Tour 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.