Arguably more than ever these days, domestiques win races. Not themselves – or rarely anyway – but through a collective effort to get their designated leaders to the finish in first place, or in a position to defend their overall positions.
In modern times, and increasingly so in mountain stages, domestiques are expected to be able to stay at the head of affairs for as long as possible, effectively functioning as an 'uphill sprint train' – witness Team Sky – leaving their leaders to wait until the last possible moment to take the race on in anger. It is very much like catapulting a sprinter to the win on a flat stage. Which is also another domestique's job.
There are many facets to the role of domestique: from riding tempo at the front of the bunch, protecting their leader from the wind, to collecting water bottles or shepherding a team leader through a difficult patch or stage, or even handing their bike or a wheel to one of those leaders after a crash or puncture.
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Quantifying and classifying such various and often specialist work is sometimes difficult, because what happens in the pro peloton takes place away from prying eyes. But from what TV coverage does show us, and from on-the-ground reporting and stories and praise from team leaders, we present Cyclingnews' five best domestiques of 2018.
Antwan Tolhoek (LottoNL-Jumbo)
For any of our readers who watched the Tour de France in 2018, you would have been hard-pressed not to have noticed a very slight, baby-faced rider dressed in black and yellow at the head of the peloton.
At 1.78m and 61kg, according to the LottoNL-Jumbo website, Antwan Tolhoek regularly rode on the front of the race to help keep a number of breakaways at bay during this year's Tour, and he and the team were rewarded with fourth place and fifth place overall for Primoz Roglic and Steven Kruijswijk, respectively, in Paris.
Damien Howson (Mitchelton-Scott)
Egan Bernal (Team Sky)
Tim Declerq (Quick-Step Floors)
Daniel Oss (Bora-Hansgrohe)
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/the-5-best-domestiques-of-2018
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