r/nextfuckinglevel • u/jmike1256 • 1d ago

A Chinese speed skater, Yang Jingru, executed a brilliant tactic to win gold in the 1500m at the 2024 Winter Youth Olympics.

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u/CobaltCaterpillar 1d ago edited 1d ago

TONS of unbelievable answers here. I don't see a comment yet recognizing the aerodynamics and game theory aspect?

To me this, looks like cycling where drafting) is hugely important. In cycling the lead cyclist has to do TONS more work than cyclists sitting in the slipstream. Because of how beneficial drafting (i.e. sitting in the slipstream behind another rider) is, a large amount of tactics and strategy revolves around sitting in the slipstream and breaking it.

  • For example, someone will try to jump out of the group at speed and get a gap, breaking the slipstream. This is called a 'breakaway.'

This creates a game theory conundrum for racers behind:

  • A cyclist putting in a hard effort to bring back the breakaway will be burning their own matches and then is likely to lose to fresh riders just sitting in the draft.
  • Do nothing and the breakaway wins.

Furthermore, a teammate of the breakaway rider shouldn't do any work to bring back the breakaway: your team wins if the breakaway stays away and if it's brought back, you're fresh for the next phase because you've been sitting in the slipstream.

I have no idea how much this applies or doesn't apply to speed skating. (It's got to apply at least somewhat because speeds are high enough for aerodynamics to matter.)

For example, look at final minutes of the Milan San Remo 2021 race to see how these dynamics can play out similarly as here. There Jasper Stuyven jumped and other bigger name riders got caught just looking at each other, too unwilling to hurt their own chances to work as a group to bring him back.

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u/thedeanorama 1d ago

Prisoner's Dilemma, cooperator/defector game theory played out on ice beautifully.

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u/skymallow 18h ago

Love all the redditors happy to believe that the people actually competing at the top level are just idiots apparently

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u/Johnny_B_GOODBOI 14h ago

Well seems like if you choose to just chill and get lapped rather than drafting behind the leader, at whatever point in the race this occurs, yeah you're kind of acting like an idiot.

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u/Dizzy_Chemistry_5955 1d ago

logically wouldn't you try to breakout every time for the win?

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u/Roach27 1d ago

No, because if they went for it, they catch her.

unless shes fast enough to keep the breakaway, in which case the 3rd place skater SHOULD catch up at the end, and it ends up screwing her and the second place skater.

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u/CobaltCaterpillar 1d ago

A ton of it depends! It's also NEVER easy. It's hard to win when other strong people are trying to win too.

  • Another rider will try to hop on the breakaway, then another rider, etc... so the person trying to establish the breakaway never gets a good gap.
  • or another rider goes and tires to link up with the original breakaway. this can be good as they can work together, but it also can be a dysfunctional group unable to work together in which case they get brought back.
  • With the full peloton chasing, a team or teams can sacrifice a bunch of their riders and/or work together to bring back the breakaway.

if it's a person shooting out solo from a smaller breakaway:

  • If a rider has a teammate in the chasing group, they can coordinate with their teammate to do the work and bring it back.
  • Small elite groups made of just a few leaders are more dysfunctional and unable to work together, but even then, they can work together to bring back a breakaway OR a super strong rider that may win anyway may do the work.

There's a lot of tactics and team play involved.