I used to be suspicious about Visma-Lease a Bike’s Tour de France “Management Room” van from the beginning. The concept behind it was, apparently, to create a command publish from which the workforce might monitor a race and make tactical choices.
Michael Hutchinson is a author, journalist and former skilled bicycle owner. As a rider he gained a number of nationwide titles in each Britain and Eire and competed on the World Championships and the Commonwealth Video games. He was a three-time Brompton folding-bike World Champion, and as soon as hit 73 mph driving down a hill in Wales. His Dr Hutch columns seems in each concern of Biking Weekly journal.
This column initially appeared within the Biking Weekly print journal, out on Thursday eleventh July.
My doubts had been aroused as a result of usually when a workforce concocts a brand new marginal achieve, they’re at the least a tiny bit secretive about it. It appeared uncommon to put in writing “Management Room” on the facet of the van in letters as giant as would match, after which launch a number of moody images of it posing in a grassy meadow as if it was auditioning for a shampoo business.
The sceptic would possibly nearly think about that the principle objective of this van was for the Tour de France to refuse it an accreditation and appeal to consideration to the workforce sponsors. The one factor it didn’t have was a “Ban Me! Ban Me!” decal. The Tour duly refused it a car accreditation, which means that it could not entry official Tour areas. Like a German vacationer, it needed to watch the race from a random little bit of roadside in its flip-flops with its bib straps spherical its waist.
The contents of the van weren’t all that refined. Within the darkened, air-conditioned inside there have been half a dozen screens, with TV feeds from a number of cameras, the Professional Biking Stats overview of the race, the VeloViewer map, some social media feeds so they might sustain with anybody who may be tweeting in regards to the climate or highway situations, and a workforce WhatsApp group. There was additionally an app that used AI to establish jerseys in order that they knew instantly what number of riders from every workforce had been within the TV shot, and climate radar for the route.
I’ll be trustworthy, it appeared like a wonderful place to observe a motorbike race. All this info, organized in your viewing pleasure. It was bike-fan heaven. The one factor it didn’t have was a espresso machine.
The ASO banned it, pointing to Regulation 1.3.006 bis. This can be a reg that permits for the transmission of information from a motorbike in a race, like its location, velocity and the rider’s energy. It additionally outlaws the transmission of a rider’s physiological information, like coronary heart fee or physique temperature, to anybody apart from the rider.
Clearly, at the least on the face of it, the management centre did not contravene any of that. Because it was introduced, the management centre did not include something you could not recreate with a couple of screens in your front room. The one substantive distinction is that you’ve most likely by no means tried to have your front room accredited so that you park it on the end of a Tour stage.
Even when the ASO suspected that the van was truly receiving banned telemetry like coronary heart fee, the difficulty wasn’t actually the van, it was the transmission, which presumably would now simply go to a workforce automotive. Actually, I think that if the workforce had been utilizing unlawful information they wouldn’t do it in an enormous yellow van with “Management Room” written on the facet.
When it comes all the way down to it, it didn’t get banned for that. It bought banned as a result of it’s not sufficiently subtle. Everybody desires the tactical calls in a race to at the least appear like they’re being determined within the warmth of battle, and that the riders are doing extra than simply obeying orders.
Nobody desires to shift the ‘race radio’ debate up one other degree, in order that it’s not even a flustered DS attempting to drive the automotive, watch the TV and bark, “Guys, get to the entrance” right into a radio, it’s somebody in a workforce onesie calmly consuming a flat white and making choices from miles away.
Which is a disgrace, as a result of it’s a job I badly need. I’ve even bought a espresso machine prepared.
