- Data, we've never had more of it in this world,
and that includes the world of pro cycling, too.
In fact, I think in cycling
data points have increased exponentially.
Never before have we known so much
about what a Tour de France rider is doing,
and what they have done previous to now,
and much of that comes from a very small
data tracking and transmission device,
that's located underneath every rider's saddle.
This small piece of tech just here
transmits all sorts of data,
including cadence, a rider's speed,
which group they're in,
where they are within the group,
what the time gaps are within the groups,
and it does all of that live.
And that device under each saddle
comes from a company called NTT,
who recently acquired Dimension Data,
the company as opposed to the team.
They have been the ones who've been broadcasting live
the data throughout the world,
from the Tour de France, since 2015.
Now for fans that means they've got more information
than ever at their fingertips, or in their vision,
and for NTT, it means they've been
collecting an enormous amount of data,
and they can analyze a race like never before.
In fact, through machine learning and predictive analytics,
NTT claimed that they can predict with reasonable accuracy,
the outcome of a stage, or of the race.
That said, I too feel like,
with my experience of racing and watching racing,
that I'm pretty good at predicting the outcome of a race.
So I decided to put them to the test.
An algorithm versus Lloydy.
Who's your money on?
(upbeat jazz music)
I've now arrived at the finish,
and the Zone Technique
where all the television companies are,
and where NTT are.
I'm about to go meet a couple of their number crunchers,
but in the meantime, this morning
I had an interview with Doug Ryder,
manager of the Team Dimension Data squad,
to ask how those numbers are helping his team.
Doug, we all know just how important it is,
to every world tour team to have
as much information as possible
about riders, rivals, the course,
the wind, and everything else,
and you being sponsored by Dimension Data and NTT,
must have more than anybody at your disposal.
- Well I mean we have a lot of information for sure,
and we focus in three areas I guess,
but during a Tour de France we,
I guess all the teams have the same kind
of information for on race day,
so of course we use the GPS tracking
to know exactly where our riders are
in relation to each other,
and in the NTT racing app,
were you can plot and find out where your riders are,
so that helps with race strategy absolutely,
so if you want to do something significant in a race,
and I guess like the day before the race day,
there was a breakaway that happened in the crosswinds,
and if you don't know where your riders are
in relation to each other,
and you don't use the technology,
then you're at a disadvantage for sure,
and if you do know that,
you can prepare for eventualities and be on strategy.
So on race day, we all have the same information,
I guess as teams,
but some of them use it more so than others,
and we of course use it every single minute
of every stage of every race.
- And what about on the lead-up to the race,
in terms of rider selection,
or deciding the right riders that are appropriate
for a particular course?
You've got various apps for that kind of thing, too.
- Absolutely, we have a few applications
that we use in that space,
and which aggregates up
into a business intelligence dashboard,
that I can see,
I guess even the health and wellness of the riders.
But we look at all this information
that's sitting in websites today.
So it's not like we've recreated and reinvented the wheel.
All this information is sitting in databases anyway,
we've just aggregated it up into information
that we feel is relevant to us,
so if we're looking for a rider
from a recruitment point of view,
we can aggregate based on what we're looking for.
And then of course,
putting the right riders in the right races.
We look at which riders have done well previously
in races in the past,
and for our world tour ranking we put them in the races,
and it's an interesting conversation
that we have with the riders,
when the rider says, I'd like to do that race.
And we're like, why do you want to do that race?
Why don't you do the races that you've been good at,
because you've scored so many points et cetera,
and this is your history,
and this is why we think you should be in this race.
- And what's next?
What's the next big thing in data
within cycling, would you say?
- Well I think it's through NTT,
and I guess with organizers like the ASO,
I think it's an opportunity to showcase
realtime information,
and get the couch coaches at home
on the TV screen to make decisions, and informed decisions,
and why things are happening in races,
and also people on the side of the road,
using mobile phones and technology like that.
So I think real live data, power data,
that kind of stuff,
increasing the fan experience, and the viewing experience,
which would be great for all teams,
sponsors, revenue, et cetera.
So I think that would be,
that would be something that would be really unique,
and significant, and something
that we'd look forward to, to seeing.
