Race Radios

TakeTheHighRoad wrote:

Banning power meters won't have a huge effect IMO, as riders know generally how hard to push the pedals to get a certain wattage.

Louis Meintjes was even talking about Watts/kg on a flat stage the other day (how he has to put out more W/kg than a ruler to go the same speed)

Would be curious to experiment on a big GT though.

Froome's faffing with his power metre on stage 9 suggests to me he does attribute some value to it - enough to be worth faffing about with at an important part of the race.

I don't think that just because a power metre isn't a panacea for amazing racing doesn't mean it's not worth looking at.

Most riders use it since they find it more reliable to their own sensations and it makes pacing easier. However mildly.

My temptation would be to say nothing battery powered on the riders. Everything needs to be powered by the rider. Including gear changes and if they want a radio.

That'd be consistent at least.

No tA Doctor wrote:

Just guessing, but maybe Froome wasn't interested in "riding to his numbers" but in finding out what his numbers were. It's a gauge of his form and how he's progressed since the dolphin. That was the first day with any climbs that would be useful for calibrating this. Though it was an important place in the race, it was also important data for later - also in estimating hat his opposition were putting out.

Sure - that doesn't mean it's not helpful though.

So, from August this year (2024 if anyone is still reading this thread from 2017 2015) the UCI will experiment with only allowing race radio for two riders per team. They'll try it at some selected races. This is supposedly a safety initiative, though strikes me as being the sort of bodged compromise that helps absolutely nobody, so hopefully they'll quietly bin the idea afterward

If they’re there for safety as is often claimed why not just have them receiving messages from a single person on the race organisation and transmit any issues via them back to the car?

Yeah riders being given race radio seems a sensible compromise.

I don't think it'll work like that. Riders aren't stupid, they know that if centralised race organiser radio says "descent is dangerous, take care" their DS would be telling them to move up. That's the issue that they're trying to solve here, everyone trying to move up and fighting for position the whole time, pushing races faster and faster and with far more movement in the peloton - increasing bumps and jostling and crashes.

Their idea is essentially to not let so many riders get instructions/info from their teams, so they don't know they're supposed to go to the front. The first unintended consequence of this is probably that teams try and stick together more, so when their radio guy gets the shout he can tell them. So that's already going to cause a bit of stress and movement as riders close off anyone naturally drifting into their team instead of making space. Second unintended consequence is riders trying to stay near the front just in case they're needed, pre-empting a call from their DS. I mean, half the time when we're wondering why Ineos are riding on the front when their GC options aren't looking good it's just because they're trying to stay out of trouble and will willingly eat a bit of wind for it.

I think race radios, however they're implemented, have little impact on the critical issue, which is that everyone wants to be at the front when it's getting dangerous. Limiting information available to riders only makes them more nervous. With normal team radios they can at least relax a bit when their DS isn't shouting at them to go forward