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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."
Yeah, brilliant.. Tell us now!.. you know, when it's over.
Umm... Oops?
You take it, I don't want it...
This post is about as funny as Steve Martin's "The Pink Panther"
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
There were some excellent advances in biochemistry and pharmaceutics if I remember correctly . . . http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/cycli ng/5138306.stm.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
the 2006 Tour de France finished yesterday with an American , Floyd Landis, the overall winner
... blah blah
I wonder how Americans always keep winning in France.. these last few years. To hell with all this fancy schmancy technology carbon fiber bikes, serious aerodynamic studies to improve the bikes, the helmets
As Alistair McLean figured out with Vyland and Royale... Fear is the Key. Americans are plain scared in France, methinks!
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
... especially in ma(s)king forbidden substances... Greg LeMond, Lance Armstrong, Floyd Landis : 11 wins between them.
In the beginning, you just had the riders out on their own wits to guide them, then they got radios and the coaches got to keep them updated, then the coaches got live TV feeds in their cars to keep themselves updated, and now apparently "it is now possible to track the position and speed of each rider in the Tour de France in real-time thanks to the EGNOS European satellite positioning system."
Being a coach sure got easier if they've got realtime tracking of all the other riders.
In soviet russia, You ask not what country do for you, but what you do for country!
Oh wait...
From the site: (http://www.powercranks.com/about/concept.htm)
So basically, they force riders to use all leg muscles and keep them from lifting one leg with the other, wasting energy. Simple, but very effective. It's a nice concept, and I'd love to get a pair even for my commute, but being a niche product they are rather expensive...
.: Max Romantschuk
I just want to know why people care so much about performance enhancing drugs. I would rather see a bunch of juiced up frenchmen flying at 200 MPH on a bike, crashing at the end and exploding, taking out 1500 spectators. Seriously, I watch sports for entertainment, period.
You take it, I don't want it...
It's a professional sporting event. Privately owned. Don't wanna play by the rules? You don't gotta play the game.
I'm not talking purely hypothetically either, it's the choice I made, although perhaps a bit easier choice for an American in the 70s. We didn't exactly have a lot of "cred" back then and things over there were not to most American's taste. For my part I'm not talking about the European culture. I loved Europe. I'm talking strictly about the bike racing culture. Those were still pretty much Prisoners of the Road days. Cycle racing was a blue collar sport, a way out of the factory job, but you were pretty much a serf to the team. Simply an employee of the sponsor.
That upstart kid Greg something or other went over there though. He managed to at least partially rewrite the rules. Go figure; and good for him. They needed a bit of rewriting. He made his team an independent business entity from the sponsor, in the American model. That changed things.
But then he didn't want to wear the jacket his mom made for him either. He wanted to wear the yellow jersey.
KFG
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.
I'm sorry Max, but we're going to take your arm off to reduce turbulence...
don't forget to mention all the high tech chemicals and drugs on the driver side!
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.
Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!
Actually the technology use on this race is still impressive.
:)
... simple problem, but still complex solutions ! Let's hope a solution will be found .... one day ;-)
;-)
... they always win and control the race from the 1sec to the last one. No passion = less interrest for viewers).
Example of 2005 configuration :
* 300 peoples : journalist, cameramen, sound, directors, arangers, production teams, etc.
* 2 Wescam helicopters : Images from the sky (landscape, monuments and peloton from the top / cool for sprints). The wescam ball is a robotized camera controled from the helicopter used since the 90s in the Tour.
* 5 image motorbike : Inside the race, following the various groups, or team directors. They provide most of the race images.
* 10 ground cameras : For TV show and Finish zooms.
* 2 motos son : sound motorbike, 2 journalist are pushing live interviews of directors or live repports of race events (very usedfull in montains where lots of things can happen at the same time)
* 2 relay planes + 2 relay helicopters : This is the hidden part of iceberg, since the 90, all the camera (wescam equiped helicopter and image motorbikes) are sending their image streams to those relays. The relays will then ensure all the streams will be received by the technical centre on the Finish city. This was the 90s revolution.
