Geo-Location vs. Guerilla Racing

When a breakaway goes clear in a major race like the Giro it can take a long time to identify the riders involved. It’s a problem for TV viewers and teams alike. Viewers can see something is happening but without knowing who is involved and teams have to know what’s going on for tactical reasons.

The technology exists to solve this and it’s coming to the peloton. We saw it already with the IAM Cycling team trialling a geo-location system in the Tour de Romandie where rider location could be tracked in real time. Is this good?

Actually it’s been used years ago, power meter manufacturer SRM did this with online telemetry for riders until the UCI banned this. Now trials are resuming and it’s possible to imagine the whole bunch equipped with something to enable rider location. It could be RFID, GPS or something else but it’s said to be coming.

Being able to identify where riders are is fundamentally important for TV. It’s 2015 and when a breakaway goes live on TV you feel for the commentators who have to try and ID the riders. For starters the frame-mounted bike numbers and the dorsal numbers pinned to a rider often aren’t legible on TV. The frame numbers are too small to spot while the moto cameras tend to film from the side. So commentators try to identify the riders by sight, not easy with helmets and sunglasses. Take Stage 4 in the Giro, it took 20 minutes to identify all the riders up the road and the moment the list of riders was communicated the group had fragmented. Similar confusion arises at other crucial points, for example knowing who has made the cut over climb.

Having technology provide instant ID confirmation sounds promising although it might not be the panacea. A rider could take a bike from a team mate and with this the geo-location ID gets mixed up; sneaky riders could even game this, staging a “puncture” to swap bikes and fool rivals. Or the technology could simply fail, for example prove haphazard in wooded terrain.

If TV viewers eagerly await news of who is in the breakaway to see if it’s going to include some big names the teams cannot afford any delay. The tactical response from teams is sometimes called “filtering”. It involves a rider hovering at the front of the bunch and, sentry-style, monitoring who is trying to go clear. If they’re small fry they get a pass but if there’s, say, a GC rival trying to sneak off then team mates are rallied and a chase is launched. Easier said than done in many ways: just being near the front when the bunch is erupting like a volcano requires a lot of effort and that’s before the sentry has to identify every rider all while watching their line.

Military tactician Carl von Clausewitz coined the phrase “the fog of war” to describe the confusing situation on the battlefield where the best laid plans can quickly fall apart, especially when information about what your troops and those of the enemy is scarce. The better the information the quicker and the more sound the tactical response. Having geo-location technology to ID the riders would help teams, offering official confirmation faster, whether real time data via the telecoms network or just quicker communication via race-radio. Even if you don’t like race radios geo-location could help the blackboard operator perched on a motorbike to list the fugitives faster.

So far so good but what about the romance of it all? In the information vacuum there was a space to be filled by surprise and with it drama. In times past a rider has been able to exploit the chaos and slip away from his rivals, perhaps riding on the other side of an attacker or exploiting some shade. This form of guerilla racing has made for many great stages. In the modern era it’s not possible to ride away unknown all day but it is still possible to go clear, build an advantage and sow panic in the peloton by the time the news breaks over race radio. Cycling is all about tactical sophistication and if dropping a rival on a climb or outpacing them in a time trial is the traditional method of winning, sneaking away counts too. To return to von Clausewitz and military metaphors once a battlefield technology arrives it’s hard to stop it but it’s different in sports: that’s exactly what rules are for.

Conclusion

Geo-location is the future but is it better? Nine times out of ten it probably it’ll be great to know what’s going on without trying to spot riders by their brand of sunglasses or pedalling style but geo-location systems are neither foolproof nor failsafe. The biggest drag could be an end to guerilla racing with sneaky riders able to get away unnoticed by crafty but legitimate tactics. Hopefully the systems are trialled more before introduction.