Re: Re:
lemon cheese cake said:
StryderHells said:
Fergoose said:
Ban race radio so that riders and teams don't know exactly what the gap is, who is in the breakaway and how strong it is looking at every single moment of the stage. In fairness the UCI have tried to introduce this but the self serving teams and their egotistical Director Sportifs have blocked it at every turn. So stages like this will be painfully predictable and tedious in the first week until the end of time. A couple of the stages this week have been the worst I've ever fast forwarded through.
I'm all for race radios being banned but would it really make a difference to flat stages? Where flat stages that much more exciting pre race radios? Also the teams will still be getting information from the team cars as they are sitting there glued to the TV coverage whilst driving along. I just don't see how banning race radios makes any difference to a flat stage on the majority of occasions
That would mean constant comings and goings to the team car, so this would mean the time it takes to get from the DS to the riders would be longer as it is no longer straight from the DS to the riders.
For me there are three ways the removal of team race radio would reduce the likelihood of the 24 carat tedium we had for large parts of this first week.
Firstly, it'd make it far harder for teams to control the composition of breakaways. Today, David Millar said he thinks it takes around 5 minutes for a team to currently respond to a breakaway. He'll know better than me but I think that is a massive overestimate. He is right in saying however, that the time during which teams are making up there mind about whether to respond to an attack is the time when breakaways make their biggest gains.
It stands to reason that if you ban team race radio, the alternative methods of formulating team tactics are far, far more time consuming and would likely put the burden of responsibility on a team leader to make the call. I think hopping back and forth between the team car and the front of a 190+ strong peleton is far more difficult and time consuming than you might consider. By the time the team realise that a strong rider has made the breakaway, or that one team has two or three riders in the breakaway (and therefore might work very well together), the breakaway stands a much greater chance of becoming established (compared to what is currently the case).
Secondly, a ban on team race radios would make the chase more difficult and less predictable. The farce of having a break held at 1 minute for tens of kilometres on end would not be anywhere near as straightforward for the teams. Motorbike fed time gaps would be less accurate and less up to the minute. Riders would not know how hard the breakaway was trying, if it was splintering, if they were working well together etc, all variables that influence a chase.
Thirdly, removing team race radios would make it more difficult for a dominant sprinter train to control the last few kms. This isn't as prominent this year as there isn't one dominant train, but in years past its been very easy to High Road etc to control the front of the race. Team radio helps with this by feeding the team constant information on what bends are up ahead, how to ride to block rival trains and riders and when each member of the train should make their maximum effort.
To me, the only "excitement" that team radio provides is by contributing to crashes by telling teams to pile up to the front, having riders concentration diverted during high speed run ins (much like a mobile phone in a car) and reducing rider agility by having them remove one hand off the handlebar in order to talk back to the team car. I don't think that's the sort of excitement we are looking for on flat stages.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram