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High Tech Tour de France
jefu writes "As you may know, the 2006 Tour de France finished yesterday with an American, Floyd Landis, the overall winner. This years Tour had a very nice
live website, including frequent news postings and a flash interface that showed the gaps between the lead riders updated every couple of minutes. The site was taking up to 35,000 hits per minute. There is lots of technology involved in this race, including carbon fiber bikes, serious aerodynamic studies to improve the bikes, the helmets and even the riders. There are also bike transponders, GPS trackers , fancy radio systems to connect the riders to the team cars, online database access to race statistics, and probably lots more."
Wow, way to put out libelous and unsubstantiated claims. The second Americans win something, it's because of doping?
I'm Italian, and I don't recall Americans saying that the Italy soccer team was doped through the roof when they won the World Cup.
Do you know anyone who has never had a medical condition treated with drugs?
Have you ever seen anyone undergoing chemotherapy? It isn't exactly performance enhancing. Neither is arthritis so bad you're going to need a new joint, no matter what sort of drugs they give you.
KFG
All things considered, it is good to have a tour-winner again who is not specializing in this event and does other courses too, unlike the specialist Lance Armstrong. The fact that he only competed in the Tour took the shine off his victories. It seems fairer this way.
Armstrong was a truly great cyclist. But I'll agree that him being a one trick pony when it came to races places him under people like Miguel Indurain. I've talked with people who have admired his multi-win streak and when I've said "Yeah, he's good but I think Indurain was better" and have them go "Indu-who?"
For those that don't know. Indurain won 5 consecutive Tour de France races 91-95 and Giro d'Italia 92-93 (not that many double winners in the history). He also set a World Hour Record in 94.
So, if a car is travelling along beside you on the left (assuming you are on the right side of the road), then how good is the driver's situational awareness about you? How much can you actually see what's going on. I ride my regular bike to work, and I feel like having the extra height even above most cars really helps to let me see what all the crazy drivers are doing. I can't imagine seeing much, or having the drivers notice me if I was on a recumbent bicycle.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Well, there is no bias: only 3 americans won the more than 100 years old Tour.
"Lance was coming through the home stretch and the crowd was parting as he approached, not more than a meter in front of him."
The crowds on the mountains have always done that, since long before Lance knew how to ride a bicycle. As with most things in cycling, enthusiastic spectators are not a Lance creation. If you think that is crazy, you should see crowds do the exact same thing at rally races - that's with cars, not bicycles.
When the tv video is shot from behind a rider from a motorcycle, the foreshortening effect of the video camera lens can make the spectators in front of the cyclist appear much closer than they really are. The same effect is very pronounced on sprint finishes, when head-on images can make the race seem like a matter of centimeters, when really the riders are meters apart.
While drunken fans can be an annoyance, the biggest danger from fans is people using cameras - the camera lens can screw up their depth perception, they don't concentrate on what's happening around them, and straps and cords dangle causing hazards that handlebars can snag; all of these have led to high-profile crashes in bike races.
RTFM; please, I beg you.