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Tour Tracker Grand Tours 4+

Pro cycling live coverage‪‬, tour tracker llc, designed for ipad.

• 4.8 • 6.1K Ratings
• Offers In-App Purchases

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WORLD'S #1 RATED PRO CYCLING APP Award-winning live coverage of the Grand Tours - Tour de France, Vuelta a España, Giro d’Italia - and 25 additional Classics and World Tour races including Strade Bianche, Paris-Nice, Milan-San Remo, Gent-Wevelgem, Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, Amstel Gold, Flèche Wallon, Liège-Bastone-Liège, Critérium du Dauphiné, Tour de Suisse, Tour of Lombardy, World Championships and many more! Tour Tracker PRO offers live race commentary, GPS tracking, race results, rider details, interactive stage maps and profiles, stage previews, race summaries, videos, and 100 more exclusive features for all three Grand Tours. Tour Tracker TEAM members get all that plus full coverage of 25+ additional World Tour races, integrated Fantasy Cycling, live Virtual Standings and our exclusive Time Machine feature that lets you replay stage data in sync with tape-delayed race video. ** Top-10 Tour Tracker Features: • Live multi-media commentary and GPS race tracking. • Live intermediate climb, sprint and time trial results. • Results and standings for every climb, sprint, stage and jersey. • Fantasy Cycling game with world-wide and private leagues. • Time Machine data synchronization for replaying every stage. • Exclusive rankings of riders and teams by time spent off the front. • Detailed written stage recaps and video clips when available. • The only app with live, interactive route maps and profiles. • Integrated general cycling news and social media feeds. • Key moment race notification options - but no spoilers. • Weather conditions from the road. • Estimated arrival times for climbs, sprints, finish. • Predictive GPS tracking between updates. • Links from the News feed to rider profiles. • Dark mode support (for all iOS versions). Tour Tracker is run by a team of passionate cycling fans, working 365 days a year to provide the best possible cycling coverage. We depend on the support of the cycling community, and we hope that after trying the app for a few days you will join us as a PRO or TEAM member! ** The app does not offer live race video, however Time Machine can synchronize with any televised or online video stream like GCN. ** Note that our schedule of races may change each year based on the overlap of races and reporter availability. Terms of Service: https://www.thetourtracker.com/terms-of-service

Version 12.5

• New animated presentation of the route on the map. So cool. • Fix for some races showing Italian commentary instead of English. • Fix for adding stages to your device calendar. • 2024 race calendar with more races added. • My Fantasy League - Season Standings added. • Fantasy Season Standings: Tap team to get position/points from past races. • See stage finish results from rider's page. • Switch between profile and map on Live tab. • Climb gradients shown on map. • Pause live coverage mid-race.

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Really is the best 3 bucks I’ve spent all year.

Really a great app. I use this app and the $60 NBC Gold Cycling App for my cycling fix. I like the NBC for the video coverage of mostly just mountain stages and time trial only and this for everything else. If I had to choose though I would only go with Tour Tracker. One underrated feature of tour tracker is how blazing fast all the page loads are and how well it’s layer out. In 10 minutes I can get everything I need to know for the days 4 hours of racing. he live feed commentary is excellent. The replays and clips are great. The ability to quickly and effortlessly track all the riders all the teams all the races all the stages without adds or slow load time. See the maps see the layout see profile and read the social feeds. No other app does anything remotely close to even part of this. And for $3 a year it’s a steal. Easily has a value closer to $20 when compared to other sports tracking apps.

Best pro cycling app by far!

I rarely give app reviews. But I’ve been using Tour Tracker for years now, and they have really stepped up their game in 2020. New features such as gradients on climbs and the “time machine” feature to stream your data as if it’s live during a race replay are fantastic. SOOO much data is available through just a few clicks. If you are a pro cycling fan, this app is indispensable! It is essential as a companion to watching the race, or just following along with events if you can’t stream video where you’re at. It’s literally the first thing I look at when I wake up each morning of a big race. There is a nominal annual subscription to get most of the races (two tiers of subscription - with the most expensive being about US$10 per year). Pay the subscription - if you love pro cycling, you won’t be disappointed.