Next year, after RollandGarros in 1080p FranceTelevision (the TV group having the license on the tour) has said they will go for HD Tour
(This will put lot of pressure on the relay IMHO)
But even with the onflight stream complex solution, sill problems about camera discontinous stream happen (for instance in tunnels or behind bridges)
My best congratulation to Floyd Landis, he was very very impresive and has the "panache" that the road spectators are looking for : bring surprise, passion and never give up !
See ya next year Floyd
(PS : spectators have never like "uber-champions" that win everything, simply because there is no surprise
Over here we have an inventive bike called a "ligfiets", loosely translated a "lying down-bike". You basically lie on your back (with your back supported), and have much more power to push on the pedals. Additionally, the riding prosition reduces drag by a significant amount. Have these bikes been forbidden for use in the tour, or is nobody interested in using them? They go damn fast (and the steering is less prompt), so I'd have expected that to be the new "klapschaats".
Here's what they look like: http://flevobike.nl/
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
Personally, Id like to see a comparison of all the amazing top-of-the-line tech going into this vs that of the World Cup and, maybe the Superbowl.
Just for comparison's sake, I think that'd be rather interesting.
Concerning live-site, I think nothing compares with tennis grand slams live scoring. You can watch shots practically live, and this really takes more effort technically, than to refresh the site every few minutes. How much is there real change in bike race, especially in flat stages? First hour, peloton is in one group, second hour, one break-away group, fifth hour, break-away group is reeled in, we gonna have a sprint finish. 10 minutes - teams are preparing for sprint, 10 seconds, the sprint has happened, the winner is such and such. That's all. I do not see what is so really ground-breaking technology-wise.
The company that makes the bike transponders has a near-monopoly in radio control car timing systems. I wanted to write a free/open source timing software to manage our club races but the company requires developers to sign a non-disclosure agreement if they want to know the interface specs. Oh, and hello slashdot! (first post)
With all this technology maybe next time we can sponsor an overweight Slashdoter slob to race?
With all these gadgets he may just finish!
For the tour though cyclingfans.com was essential - an eye-hurting mess of a website but it had links to all the live streams of the coverage.
EPO is a performance enhancing substance and is banned from the Tour de France. Armstrong received EPO while he had cancer to treat some of the side-effects of chemotherapy. So, yes, technically Armstrong did receive performance enhancing drugs while undergoing treatment for cancer.
That said, anyone who thinks he was using EPO to cheat while he was undergoing chemotherapy is crazy. Prescribing EPO to patients undergoing chemotherapy isn't unusual.
Doping has been part of the game for as long as Tour de France has existed. The game doesn't gat any less exiting for that reason, doping isn't magic potions that turn ordinary humans into superhumans.
The hypocracy is anoying though, and it is annoying when some of the pre-race favorites gets excluded because they are unlucky enough to get caught, but that risk is part of the game, like the risk of being involved in a bad crash before the start.
While an American keeps winning The Tour de France, Europeans have been winning the Ironman race in Kona lately (www.ironman.com). So, I guess it's just that everyone does better outside their own country. Probably just showing off...
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They also had maps of all the stages, with all the checkpoints, sprints, etc, available through Google Earth. You'd download the file, and suddenly a bunch of blue lines would appear on the pictures of France. As usual, you could then tilt the view, and the contours of the mountains would appear, i.e. mountains would rise either side of the blue line that people would be cycling down. You can then almost pretend you're flying down the valley along the course! Very nifty.
What about all the high-tech, performance enhancing drugs the spectators are using? Nothing like watching the Tour high on Human Growth Hormone.
You are welcome on my lawn.
...high-tech tubes used on the bikes be modified in some way to make my Internets go faster?
-FB
This story title appears every year by my memory.
!sig
You can find the high tech version here, it's much more interesting.
"I told you a million times not to exaggerate!"
I love Le Tour, but the spectators are fucking retards. I remember watching a video (cannot find it now) where Lance was coming through the home stretch and the crowd was parting as he approached, not more than a meter in front of him. (Then getting in the way of other riders, causing them to have to slow or swerve.) Imagine biking as fast as you can through a dense crowd of dense people, just hoping that nobody trips or does something else stupid. And for those not in the know, brakes on road bikes are not what you expect. Almost exactly the opposite of mountain bike brakes, they are not intended to stop you, just trim your speed. If you face an obstacle your only real option is to go around it. Also, you never just stop flat-out in a pack unless you want to become a third wheel for the guys behind you.
