Twitter blamed for disrupting cycling coverage

Looking at that photo it seems the jobsworths at North Camp station did me a favour by not allowing me get on the Deepdene train with my Brompton. I went back to Farnham, got on my mountain-bike, cycled 25 miles to the Denbies event, had a great day and then cycled home. I can vouch for the strength of the SW tailwind which sustained the breakaway. The ease with which I wafted to Dorking in the morning (from Albury on the still-closed road race route) was in contrast to the struggle home in the evening.

Never mind the split times, if there'd been any coverage that named people attacking, how they were looking, what their history was etc (ie actually knew arse all about the race and who was riding), Twitter would have been second best. Less people would have relied on it to know what was going on. As it was........

I've been to two other Olympic events and have been very impressed. The train services have been excellent, the sign posting of events has been great, the volunteers inside & outside the venues have been helpful & polite. The explanations of the sports were helpful.

I watched some of the race on TV, and it didn't seem too bad. I could follow who was out infront and which groups were there. It's unfortunate if it didn't go to plan for the road race, but I don't think that makes it a farce.

Does anyone know if there was a test event for the road race? If there was and they are using a system that has already worked for an event, then there isn't really any reason that they would expect it to fail. If they've tried to find out why, and that's the answer they were given, then all they can do is try to find a way to make it work for other events that might be using it.

It wasn't me it was somebody else. Is the sort of excuse you would expect from a six year old child not a corporation that boasts it's the best in the world.
I also unfortunately (like THEFATCYCLIST ) think that many people who should have been inspired if they had been more informed will walk away from the sport with a shrug of the shoulders saying so that's cycling why bother.
I know some sport commentators receive flack (rightly or wrongly) but these events are possible the best chance of informing the non cycling public what our sport is about and why some are so very passionate about it I realise this may mean that the commentator will be talking down to the afficionados but it will get the fence sitters off (hopefully on to our side).

Problem is that the idea was that some of that massive crowd would have been "inspired", but now they have witnessed a farce, they will be lost to the sport, and as future spectators.

Unbelievable …. More poor excuses for a badly organised event! At least the public turned out though. I guess they don’t have bandwidth problems at the stadium events because half the seats are empty. To think I got all enthusiastic/patriotic on Friday with the opening ceremony. Only to be disillusioned again by the corporate rip-off and bad planning!! Such a shame.

Just reading in the paper that Lizzie said the timing motorbike had to use hand gestures to convey the time as his pen wouldn't write on a wet white-board.

I don't believe that there were GPS transmitters on the individual competitors' bikes. They were only on the motorcycles, surely? GPS + mobile phone transmitters would be quite large, and looking a photos from the race there didn't seem to be even the passive RFID based transponders which they use during the TdF on the bicycles. I believe at the TdF the GPS data from support vehicles is sent to the TV aircraft via radio link.

Clearly none of the team behind this system have ever actually attended a major sporting event of the type that brings in a large crowd. If they had, they would have realised the moment the idea was mooted of using the public mobile networks to transmit time-sensitive data that it was completely stupid and was never going to work.

Pathetic.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Seriously?

What could anyone possibly be putting on twitter that would pass the IOC test for being "urgent"?

"OMG! Help! having a heart attack! #acutemyocardialinfarction LOL! please RT"

As has been said by at least one commenter, you don't transmit position via GPS as the article states. A GPS device is purely a receiver that calculates its position from timing signals received from multiple satellites. The devices on the bikes must then have another method of transmitting that position to the organisers. Unlikely to rely just on the 3G networks - there is only a small amount of information to transmit each time so 2G would be fine, or even SMS.

Whatever method you choose, if it relies on mobile networks, and you've got a busy event with lots of spectators, you're going to suffer possible delays. You'd be a fool not to build in some contingency to your plan - the ability to relay the information from the blackboard guys at least? As anyone who has been to major events knows, even SMS suffers from delays in these situations, as it relies on spare capacity on the signalling channels for the voice network.

The IOC statement is plainly ridiculous. You have a hugely successful event and then tell people off for being enthusiastic about it. Perhaps in the future their system should be to get marshalls to shout out the timing gaps as riders go past? The IOC could then complain that people were making too much noise for the system to work properly, and could they please keep quiet as the riders pass (unless they have something urgent to say, of course)?

Of course this is a disgrace but how many of the tweets were worth reading? Social networks are mostly like millions of toddlers shouting 'look at me! look at me!' and when you turn around they're just picking their (or someone else's (RT)) nose.

I do think its Good riddance to race radios ...should never been allowed in the first place....Just another thing we can point the finger at for, e.g. that texan we all love to hate

Its back to who can read a race, not just be a puppet of the race directors.
its not just deciding shall we chase a break, who is in it etc ...its now infiltrating sprints

whilst I loved seeing Cav win in Paris again..... seeing the coverage of Yates yelling go, go ,go in his ear when he knew a gap had been created from the in car TV

I do agree it has a valid role for safely,

Is it not more likely that they were sucking up valuable bandwidth watching the race via the BBC Olympic app?

Bring back race radios

Don't remember any problems in the TdF, but then of course they don't have any mobile phones in France

The IOC are blaming the spectators for overloading the mobile phone network during the race? What did they expect? Any muppet could have predicted the public mobile phone network would be under a great load during the race. A pathetic excuse. My twitter/facebook/email actually held up well on my smartphone at Box Hill on Saturday and on The Mall on Sunday. Luckily lots of well informed people tweeting good info during the race. Thanks to them for that.

From the Guardian story:

The timings are sent to organisers via tiny GPS transmitters in competitors' bikes

I seriously hope not. The only things that actually transmit GPS signals are usually to be found 12000 miles above the earth and are quite heavy. Though I guess that, if they were carting one of those around, it might explain how come Wiggins et al got quite so tired.

I don't know guys.

I tweeted a fair - Fair - amount today.

Relying on a public network for essential corporate activity is asking for trouble.

Timing points, radios and motorbikes with boards as they do in the Tour de France would have worked as a backup.

In any event it was unlikely to have been just Twitter updates - text messages aren't going to use up that much bandwidth. There would have been a huge number of photos uploaded to all manner of sites, or being sent, as well as phone calls.

I'm not a telecom engineer but I think live phone calls, which can't be packaged and sent in bits, would be the most resource intensive.

so it is the fans fault now,..

really, i mean, words fail me, what did they expect!

Oh sorry i didn't realise that i can't use the phone i have paid to use.

How about paying phone users not to use their phones if it is that much of an issue!

BBC was decent today, not many timing gaps, but they brought their own stop watches.

Blaming people tweeting? Wise up, so because people had GPS on their phone's it disrupted the GPS timing? You would have thought they would have had a better system than that.

Whats going to happen in the TT on Wednesday then if everyone is sending updates again

Didn't seem much better today (though at least the Eurosport commentators seemed to know who was who unlike the dear old beeb!
Pathetic excuses from the IOC and the BBC!