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news
Tour de Suisse logo.pngTour de Suisse TV coverage to feature heart rates and other rider performance data
This year’s Tour de Suisse, starting on June 11, will give viewers the opportunity to see riders’ heart rates and other data while the race is in progress. "This will enable viewers to experience the tremendous effort of the professional riders at close quarters," said race director Olivier Senn.
The development arises thanks to a collaboration with Velon, the joint marketing company of 11 WorldTour teams. Race organisers said there would also be mobile phone apps allowing fans to access the same data even when they’re not in front of the TV.
Velon has pioneered the use of live on-bike camera footage during road races and has recently been working on broadcasting live race data thanks to an agreement with Infront Sports Media. An earlier announcement had previously said something along these lines was going to be on offer during the Revolution Champions League.
There was no real detail as to what the data might be at that point, as what would be publicly visible on TV screens was still subject to discussions with riders, teams, organisers and the UCI. Details are still a bit sketchy with the latest statement saying only that TV viewers will be able to “make a direct comparison between individual riders in terms of such factors as pulse rate and performance.” Here at road.cc we’ve always taken the outcome of the race itself as being a pretty good measure of performance, but what do we know?
It does however seem unlikely that you’ll be able to watch a leading contender’s heart rate rise until the point at which he cracks. It’s early days and it seems only a handful of riders will be equipped with the specially designed sensors for now.
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.
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6 comments
Personally, I don't need all that nonsense. Give me a plain old simple great bike race on the box and let me enjoy it. Paris-Roubaix 2016, for example, nothing else needed (except perhaps some cold beer and frites/mayonnaise).
Those who moan about the lack of stats from the peleton, just tune into the yawnfest that F1 has become and watch that to your heart's content.
Oh I so look forward to a commentator saying "I don't know why we show you the heart rate data, it tells you nothing." But I'm sure they never will.
or proved he was using a motor
Like with GP cars, on screen you should have the cad, power and HR and be open. No one really believes it helps competitors and if he does so what, makes it more exciting anyway.
Really should be getting close to the stage where you can watch a race live on a tablet and have interactive controls to tab through the riders and pull live stats on power, speed even wind etc.
After that we should be moving to smart overlays where you can tap the screen on a specific rider and it will recognise who you've tapped on and pull up info about them, both live and historical.
Cycling should be leading the way here as the guys are all sensored up but as usual the UCI drag their heels.
They had a lot of those stats through the TdF website last year via dimension data:
http://www.dimensiondata.com/tourdefrance
I don't really see how heart rate data is very useful though - it's more likely to lead to the usual confusion as it did when Froome's HR data was released with his power data last year and assumed that due to a low HR he wasn't actually working that hard, which is total nonsense.
Actually, if the whole thing about cameras on bikes is anything to go by, it's not the UCI that hold things back, but the teams. Bike cameras took a while to appear due to arguements about who owns the rights to the footage etc - i'd imagine the arguments would be much louder and longer if rider data might be broadcast live.