Join Tor today!
(to the Weird Al's tune or Manson's one, whatever)
We are stars now!
In the dope show!
We are stars now!
In the dope show!
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
The recumbent position is better for looking at clouds (as in a sailplane).
I'm riding a recumbent every day to work and I have no problem with situational awareness.
Only very close potholes can't be seen very well.
But the position is much more back friendly.
Why is it that people think correcting mistakes is somehow a bad thing?
Join Tor today!
I'm sorry, but Tour-de-France is the anti-technology race. Wired had a photo gallery listing many technologies that are banned from the tour:
http://blog.wired.com/tourtechnology/
Any bicycle which is too light, or which has excessively good aerodynamics is outright banned. There is very little exciting aerodynamics research going on for Tour-de-France. Recumbents were banned by the Union Cycliste International way back in the 30s because they were way too fast. Every bicycle speed record currently held was taken with a recumbent.
UCI basically felt that racing should be a test of the rider rather that of the technology, and so made the diamond frame the "standard". Since everyone else saw people winning races on diamond frame bikes, these bicycles were much more popular than many other technologically superior bikes, which is pretty much why recumbents are hard to find and overly expensive today.
Even this nearly traditional looking Softride pivotless suspension bike (http://www.bronesbikeshop.com/Softride.jpg) was banned because it "could have an aerodynamic advantage".
A streaming helmet cam of the leader of the race would be cool.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Thank you for pointing this out. The coverage of this sport is also very low tech compared to other sports. You get noisy glitchy low definition video feeds from motorbikes and bad editing where the commentators are talking about one thing and the tv is showing something else. Compare this to NFL or NBA HDTV coverage for example.
> AMD went to work right away to support our common goal - winning the Tour de France.
I'm glad that worked out so well for Team Discovery, especially without Amstrong.
ian
There are several reasons for the technical limitations:
1. Safety reasons... it just recently became possible to build a _safe_ bike under UCI weight limits. Prior to that people were using bikes of questionable structural integrity and even drilling holes in important components to shave weight (e.g. stems, cranks, etc.) Very, very nasty wrecks ensue when your bike fails on you.
2. To level the playing field a bit. There are mega teams like Discovery, T-Mobile, etc. that can afford to throw money at a problem. There are smaller teams that can't. By imposing some limits on the technology it allows these smaller teams to compete.
3. In Europe, cycling is very much a blue collar sport of the people and UCI felt it was important to get the teams riding bikes people can actually buy. Over the past decade most of the teams have gone from custom bikes to off the shelf bikes with the really hi-tech bits reserved for time trials and mountain stages. You can go buy the Trek that most of the Discovery riders use at your local Trek dealer.
Drugs aside, I can throw on my old school Postal kit, jump on my Trek OCLV and pretend for a moment that I'm chasing down Floyd and that is part of the allure of the sport for most fans. You just don't get that with Football, NASCAR, etc. (Although I think it does translate well to baseball and soccer, which probably explains the popularity of the sports).
Finally, for the post underneath this complaining about the quality of the coverage... stadiums are built with TV coverage in mind, they have broadcast booths and hardpoints for the cameras with all the wiring already run. Cycling coverage is done over a 150+ course, at 25+ mph and they can't prep the city because they move to different citites each day. The technology behind it is pretty cool and covering stadium sports is childs play compared to what they're doing.
Every bicycle speed record currently held was taken with a recumbent.
You forgot to mention that the speed records that you mention are limited to mostly flat land, or in the words of the IHPVA, "one of the straightest, flattest, and smoothest surfaces in the world."
If you want to bike competitivly and leverage technology, you need to learn to swim and run, too, because it's traithlon (USAT) that lets you do pretty much anything.
If they went to an open format, tech wise, you'd see a couple things happen.
1) Aero recumbents would dominate. Not only would the playing field no longer be as level, from an equipment standpoint, but the benefits of drafting, and riding in a pack would be diminished or even eliminated. This would remove the entire 'rolling chessgame' aspect of the Tour, turning it into a giant series of individual time trials.
2) Riders already go fast enough on descents, they're hitting over 100 kilometers per hour coasting down some of the hills. If they were hitting 150 or more on those descents it would be even more insanely dangerous.
