The Future of Pro-Cycling

(Photo by Bryn Lennon/Getty Images)

The banning of radios in two Tour de France stages next month got me thinking about what pro cycling might look like in a few years time. While I look forward to those two stages, I am convinced that this ban will not find much following. In sports, in life, and in business technological progress cannot be stopped.

The last 10-20 years have already pushed the sport forward. Among other things:

- (almost) faultless indexed gearing;

- from 10-speed bikes to 22-speed bikes;

- the aerodynamic advances evident during time trials in bike design, helmets, wheels, and clothing;

- the emergence of GPS;

- and those radios of course, enabling direct and continuous communication between riders and between rider and team directors.

Riders like Lance Armstrong have also modernized training regimes and team tactics. Teams like Saxo Bank, Silence-Lotto, and Rabobank now prepare differently for multi-stage races like the Tour and the Giro than before the Armstrong era. Trek, at Armstrong prodding, provides the team with different bikes for the flat stages vs the mountain stages, let alone the time trails of course.

Both technology influences and human influences are further professionalizing the sport. Let us freely speculate where it may go from here.

Perhaps begin with a more controversial topic: doping, an aspect of professional sport that has seen its own professional advances. 

From the 1950-80 era of steroids and testosterone to EPO and other forms of blood doping. The test regimes are getting better with also more structural defenses like the recent introduction of the so-called blood passport. But it will continue to be a cat and mouse game, a catch up effort.

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