Pro cyclist booted off race for wearing AI video glasses: “Confused” rider slams UCI for allowing Tour de France pros to “vlog with a camera in your hand”; End of an era: Bye, bye Quick-Step + more on the live blog
SUMMARY
Pro cyclist booted off race for wearing AI video glasses: “Confused” rider slams UCI for allowing Tour de France pros to “vlog with a camera in your hand”
Back in the day, news of a professional cyclist being disqualified from a bike race in July was extremely common, almost to be expected, really. It usually broke on a rest day, took place in Pau, and involved industrial quantities of refrigerated blood.
These days, we have to turn to China and AI video glasses for our annual dose of DSQ-related controversy. Things have changed a bit since 2007 and ‘Black Wednesday’, I suppose.
Over at the brilliantly named Tour of Magnificent Qinghai, South African pro Willie Smit was booted off the race after its first stage for filming the event on his funky new video-recording glasses.
The 33-year-old, who raced for WorldTour team Katusha and second-tier squad Burgos-BH before plying his trade in Asia for the past five years, uploaded footage of the stage around Xining, featuring a nasty late crash, to Instagram on Saturday.
View this post on Instagram
Smit recorded the stage using Oakley’s Meta Vanguard Performance AI glasses, which feature a 12MP 3K camera, Oakley Prizm lenses, and open-ear speakers.
However, that footage proved enough to earn Smit, a prolific vlogger and content creator, an early ticket home, the commissaires citing a recently introduced rule banning the use of smart devices capable of capturing or transmitting data that aren’t mounted on the rider’s bike.
“Today I was disqualified for the first time in my cycling career (14 years), for wearing glasses that record video,” he posted.
“Unfortunately I was not aware of a new rule that was implemented in April that prohibited this. A warning, fine, or yellow card could have also been enough.”
View this post on Instagram
A confused Smit then pointed to footage uploaded by Velon, showing Lidl-Trek rider Toms Skujiņš apparently using a hand-held camera to interview Visma-Lease a Bike’s Victor Campenaerts during the Tour de France last week.
“But what I struggle to understand is why In the Tour de France can you quite literally vlog with a camera in your hand which is perfectly legal, but because the camera is in the glasses you get an automatic disqualification?!” he asked.
“Yes, If I knew about the rule I would have also never posted it on social media. Anyways, I’ll take it on the chin. Here is the video that got me disqualified and the other video is just to show what is completely allowed it seems.
“And lastly, my glasses have absolutely no AI capabilities unless used with a phone. So on the bike it can do nothing but record video!”
View this post on Instagram
When asked on social media about the reasons cited for his disqualification, Smit said: “They informed me that the UCI contacted them and asked for my disqualification. They took a picture of the Oakley glasses and just said the video recording was not allowed.
“We then asked if there would be some discretion if the organisation allowed it, and he said it doesn’t matter because the rules are clear and he can lose his job if he does nothing about it. I respect the rules.
“But of course my biased side would have appreciated at least a fine, warning, yellow card etc. Online I could only find the regulations for track cycling? Any idea where I can find the one for road? Also does that mean wearing your Garmin is a smart device? Because then I should have been DQ’d twice. Anyways, happy I’m aware of these regulations now.”
He continued: “I do not want to make excuses for not knowing the new rules. Not sure where it was published. But using common sense one would think it’s much more dangerous having a GoPro in your hand and recording in the biggest bike race in the world, compared to having a camera in your glasses that does not require taking your hands off the handlebars and that is also not distracting.
“But as you can see it is completely fine to do it in the Tour de France.”
End of a laminate era: Quick-Step stepping down as team title sponsor after almost three decades, as Belgian squad set to be renamed Soudal Safety Jogger from 2027
Next spring, when the cobbled classics roll around once again, you may feel a slight emptiness, or a strange nagging sensation. You might find yourself sitting in front of the TV during the Tour of Flanders wondering: Why don’t I feel the sudden urge to buy some laminate or vinyl flooring?
Well, that’s because in 2027, for the first time this millennium, Quick-Step will not be appearing on a cycling team jersey, the Belgian company stepping down from the co-title sponsorship role it currently shares with Soudal at the formerly all-conquering classics squad.
This morning, during the Tour’s first rest day, it was announced that Soudal Quick-Step will race as Soudal Safety Jogger from 2027, with Quick-Step set to step down (sorry) to a lower-tier sponsorship role until 2030.
The brand, known for its easy-to-install flooring, first joined the cycling world in 1999 as co-title sponsor of the Mapei team, before joining the Quick-Step–Davitamon outfit founded by Patrick Lefevere in 2003.
