Miss & Out

Miss and Out or Devil Take the Hindmost is a massed start track cycling distance event. It is not a world championship or Olympic discipline but is a popular event for both spectators and riders at track meetings at a lower level and is usually incorporated into six-day races.

The race is run for individual competitors or, more rarely, for teams of two relaying each other as in the madison; field sizes are up to the maximum permitted for the track in question. The principle of the event is that every lap, or every X laps (with sprint laps generally announced by the lap bell or a whistle), the last rider or X riders to cross the line is eliminated from the race, until a predetermined number of riders remain to fight out a final sprint for the win on normal lines. The parameters can be adapted to suit the desired race length, the track size and the size of the field. A rarer variant for a smaller field is to give each rider or team a number of 'lives' which are lost when crossing the line in the last position, with riders only eliminated when all their lives are lost.

Tactically, the real racing in a devil tends to happen at the back of the field - attacks are rare and not really in the spirit of the thing. With riders who are safely at the front riding relatively steadily and those behind moving up and around on the elimination laps to try and find a safe spot, the race favours riders with a certain amount of nerve and track-craft; it is sometimes safer (and more entertaining) to ride from the back where you can see what is going on, than to try and hide in the middle of the bunch only to be eliminated when all the riders behind you suddenly find gaps to get past you. This telescoping of the field does mean that crashes are more common than in some other related types of racing, especially among inexperienced riders.