I'd not be okay with that honestly. THere's very little by way of info live during non WT and European HC races, and removing access from the cars and managers would make it a complete blackout. There will be motorbikes that relay time info anyway.

Anyway, surely a weak team can't control a race, with or without radio, GPS and even radio tapping, and a nine, ten or twenty man team could.

Perhaps I should have clarified. I'm cool with them having thw two-way race radio like they always have, I just think it would make for better racing if they were not allowed to talk to their riders via radio.

surely you have to ban TV streams, twitter etc from DS cars as well, even if you get rid of radio. As surely when riders drop back they will get information and pass it on to the team/peleton

I'd be cool with that though, provided that all doms don't suddenly go back en masse to the car at once (which isn't feasible enough to happen in reality anyway). ;D

The TV streams and Twitter are recent, but there was always always always race radio even when I was a kid, and you still learn a lot more from that today than you'd ever get off a telly stream or a bunch of ill-informed twonts.

So what I'm saying is that new tech doesn't really change the game.

Team management has always dictated strategy, but in the heat of the moment the riders knew they might have to improvise.

And this is where the old, rusty role of Road Captain was so much more important than it is today. Now that is how guys like Gilbert Duclos-Lasalle really earned their francs. Hard-faced old Duclos won Paris-Roubaix twice at the end of his career but he was more notorious for his Machiavellian grip on the peloton. If you think the Canc can boss a race a bit, you ought to have seen this guy. Duclos was feared and he always got a spot on the big French squads because of it.

Digressions aside, if we accept that a) management has always dished out the plays and that b) the ubiquity of race radio has remained unchanged for many years, then the only big difference twixt now and then is that with a radio, the DS can micromanage the plays. Quickly evaluate whether or not they're working. Tune them to perfection or scrap them and start over.

That takes all the instinct away and you'll have to take my word for it, but in addition to the requisite physicality, the really special champions riding a bike have got that.

Occasionally, you get to see the result of their instinct, when they pull of a great win and they nonchalantly tell the press that they ignored the team car.

In the same way, bringing a breakaway back for a bunch sprint with sufficient time to comfortably assemble a sprint train and do a nice steady leadout is not - contrary to the opinion of that great expert on cycle racing theory Phil Liggett - a fine art. I remember the nerves as you sat watching the bunch and the breakaway: you really didn't know whether either party was going to make it. What does it take for a break to hang on today? A bunch crash, a dog in the spokes, a dropped GC contender? Perhaps, but on the rare occasion the sprinters' teams screw up, it's more than likely to be the result of a misunderstanding. A miscommuncation, if you will.

Why do they almost always bring it back? Because maybe five managers have got a radio and a calculator and maybe a few formulae for the mathematically challenged like me. What it takes to bring back a breakaway with certainty is radio contact.

Take away those guys' radio handsets and leave it all to that fine lady in yellow with her chalkboard and then, yes, Phillet might have something there.

One way radios for injuries and mechanical issues, and 6 man teams = SUCCESS.

No radios also contributed to Sylvain Georges' win at Big Bear Lake in Cali this year, which I thought was very exciting, and had there been constant communication, Garmin would have brought him back early and Sagan would have won, again*. The race was more exciting because there wasn't an aura of inevitability. There are pros and cons to no radios, but I think the pros far outweigh the cons.

*Not that there's anything wrong with Sagan winning, btw.

Question:  Hands up anyone who thinks that the mens (or women's) RR would acually have been more interesting and animated if only they had been allowed to use their radios?

Personally, I agree with the comments that if there were radios then Cavendish would have done what everybody expected and actually won the race.  Organisation between GB and Germany (and likely others) would have been clearer, the names of those in the break would have been clear in alll riders' heads, who was working and who was tired would be transmitted, and overall, things would have been packed down tight like a really boring drum.

The idea that teams will be more conservative and defend against attacks harder is an interesting one - but it ignores the idea that the opposing teams will be even more aggresive and inventive.  Teams with 2 or 3 potential leaders can actually use them properly.  How can a single 9 man team defend every km of every day against attacks at considerably more opportunities than they are used to.  Right now in the mountains, teams know who is where to almost the nearest mm and how strong they are.  Take away radios and there will be at minimum large delays in getting this sort of info and spreading it through the bunch.  By the time this has happened, the circumstances will have changed.

Anyone who has raced in a 200 rider peloton knows that most of the time you only know what is happening to the 10 or so riders around you.  You have no idea whether there are breaks off the front or if the group is compact.  You just ride and improve position where you can or hide where you have to.  You feel the terrain you are on and guess what is happening and make your moves to the front if necessary based upon that.  If a break is away and you are chasing, you MIGHT know how many WERE in it, and who they are but the time gaps you get are to the leader not necessarily the rider you are marking. 