It’s been the first or second sponsor of that squad ever since, adorning the jerseys of some of the sport’s biggest names, including Tom Boonen, Paolo Bettini, Mark Cavendish, and Remco Evenepoel, winning a host of classics, grand tour stages, and the 2022 Vuelta during a dominant period throughout the 2010s and early 2020s.
The team is also set to swap its long-standing partnership with Specialized for a new bike deal with Merida next year.
“The strongest partnerships are built on shared values, which is exactly why our future with Safety Jogger is so compelling,” Jurgen Foré, the team’s CEO said today. “While we both share proud roots in Flanders, we have each built a global footprint through a relentless commitment to innovation and excellence.
“This new co-title partnership is the natural evolution of a highly successful relationship, and we are excited to take our collaboration to the next level as we pursue ambitious global goals together.”
I’m a bit sad, if I’m honest. Stop changing all the time, cycling, stop it.
Fans injured after driver crashes car into Tour de France finishing straight
Some worrying news from yesterday’s Tour finish in Ussel, where eight fans, standing just 500m from the line in Ussel, were injured in a collision involving a journalists’ car, including one who is reported to have suffered serious but not life-threatening injuries.
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When the UCI said cycling needed to focus more on safety, I'm not sure hard hats, hi vis padded jackets, and steel toe caps was quite what they had in mind.
I would love it if bike manufacturers offered us more exciting paint jobs. Seems like some of the chinese brands are offering far more customisation in their framesets. You see so many cool paintjobs on professionals bikes and then you look at the offerings to us mortals and its depressing. I know part of this is that they also reserve the more interesting or exciting paint jobs for the top end bikes to lure people up the price ladder but its a shame nonetheless.
Not gonna lie, I would consider Merida bikes when buying a new bike if their paintjobs weren't utterly utterly awful. I don't know that I have seen a single one I like. They seem to manage to pick colours I don't like or think complement each other and then the actual use of said paint isn't in aesthetic ways. I know the paint doesn't make a bike good but we are all amateurs and if you don't like the look of your bike then there are dozens of other bikes that you would like just as much to ride that look better.
@mdavidford Too bad the Police themselves, whose job it is to discriminate between legal and illegal and promote public understanding of the same, don't know the difference: "doing wheelies on what the force described as a Sur-Ron "e-bike"
@wtjs Yes - surely better to filter out bugs than to eat dead ones or live mostly sterile ones that can't reproduce.
@Rendel Harris You know damn well what I mean, Rendel. The bikes here are just a nice angle to make their point about how tech has changed over the years. They could have easily used two other bikes for exactly the same purpose. They chose these because they already had an article that looked at the old bike in depth, and because Seixas' bike is new. You keep cherry-picking, to try to win this silly argument on semantics, but the intro actually says it quite clearly: "We compare Jaan Kirsipuu’s early-2000s AG2R race bike with Paul Seixas’ latest machine TO CHART A QUARTER OF A CENTURY OF TECH PROGRESS". The article is not ABOUT these bikes, it USES these bikes to illustrate that tech progress, hence, the article is about that tech progress.
@Sreedlums That's hilarious, the article is literally about two Decathlon Tour de France bikes and comparing them. It says that everywhere, in the headline, in the subhead, in the body text. It says it's "a good excuse to look back at how Decathlon’s top-level race bikes have changed over the last 25 years", how on earth can you get from that to "this article was *not* about these two bikes"? Go on swearing black is white all you want, but you are totally wrong.
@Sriracha They have got what makes bicycles be recognized by the public as bicycles, and what motorbikes haven't got - pedals, that's why.
@Rendel Harris Oh wait, so now the article is only about Decathlon's TdF bikes? Because that's in the headline? That's funny, because in your previous comment you said "I think if you look really hard you can see this is an article about how Tour de France bikes have changed",. So, which is it? You can keep cherry-picking snippets of text, but it doesn't change the fact that this article was *not* about these two bikes, nor was it about TdF bikes. This article took these two bikes as examples of top road bikes of their time, to take a broader look at how road bike tech has changed in 30 years. And my original comment was about exactly that; road bikes then and now.
@Sredlums Did you miss this bit? See the words "Tour de France bikes" there? Easy to miss, only being in the headline and all...
1 thought on “Pro cyclist booted off race for wearing AI video glasses: “Confused” rider slams UCI for allowing Tour de France pros to “vlog with a camera in your hand”; End of an era: Bye, bye Quick-Step + more on the live blog”
When the UCI said cycling needed to focus more on safety, I’m not sure hard hats, hi vis padded jackets, and steel toe caps was quite what they had in mind.