About the UCI GPS controversy: If the purpose of the tag is to track riders, shouldn’t the GPS tag be on the rider rather than the bike? Riders can change bikes during a race, and the bike may become separated from the rider in case of a crash. Wouldn’t it make more sense to put the tracker on an armband to be worn under the jersey?
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Fair point about changing bikes….but as far as a rider get separated from a bike in the event of a crash, they would still be in the nearby vicinity.
Even if the bike (or god forbid, the rider) goes further down a hill or ravine, organizers will still know something is wrong and be looking in the right area at least.
I agree that having it on the rider (or their helmet?) does make a bit more sense though. Or integrated into the race numbers even.
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I don’t know what’s on the market, but it seems that a GPS tracker could easily be integrated into a race radio. The GPS is small, and the radio will already have a battery. The change in size of the radio should be minimal.
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Replace the race radio with an Android device with mesh wifi networking.
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Helmets are designed to slide in a crash and something attached to it would be a liability and potential danger.
Every bike should have a data processing unit attached which broadcasts everything - location, speed, power, cadence, HR, etc. Time to move in to the 21st century to enhance coverage ala F1. If a rider swap bikes, they then simply need to link the rider to the new bike.
There’s a lot of reluctance to share rider data, but I don’t buy any of the reasons given, or there are mitigations for the concerns.
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I agree. They’re not perfect, but triathlon (specifically T100), has a tracker unit which also shares HR data, displayed as a % of Max to indicate how hard they are going and add to the viewer experience. They show changes in position in what seems to be near real time (you see an overtake and within a few seconds the graphics change), and must be able to operate as a safety device if you change how it pings. Some athletes complain about the placement and chafing, but cyclists wouldn’t be swimming or running so likely it’s be less of an issue. The issue would be the doubling up of a tracker pod and radio, and making sure it’s robust enough to survive a crash without causing injury if you landed on it.
ANGi requires a phone connection to work - it will send a text. I assume riders are not riding with cellphones.
As far as on the person, they make very small and slick looking GPS trackers for dogs… just have the riders wear a dog collar GPS tracker.
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Right, it wouldn’t use the exact same technology, but the placement could be similar
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They’re pros, their entire livelihood is possible because of public interest. I’m not suggesting it applies to amateurs, but it’s pretty simple to makes rules at the pro level that in order to take part this data needs to be shared.
There are easy enough ways to ensure competitor teams are not making live tactical decisions based on the data (a fair argument against), whilst making the live broadcasts far more interesting especially for the more casual viewer.
I agree they should ideally be on the rider, but I imagine the UCI would get more pushback from riders about having to strap a device on themselves.
Yes, I know they do it with race radios, but it’s human nature - it’s different when someone else is telling you to do it.
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I’m sympathetic to this perspective, but some rider information is already public. Height, weight, date of birth. Here’s Pogačar’s listing on PCS. Adding heart rate would be chipping away at their privacy a little more, but that wall has already been breached.
Here’s a different possible issue. Consider the riders who already have trackers provided by Velon, and the UCI adds another tracker. I’m a little out of my depth on this, but when there are two radio receivers in close proximity, one of them can absorb all the radio signal (I’ve seen this happen with commercial walkie-talkies). So there might be a situation where the Velon tracker worked but not the UCI tracker or vice-versa.
I’m no communications engineer, but I don’t think that’s a major problem. When you have 100,000 people in a sports stadium, the cellular phone network can be overwhelmed. But there’s only 200-odd riders.
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How about just issuing everyone Apple Series 11 watch? I’m only partially kidding. Instead of the UCI trying to invent something new, just go with a commercial solution that has both cellular & satellite connectivity. Plus it has built in crash detection
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Too logical. Stop it. UCI would rather both reinvent the wheel and do it incorrectly.
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This is a solved problem - just give every rider an Apple Watch Ultra 3:
- Crash detection
- GPS with “Find me” capability
- Cell connectivity
- Satellite connectivity when no cell connectivity
- Can connect to external sensors
If not an Apple Watch Ultra 3, pick a similar (if there is one) commercial product
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How would that work with riders “sponsored” by Richard Mille?