> In professional cycling the Ride as Hard as You Can people are necessary but often don’t achieve any real rank on the team. They might not even finish a tour, either having not budgeted enough for the late stages, or being so new that they can’t understand how tired they’re gonna be later.
I am not much interested in cycling, but I understand this is the dimension that is not present on Olympics. Or do they also ride as teams and assign from the start who is going to get "protected" to preserve their strength to get the best shot at getting gold?
Most countries will have a clear leader yes, especially the big ones with 4/5 riders. Sometimes they hedge their bets by having one guy "free", often in the breakaway. It apparently wasn't so much the case with the Dutch women this year though.
I am not much interested in cycling, but I understand this is the dimension that is not present on Olympics. Or do they also ride as teams and assign from the start who is going to get "protected" to preserve their strength to get the best shot at getting gold?