I’d pay 5x this amount — it’s that important to me

When my friends ask “isn’t it boring, just watching them whoosh by?”, I explain how I not only watch them go by (when I’m watching in person), but I watch the progress of the race (and all the mini competitions within the race) on this great app. When I’m watching on TV at home, Tour Tracker is my constant companion, to know who’s where, who took the KOM points, how many bonus points or seconds are on offer, what the gradients are, what happened before I tuned in, etc. Every season, I upgrade to the Team version, but I would genuinely pay much more — I’m happy to support this great app, and the team that brings it to me.

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Big data comes to the Tour de France

Live GPS tracking and analysis for all riders, plus GoPro cameras on certain bikes

Ben Delaney / Immediate Media

Ben Delaney

For the first time in Tour de France history, all riders racing in this year’s event have GPS transponders on their bikes, with the live data streaming to Tour organizers thanks to technology group Dimension Data.

Each rider has a transponder mounted to his saddle rails. This will be used by every rider for every stage of the Tour.

The data collected from this will include:

• the stage winner’s top speed, average speed and time per kilometer
• the fastest riders up key climbs
• the speed of the winner at the finish line
• the top speed achieved by a rider on the day
• average speed across all riders

“The technology will allow cycling fans to follow the race in ways they’ve never been able to before,” Dimension Data executive chairman Jeremy Ord said in a press release. “Until now it was difficult to understand what was happening outside of what could be shown on the live television coverage. The ability to follow riders, get accurate information about which riders are in a group, and see real-time speed are just some of the innovations that will be realized through this solution.”

Each rider has his own GPS transponder for the Tour

Dimension Data is also offering a Daily Data Wrap analysis package, which you can sign up for here .

Should a rider need to change bikes during a stage, teams are required to notify race officials, as the bikes also have a timing chip on them needed for scorekeeping. In this case, that rider's GPS transponder almost certainly won't be transferred to the space bike as time will be at a premium for the racers. But in between stages when riders change from time trial bikes to their standard race bikes to perhaps an endurance bike for stage four's cobbles, the transponders will go with them.

In related news, GoPro and Tour organizers ASO have partnered this year to deliver GoPro footage from bikes , team cars and more. There will be 12 GoPro Hero4 Black cameras that are used on bikes throughout the race, with each team having at least one rider using one at some point.

12 GoPro cameras will be making their rounds on various bikes throughout the race

Last year was the first time ASO allowed videocameras to be used on bikes during the race, and Shimano leapt at the opportunity with its CM-1000 videocamera used on Shimano-sponsored team bikes.

Check out more Tour tech at our Tour de France 2015 homepage .

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• Discussion (23)

Lachlan Morton’s Tour de France Alt Tour: How the Tracking Device & Site Works

(Lachlan Morton and his full self-supported setup, credit: Grubers)

By now you’ve undoubtedly heard of Team EF Education First’s Lachlan Morton’s so-called ‘Alt Tour’ . In short, he’s solo riding not just the entire Tour de France route, but also all of the ‘transfers’. Meaning, each night when a normal Tour de France rider ends their day at the finish they normally jump on the team bus and drive a few hours (or a lot of hours, or in one case, a plane flight across the country). Instead, Lachlan’s riding all of that – solo, unassisted. Even more, unlike teams that can follow highly direct highways for those transfers (and even parts of the TdF route), Lachlan can’t. He’s got to take less direct side roads.

And, as incredibly impressive as all that is, it’s been well covered in other media outlets. Instead, I’m here to talk about the live tracker system that he has. Because, if there’s anything I do well around here, it’s talking about live tracking of pro cycling events.

In Lachlan’s case, the goal of his suffering is to raise money to donate bikes to World Bicycle Relief. As of this moment, he’s raised £146,094 – covering 1,217 bikes – and we’re only on day 4.

