Heart rate monitors and TV coverage

stagehopper

Was having a discussion earlier re: TV coverage of marathons and someone said heart monitors would be a help in improving coverage but athletes would never agree.

I chipped in that you used to see this in cycling in quite a few events with selected riders monitored up and then TV graphics showing their heart rate. Now been asked for examples - anyone with a much better memory than me help re: which events used to have this?

okgo

Possibly tour of California.

Richmond Racer

okgo wrote:

Possibly tour of California.

via Tour Tracker

thomthom

I'd rather not know too much about the condition of the riders tbh.

Turfle

An awful awful twitter poster posted this:


I'm always happy for them to try things, but I can't imagine it would increase my enjoyment too much.

Crankbrother

It was usually just riders who knew they would be peletonned for the day ... O'Grady & Thor both had a go with one ... From memory one of them had a naturally high Aerobic HR (@150) and the other very low (@100) ...

RichN95.

It's something that will have short period where it is of novelty interest, followed quickly by apathy or annoyance. Ultimately it doesn't really inform the viewer of much about the race.

Yellow Peril

If I wasa rider I wouldn't agree. there is still a certain amount of brinkmanship and poker in racing, if my opponents team can see how deep I am in the red then you have handed them an advantage.

ContrelaMontre

Giro 2004 or 2005, I recall DDL's HRM being displayed on screen. They picked a different handful of riders each day if memory serves.

Turfle

The things that would really add to my enjoyment:
- commentators who can recognise riders, and don't just wait until their number comes into view three minutes later. Failing that, the year long number idea might help. And make the numbers bigger too!

That's all.

RichN95.

Turfle wrote:

The things that would really add to my enjoyment:
- commentators who can recognise riders, and don't just wait until their number comes into view three minutes later. Failing that, the year long number idea might help. And make the numbers bigger too!

That's all.

I agree. It's about time that riders had squad numbers permenantly printed on to their jerseys rather than the antiquated system they have now.

Omar Little

One of 6 days events this winter had power, speed and cadence info on the screen that was pretty interesting when following attacks

stagehopper

The Giro is what came to mind when I was thinking back and possibly the Tour. As some have said usually only a couple of domestiques.

Essex Rouleur

Heart rate on screen does nothing for me, i would rather see speed, cadence and gear selection.

But my No.1 would be to see on-bike cameras, so a camera mounted on the handlebar, like F1. After all, this is a Man/Woman & machine sport.

Also, i think it was the Tour of California a few years back, where they pick riders out and annotate them with graphics, but its done from the helicopter view above. I thought this was excellent, because it occurs to me that when you are trying to explain the sport to someone whos trying to understand it, its very hard to go 'watch Cav and Omega-Pharma now..' and they are completely none the wiser, as its very difficult to point a rider or team out seeing as the peloton is so fluid. So this graphic pointing them out was really good for a newbie.

Mad_Malx

Essex Rouleur wrote:

Heart rate on screen does nothing for me, i would rather see speed, cadence and gear selection.

But my No.1 would be to see on-bike cameras, so a camera mounted on the handlebar, like F1. After all, this is a Man/Woman & machine sport.

Also, i think it was the Tour of California a few years back, where they pick riders out and annotate them with graphics, but its done from the helicopter view above. I thought this was excellent, because it occurs to me that when you are trying to explain the sport to someone whos trying to understand it, its very hard to go 'watch Cav and Omega-Pharma now..' and they are completely none the wiser, as its very difficult to point a rider or team out seeing as the peloton is so fluid. So this graphic pointing them out was really good for a newbie.

Agree with all this, the Cav example is exactly what I have with Mrs MM & MM junior. Even worse is trying to pick out one black clad rider out from another in a bunch - it's going to be very tricky when Cav loses his national (then again, he's finished apparently). Just saying the rider's name isn't very helpful unless you know all the team rosters.

takethehighroad

Heart rate monitors - Giro 2005

On screen graphics - USA Pro Challenge 2012

Pross

A starting point would be all kits to be easily distinguishable! HR and even power are pretty useless without knowing each rider's MHR and FTP. For on screen displays I like the inclinometer they show at the Vuelta. Bike cameras would be great though.

okgo

Rider weight, power, speed, that is all you need to know.

RichN95.

okgo wrote:

Rider weight, power, speed, that is all you need to know.

Why do you need power and weight? They don't really tell you much about the race itself. Speed, gradient and wind are the pertinent factors.

And how are you to do the weight. Weight every rider before a race?

okgo

I can see with my eyes if the race is going uphill.

It would tell you what sort of effort they're having to make at any given effort, the bunch, on the attack, on the front etc, and most rider weights are available on the web already with a quick google search.

Richmond Racer

okgo wrote:

I can see with my eyes if the race is going uphill.

It would tell you what sort of effort they're having to make at any given effort, the bunch, on the attack, on the front etc, and most rider weights are available on the web already with a quick google search.

Riders' weights on the interwebz even on the team websites, are at a point-in-time - they are absolutely not accurate for any given race.

So take Wiggins for example. Here's his profile on the Sky site:
http://www.teamsky.com/profile/0,27291, ... 76,00.html

Gives his weight as 69kg. That was his absolute minimum weight as of the 2012 Tour (even then, that was more likely his weight at the end of a day's racing, rather than at the start).

He is absolutely not riding at 69kgs now. Add a few kgs to that.

RichN95.

okgo wrote:

I can see with my eyes if the race is going uphill.

It would tell you what sort of effort they're having to make at any given effort, the bunch, on the attack, on the front etc, and most rider weights are available on the web already with a quick google search.

Can you see the gradient of that hill with your own eyes?

As for the power data - it's not telling anything that exciting. It'll be similar for most races. You'll bored of it withi a week of it's introduction (unless you're one of those people who wants to shout 'Not Normal' on twitter every time they go over 6W/kg)

Turfle

I can't imagine a graphic showing a rider's weight would add an ounce of enjoyment to my viewing. A few more graphics of a climb's gradient, topography (topology? or whatever the word I'm trying to think of) etc would be nice, the odd wind update maybe, and I guess it would be nice to know how fast they're climbing. But then they do show most of that already, and nobody takes any notice, because race situation is so much more important.

In all honesty, I want a screen with no graphics other then time gap, and distance to go. The odd update, fine, but everything else I can get from watching the race.