When a breakaway goes clear in a major race like the Giro it can take a long time to identify the riders involved. It’s a problem for TV viewers and teams alike. Viewers can see something is happening but without knowing who is involved and teams have to know what’s going on for tactical reasons.
The technology exists to solve this and it’s coming to the peloton. We saw it already with the IAM Cycling team trialling a geo-location system in the Tour de Romandie where rider location could be tracked in real time. Is this good?
Actually it’s been used years ago, power meter manufacturer SRM did this with online telemetry for riders until the UCI banned this. Now trials are resuming and it’s possible to imagine the whole bunch equipped with something to enable rider location. It could be RFID, GPS or something else but it’s said to be coming.
Being able to identify where riders are is fundamentally important for TV. It’s 2015 and when a breakaway goes live on TV you feel for the commentators who have to try and ID the riders. For starters the frame-mounted bike numbers and the dorsal numbers pinned to a rider often aren’t legible on TV. The frame numbers are too small to spot while the moto cameras tend to film from the side. So commentators try to identify the riders by sight, not easy with helmets and sunglasses. Take Stage 4 in the Giro, it took 20 minutes to identify all the riders up the road and the moment the list of riders was communicated the group had fragmented. Similar confusion arises at other crucial points, for example knowing who has made the cut over climb.
Having technology provide instant ID confirmation sounds promising although it might not be the panacea. A rider could take a bike from a team mate and with this the geo-location ID gets mixed up; sneaky riders could even game this, staging a “puncture” to swap bikes and fool rivals. Or the technology could simply fail, for example prove haphazard in wooded terrain.
If TV viewers eagerly await news of who is in the breakaway to see if it’s going to include some big names the teams cannot afford any delay. The tactical response from teams is sometimes called “filtering”. It involves a rider hovering at the front of the bunch and, sentry-style, monitoring who is trying to go clear. If they’re small fry they get a pass but if there’s, say, a GC rival trying to sneak off then team mates are rallied and a chase is launched. Easier said than done in many ways: just being near the front when the bunch is erupting like a volcano requires a lot of effort and that’s before the sentry has to identify every rider all while watching their line.
Military tactician Carl von Clausewitz coined the phrase “the fog of war” to describe the confusing situation on the battlefield where the best laid plans can quickly fall apart, especially when information about what your troops and those of the enemy is scarce. The better the information the quicker and the more sound the tactical response. Having geo-location technology to ID the riders would help teams, offering official confirmation faster, whether real time data via the telecoms network or just quicker communication via race-radio. Even if you don’t like race radios geo-location could help the blackboard operator perched on a motorbike to list the fugitives faster.
So far so good but what about the romance of it all? In the information vacuum there was a space to be filled by surprise and with it drama. In times past a rider has been able to exploit the chaos and slip away from his rivals, perhaps riding on the other side of an attacker or exploiting some shade. This form of guerilla racing has made for many great stages. In the modern era it’s not possible to ride away unknown all day but it is still possible to go clear, build an advantage and sow panic in the peloton by the time the news breaks over race radio. Cycling is all about tactical sophistication and if dropping a rival on a climb or outpacing them in a time trial is the traditional method of winning, sneaking away counts too. To return to von Clausewitz and military metaphors once a battlefield technology arrives it’s hard to stop it but it’s different in sports: that’s exactly what rules are for.
Conclusion
Geo-location is the future but is it better? Nine times out of ten it probably it’ll be great to know what’s going on without trying to spot riders by their brand of sunglasses or pedalling style but geo-location systems are neither foolproof nor failsafe. The biggest drag could be an end to guerilla racing with sneaky riders able to get away unnoticed by crafty but legitimate tactics. Hopefully the systems are trialled more before introduction.
I’d think this could be done in a way such that TV/commentary have ID on the riders, but the teams do not. (Just like I’m certain the radios can be programmed to be rider-to-car for mechanicals, and race radio-to-riders for safety, while not allowing teams to talk to the riders.) And putting the chip in a jersey pocket or on a helmet would solve the bike change issue.
