Live camera & telemetry action on "selected" riders in big races

[DominicDecoco]

Love those celebration videos from the team cars. This one was on the same level as the Saxo one last year. Brilliant.

 

[roundabout]

Chann Mcrae had a helmet cam on him in the Giro in the late 90's (I think). To be honest, it wasn't exactly a make or break feature of the coverage.

 

[Ferminal]

The major host broadcasters can't even do live timing. Focus on the basics first before the gimmicks.

 

[karlboss]

wasn't there a site during the last tour that had real time GPS for about 10-12 riders each day ?

SRM does it. Doesn't add much more than any of the live tickers.

If you know who is in which group and the time differences between groups it's more than enough.

 

[meat puppet]

guess Im with libertine here: no need for gimmicks, just concentrate on making the races themselves more interesting. onboard cameras wouldn't add much, imo.

also heart rates mean absolutely nothing unless we know the individual riders' thresholds. power too, unless we know the riders' CDAs in TTs and weights in MTFs/hills.

just publish the power files after the event, that's enough to me. SRM's live data was a nice gimmick, held my attention for maybe a minute / stage, but never were the top dogs' numbers shown if I remember correctly.

 

[Microchip]

Sounds like a GREAT idea! Looking at descents would be thrilling. If it could be used to complement the broadcast, they can switch between cameras when the footage gets too uncomfortable (shaking & vibrating) to view. Or if it can be an option by itself, that's cool too.

 

[DirtyWorks]

Anecdote: Marathon Viewing

I just spent a little time watching the L.A. Marathon on the tele yesterday where they had a crazy number of graphed performance stats having something to do with the way the athletes were running in a cool overlay.

I didn't understand it and it didn't add to the drama. I know it meant something, but what? I don't think more stats would benefit the show the casual viewer sees and that's the audience Pat is after.

Sending the view from a bike rider to the production feed would be fun, but there are serious technical issues with doing it. There's a real reason the wireless cameras on the motos are so big. Still I agree with the idea.