Ok, so let’s talk about Lachlan Morton’s tracking site. First, if you haven’t seen it by now, you can head there . It’s updated 24×7, at 60-second intervals. It’s certainly worth noting undoubtedly a big part of doing something like this is media attention for sponsors. In this case, EF’s sponsors being EF (Education First), and Rapha. And you’ll see that in the site itself, which is skinned to match the branding of the sponsors.

However, under the covers, the site and the tracker are run by a company called ‘Follow My Challenge’. They’ve been around for about 6 years, covering various events and challenges, from one person to 200 people. In their case, the entire solution is pre-canned. Meaning, they supply the tracker, the website, and even will manage maps and overlays. But we’ll get to all that in a second.

The Hardware:

There’s no better place to begin than with the tracker hardware:

(A close-up of Lachlan holding the tracker, image from Rapha)

You can see it in an image provided by Rapha of the pile of gear he’s carrying with him. Specifically, he stores it in his Rapha + Outdoor Voices Bar Bag. Or, as the rest of us call it – the white bag:

(The tracker in his bag, image from Rapha)

The tracker is technically a Queclink GL300MG , slightly rebranded by Follow My Challenge. You’d rent from them when doing a challenge. Anyone can sign-up to use their service, for one month to more months . You can see here the fee structure, which is pretty reasonable if you’re doing a one-off multi-day event, to have complete live tracking across the board.

The device itself has a battery life of about 6-7 days, depending on the cellular conditions nearby. In talking to the folks behind Follow My Challenge, they said that for wide-open fields with good connectivity, it’ll be on the higher end, whereas for deep mountains, it’ll cut into the battery life a bit (as the tracker compensates by increasing power to the cellular side). The company strongly recommends athletes keep the tracker on 24×7, even when sleeping, as many times exhausted athletes will forget to turn it back on after waking. The device has an accelerometer in it, which will automatically go to sleep when idle.

Lachlan’s team says he charges it every 4 days when power is available. This isn’t the first time he’s used the Follow My Challenge tracker either. He did so during the Badlands too .

The tracker has a roaming-enabled SIM card in it, so you don’t need to add anything. It’s already covered for anywhere you wander to. The device is primarily on LTE-M (just like Garmin’s new Forerunner 945 LTE GPS watch ), but can fall back to 2G if required.

When it comes to the tracking interval, Lachlan’s unit is configured to update at 60-second intervals. For the first day or so, they initially did 5-minute intervals, but then tweaked it down to a 60-second option. That hurts battery life a bit, but not too much. The update interval is for both GPS & cellular connectivity. Meaning, it takes a GPS sample every 60 seconds and uploads it instantly, but doesn’t actually track the GPS in between those points. In fact, if on the tracking site you click on his dot and toggle the ‘show track’ option, you can see how it doesn’t perfectly follow the line, because it’s just connecting those 60-second update dots:

(The grey line was the planned transfer route, and the pink line his actual ride, showing how the 60-second update means it appears he cut chunks, but in reality, he didn’t magically transport across fields/highways/etc, but simply that’s the connected dots.)

In the event he doesn’t have cellular connectivity, the device *will* backfill the every-minute GPS data points. Meaning, it’ll transmit all those un-synced data points back to the map for as long as required.

The Mapping Platform:

Speaking of the map, part of the initial fee you pay for Follow My Challenge is for them to load up your route map into their platform. In some cases, that’s relatively easy. But in other cases, it’s a hot mess. And Lachlan’s route is a good example of that. You see it’s not just one giant route, but rather alternating routes each day showing both the official Tour de France route (in pink), and then the transfer route (in grey). To the viewer it’s semi-seamless, but in reality, it’s pretty complex.

In this case, the route was provided by Lachlan and his team, who did it in concert with VeloViewer . You probably know VeloViewer as the one who provides all but one of the WorldTour teams their maps for the Tour de France and most other major events ( notably in their team cars ). Or, maybe you know them for their wildly popular Strava plug-in/site. But, Tour teams use them for mapping too. And in this case, VeloViewer in conjunction with EF/Rapha Gone Racing did much of the work primarily on the transfer routes coming up with safe routes for Lachlan to ride.

