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Jason Locklin wrote:

I hear that the TdF is banning radios next year. What do you think
of this?

At first, I thought it was a terrible idea. However, cycling is a
technologically pure, and banning radios is a way to keep this
purity.

Of course you can use that logic to propose bans on certain
bicycles, food supplements, and lycra.

Cycling is evolving - thank God. Instead of fighting it, we should
just embrace it...

Radio's lessen the need for support cars and motorcycles to follow
really closely. If anything, they should be placing more limits on
support vehicles to open up the road, rather than taking away the
rider's radios.

Who is racing anyway? Are those just puppets out there on the
bicycles operated by remote control from the manager in the team car?
Part of a bicycle racer's skill is keeping abreast of what is
occurring in the field and any break aways. All the commo has reduced
action and interest to viewers by reducing the complexity of the race
to essentially that of a race with few riders, all actions monitored
by motorcycles, helicopters, and cars. Even radio commo among team
members has this effect when they are not together.

Jobst Brandt

I'm not sure where people get that idea. Are chess moves more
interesting when you have a clock that requires rapid decisions without
being able to analyze the board more fully? Radio changes strategies,
but how does it make the race less interesting? The decisions of an
intelligent or stupid Director Sportif have become more relevant than
the decisions of the individual rider, but we're just substituting one
for another.

It's possible that radio might be responsible for breakaways always
being caught just in the nick of time, but even there I have my doubts,
given enormously-successful breakaways in the recent past, including the
one that put Periero into Yellow after Landis was thrown out.

What we have seen is less differentiation in ability, on a given day,
between the top GC riders. Do you really suspect radio is to blame here?
Or have we gotten to the point where training & equipment issues are
leveling out among top riders?

--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReactionBicycles.com