The chipping the rider idea crossed my mind as well. Maybe integrate it into the radio?
well, we chip our cats and dogs after all…
Not sure that this will make for better racing.
And wouldn’t a simpler method be to give riders a larger, more visible number?
Its even easier…just put an RFID chip in the race numbers that every rider sticks on.
Just like 1000s of amateurs do when they take part in cyclosportives, marathons and triathlons.
How do you monitor that real-time? You need RFID readers. In amateur events that involves running past a detector. Put detectors every 100 meters on the course? The motorbikes could scan but they don’t get everyone. You’ve got to get close.
The DSs in the cars have TV pictures, plus Twitter for updates (assuming signal ok which aint always the case). So when the TV commentators got the rider IDs and broadcast them, the team cars would know at the same time as the rest of us watching.
Did I mention I don’t think they should have TV in the cars? š
Then you just have someone in the Team bus on the phone to the DS in the car.
Exactly, once information is made available so easily teams will make use of it.
GET RID OF IT ALL!!! No phones, no laptops, no radios!
Yeahyeahyeah I know.
Get rid oft team cars?
No, Sean Y: it must be ridiculously technological – even if that technology doesn’t work and actually makes the sport worse.
That is the way of the world.
No way this could be solved by having numbers on back and front of helmets, and back and front of jerseys, and sides of shorts.
Yes, pinning them on would be a shambles, but as one Eurosport commentator has suggested, you could give each rider a number that they use all season (or all career). Then, it’s on their kit.
Permanent numbers have been suggested but how many riders over the course of a year ride for each team? You need to allocate enough numbers to cover them all. Then you need unique numbers for each team: World Tour, Pro Continential, etc. How many teams total? 100? If 100 teams and 50 numbers per team that’s numbers going from 0 to 4999.
Back in the day before FinishLynx when spotting numbers was more difficult the numbers were bigger. Here’s a photo of Amstel Gold Race in 1976:
http://img.youtube.com/vi/lPWgm3LlKxg/0.jpg
This was true in athletics as well.
People say bike racing is “boring” because “nothing is happening” most of the time. A lot IS happening but you simply can’t see it. There’s just a big anonymous crowd of black-and-something jerseys zipping along. If you knew where favorite riders are, further up, further back, then maybe it would be a bit less boring.
Off topic a bit: but I’ve always been curious about how team cars get their TV pictures. With most of the world having shifted to digital broadcasting of one sort or another, are they just tuning in to a local TV broadcaster showing the race? Or tuning into a satellite channel? In which case, how do they keep a dish pointed the right way?
Why not allow just one radio per team? This would allow for tactical decisions on who to give the radio to, the road captain, or to the GC leader, or whoever the team fancies has the best shot at the stage. Would keep teams who are keen on communication relatively happy and would allow for more natural and less stifled racing. GPS tracking on every rider could work well in tandem with this because the information on who is up the road is less easily available.
yeah taking the chip off the bike is the solution – a wristband or something would do if it was light.
As with most technological advancements, geo-location is likely to be ethically and tactically neutral in the long run. I view it as akin to the pendulum swings between attack and defense in the design of the great castles and fortifications. A new development that neutralizes one tactic or strategy typically promotes the development of new effective alternatives. At the end of the day, it is still people riding the race with all the cunning and craft that comes with that. So, while teams may have to drop certain strategies that worked before geo-location, the resulting turmoil and churn, as teams try to develop effective new techniques, might produce exciting racing.
Another technology that moves power and decision making from riders to the men in the cars. Probably an inevitable development. No surprise riders get less and less tactical astute as they don’t have to think anymore.
Everyone has to admit it. It was pretty exciting when no one knew what the hell was going on for a while yesterday.
The lack of information undoubtedly makes for good racing.
And you get to shout ‘That’s Cataldo, you morons!’
2 of the reasons I like to watch Continental races like the Tour de Langkawi and the Tour of Turkey, more like classic bike racing. And you get to laugh when Phil mixes up Deignan and Kiryienka.
