Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Can You Hear Me Now?

Race radio is sucking the suspense and drama from professional cycling. The directeur sits in the car monitoring the radios and TV coverage telling the riders what to do and when to do it. There was a great video that Nike put out a few years back that followed the postal team, in which Christian Vande Velde is talking about the radios and how you can be racing with your brain switched off and don't really know what to do without someone telling you. What if the UCI banned radio communication? Wouldn't that make the racing more exciting as the racers would have to assess the race and decide when to chase and when to attack and when to hold back. In any case, can you imagine listening to that drone all damn day!? Imagine Manolo Saiz screaming "Venga! Venga! Venga!" in your ear 10,000 times. For a little taste of the race radio experience, Cervelo has some great podcasts from the last tour, one of which includes some actual race radio audio. To subscribe to the Cervelo podcast, or to listen to individual audio segments, visit http://www.cervelo.com/mediacentre.aspx

1 Comments:

At 4:39 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yes, each rider in the field is getting instant info on who's up the road and how far, but it hasn't changed that much. Spectators would convey info directly to the riders about who was up the road back in the pre radio days, either directly or via the team cars and domestiques fetching bottles. Bottom line, they will not ban radios in Pro cycling. But I agree, if I were a rider, I sure would want a mute button!

ethebull

 

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