Road captains can control sme of the tactics on the road but they can only do so much without second by second  information.  They can do the math based upon the last picture they got - not what is happening right now.  Its possible to tricka  bunch by intentionally slowing down just before passing a timing point and then surging hard right after it.  The bunch thinks the gap is stable when its not.  Doing that in the last 5-10km of a race can be enough to ensure you are never caught...

Yes, it is of course wrong to suggest that taking away radios will result in continuous fantastic racing - just as it is wrong to suggest that taking them away will have no real effect and its therefore not worth it.

I was going to start a thread similar to this but mine was going to call for a ban on all electronics on a bike/rider, including radios, electronic gears and most especially power meters.

For me, having a battery pack on a bike is as dodgy as having a former Phonak Doctor.

dont have any problems with electronic shifting, its just a natural progression of cycling technology. And its always another thing to go wrong (although they seem remarkably reliable)

But id like to see Power Meters go. Let riders judge by how their legs feel what power to go at instead of churning out wattage, but too many companies got too much invested in them. never going to happen.

on the vehicles thing, wouldnt need any extra vehicles. The time gaps are still the same, they still use a chalkboard now. Its not like they get time gaps out of thin air at the moment

yeah I think the race would be better off without them

The only issue for me is that they would need more/better info from the motorcycles.  Does that mean more vehicles in the peloton? 

People seem to think that race radios are what has made the sport so boring and has transformed the riders into "robots" but they need to consider the other factors of the sport as the scientific aspects progresses. For example we may end up seeing more performances like GB's on Saturday when they rode exactly as their DS ordered. Boonen himself admitted he was limited in what he could do in the race because they had set out with a plan prior to the race and they had no choice but to stick to that plan.

People must consider that even without the radios, it wont be all the way back to the days of old without race radios because the sport has progressed since those days. Sky are the prime examples of that but with the success of Sky we will probably see more and more teams race in a regimented and indeed seemingly "robotic" fashion, as that does seem to be the most effective manner of racing and so rather than solve the problem it may only result in teams being even more limited in following only their DS's instructions and not being permitted to alter them at all during the race which will result in less entertaining races.

I don't think you're old enough to remember pre-"preparation", pre-"managed" cycling, but in some respects you're right. The racing was much more fractured than now, and much more interesting on the whole because GC placings were not some sort of objective unto themselves. Jersey competitions were important and were not largely determined by the points accrued at stage finishes. Teams could not often dominate because they couldn't know for sure what they needed to do. There were many more variables in racing back then. A stage would not usually take on the same character as they do now where none of the favourites get started before 60-70km from the finish.

And before I'm accused of wearing rose-tinted spectacles, there were many more "boring" stages of the GTs back then. Teams simply could not sustain the sort of controlling racing we have today when there were so many moves being made. So you did have a lot of days where the breakaways got 30 minutes and nobody rode at all. The 1990 Tour de France was a good example of that - between them, the members of an early breakaway on Stage 1 actually wore yellow almost all the way through the Tour, when Lemond finally grabbed it from Chiapucci just two stages from Paris.

People seem to think that race radios are what has made the sport so boring and has transformed the riders into "robots" but they need to consider the other factors of the sport as the scientific aspects progresses. For example we may end up seeing more performances like GB's on Saturday when they rode exactly as their DS ordered. Boonen himself admitted he was limited in what he could do in the race because they had set out with a plan prior to the race and they had no choice but to stick to that plan.

People must consider that even without the radios, it wont be all the way back to the days of old without race radios because the sport has progressed since those days. Sky are the prime examples of that but with the success of Sky we will probably see more and more teams race in a regimented and indeed seemingly "robotic" fashion, as that does seem to be the most effective manner of racing and so rather than solve the problem it may only result in teams being even more limited in following only their DS's instructions and not being permitted to alter them at all during the race which will result in less entertaining races.

Agreed and that is one reason to be happy Contador is around - he is a good enough rider to blow away a tolerance climbing style imo 

People seem to think that race radios are what has made the sport so boring and has transformed the riders into "robots" but they need to consider the other factors of the sport as the scientific aspects progresses. For example we may end up seeing more performances like GB's on Saturday when they rode exactly as their DS ordered. Boonen himself admitted he was limited in what he could do in the race because they had set out with a plan prior to the race and they had no choice but to stick to that plan.

People must consider that even without the radios, it wont be all the way back to the days of old without race radios because the sport has progressed since those days. Sky are the prime examples of that but with the success of Sky we will probably see more and more teams race in a regimented and indeed seemingly "robotic" fashion, as that does seem to be the most effective manner of racing and so rather than solve the problem it may only result in teams being even more limited in following only their DS's instructions and not being permitted to alter them at all during the race which will result in less entertaining races.

hey JSG you could be right and the peloton would only give the break a minute or 2, but you could also get a repeat of Saturday.

with teams of 9 could have but unlikely me thinks

if you want exciting racing teams of 6 for WT races imo