3) As it stands, the cream of the crop racing bikes are attainable for mere mortals. I can go out and buy a Trek Madone 5.9 SL and 'be like Lance' for around $4k USD. I can go out and buy a BMC Pro Machine like Landis rides for around double that. How much does Michael Schumacher's car cost? (Millions) How much does a racing level rowing shell cost? (around $6k for the shell alone) What would these bikes end up costing if they became extreme, one-off, aerodynamically faired bullets?
A recumbent wouldn't be much of an advantage in the mountain stages, but would be very interesting on the relatively flat time trials.
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
139 comments and nobody mentioned how the TDF site looks like it was inspired by Goatse?
So then, you just put up with the yellow jacket even if it is really uncomfortable to wear?
Maybe it is scratchy or confining, too hot, or not warm enough. What if it sucks enough
to make you think you'll lose the next stage because of it?
I think it was IBM that made a big deal about putting together the site and it's "cutting edge" live text updates. Here we are 7 years later with...live text updates. The only thing that's changed is the flash doodad that shows the time gaps between the lead/chase groups, peloton, and gruppettos, and they don't tell you who's where, save for the specialty jerseys. If there's a GPS unit on each bike, it shouldn't be difficult to add that to the feed, maybe on mouseover to keep it clean, and lay the whole thing on a google earth map. Actually there's LESS technology now. At least back then you could get streaming audio of Phil and Paul, and a few video clips from the day before. Now you can't get a live audio feed anywhere, and video, fuggedaboutit. At least the World Cup was on TVUplayer.
While we're on the subject, back before Lance made the Tour worthy of more than a 1 hour weekly recap on a broadcast Network, the best you could hope for was to hear Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen call each stage live. They knew that like the "old days" most people could only get their live tour fix over the radio, and their commentary spoke volumes about the history of the tour and the day-to-day tactics. IMO they are "Hors Categorie" in the small field of bike racing announcers. Do they repeat themselves and employ a few hackneyed clichés? Of course, but talking for up to five hours a day on any subject would drive most announcers to far worse.
Like the knuckleheads Al Trautwig and Bob Roll. Maybe the American audience needs a baritone voiceover and a goofball sidekick to kick off the day, but their "expanded coverage" at the end of the day, evenhaving the benefit of knowing the outcome and setting up a little drama, cropped out the best part of the coverage by removing the sophisticated and insightful announcers and replacing them with frick and frack. Here's an example:
Al: It's got to be really hot out there. How much water do they have to drink on a day like this?
Bob: They've got to drink enough water to drown a catfish. The air is hot, the bikes are hot, but the ground is scorchingly warmified.
Al: As exciting as this is, does it hold a candle to the time that Lance charged up Alp d'Huez and slapped Jan Ullrich's mother?
Bob: Of course not. After the 2001 season, they actually added a rule to the Tour Day Fraaantz rulebook about making the runner up shine Lance's shoes to prevent that from happening again.
Seriously, they have all day to put together voiceovers for the day's events, and they prattle on, slightly more interesting than dead air. That would be like a morning news announcer covering an accident scene, and the evening anchor sitting around looking at footage, saying "wow, that accident sure looks bad. I bet somebody got hurt."
Ok, enough ranting. Only 9 more months until the Spring Classics.
Maybe it is scratchy . . .
.or confining . . .
.too hot
.or not warm enough
Until recently they were made of wool.
. .
Well, d'oh! It's a cycling jersey. Get with the program.
. .
Add water.
. .
Add a piece of newspaper.
What if it sucks enough
to make you think you'll lose the next stage because of it?
Quit. None of the other riders will complain if you do this.
KFG
Apparently the "many technologies" that are banned are:
1) bikes that are too light
2) bikes that are too light
3) bikes that are too light
4) bikes that are too light
5) bikes that are too light
6) bikes that might have a significant aerodynamic advantage
7) recumbent bikes
8) recumbent bikes
Looked EXACTLY THE SAME AS LAST YEARS SITE.
EXACTLY. Except for the names of riders, of course.
And it was excellent last year, too.
Now to endure the carping from so many riders and teams about Floyd's 'bionic hip' next year. Sure, it really upped your grandmother's game, getting a hip transplant, didn't it?
