Support road.cc

Like this site? Help us to make it better.

news

Video: On-bike footage from the 2014 Shimano Supercrit

Race also thought to have been the first to feature live-streamed on-bike footage

Shimano Australia have recently uploaded some on-bike footage from this year’s Shimano Supercrit in Melbourne. However, the race was also notable for an experiment in live-streaming on-bike pictures while the race was in progress.

The footage below comes from the bikes of Team Giant-Shimano's Koen de Kort (handlebar) and Avanti Racing Team's Pat Shaw (saddle rail) during the Shimano Supercrit on Sunday December 14. The race was won by Scott Sunderland, riding for the Budget Forklifts team.

Separately to this, CyclingTips.com teamed up with Tom Reynolds and Andy Richardson in a bid to see whether it was possible to offer a live stream of footage during the race. With UCI president, Brian Cookson, having deemed on-bike pictures ‘the way to go’ earlier this year, this largely successful experiment may prove of great significance.

Both Reynolds and Richardson have a background in motorsport where in-car footage is considered a vital broadcast tool. While the pair didn’t expect their experiment to go perfectly, it does seem to have been a very useful exercise. Reynolds outlines how they set about their task in an article on CyclingTips.com.

“Having decided that an on-bike camera streaming live was a good idea in theory, we realised early on that hacking existing technology would be the go. As avid drone enthusiasts — I made last year’s SuperCrit video, while Andy recently built a six-rotor drone on his day off — we wondered whether it would be possible to hack existing drone tech into a workable solution. Of course it turned out to be far more complex and difficult than originally thought.”

The setup used was geared towards criterium racing and they already have a new system in the pipeline with multiple digital receivers and gear which auto-switches between signals as the bikes come into and out of range. This could offer much improved full-lap coverage.

While road racing presents additional challenges, Reynolds concludes that it would be possible to live-stream a WorldTour event – albeit with a few pretty big ifs. Among other issues, he says a system would be needed to wake the camera and send it to sleep again in order to preserve battery life.

Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.

Add new comment

4 comments

Avatar
pedalpowerDC | 9 years ago
0 likes

Ummm, yeah. I want to see when someone puts in an 1000W surge. When guys are trying to make a break stick doing 500W+ for a few minutes. Or even when info like "so-and-so was sitting in easy for the last few laps doing whatever wattage and now he's blasting off the front." How about data from the front guy on a sprint train as it's reeling in the break. Maybe that's best served as post-race analysis, but then it's there in the computers ready for on-camera analysis rather than looking at pro's Strava files a couple days later to see what they were doing for all 6 hours of a race. What's not to like about that?

Imagine if they could do live analysis of a combination of tactics and real-time effort data. There are race announcers who literally have nothing interesting to say (USA broadcast announcers who re-explain drafting every stage; that UCI CX guy who won't stop talking about disk brakes; etc). What if they had constant info coming in that could give them something relevant to talk about? In the minimum, you could have a live webpage that gives access to data while watching the regular broadcast on TV or online.

Avatar
glynr36 | 9 years ago
0 likes

Read the CT article on it and you'll see the trouble had getting it to work like it did.
Metrics are just a gimmic too, do you really care what power rider X puts out? It doesn't add anything.

Avatar
Daveyraveygravey | 9 years ago
0 likes

They should have a speed graphic in the bottom right corner and maybe HR or power...

Avatar
Daveyraveygravey | 9 years ago
0 likes

They should have a speed graphic in the bottom right corner and maybe HR or power...

Latest Comments