Bicycle racing and data overlays, by Jeffrey Veen

Bicycle racing and data overlays

Combine a rich, well-designed web application with professional cycling and what do you get? Well, all of my available attention, for one. But also a glimpse into how sports may change on TV.

Adobe and CSC teamed up with the organizers of the Amgen Tour of California to provide real-time tracking of each stage, along with full-screen streaming video. While the app is not without hiccups, it certainly represents a very cool vision of how data can overlay and enhance a televised event.

While the stage is progressing, the background of the app fills the browser with chunky, scaled video accompanied by a voice over. On top of that are little windows with different types of data: An updated news ticker from Velonews, a photo mashup from Flickr, a map showing the peloton and breaks-aways, the current overall standings, and a course profile. It's too much all at once, of course. But the modules are easily collapsable - which is nice.

The only real problem is timeshifting - that is, all of this cool stuff only works while the stage is actually happening. Checking in late in the race these past few days made me instinctively want to rewind. And not just the video, but the data as well. How cool would it be if there were a slider to drag back to see how the group was split half way up the climb across all the visualizations? I guess Tivo has permanently spoiled me.

It's great to see this kind of effort come off so cleanly. I didn't need to install or configure anything; it just worked. I can only imagine this will continue to get more sophisticated in the future - individual rider tracking and deeper data behind the initial view. I can't wait.

This entry was written by Jeffrey Veen and posted 21 February 2007 at 2:18 PM. It was filed under Cycling, Technology.

Comments

1. On 21 February 2007 at 3:42 PM Dunstan wrote:

Not very interesting, but I thought I'd mention that they're only pulling in their photos from flickr, rather than photos tagged with tourdefrance or whatever:

http://flickr.com/photos/48361044@N00/

2. On 21 February 2007 at 3:45 PM Matt wrote:

So it only took us 10 years or so to get back to Quokka Sports??? ;-)

3. On 21 February 2007 at 4:02 PM Brett L. wrote:

Looks like Portent Interactive of Seattle did the design of this:
http://www.portentinteractive.com/portfolio.htm

4. On 21 February 2007 at 5:14 PM Dan Harrelson wrote:

Jeff, you beat me to it! I was just about to blog about this very topic when I noticed that you already covered it.

I have been very dissapointed with the mobile interface and the RSS feeds from the Amgen site. It's a little better than last year, which only means that t works at all ;-)

I think that the overall architecture of the site leaves something to be desired, but I do like the embeded Yahoo! maps: http://www.amgentourofcalifornia.com/Route/map/stage1map.html

The Flex application to watch live video, see photos and see real-time data is truly awesome. Somebody was really on the ball with this and invested heavily in the development of the app and in the infrastructure that feeds data to the site. I wonder if someone will try and sell this app to the sites for each of the Grand Tours?

5. On 21 February 2007 at 5:27 PM soxiam wrote:

Here's one idea I've had for a while. Most bikes are coming in at under the regulation weight these days. Why not require all riders to wear a helmet cam with live feed? Wouldn't it have been cool to be able to switch over to Ullrich's cam when Lance attacked him after the "look"? Hook the live stream up with telemetry and bio data and allow people at home to switch which rider's POV they want to follow. Of course the riders will have to remember to look up at the sky when they're taking their nature breaks.

6. On 21 February 2007 at 6:31 PM John Roberts wrote:

Matt beat me to the Quokka Sports reference. An idea ahead of its time... and so much money wasted on high-end schwag!

7. On 22 February 2007 at 6:18 PM Eric Rodenbeck wrote:

Adobe did a much better job of live race coverage this time (last year was a bit borked); Michael Gough (former CCO of Quokka, now at Adobe) took the project over and they really pulled it off.

The site totally needs a rewind, agreed. Until they do it, you can rewind this one all you like:
http://studio.stamen.com/open/blog/cycling.mov

This is the initial sketch that Michael and I did back in... '98? '99?

8. On 23 February 2007 at 7:14 AM beaman wrote:

quokka owned the day back then. amazing stuff for that time!

i didnt know M. Gough was at adobe now. thanks for that info eric

9. On 23 February 2007 at 7:18 AM Beaman wrote:

oh one more thing, RedBull is pulling off some of this with their Air racing sites etc.

10. On 24 February 2007 at 5:07 AM Gartenfackel wrote:

I disagree too. I think the infrastucture isnt devolpment enough.

11. On 1 March 2007 at 9:19 AM Allan Padgett wrote:

Hi Jeff. I wrote the Tracker (for more see http://www.allanpadgett.com/blog) and thought it might help to respond to your comments and those of your readers. First off, timeshifting. You are 100% right. That was in the dream plan, but with only 4 weeks from concept to ship, and only one programmer on the client, only so much got done! In particular, we didn't have anyone willing to store that much archived video, and while CSC did archive the GPS data, they forgot to include timestamps in the data. Soon, however, I'll be putting a version up that will allow you to scrub through each stage and at least see the photos and play-by-play. Adobe saved GPS data for the last few days once we realized CSC's error, and I will try to incorporate that too. As for "too much at once," you are not alone on that one, and the next version (Tour de France?) will have better information management. As for your readers, here are some answers to their comments. Dunstan commented on Flickr usage. We used a specific account instead of tags as part of protecting the photographer's copyright. Plus, Amgen and the other sponsors understandably did not want random photos showing up in a branded application. Matt mentioned Quokka, and yes, we owe a great deal to Michael's past at that trail blazing company! Sadly, Michael was too busy schmoozing with race officials to be a big part of the project... Brett mentioned Portent as the designer, but they just provided the backend support for hosting the application and the results from each day. Sadly, they didn't set up a cluster for a few days, so getting the application and data was a challenge for many users. Dan asked about future Grand Tours? As a bike nut (that's why I volunteered to write the application) I'm all over that! Finally, and most importantly, Gartenfackel said that the infrastructure was inadequate, and that's 100% true. Akamai provided the video and audio streaming and they were running beta software (why? who knows!) which went down every day. CSC's GPS system was dependent on beta GPS devices and T-Mobile's terrible coverage on California back-roads. And as I mentioned, the Amgen site itself was running just one machine for much of the race, while we had 8,000 or so viewers. If you or your readers have more questions or comments, feel free to ask away!

12. On 7 March 2007 at 9:56 PM German Bauer wrote:

To Eric:

Oh my god, one of the epic Tour de France moments - thanks for providing that QuickTime for historical reference. I believe this had to be 98, since Ullrich won in 97 and Pantani got it 98 with that decisive climb.

13. On 8 March 2007 at 5:08 AM ltbgfyx csrfxpbl wrote:

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14. On 20 March 2007 at 6:46 AM Michael Caron wrote:

Allan, wonderful software given your constraints dude. High fives for making this! I'm looking forward to all the goodies in the future implementations.

It beats watching the tour on the big screen with a few laptops on the coffee table sporting different tickers and photo browsers...