At the moment there’s *a lot* of information, but not complete information. Yes, a DS can see a TV, listen to race radio or whatever. But there are gaps. But we’re talking about different technologies doing similar, but not the same jobs.
With GPS geo-location. the danger is that all the riders will end up with a screen on their cycle computers with a visualisation of the gaps and key riders that’ll be highly accurate and make races duller. You’d know exactly the level of exertion that
But I think it’s worth noting that something like RFID is very different. It could be introduced in a way that could make it quicker for TV to identify the riders in an escape – especially if the chips are on riders and not their bikes. It might require the TV camera bike to “scan” the riders to work out who they are. Everyone would know *who* is in the escape faster, but it wouldn’t produce a deluge of additional information that would make races duller.
I’m not sure RFID could do the job. The range depends on the antenna design and is fairly limited anyway. I, personally, like the Giro’s system where the gap can change plus or minus a minute in the space of 10 seconds. Gets everyone really confused!
RFID can be used over a variety of ranges – they’re kept deliberately low-powered for contactless payment cards for example. I believe there are battery powered RFIDs that can be read up to 100m away. These are often used for automated toll-stations. I would think the necessary antenna could be carried by commisars’ bikes or cars.
We use them at over 100 meters in warehouses but it requires one element to be fixed to read accurately. A moving car and bike would be quite a challenge but maybe it is an area with which I am not familiar.
I’m telling you: a really big number.
Madness I know but we could just have names on jersey’s…maybe a little bit crazy/out there…
even those little Sky flashes under their arms helped… why did they stop that?
It was precious advertising space. They have them on their sleeves now – they’re not as obvious but still helpful, if more in photos than than on TV.
I think they should standardise this – all teams should put the riders name in the same place, nice readable font/size.
Like SKY used to, but perhaps above the ‘sponsor’ panel – this is the most visible location when the riders are in the riding position and the moto camera scans past.
I also like the suggestion of giving riders a number for the whole season – prominently printed onto all their jerseys, jackets, gilets etc – get rid of pinned on paper numbers !!
Well if you mean numbering how cycling is numbered now, you’d have tens of thousands of numbers for all the UCI-licensed riders in the world, who regularly end up competing cross-category (Continental and World Tour, Amateur and Continental, and even sometimes Junior and Pro). If you mean numbering riders from 1 to x for each team, it still causes a problem for UCI-licensed riders who ride as independent or for non-UCI teams.
I meant each team having numbers 1 to xx. Still not perfect as some of the kits are rather similar, but just an idea I’ve seen suggested a few times. “Squad” number plus name on jersey, jacket etc, would help I think especially on those wet days ??
On the Giro stage 4 OGE backstage pass it’s noteworthy how jumpy Matt White was about the 20 rider move… until Gerrans radios back to say all 3 team climbers are up in the break. An example of the value of a quality rider / team captain on the roster.
Geo tagging is truly ‘manna from heaven’ for TV commentators though (whose errors are usually exacerbated by tiny screens and mounds of notes), but who also provide the primary means of viewing the big races in our sport.
Completely unrelated but can anyone tell me what “FTM” means here?
http://www.gazzetta.it/Giroditalia/2015/en/stage/05/standings/retired.shtml?t=05?lang=en
Thanks!
fuori tempo massimo = outside time limit
TV rights/ratings are the golden goose for professional cycling. Anything that can help improve the product should be used, including rider identification and GPS tracking. The ability to track riders and show gaps, breakaway composition, compare ascent and descent speeds, team movement, would likely be big hits. Imagine if a team leader gets a puncture or crashes and you can watch/follow as the team members get their orders to drop back to help bring him back to the lead group. Even the simple domestique duties of dropping back for a bottle haul would be interesting. It is surprising that it has been so slow to be adopted.
And you’d watch all this instead of the race?
I for one don’t think it’s more interesting to know everything.
