For the most part, though, the good stuff did not come in following a break of three riders, nor sitting 20 metres in front of the peloton watching its arrow head glide across the plains of south-west France. It was at the back of the peloton, in the engine room, where things really got interesting. It is a remarkable thing, the peloton. In the distance, or from the aerial shots showing it stretching and contracting, or splitting down the middle to allow it to flow smoothly around a roundabout, the 175 individual cyclists resemble a single unit, a fluid, malleable whole.

The summit of the climb came 38km from the end of stage 14, which began in Limoux and ended in Foix in the foothills of the Pyrenees, and the incident occurred as the peloton emerged into the light and passed under the banner at the top, a quarter of an hour behind a five-man breakaway.

A regiment of cavalry consists of six squadrons, each squadron of four pelotons, each peloton of two companies, each company of two escouardes, and each escouarde of two men.

In Bauske, on 2 July, the local commandant had twenty hostages publicly shot at the Memel bridge by a peloton supplied by the local headquarters, allegedly in "reprisal" for the German soldiers who had fallen in the battles for the town.

Peloton

Meaning

Noun

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