Which is a much better system, but also introduces complication and with that greater potential for error.
I’m honestly not trying to dunk on the AG race ranger idea, I just didn’t think they thought through how complicated and controversial it’s going to be.
Already said this, and from the creator of RR. You are not considered in the draft zone until you have exceeded the allotted time you have to pass someone, and then it resets each time. You could pass a 1000 folks and not spend 1 second in the draft zone illegally…Got any other counter points??
The 1st issue they have to solve imo is a math problem. How easy are these units to even put on, etc. Putting them on 50 pro bikes, easy peasy. Putting them on 3k bikes will either take days or lots more man power to get it done in 1 day ($$$). I mean we are at the end of the day talking about AG racing. So while RR sounds like an incredible kick ass technology, how to actually implement it at an AG wide level, ummm seems impossible. And I also think at best this is more of an procedure to help the athletes/officials with better in race bike positioning, than it will be some AI data driven penalties. Sure they can store the data, and maybe even “target” athletes who seemingly always ride 15 mins inside the draft zones, etc. So I think at best your talking about using this to help on course officials and athletes, and in no capacity to I see it turning into an data driven penalty at the AG level. That’s a bridge too far imo, especially again we are talking about AG racing.
This should be a no brainer technology with AI generated time penalites for the pro’s once the kinks get figured out. But AG, I actually almost chuckle even though I love the technology/idea. I just think with actual implementing it in AG racing, yeah not really beyond very specific likely races at best.
I remember way back when this same argument was made about chip timing. Too expensive, small races couldn’t afforid it, etc. But of course it was all a Trojan horse argument, and now virtually every race in the world uses it. And keep in mind races dont have to buy this, they rent it. So when companies have scaled it just like chip timing, it will be just a few bucks tacked onto entry fees to cover.
And there will be a huge incentive for companies to get into this space right now, most all of your investment is up front and gets amortized down with each race you do. The only real cost after that would be advanced programming, and I suppose every 5 to 10 years upgrades in hardware.
I just did a race recently where the actual chip around the ankle was throw away. And other races where it is imbedded into the actual paper race number. It’s gonna happen, just a matter of when, how fast it takes hold, and the buy in from athletes and RD’s…
A few from the thread above, but the specific issue this opens up is obviating attacks and legalizing late race drafting. If 10 min is allowed and the guy in front of me starts pushing to break the elastic I’ll just make note of the time and pull up onto his wheel. Oops. Likewise at the end of the race if I have 7 minutes left why wouldn’t I just latch onto a wheel and save some energy.
Rules are really hard to write. Competitors will read the rules to see what they say, then again to see how to get around them.
You also have to take into consideration the actual man power it’ll take to implement these at each race. This is way more intrusive than just an race chip. Hell you even wanted to add stuff on the seat post and front bars, that all will take time and man power. If you think the sport as a whole wants to take that on, cool. No way in hell I see that happening on a wide scale in the AG ranks. We already are a sport that is struggling with race numbers, to add on any more “costs” to the RD and then through the athletes themselves, not likely going to be much interest in it.
Could there be certain companies that buy in and use it, that would be about the best your going to get for AG implementation. Scale wide within the sport, nah. It’s too expensive of an technology and too time intensive per unit.
It’s a kick ass techology, that at this point is almost a must for pro racing. But completely not worth it for the likely cost overall at the AG level if your actually looking at the actual +/-. Like no duh it’s a no brainer to implement if your just talking about “fair play”. But there is a reality to the conversation as well.
Once again, this whole thing is programable and elastic. In your scenario there could be an actual distance factor pre programed. If you are just the usual minor few foot inside that happens accidentally, usual second for second penalty. If you get up onto someones wheel the factor could be a multiplier, like 10X. So for every second you spend right on the wheel illegally, your accumulated time is accelerated.
And the beauty of this is it is just math. Doesnt matter if someone is ignorant or just as you say going to milk the rules, the lights will change color regardless. And I just threw out 10 minutes, probably that time will be much less, like maybe 3 minutes of illegal time once fleshed out…
It is going to be very easy to keep habitual cheaters from gaining a real advantage. The system now gives them almost impunity to do their dirty work, and thus bring in a lot of others that just go with the flow.