-rick
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
> Until recently they were made of wool.
Ow! I get it now. This is the punishment jacket. You have to wear it if you go too fast. It keeps the race close, because nobody can stand to wear wool.
I don't know about you, but the tour homepage http://www.letour.fr/ looks a little too much like goatse for my comfort.
If you construct a scale of funniness from 1=not even slightly funny to 100=perfectly hilarious, Steve Martin's "The Pink Panther" would have a minus score.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
For people who don't have the background on this: Floyd Landis raced on Lance Armstrong's team while Lance was still racing. In one of Lance's books, he tells a great story about Floyd Landis -- I don't remember all the details, but it went something like this.
Floyd was training for the Tour with Lance's team, but not really pulling his weight. He was unmotivated, or not taking it seriously -- something like that (like I said, my memory is sketchy). Anyway, Lance pulled him aside and basically said "WTF?" He took Floyd to go training with him that day -- Lance had been training away from most of the team, doing high-altitude climbs, pushing himself harder than everyone else. He took Floyd with him and made him do the same climbs, and basically whipped him into shape, and after that Floyd became one of his team's most solid members.
I think it's pretty awesome that he went on to win the Tour.
(If anyone knows this story better than me, please fill in!)
One of the more fantastic tools are the wattage graphs of human power output during the race. A human adult at rest outputs about a half watt per pound. Thats why they need to crank up air conditioning in auditoriums with the equivalent of an incandescent light in each chair. A trained athlete can sustain 200 watts for hours and peak twice that for minutes bursts.
And Greg was building on the americans-in-europe tradition that George Mount had kicked up in '75-78, when he was racing in the Giro. I *think* he was the first American since the '30's to show up in European pro cycling.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
If you want to bike competitivly and leverage technology, you need to learn to swim and run, too, because it's traithlon (USAT) that lets you do pretty much anything.
Except ride in a pack and draft other racers.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
Because that's goddamn cheating. You gotta stand on your own. What an assinine criticism. Die in a fire. Please.
it was partially true but it's not.
Performance enhancing drugs have a long history in all kinds of sport. Cycling's history of abuse is at least as old as the sport.
As much as sport organizations may not legitimately want the drugs in their sport, they start by making sure no one kills themselves with abuse first.
Some years ago 20yr old semi-pro cyclists were dying of heart attacks because of too much EPO and probably a few other things... The UCI's solution was to set a red blood cell count limit. Now most pro cyclists are close to that limit, which is way beyond a non-doping cyclist.
The goal then, is for pro or semi-pro athletes to stop a sport and lead productive lives as citizens. The Gov. of California is a well-known example. No one gets to be Mr. Olympia (or whatever) on training alone.
Today's lesson: Doping is okay in any sport. Just don't be stupid about it and don't kill yourself. Staying clean gets you nothing but peace of mind and a low-range pro athletes salary. That's a high price to pay for sticking to convictions.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Did anyone else notice that Didi Senft seemed to get censored by the producers. I could see the pitch-fork paintings on the road, but not the guy himself. Except on one occasion, where he was onscreen for half a second, before the camera moved slightly to the side.
Maybe he isn't high-tech enough?
"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.
Considering all the technological gee-whizzery that goes into all aspects of bike racing, and all the years that bike racing has been televised live, I'm hoping that soon we'll see a drastic improvement in signal quality from the motorcycle-video feeds. It is still very prone to garbled images and interruptions.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
"That upstart kid Greg something or other went over there though. He managed to at least partially rewrite the rules. Go figure; and good for him. They needed a bit of rewriting. He made his team an independent business entity from the sponsor, in the American model. That changed things."
The Greg in question was Greg Lemond:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Lemond
He's best known for:
- 2 World Championships
- 3 Tour De France Titles
- Being the first millionare in the sport
- Aerodynamic innovations including areo bars and helmets (the ones that you see everybody use now).
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Ah, yes, George and his famous grimace. "Smile" is far too polite a word for it.