Who said anything about not watching the race? That is the race. Don’t see many riders without a team. It also depends on the stage and the length of the broadcast. 4 hours of live coverage is really long or even the last 2 hours. Besides, they could use split screens so you can keep watching that four man break away that has been off the front for 100 kilometers, but will be caught well before the finish line. Gripping.
Depends which you prefer: watching bike racing; or analyses and statistics.
I think it would be most interesting when the race situation is unpredictable: short, explosive stages like the start of the Giro, an epic like Gent-Wevelgem ’15. That’s when it’s hard for just a couple of motorbike cameras and a helicopter to bring the race in view, so extra information about positioning of the field and riders/teams in it would be useful. As it stands now, we’re often left to wonder or wait to know if a rider got caught behind a crash or in second or third echelon. Instead we’d know, and the questions become – far more interesting I think – ‘will they make it back? are they working together?’ etc.
On those long stages or one-day races that resemble a 200km group ride followed by a 50km race, it would only be interesting for the race portion; for the ride portion we get things like super slo-mo cam, shots of lakes and castles, and some schoolkids forming a giant bicycle in a field. Yawn.
If there was more actual racing in bike racing, then I think a lot of this technology would be useful and interesting for broadcasts. No amount of technology can make a group ride interesting to watch, maybe that’s why so much of it seems disappointing. The on-bike cams for sprint finishes are great for highlights, but would only be useful in real-time if you also had a view of the race situation. For some it would be worth a premium to watch the finish on-board with your favorite sprinter and have a view of the race situation too, or say the choice of having a helicopter shot* of the last 1km instead of the head-on shot.
*better yet: can we get an ‘ultimo kilometro’ low-flying drone cam?
Maybe it’s just because I’m fortunate to be able to watch Sporza, but they are very quick and accurate to identify riders and situations often before ‘radio corsa’ does. Jersey number + startlist š
Real-time rider tracking seems very tantalizing, but I really wonder how you would add that much extra value to a broadcast with it. If it would help television directors to bring more of the race-making action to the screen, that would be one good way – how many times does the RAI cut from a group *just* as someone attacks, then cuts back to show his backside rather than the counter-reaction?
More interesting use of positioning data would be for analytics over time to understand more about the basis of successful breaks, winning moves, points accumulations, etc. Riders already have their individual data and stats, but it would be interesting to view that in the context of what the peloton or any group is doing.
‘ ā how many times does the RAI cut from a group *just* as someone attacks’ – God, yes. It’s like they do it deliberately.
Also, why does the RAI feed break as soon as it rains heavily? (Just wait) Only happens in Italian races.
But you get some nice aerial shots of trees.
Perhaps trial it in World Tour races and only use it at that level, ala radios? I prefer the frantic romance of less technology but can understand the need for better TV coverage. Might help to convert more casual fans which will boost the sport
I think HTC used something like this, using GPS, in either the 2009 or 2010 tour and viewers could go on the team website and track each rider.
In terms of being able to identify riders, I’ve heard that Sky wanted Wiggins to ride (and win) the 2011 nationals so that he would be identifiable in the peloton during the tour.
That’s kind of why Fabian Wegman wanted the German national title a few years ago…so his girlfriend could easily spot him in the peloton
INRNG, your question and first sentence in your second last paragraph said it all. Where is the surprise? Where is the beauty (and romance?) Seeing the tactic being delivered in real time is the true beauty of our sport. There are too many couch experts now, what is the value in pandering to them?
Once again an exquisitely timed article.
I agree it is a challenge for the commentators, but them getting it right only shows their class, them getting it wrong only shows they too are human, just like the athletes who are entertaining us!
+1 – completely.
(With bigger numbers.)
I too don’t, want or need to know every last detail of what’s going on. I have eyes and ears, and intuition, an excitement, a lust for some of the unknown and at times a little confusion creates intrigue and expectation. More “radio controlled” racing will take more away than give, pretty soon it will become as dull as F1. I too don’t think the Ds’s should have tv in the cars but they can always play the Elf n Safety card there. Shame.
