I’m doing lots of racing events, and I’ve several times seen riders escape when riding through a large group of other riders. It’s simply too hard in a race to tell who’s in your group and who’s not. What would be really nice, is to somehow highlight all riders in the group so there’s no guessing.
closed courses for events is coming
some ad-banners on shirts/pants would help. I saw several times the riders in same jerseys.
But in fact closed couses were OK (no drafting from “helpers” not running in the event).
I guess the only downside is getting dropped and not drafting the other riders not in the race. Oh well, that’s more realistic.