But Jackie Simes III was the one who really kicked it off in the late 60s. He was the one we all looked to as the first to give it a go in the post WWII era, but a track rider. Track was still huge in Europe, but nearly unheard of here though, so he never got any headlines. Silver medal in the worlds kilo in '68. Gave up the idea of a European career to try to restart pro racing in the US. He did it, but it took 20 years or so. Dave Chauner was the first American to actually win a Eurpean race, even though it was only amatuer and only in England it was a huge event for American cycling. John Allis brought the first American team overseas. Selected for the Olympic team 4 times (declined the fourth), but never turned pro. Then there was Jack Boyer, the model for Breaking Away, although Jack went "all French" instead of "all Italian." Expatriated to France, went pro in '77 and rode The Tour in '81. Mike Neel turned pro in Italy the same year Jack went pro in France.
The lead up to, and the '76 Olympic games themselves, is what really kicked started American pro cycling, more than any one rider. It showed our amatuers that they really could compete and gave them impetus to go to Europe.
But, to be honest though, it was the American amatuer women who led the way in international success, although mostly on track. Sheila Young, Sue Novara, Connie Carpenter, Miji Reoch. When the men were despairing of ever being comptetive the "girls" were kicking ass and showing us it could be done. In Europe women's cycling was culturally a kind of "Powder Puff" affair, but our women took it very seriously and showed results. I think a lot of American guys, perhaps even George, secretly held one of the women as his role model for success.
I'm a pure roadie, but to me Sue and Shiela were Gods.
KFG
I have to admit that while I especially didn't like Bob Roll at first, he's grown on me. He sure is goofy and fun to make fun of. "Tour Day FrAnce!" LOL! He absolutely butchers it every time!
That said, Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin are definitely great commentators and I wouldn't want anyone else commenting during the sages.
(PS : spectators have never like "uber-champions" that win everything, simply because there is no surprise ... they always win and control the race from the 1sec to the last one. No passion = less interrest for viewers).
1 4)
:(
Domestic to the States, OLN viewership was down 52%. In Germany, after Ullrich got das boot (har har), ratings were down 43%. Even in France there were 23% fewer people watching on TV. (Source: http://www.pezcyclingnews.com/?pg=fullstory&id=42
Personally, I'm psyched that it was wide open - the drama was a blast, and last Thursday when Landis cranked the dial to eleven was a beautiful thing to watch... but if the majority of Murrikins can't watch Texas-boy dominate again, they'd rather watch something else.
The pain was excruciating and the scarring is likely permanent, but that just means it's working.
Yeah, but the US has never lost the World Series. Ever. Must be some kind of miracle!
Missed the World Series in 1992 and 1993, eh?
Big Mig was no Eddy Merckx...
Eddy won the Tour 5 time, the Giro 5 times, and the Vuelta A Espana once, not to mention having more than 20 career wins in the classics...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
Actually this is not all new innovative technology, both http://www.letour.fr/ and http://www.eurosports.com/ used the live technology last year too. Eurosports was nice because they offer live audio feeds with commentators as you can read the postings, and get live updates with the distance of the race. Maybe in the future the stats for each rider will be available live such as Speed, Heart Rate, RPM's, etc.
That part is always interesting. It seems like making the machines simpler makes it easier for the "small" guy to get involved. But, just like in NASCAR, F1, and Pro Stock drag racing, where they have imposed limits to try and bring budgets down, the opposite seems to happen. I'll use Pro Stock drag racing as an example: The Pro Stock class was created to allow teams with smaller budgets to race with the big guys so what they did was eliminate power adders (superchargers, turbos, nitrous) and allow for HUGE motors (>800 cubic inches). Well obviously everyone went with the largest motor they could legally have. What happens when you make the rules so narrow is...the teams with money start dumping huge amounts into R&D for the most incremental of improvements. Over time this has driven out the little guy for which the class was created.
The same things happen in F1 alot. They went to a two race rule where your engine had to last two races otherwise you were penalized. Rather than making the components with less expensive/more durable parts the rich teams went crazy with R&D trying to get their same motors to last through the two races.
Long story short...big gains, whatever they may be, are usually relatively inexpensive. It's that last 1/10th of a mph or the last gram of weight that costs all the money.
I have two comments about the technology of professional bike racing. First, there is a bit of disagreement whether the riders' two-way radios make for boring racing (http://www.dailypelotonforums.com/main/lofiversio n/index.php/t652.html). I think they do, but who cares what I think? The more important detail that I object to is the artificial power source. If these guys are allowed to carry a battery around, why not strap a really big battery on? Where is the battery limit? Clearly it's somewhere. So I'd like to see cyclocomputers and intercom radios powered by the rider.