- And we've arrived.
This huge blue truck here in the TV compound
is basically where all the magic happens.
As you just heard from Doug,
all that data is incredibly useful to teams
such as Team Dimension Data,
and their sports directors, et cetera.
Although this part is all about you,
giving the fans what you need or what you want,
in terms of data and seeing where riders are,
and what might happen, et cetera.
I've set a tour around,
I'm going to bring you in now.
Age before beauty.
We're in.
I'm shortly going to take you upstairs
to introduce you to, and speak to, in fact,
Tim Wade and Peter Gray,
who are real cycling nerds.
Not my words, the words written on the wall just behind you.
Before we do go upstairs though,
you'll want to know what my prediction
for the stage was, won't you?
Well this is stage 11,
where we're recording today's video,
and as such it should finish in a bunch sprint.
So, I have gone for Dylan Groenewegen for the win,
in second place, Elia Viviani,
in third, Caleb Ewan,
fourth, Pete Sagan, and in fifth place,
Jasper Stuyven of Trek-Segafredo.
However, if you look on this screen,
you'll see their predictions,
and it is 17% Caleb Ewan, 6% Viviani,
five for Sagan,
2% Dylan Groenewegen,
and 2% Matteo Trentin.
Now that points out to me,
that they are never ever going to be able
to 100% predict the winner of each stage.
Of course they're not going to be able to,
and that would ruin sport for everybody.
What they have achieved though,
is being able to predict it,
almost as accurately as a journalist,
or an ex-rider who's been following racing for years.
We'll see whether that's true today.
But, let's go upstairs.
This is Peter who is about to show us everything
that we can see whilst we're watching the race
on a computer screen.
But before he does that,
he's going to explain
how this transmitter takes the data from the bike,
and gets it onto a computer screen.
- Yeah, so there's little GPS trackers,
and you ought to have seen these
sitting on the back of all of the bikes,
so 176 riders started the Tour de France,
and they all started with a tracker,
a few less riders now.
But basically this transmits
every second of position and speed,
and that gets bounced by the television motorbikes,
up to the plane that circulates above the race,
and then down to the finish line
here at the Zone Technique,
where we can pick up that data.
And we use it for information going into
the television broadcast, into the digital channels,
and into social media as well.
- I understand that they can talk
to each other on the bikes.
If somebody's got a problem
with beaming up to that airplane.
As long as one of them's working, then that's fine.
- Yeah, the signals all bounce around
and find the best path
to get up to the plane,
so it's pretty clever stuff.
- And so, at the moment you've got
speed, position, cadence, as well?
- So mind that the agreement with the teams
just allows us to capture speed and position,
for the Tour de France.
Other races obviously,
you can see races we're able to capture
power and heart rate and those types of things,
but for the Tour de France it's speed and position.
- Right, let's have a look at what we can all look at,
on our computer screens,
if we so wish to watch alongside the racing coverage.
Starting with the Race Center presumably.
- Yeah, so Race Center is the official live website
for the race, for the Tour de France,
and on here you can see all the information
about the groups, the gaps.
There's news feeds and little video snippets,
pictures, et cetera,
as well as some interesting statistics.
So we can see here that the gap on the breakaway
has pretty much stayed stable
around that two and a half minute mark,
for the last 40 kilometers.
- Basically they've got no hope,
Groenewegen's going to take it.
- Probably.
Or Caleb Ewan.
Come on Aussie.
- Is that why he's come up as a 16% chance?
You're playing favorites.
A little favoritism going on.
- You never know.
You never know.
And then you can,
through the live tracking part of the website,
you can actually then go and see,
the details of individual riders,
select your favorite,
your favorite riders,
and so I've got Edvald Boasson Hagen here
from Team Dimension Data in here.
He's sitting in 53rd spot on the road at the moment.
He's traveling at 49 kilometers an hour.
- So if you were a huge fan Nari Cantani,
you hit the mountain, and you can select him,
and maybe some of his rivals
and see where they all are.
- Exactly, and so you can go in here
and you can choose by nationality,
or choose by team, or just choose individual riders.
Pick your favorites and follow where they are.
