’s winning route sat between those extremes at 4,835 kilometres. There was no tidy pattern in which fewer kilometres produced a better result.
That shouldn’t be surprising. The shortest line on a map isn’t always the fastest once it meets an unpaved road, a long mountain climb, or an area of sparse resupply. Transcontinental repeatedly turns route planning into something closer to gambling.
The race offered another version of the same problem after the Adriatic crossing. On the approach to CP5, riders could take a shorter off-road route or remain on a longer paved alternative. One rider chose the direct option and punctured three times. Another stayed on the road and reached the control only 32 minutes later. The shortcut had offered the possibility of a meaningful gain, but almost all of it disappeared into tyre repairs.
Even the final approach caused some chaos. Victor planned to cross the Danube using the Friendship Bridge, only for organisers to rule that the pedestrian route couldn’t be crossed safely within the rules on his arrival. He was forced to find another crossing and eventually spent six hours waiting beside the river before beginning his final sprint towards the Black Sea.
A route isn’t efficient because it contains the fewest kilometres. It is efficient because it allows a rider to turn those kilometres into dependable forward progress.
The strongest route may be longer but smoother. It may pass more food and water. It may avoid a fragile shortcut, reduce the chance of a mechanical, or reach a ferry with enough time to eat and sleep before disembarkation.
When the dots begin separating during TCRNo12, the longer line shouldn’t automatically be treated as the slower one. The more useful question is what the rider has bought with those extra kilometres.
2. The race turned when fatigue caught up
Martin Moritz reached the fourth control point more than two hours ahead of the eventual winner.