Forgot to add that there would still be an on site Marshall component, so that late race wheel sucker would also have to dodge that. And those calls would be so easy because of the colored lights that everyone can see.
Not a bad solution. But again, as this gets more complex there’s more room for error, and more complication in explaining to AGs who have trouble understanding “stay on the right side of the road” rule.
The other thing to consider is once the race ranger system becomes so complex and possibly game-able is it with the cost of replacing the current system?
I’m not trying to poopoo your ideas, they’re good, it’s a good debate and I hope a similar discussion happens at RR/IM.
That’s why I like the colored lights, you dont have to understand every nuance of the programming, just that if that light comes on you are doing something wrong. And of course that something wrong is riding too close to the riders in front too long, not a hard concept to hold for most…And for the ones it is, they will soon learn once their time and place is missing from the results…
So here’s the funny thing in all of this.
The rules from day 1 in our sport have been setup in a way that it’s essentially governed more by integrity than actual officiating, yet we put all the power into the officials. No one ever “calls their own fouls”, it’s only a foul if you get caught (and no one ever is in the wrong, officials are always in error…pink/not pink). This technology would essentially get us back to “integrity” eye in the sky is always watching.
We’ve always wanted to be golf, yet we never actually followed through with the self integrity part of it like golf almost religously relies on. So we now basically rule by “your only cheating if you get caught”.
The issue though is that this sounds better on paper than what it will actually take to actuall implement imo. In a weird way within AG ranks, we are trying to solve for a problem that while it does exist, is imo almost inconsequential if you are talking about an cost analysis breakdown. (especially if you are talking about local RD’s)
The colored lights would be good for sure. I would also try my hardest to figure out the algorithm for the lights and when a penalty is triggered. Say it’s 10 min in zone 5-10 meters, 5 min in zone 1-5 meters, and 1 min in zone under 1 meter. That lays out specifically how much I am allowed to draft.
To tie into what @BDoughtie said, a sport governed by integrity is inevitably going to become a sport full of cheaters. Especial with money on the line. The world’s most famous golf player is also the world’s most famous golf cheater.
As a competitor the question has to be: What is the penalty, what is the % chance of the penalty, and what is the gain? Drafting is no where near a 5 min gain (at the levels FOP/pro can get away with) so most don’t set out with the plan of drafting afoul of the rules. If it was 1 minute tho, with levels of officiating in AG it wouldn’t be a bad idea to find a fast wheel and get pulled along. Is that cheating? Even if you get a penalty?
In American college football the penalty for defensive pass interference is 15 yards. It’s not uncommon for a defender to get beat and intentionally commit this penalty to stop a 40y completion or TD in exchange for a 15y penalty. It’s this cheating as well?
The rules don’t say “you can’t”, the rules say “if you do you get this penalty”. If the penalty is less than the gain you should take it.
This entire thing will come down to costs on the race/RD’s. How expensive will this technology to be implemented. Cost of each unit, cost of man power to actually put them on the bikes for each race, etc. That is the riddle.
Well yeah that’s a big question for the powers that be.
Does anyone know if Race Ranger is financially coupled to IM in any way? Understanding that IM ostensibly wants to raise it’s race experience above T100/Roth/others, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there was and other tie that explains the big push.
There is a huge difference between tri and golf. In golf the integrity ruling works because you play your entire round with multiple competitors that get to watch your every move and they can play a role in the integrity of calling a foul on yourself. Not sure that works in tri. It’s more like how playground rules work in other sports where you call your own fouls.
The problem with that though is the sport of tri is officiated like a ball sport played in a cute 100 yard stadium where all the players are always in front of the offiical. It’s not, your literally more often NOT in front of an official than you are in front of an official in a race. So the “spirit” of the rules from day 1 in tri was always basically “integrity” matters. But it’s never really been like that since we truly added officials and basically only them calling out “cheating”.
And I would disagree with your assessment on golf. If you are relying on doing the right thing cus you are playign with playing partners, you’ve probaly missed the whole “spirit” of golf.
My point was more why integrity will work in golf because it has a natural check of competitors being right there.