Live data commentary through social media.
- On Twitter yeah,
on Twitter just recently,
I'm a bit of a data geek myself,
I like to do numbers,
and I love this Twitter feed already.
- Yeah, it's very cool,
so we've got a journalist working with a data scientist,
and they're putting together different stories,
and so they might have been talking about
the workload,
who's in front of the peloton,
and who's doing the work there,
so we can see Lotto Soudal are at the front,
so they obviously think Caleb Ewan's going to win today.
- So it says Lotto has done 45% of the work.
Quick-Step 40, and Jumbo-Visma just under 10%.
That's why they're not confident.
- And then we're starting to experiment
with a whole range of new ways of looking at the race.
So this is an
augmented reality cap,
that projects the course in three dimensions
onto a table.
So this is an augmented reality application,
we can see the course there,
we can see where
the riders are.
And on a flat stage like this,
it's probably not as exciting,
but certainly once we hit the mountains
you can start to get a real feel
for following the path of the course through,
and get a real feel for the geography.
- [Dan] So in terms of the prediction,
why would you say that the internal computer brain
has give Caleb Ewan such a high chance of victory today,
given that he's not won a sprint so far?
- It's taking into account,
I think we've got about 35 different features
that get incorporated into the model.
And so it's looking at form,
it's looking at the history of the rider.
It's looking at obviously the course.
It's looking at the composition of their team.
So stronger teams,
you know you tend to find,
winning riders tend to come from stronger teams, et cetera.
And so it brings all of those features together,
and it's been trained on
five years of historical data,
to figure out who are the riders who are most likely,
and look, it's not going to be perfect, it's sport.
Sport's exciting because we can't predict the outcomes.
But it's certainly on par with the people in the know,
journalists and commentators.
- Which can be useful,
because as Peter pointed out to me before
we started filming this part,
the experts in the city charge an enormous amount
to give you tips on stocks and shares, et cetera,
and some betting tips that do
in fact in cycling too,
whereas this, is not guaranteed
to give you the correct winner in each and every stage,
but it's going to give you as good an idea
as some top experts.
- That's right.
- So, we've spoken to the team manager,
we've spoken to a cycling nerd.
Before we go on to the next one though,
let's talk to one of the riders.
Here's Ben King.
So what apps do you have at your disposal
to help your own performance now?
- One of the apps that we use every day,
is called the Fila app.
We have that through the team,
and it's kind of a wellness app,
that the team looks at in conjunction
with our training files that we upload every day.
It gives the coaches and the doctors
a sense of where we're at
and how hard they can push us on given days.
It's a good way to get feedback after races,
and after training as well.
So we update it in the morning about how much rest we got,
how was the quality of our sleep,
how was our diet, everything.
- How accurate would you say it is?
I mean has there ever been a point
where it's told you you're not fit enough
to train on a certain day,
and you've gone out and felt amazing?
- Yeah, I mean there are definitely days,
especially in racing, you don't really have a choice,
but in training, if I log in there
that I woke up feeling very fatigued
and maybe had a rough night, and didn't get much sleep,
then I'll get a message almost instantaneously
from the coach saying,
maybe we back off training a little bit today,
and then the doctor will follow up,
asking about if there are any concerns,
any symptoms that can be addressed.
- Right, and finally,
I'm pitting myself up against the algorithm machine,
that Dimension Data and NTT have made,
that predicts, quite accurately apparently
stage winners and overall winners.
So for today I have gone for Dylan Groenewegen.
You going to make a pick?
- Giacomo Nizzolo.
- I thought you might say that.
Who's going to come second to Giacomo?
- Second,
I think Groenewegen's a good choice.
- I think Caleb Ewan is a big possibility today, as well,
and so I think my money would be on
our rider, Giacomo Nizzolo of course,
because he's been up there already this tour,
and I think he's going to be good today,
but an outside chance could be Groenewegen or Caleb Ewan.
- Okay, thank you very much.
I think he's been talking to his sponsors
because that's who they went for, is Caleb Ewan.
Some of you may recognize this next face,
because Tim was involved in the 24-hour record attempt,
which we did the video on a few weeks ago.
