#tbt – Guerilla Radio (Dec 2008)
We can’t remember who wrote this one. There’s a sinking feeling that it was a certain person who was working with a pro team at the time. But we can’t be sure, and it’s funny regardless of whoever its author was.
There has been talk of banning team radios in cycling, which has been divisive in the sense that everyone wants to ban them except for a small number of very influential people who don’t. Team radios are unpopular with fans and race officials because they make the racing less spontaneous and reduce riders to puppets at the control of their directeur sportive. However, they are popular with teams because they make the racing less spontaneous and reduce riders to puppets at the control of their directeur sportive. Perhaps, rather than an outright ban, an alternative method of rider-to-car communication could be used? Here are some suggestions:
Text message: All riders to carry a mobile phone in their back pocket and communicate by text message. The sight of a first year pro using predictive text in a language he is not yet fluent in while riding in a bunch around traffic furniture would do wonders to spice up the action on flat, early stages of grand tours. Similarly, riders texting with one hand and eating an energy bar with the other, while barrelling down a mountain at 80km/h would help attract a younger audience.
Semaphore: Communicating by wild arm gestures is already widely used by many teams from southern Europe, so its adoption would be fairly seamless. Northern European and particularly Russian riders may not be in favour, due to loss of stony-faced composure.
Shouting: Put simply, the DS drives alongside the rider and bellows at him to ride harder. Again, this practice is already well established and many teams already use it in a combination with the semaphore signals mentioned above.
Cup on a string: The DS speaks (or shouts) into a cup, causing vibrations in a string attached to another cup, held to the rider’s ear, the rider reversing the process to reply. However, the safety implications of several riders’ strings becoming entangled while negotiating alpine switchbacks are a worry.
Morse code: The DS alerts his riders by sounding a message with his horn. As with semaphore and shouting, this is also already in wide practice, although it is easy for different teams orders to become confused.
Passing notes: The DS writes a note, folds it in half and asks the rider nearest him to pass it on to the riders from his team. The rider then writes on the note and returns the message via the same route. This procedure can be spiced up by race officials spotting notes being passed, confiscating them and then reading them out in front of the whole peloton.