Yes but it’s bigger than that. Golf is built on it. At it’s most basically level, “integrity” is above winning in golf, and not because you can be checked by ypur playing partners. You could cheat all day if you wanted in golf and no one would know, but for the most part, winning that way is frowned upon. Other sports it’s not that important. Tri initially had to go the golf route because it basically can’t officiate a race properly. So in that aspect RR would essentially bring back who is and who isn’t “honest” with their racing. There isn’t that many in the pro ranks who “blatantly” cheat at the front of the pros. But there are those who even use the rules to their advatage and while not legally wrong, it’s “unsportsmanslike”. Jordan Rapp was famous for speeding up when someone was about to pass to get them in a position foul. By the letter of the rules, nothing wrong with it. But “sportingly” it can be viewed as a “dick move” to do it for the extent purpose of getting them a penalty. So there’s all kinds of takes on sportsmanship/integrity, etc.
I believe it was Brady’s last game as a Patriot and the other team basically used the rules against the Patriots. They kept getting penalties on themselves to run out the clock, they basically out Patrioted the Patriots on odd rules to win in your favor (NFL then proceeded to clean up that particular ruling so teams couldn’t do that anymore). So there’s all kinds of ways to win and how you want to win and everyone has an n = 1 take on what they feel is fair or sporting, etc.
But team sports there really isn’t the need for “integrity”. If you committ a foul, you commit a foul.
But if you “cheat” in golf to win, that’s a “big” deal, especially if you knowingly do it, like drafting is for most athletes (if you are blatantly drafting…i’m not saying those 11.8m spots are intentiaoally drafting).
Look at road cycling. There’s dozens of unwritten rules, the penalty for not following them is getting shuffled out of the pack or getting crashed if it gets bad enough.
I’m not sure how you ever get that in tri. If three people tell an official you were drafting should you get DQ’d? What can they really do? Hard to stop someone from drafting 10m behind you.
We need to stop thinking about sports as having “integrity” and start thinking about it as “how do game the rules to place as highly as possible” then write the rules around that.
I think the golf analogy is good but a bit misguided. A PGA golfer has eyes on them the entire time so really can’t cheat. How many amateur golfers see their ball in a bad lie and sorta nudge it before taking their swing? Sure, in a friendly competition it’s more fun to play fair, but if there’s a few thousand dollars (like a pro tri) you can expect every competitor to take liberties like this.
IMO defining any rule break as cheating short circuits the conversation. People cheat because the benefit outweighs the risk. The rules need to be written in an enforceable way that balances over punishment (DQ for first draft infraction) with under punishment. It’s further complicated because the punishment needs to be multiplied by the probability of penalty, which in AG tri is vanishingly small.
I’m not sure how you ever get that in tri. If three people tell an official you were drafting should you get DQ’d?
So the rules allow that to happen. Atleast in ITU, if you were to cut the course and you have more than 1 witness, yes your going to get DQ’d for cutting the course. That is IF the other athletes protest, and all their stories add up. Now the caveat is that you have to have more than 1 witness and/or their stories have to 100% align (where they cut the course, make sure it’s the correct person being id’d etc)
The reason why I bring up “integrity” is because in a sport like triathlon you can’t write the rules in any other way. It’s simply impossible to write the rules in a way that are’t it’s up to the individual to then follow the rules on a course that is 112 miles long with 6 officials on it. Seriously how the how do you write the rules of triathlon with how it’s currently setup and have any faith them being followed except when your around the official.
So again the RR essentially is the 1 device that basically can bring back “honest” racing.
Which is actually why I’ve always said. Drafting rules in triathlon make zero sense if your only going to follow them when your around an official. Take out rules which means make it DL…But obviously that would sacreligious. But in terms of actually creating the fairest pathway, it’s never made sense to have rules where the athletes can so blantantly not follow them if they don’t want too. Lol, we got 4-6 officials officating 112 miles of real estate, and we think all will be good, it’s a fucking joke. But again it’s because we as a sport think/hope your going to be honest/integrity and race with good sportsmanship. There’s no other real way when your talking about non-draft racing in triathlon.
So in that aspect I love RR as a concept. I just simply think at the AG level, no one cares enough to pay for it and put it into useage beyond probaly very specific races.
It could play a really annoying beep noise when you’re in the draft zone for longer than 20s. Then everyone’s alerted if you’re intentionally drafting, helping athletes self police. In the big packs you’d have everyones device beeping so bad that you can’t stand it and have to race fair