One race that this technology is made for is Paris Roubaix. I can see little downside tactically and miles of upside given how fractured the race becomes.
Chip the riders, integrate into the whereabouts system and its job done
(Joking)
I was going to write that, but only be half joking. Rider wouldn’t have to fill out whereabouts forms. Win-win.
They would because testers cannot be expected track them in real time like some surveillance operation, eg if the athlete goes for an MTB ride the testers cannot follow into the wild etc.
Tracking Drones… jk
https://www.lily.camera/
Count me in the “fog of war” camp. All this technology is a dead-end. Let’s face one big fact – a bicycle that you have to pedal is far from a modern device even if it’s made out of space-age plastic. “Technology” has improved them over the years…to the point they’re now called MOTORCYCLES. Yet we still insist (even checking bikes to make sure no electric motors are hidden inside) that the riders pedal theirs. So why do we need to add all this other technology to a sport with appeal precisely BECAUSE of it’s low-tech simplicity? Many times simple is better. Don’t accuse me of claiming we need to go back to Henri Desgrange’ type rules, but a blind, headlong march to embrace so-called technology is not the way to go. Example? Look at how well that’s going for F1 and MOTOGP at present.
As you say this is not new, and is used widely in other sports.
Take a look at professional rugby, you will note a small lump on players jerseys between the shoulder blades.
The devices embedded in the jerseys track player location (on a small pitch!) at all times allowing post game analysis.
Hopefully the UCI will continue to allow technology into the sport, BUT only on the proviso that in race situations all the data is available to everyone, including comms, feedback from power meters, and so on.
I for one, would have enjoyed seeing on screen graphics showing the power/hr/cadence/gearing of Contrador/Porte/Aru during the attack yesterday.
I’m afraid its rage, rage against the dying light, all of you who hate the technology. Cos it ain’t going away. Completely the opposite.
And I’m afraid I can take my interest and my money elsewhere too.
and that’s the beauty of freedom of will
This would greatly enhance the TV appeal. That it can take commentators 20 mins to work out who we are looking at is a terrible advert for our sport… Imagine that happening on a football pitch “errr.. someone has made a great run into the box”!
When I am out on my bike, I can see speed / cadence / power / gradient etc. Getting this sort of thing on the live TV would be great.
Even without the data, just speed would be interesting. At the moment, the best idea of speed we have is when the TV camera has a look at the speedo on the camera bike!
Formula 1 gives us this info.. and more. We get to hear (some) of the radio conversation. Now that would really add to the ability to follow what is going on in a race closely!
The TV money is critical, so why is cycling so slow to improve the coverage with telemetry? Besides, showing all the information on power, speed, etc. will help level the playing field between the rich and the poor teams.
Remember the largest segment of the audience is people tuning in to see the race cross the landscape, they don’t want telemetry in the way; technology can sole this so people can watch TV but with a smartphone or tablet on their lap for data but we’re not their yet. Still most keen cyclists don’t understand power fully so understand live telemetry from a stranger is even harder.
I don’t understand power output because I can’t afford one, go figure.
I would love to have more info on what is happening in a race like Paris-Roubaix where having a better idea of which group key riders are in and their positioning within that would only add to the intrigue and suspense for me. There would still be the fog of war because so much happens in PR, it just wouldn’t quite so thick!
Plus it would be great for post-race analysis to see how riders approached the race in different ways – e.g. I’ve read before that Van Petegem was the master of hanging at the back of a race like PR before appearing right on cue in the finale, I would love to see if that reputation was based on fact or was more urban myth!
What do they use in the Tour of California? Their ‘Tour tracker’ is the best coverage of any race I’ve seen anywhere with everything the data-geek could want to know (well, almost: no individual power outputs… yet).
While all this talk of a romantic side to racing is nice, not even knowing who you are watching pedalling away on screen is alienating for people trying to get interested in the sport and is also blind to the reality of modern cycling: carbon fibre, heart-rate monitors, electronic gears, power meters, individual motor homes… the romance is dead, folks! Time to welcome in new fans and make the sport more inclusive.