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."

Comments

Re:specialist

[KokorHekkus]

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.

Re:recumbent good for looking at clouds.

[CastrTroy]

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.