[netaustin]

As a cyclist and avid fan of pro cycling, I don’t see this being so useful for transportation from a dropped position back to the peloton or breakaway. As others have noted, team cars help, and often the distance to close can be handled by one teammate. I forget which stage, but this year when Vingegaard had a mechanical and needed to swap bikes, Visma didn’t have any domestique wait for him! The protected rider is usually the best rider.

I was thinking about how this might be useful on the attack. Visma had several super domestiques remaining at the end of the tour (Jorgensen, Kuss, Simon Yates) and UAE had lost its top lieutenant. Could they have made a 2x2 train for Vingegaard? Well, maybe, but Pogacar would’ve just hopped on board. So not sure we would see this either.

Amateur rides with no cars and a wider divergence in cyclist abilities, maybe this is more useful.

[pvtmert]

I also agree that it is more useful to semi-pro or amateur riders than the actual pro ones, especially because the formations are quite small (3, 4, and 5 riders) and as you mentioned, usually team cars help out (which is much nicer aerodynamic support than a single rider anyway)

Although, could be useful for the breakaways. I mean, sometimes breakaway forms with handful of riders, still, Pogi could jump into them, but that did not seem to be their (UAE) strategy recently, it was more like: Hold onto the Yellow jersey (GC) as long as possible, and don't take any risks...

As far as I can tell, a similar tactic lead to the Wout van Aert's win at the last stage of Tour de France. From 20km on, the breakaway had ~5 people, Wout waited at he back (essentially a `-==` formation) until the last ~5km, and dropped Pogacar at the climb, then extended nearly a minute difference until the finish.