Counting Every Second: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Timing and Scoring the Tour De France
posted July 19th 2004 4:00PM
We've got a treat for you today: an in-depth report from special correspondent Patrick Karle on all of the crazy technology being used for timing and scoring the Tour de France.
Timing and scoring the Tour de France is an exacting and important task that mirrors the race itself. A team of
skilled electronics operators in a mini-van loaded with a mobile computer network, chase the world's greatest
bicyclists around le Grande Boucle, sorting out split-second finishes marred by chaotic, and, sometimes, massive,
crashes. International reputations, careers and millions of dollars are constantly on the line.
As the world waits to see if American Lance Armstrong will nail his record sixth win, responsibility for timing and
scoring every rider in every stage of the 2004 Tour de France falls squarely on the shoulders of Philippe Collet and
his dedicated team at Matsport. The privately held French company provides timing services and scoring information for
the judges of the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), Festina,the Official Timekeeper, and the media and ultimately
millions of fans around the globe. Located in Grenoble, Matsport also provides timing services for major sporting
events all over Europe, and have been timing the Tour since 1998.
Matsport relied on some rather amazing high-tech timing and scoring technologies this year, including a FinishLynx®
high-speed digital finish line and timing camera system, produced by Lynx System Developers, Inc., of Haverhill,
Massachusetts, and an AMB Activ transponder timing system, produced by AMB-it, Heemstede, Netherlands.
I recently talked with Philippe Collet, Matsport's president and director general, who is not only a successful
electronics entrepreneur, but also a former Olympic world pole-vaulting champion, which may explain his affinity for
electronic timing and scoring devices.
"Timing the Tour isn't like a stadium sport where the system is stationary throughout the event," he said. "Every day
we must take the system down, pack it up, drive hundreds of kilometers, set up the system, and test it. Everything has
to work, because you have only one chance to get it right."
Collet said Matsport employees and contractors make no decisions regarding rider's performance. Their job is to
provide timing and scoring data to UCI judges who referee the Tour De France.
UCI rules state that an official time is determined when the front of the rider's bicycle tire crosses the finish
line. Collet said this is not always easy. During mass sprints to the finish a few, or sometimes many, riders fall. In
the past, if there was a crash before the riders reached the finish, where the FinishLynx cameras could document it,
judges would have to huddle and study the observers' records, and watch replays of the OLN broadcast video to determine
where fallen riders should be put into the results, he said.
To streamline scoring the flat stages this year, AMB equipment provided unofficial times for all the flat sprint
stages from the prologue in Liege, Belgium, through 172-km Stage 8 ended in Quimpere, France, July 11, Collet
said.
The FinishLynx® line-scan video process is a remarkable piece of technology, developed in 1991 by Doug DeAngelis, as a
graduate student in engineering at MIT, to time and score track and field events he participated in. Today,
FinishLynx® equipment is used to time and score international racing events from Olympic track and field to the
Kentucky Derby, replacing the Polaroid photo finish technology that had been the de facto standard at events for
years.
"The early line-scan technology worked like a scanner in a fax machine," DeAngelis, now CEO and founder of Lynx System
Developers, Inc., said in a recent interview.
DeAngelis said today's video output is closer to computer animation technology. Proprietary FinishLynx® software
designed for the Microsoft Windows OS, running on a notebook computer connected to the camera is able to slice finish
line motion into extremely fine images, synchronize and store each image with the race clock.
"Each image represents a fractionally later moment in time," DeAngelis said. "Reading a time is simply a question of
identifying which "image" contains the moment when a bike's front tire crossed the line and placing the hairline there.
Because the software time-indexes images, the competitor's time is instantly displayed to the thousandth of a second,
so there's no problem determining who crossed the line first."
Collet said Matsport has used FinishLynx cameras since 1998 to document and score the arrival of every rider at the
finish line of every stage. "FinishLynx is like a video camera that takes a frame every 3000-4000th of a second-fast
enough to freeze tire rotation as the bikes pass between 65-74 k.p.h.," he said. "These images are so
crystal-clear, you can easily read the numbers on the riders' jerseys."
UCI judges use the images and associated times to score the Tour, while the transponder data gives them another
valuable point of view at the finish, Collet said. In fact, Matsport uses FinishLynx in concert with AMB systems to
time and score bicycle events, marathons and triathlons, in-line skating and short-track ice skating.
Kevin Oonk, president of AMB US, in Atlanta, GA, said the same system was used at the Vuelta a Espana, the UCI World
Cycling Championships and at all the cycling events, including the velodrome events, at the Olympics since the 1996
Summer Games in Atlanta.
The AMB Activ system works like this: Each bike starting the tour carries a small, yellow, battery-powered
transponder. Fixed to the frame exactly 1.2 meters behind the leading edge of the front tire on the left chainstay, the
transponder emits a seven-digit identification code via a process called "magnetic induction" to a detection loop taped
across the road surface.
Though AMB engineers won't reveal exactly how it's done, the detection loop's thin copper wires can pick up the
individual signals of up to 80 transponders crossing simultaneously and collate them into a classification, quite a
feat considering the peloton, almost 200 bikes traveling an average 65 k.p.h., can cross the same loop within 15
seconds.
The detection loops are connected to the system's trackside decoder (TSU) that reads and interprets the ID code and
puts an accurate timestamp on each rider's passing. The "passing" data is then handled by proprietary AMB timing
software running under Microsoft Windows XP in a notebook computer or Dell PowerEdge server connected by fiber optic
cable to the TSU.
"There was an AMB Activ detection point at the half-way point that generated official results for TV broadcasting.
Riders crossed another detection loops at 1 km and at 20 meters before the finish line. That way, if a crash occurred
before the finish line, under UCI rules, judges can revert back to the riders' classification at the closest of the 1
km or the 20m detection point to determine the final order of classification," he said.
Finally, a detection loop at the finish line pick up the transponders, while a system of three FinishLynx cameras
capture the entire crossing sequence of the peloton from right, from left and from above. Together, the information
from these technologies provided judges with both a visual record and an additional numeric sequence, allowing the
judges sort out the riders' positions and declare the stage results official within minutes.
Once official, GC information is sent through fiber optic cable to the Tour De France information center, a
semi-truck-trailer filled with state-of-the-art communications electronics provided through an official technology
partnership with CSC.
Collet said the results are displayed over TCP/IP connections to scoreboards, and up-linked to the world via Global
Positioning Satellite (GPS) for the live OLN TV broadcast, and to the Internet, where free live timing and scoring
information is available during the running of the stages on the Tour's official website,
www.letour.com, and America Online.
Collet said the transponders provided the judges with excellent records, which were especially helpful in the early
stages, which were marked by an unusual number of crashes.
Though the AMB Activ system will not be used in the 2004 climbing stages, in the future, UCI may well approve
detection loops to augment the official FinishLynx camera data to trap speeds on the uphill and on downhill portions of
the climbing stages, he said.
Cool story. Thanks!