During the coverage of Stage 1 of the Giro d’Italia on the Outdoor Life Network earlier today, the video feed from Italian broadcaster RAI showed Liquigas-Bianchi rider Marco Milesi nearing the top of a Category 3 climb which counted toward the King of the Mountains prize. While the camera was on Milesi, RAI put up a graphic that said the following:
190 92% 175 157 Marco Milesi
Sorry I don’t have a video capture card so I can show the video frame that I’m talking about.
The Outdoor Life Network commentators had the following dialog:
Paul Sherwin: … {Here is} Marco Milesi. Bob, just explain that graphic to me.
Bob Roll: {laughs}
Phil Liggett: I can’t wait Bob. What does it mean?
Bob Roll: We have been trying to work out exactly what that means and… uh… we think that 92 percent of the field of the group where he’s in {sic} is behind his rear wheel based on the GPS marker which has a transponder on the chainstay of the bicycle down by the rear wheel. And, we think it’s a marker in his relation to the riders in front of him and the riders behind.
Phil Liggett: Well, that’s the most useless piece of information that I think we’d ever require on a stage of the Tour of Italy.
When a similar graphic was displayed later in the broadcast, the OLN team requested that viewers write in if they knew what the graphic meant. The graphic shown on the screen was providing the following information, from left to right:
- Rider’s maximum heart rate
- Percentage of rider’s maximum heart rate
- Rider’s current heart rate
- Rider’s race number
- Rider’s name
I guess I spend too much time looking at data from my Polar S625x Heart Rate Monitor to miss the relationship between 190, 92 percent, and 175. A ballpark estimate of a person’s maximum heart rate is 220 minus age in years. Marco Milesi is actually 34 or 35 (born in 1970), so he has a slightly higher than typical maximum heart rate. My maximum heart rate is higher than typical for my age also. At the Chicago Showcase Hockey Tournament, my highest recorded heart rate was 187 beats per minute, while my maximum heart rate ought to be 182 by the formula.
I don’t know how the heart rate monitor telemetry is being transmitted from the rider to the broadcaster. A heart rate transmitter like the Polar WearLink Coded Transmitter is only capable of transmitting to a receiver about three feet (one meter) from itself. Are they using a special transmitter, or some sort of repeater on the bicycle?
This style of graphic was used occasionally during the Prologue as well. I meant to mention that I saw it in my Prologue summary article, but I forgot.