Temporary organizational forms and coopetition in cycling

Abstract

Purpose: In road cycling races, one of riders' main objectives is to win stages, which most often requires breaking away from the pack of riders. What is it that makes a breakaway succeed, i.e. enable one of its members to win the stage? Originality/value: The present study adds to the literature on temporary organizational forms, coopetition and cycling performance by analyzing within-stage data in cycling and, as such, enabling to capture its strategic dimension.

Guest editorial

“…Thus, any study that focuses on professional sport teams and leagues also has to consider the broader literature on coopetition (defined as simultaneous cooperation and competition (Brandenburger and Nalebuff, 1996). A more recent paper by Scelles et al (2017) supports this stance. Here, the authors state that the concept of coopetition in sport is highly relevant in the sense that if opponents are competitors on the field, they need each other to produce the competition and, as such, they are economic partners.…”

Applying Google Trends’ Search Popularity Indicator to Professional Cycling

“…Besides these media-related studies, several other aspects related to the Tour de France have been investigated, which are less relevant to the current investigation, such as marketing cities and their peripheral areas (Smith, 2009), the doping culture in events such as the Tour de France and the resulting breaches of integrity (Palmer, 2000;Schneider, 2006;Wieting, 2000). From a competition point of view the Tour is also a field of experimentation for different forms of cooperation, for example when riders from different teams try to break away from the peloton, leading to a temporary organizational form (Scelles et al, 2018). Organizational forms also play a role in the study of the composition of teams, especially for the Tour de France, and in the role of the team manager (Prinz & Wicker, 2012).…”

What made the tour successful? Competitive balance in the tour de France, 1947–2017

“…Cabaud et al review the literature on competitive balance in cycling and they introduce an interesting measure of competitive balance at the stage level called intra-stage 'competitive intensity' (Cabaud et al 2015). However, computing this sophisticated indicator requires within-stage data, which are not available in the long or even in the medium term (Scelles et al 2017).…”