His main job though, is here with NTT.
This is Tim, he literally just said to me
that he gets to do all the nerdy stuff,
and he's going to go through some of that now.
We've got a different-looking screen or screens,
what are we looking at here?
- Yeah, so one of the challenges that we have is,
the people that are looking at Race Center,
are from all over the world,
and it's very difficult for us to understand
what experience they're getting,
when they view this.
So this year we set up a tool
that enables us to understand what
that experience is like for them.
So we can basically see everyone around the world,
see all the people that are connecting in,
and then understand how the data flows through the platform.
- And then you just explained it,
on the bottom left there,
you're working on something very new,
that they're using in the race cars from ASO.
- Yeah, so the fun is that,
one of the challenges that the ASO have,
is that they have limited connectivity through the race.
If you look from a telco point of view,
you're going to get about 85% coverage across the stages.
So, to then push data into a car is very difficult,
so the plan is to use the same data transmission
that we have off the back of the bikes from transmitters.
Send the data directly to a car,
and then we've created an analysis platform,
a data visualization platform, that runs in the car,
so that they don't need to have those big pipes
in front of it coming in to be able to see what's going on.
- That's cool.
Right, so you've been doing this since
Dimension Data first made the contract
with ASO to do it,
so lots have changed I'm sure since then.
But what do you see as a future?
Because as I said, this hub here
is all about making the fans'
and the viewers' experience better.
What's going to be happening over the next year or two?
- Yeah, I think we've focused on the viewing experience
for the last five years,
and I think now we're looking at the fan experience,
and how we can bring data and the elements
to the people at the side of the road.
So one of the things that we've got here this year,
is in the hospitality areas,
we have a data dashboard
that's so people can see what's going on,
and they get a more enhanced view.
- Just before we exit the big data bus,
I want to show you this,
because it's a bit of a glimpse
as to what you might be able to expect to see yourselves,
in the not too distant future.
At the moment, it was reserved for the truck here,
and also NTT's VIP area, closer to the finish line.
But as I've got it set up at the moment,
you can see the leaders
of all of the classifications on the screen.
Bernal, Wellins, Sagan, Alaphilippe,
and their positions within the race.
Alaphilippe's starting to move up,
he is currently in 149th position,
exactly how far they are behind the leader,
and their exact speed too.
He's going a little bit faster,
I think he must have just stopped for a comfort break,
and he's making his way back to the front of the Peloton.
Right, all that leaves me so really,
is a huge thank you to everyone at NTT,
for allowing us access behind the scenes
to see how it all works,
and how it works for the teams,
and with the riders too.
And I have to say from a personal point of view,
being a little bit of a numbers and stats geek,
I love the extra data
that you can get from races these days,
to accompany the pictures that you're seeing
on your screen,
and I'm also very excited to see
where those data points and stats
are going to go in the future,
because I think they've got some really big plans.
Now, I'm very excited though,
to see who wins this stage,
if I can beat the big computer brain.
I'm off to the finish line to see.
(acoustic music)
Ewan won.
(camera shutter clicking)
I don't believe it.
I was beaten by a computer.
I mean to be fair, I did get the top three exactly right,
they were just in the wrong order,
which they didn't manage to do.
Interesting though.
I didn't expect Caleb Ewan to win,
hence why I picked Dylan Groenewegen.
However, they will never ever, as they've admitted,
be able to fully predict stage winners,
which is not what we want anyway.
Otherwise there'd be no point in watching the stage,
or indeed the race.
Luck is always going to play its part
in the world of cycling.
We saw that today actually,
with the pick of Ben King and Doug Ryder.
Giacomo Nizzolo, Team Dimension Data,
unfortunately crashing with about 30 kilometers to go,
and not playing any part in the final sprint.
It's been a really interesting day though,
I'm looking forward, as I said earlier,
to seeing what they come up with in the future
in terms of their data, so stay tuned for that.
Now if you like your racing just as much as I do,
make sure to subscribe to GCN racing,
our new YouTube channel dedicated to pro cycling.
On the other hand, if you really like your tech,
and you want to see what Dimension Data are writing,
we've got a closer look
at one of their BMC machines down here.