Tech from the Tour de France…
Today is the eve of the Tour de France, a month where we stop busting on the French as much and watch guys in spandex pedal a lot, over 500,000 times per rider. While a lot of the coverage will be on the riders and specifically Lance Armstrong (We think Jan Ullrich is going to do some ass-handing this year) we thought we'd cover some of the gadgets and technologies used in and around the race- the on bike computer, the two-way radio, tv coverage and getting updates on your phone.
The race…
The 91st Tour de France takes place from Saturday the 3rd of July to Sunday the 25th of July 2004 in France, with 21 teams of 9 riders each, making a total of 189 competitors with a total distance of 2,100 miles.
Wired Magazine's 7/2004 issue has some of the gear, from the bikes to the power bars (Riders will burn 110,000 calories during the race)- but only has 2 short mentions of the gadgets, so we dug around a bit to see what and how they're used.
Chatter…
The first device is a two-way radio that the rider and the teams use to communicate. The credit card sized DJ-C5T Alinco supports CTCSS encode, CTCSS decode, standard and nonstandard repeater offsets. It provides over 300 mW of efficient output to reach local repeaters through out the race and also has a built-in speaker, wide band receive, including VHF air (AM).
Our pal who is an amateur racer said these are appearing in many races around the world too, at $150 or so, it's a cheap and easy way to chatter up strategy. Of course, it seems possible to figure out the channel and do some ease dropping (Yes, we're HAM radio freaks) while we're not going to France, we've been looking in to how hard or easy it would be to tune in to these while someone is zipping by at 25 mph. Bonus feature, it has a built in Mosquito Repeller.
Bike puter'
The second device is a bike computer. The CICLOSPORT HAC4 is a combined heart rate monitor, altimeter and computer and is the ultimate sports information system with 50 functions (imperial version) or 57 functions (metric version).
Key functions include percent gradient, rate of ascent, dual target heart rate zones, recovery heart rate, thermometer, a cadence option, PC compatibility, and wattage calculation. With the PC Download kit, riders can examine daily ride data to help monitor and log training effectiveness and racing performance.
Covering the race…
With over 2 billion viewers expected to watch the Tour de France, you'd expect with the stakes this high, you'll see some pretty amazing coverage. The way they film the race is actually more exciting than the race itself. 5 "daredevil" cameramen on motorcycles speed along with the racers and beam the images to two low flying helicopters, if you've seen the race before, there are tons of hazards and twisting turns, as these guys film they hang off the sides of their bikes and zip around at crazy speeds to get the best shots.
As the racers hit the Alpines it's been reported that gravel and sliding on the steep hills is pretty common. After the video is beamed to helicopters, it's then sent to a team of production cars where they have commentary and editing and it's finally beamed from that team to the studio where "75 networks in 170 countries, to produce 2,400 hours of global TV, a pressurized airplane remains on standby for cloudy days".
Updates on your phone…
This year…
if you're a real junkie, you can get updates sent to your phone throughout the race. Just fill out this form and in theory it should all work, we're not sure what they'll do with this info after the race, so as always be vigilant.
So there it is…As the race progresses and more is revealed, we'll post up any other gadgets used in the race or interesting tech. You can of course always post a comment here or send us off a note too.
Oh, before we sign off here…Lance, dude, ditching your wife then bagging Sheryl Crow- and those Subaru ads on 24/7? C'mon man, tone it down a bit.