The second issue that I'd point out is that it seems like European sports like cycling, F1, and soccer are ideal candidates for distribution over the Internet. This was proven to be technically feasible I think by OLN for this year's Giro D'Italia. The reason all such sports could be streamed this way is that the advertising model is in the actual content. I find it ridiculous that Flowmax (some crazy weiner drug) is advertised like crazy while I'd rather be watching bike racing. Why doesn't this drug company just sponsor a cycling team? For our coverage in the USA, it's as if the advertising model was forgotten. Because this is fundamentally the advertising model, I'm somewhat expecting velosport to show up on the Internet for free relatively soon.
As for the letour.fr site, I agree that it's exactly the same as it was in 1999. Now, however, I don't take advantage of the updates and gaps, etc. I can't because I'm watching the race (in PDT) on the hard drive recorder with about 2 hours of timeshift i.e. extra sleep.
I didn't know that Boyer actually made it to the Tour! That's awesome. AFAIK George didn't ride in the Tour, so Boyer is a better candidate for cracking open that door.
I wonder sometimes if women's racing in Europe was helped or harmed by Jeannie Longo's unbelievable string of victories. Sometimes it seemed like there wasn't any point to even holding the races, when you could just send the trophies directly to her and save all the hard work.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
No doubt Phil and Paul are the greatest, and while Al and Bob are useful for their entertainment value in small doses, they aren't worth listening to for any length of time. That said, did anyone else notice that Phil couldn't keep Floyd Landis and Levi Leipheimer straight. Nearly every day he had at least one confusing moment like: "oh no! Landis is cracking!" I panic, look to see a blue gerolsteiner jersey moving backwards... Seriously, by the time Landis did crack in the Alps, I assumed that he was talking about Leipheimer for a moment. Even on the very last day he did it (and that was the only time I ever heard him catch himself!). I mean, I love his commentary, but can't he keep 2 names straight? I guess after 7 years of "Lance this" and "Lance that" he isn't used to talking about more than one American...
I didn't know that Boyer actually made it to the Tour!
.Jeannie Longo's unbelievable string of victories.
Oh, shit yeah. Rode it five times. Finished 12th in '83, the year before LeMond's first. I'll tell ya, there was some hootin' and hollerin' around my local bike shop over that one. Unlike other Americans who "visited" Europe to ride Jack completely acculturated himself as a Frenchman; and into the French amatuer system, in '73, That made all the difference.
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Ahhh, Jeannie's sumpin' else; and a geek! Mathematics and computer science at Grenoble. A shame she was born into a family that supported her fully, but a nation that didn't. She was one of the first to cross the pond in the other direction to find competition. I guess I'll never fully understand the French. Rene Arnoux once complained that he was a bigger hero in France when he was coming second in an Italain car than when he was winning in a French one. Elan! The valiant loss. I'm a huge fan of the man (or woman, Seana Hogan another God, another geek. MA in Mathematics) who "puts in the effort" myself, but one can overdue that if one isn't careful.
KFG
It's not unusual and he didn't use it in order to cheat, but the physiological effect is the same nonetheless. Of course, chemotherapy is very much performance diminishing, so it doesn't really matter.
Landis' case is more interesting, however. He's using cortisone because of his (serious) hip problem. Cortisone a known performance enhancing drug and Landis is very much using it while he's actively racing. Here too, I'm not saying that he's cheating, but the physiological effect is present nonetheless. Whether or not it overcompensates for the hip issue is something I cannot judge, but considering that Landis didn't even inform his team until very recently, the negative effect of his dying hip on his performance cannot be huge yet.
Linux user since early January 1992.
Who busts out with Fatah jokes? Seriously
That's just weird.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Yeah, Bob's ok, he sort of grows on you (like a fungus).
But Sam Posey will make me turn the channel (or rather fast forward on the tivo).
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Rucumbents are only faster on relatively flat stages. Trying to keep up with a traditional bike on an actual climb is virtually impossible. All those speed records you reference are in areas similar to the salt flats.