(Lachlan Morton on Day 2 of his tour, credit: Rapha)

VeloViewer did more than just come up with the initial route in conjunction with Lachlan, they also create the exact routes each day as they shift on a daily basis. Which he in turn rides on his Garmin Edge1030 Plus . For example – if he planned to ride 215KM, but decided to go extra to 255KM , that shifts more than just his progress. It shifts tomorrow’s route files, but it also shifts camping site plans for not only that night but probably the next night. That impacts the Rapha filming crew with him (where they park their vans), and even more interestingly – impacts the planned address he must provide each night to WADA, for anti-doping measures.

Ben Lowe at VeloViewer explained that today, June 29th, “Lachlan is thinking of doing an extra 70km today (to another known campsite), although he will make the choice when he reaches the originally planned stop. If he does that then Kim English [ EF/Rapha’s Gone Racing producer ] will adjust that riding time for today and will then need to spend a few hours re-planning the campsites for the next few days.”

You can see this on the currently proposed file splits, which are used to generate the GPS files to follow each day. These are also used by the EF/Rapha crew/film members using the standard VeloViewer iPad in-vehicle race tracking/planning system too. Here’s what that looks like in a team car during an event last year. VeloViewer also added in special integration with the Follow My Challenge hardware, so they could see his live position too, on the VeloViewer WorldTour package app.

Speaking of which, as you might have noticed, there’s a dot on the map for ‘The Peloton’. That’s simply another Follow My Challenge tracker in one of the Team EF team cars (as racers aren’t allowed to have unauthorized tracking hardware on them). Given the team cars are usually pretty close to the peloton, it’s an easy solution to showing the race position.

As you can see above, the Follow My Challenge platform shows stats for the rider, which are done by a blend of known track length along with finding the nearest point on the ‘known track’. We can see it above for the Peloton, but also below for Lachlan too:

However, things can get super interesting when the company is doing larger-scale events. And in fact, on their website you can look anytime at any/all published event live. It’s actually pretty darn cool. For example, right now there’s the Transpyrenees 2021, which they’ve got some 160 riders with trackers on them :

Every single rider you can zoom in on, but there’s also a ton of analytics types pages too (way more than just these two screenshots):

It also includes 3D mapping pages, Instagram pages to pull in photos from participants based on hashtags or known/designated accounts, and more. It’s pretty darn impressive.

Meanwhile, while you read this entire post, Lachlan keeps on pedaling along – right now at 24.72KPH, the peloton meanwhile is moving at 50KPH as they approach the stage finish. Still, he’s building up a nice lead on the peloton, helped by some short transfer stages the last few days and a very short individual time trial that’s slated for the Tour tomorrow. Of course, later in the week, he’ll repay that debt with some substantial transfer stages as well as long and straight stages where the peloton can maintain much faster speeds than him.

Still, I’ll be watching his dot just as closely. Because as always, there’s something about watching the steady-moving progress of a little dot that intrigues me.

With that – thanks for reading!

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23 Comments

Tha ks for the detail on the mapping/tracker etc. I was expecting trackleaders/spot trackers, but this is new to me. Great stuff

However, being a little pedantic, hes not doing this unassisted. Having someone sort out your camping options ahead of you will not only save him time, but will make him so much less stressed and therefore calmer. On the other hand, he’s racing the tdf peleton!!!

True, though, the only reason someone has to arrange camping sites is because the film crew is with him. Otherwise, he’s just likely camp wherever the heck he wants – more than likely by the side of the road.

And, I suspect the film crew aspects add plenty more stress than not. I’m betting there’s plenty of random b-roll type shots he has to do 12 times over that eat up time. Plus interviews, sit-downs, etc…

> the only reason someone has to arrange camping sites is because the film crew is with him

Sort of. If he’s opportunistically grabbing catnaps, then yes. If he wants to bed down for a few hours, he doesn’t want to do that on top of the Alps. Similarly, he probably doesn’t want to find himself descending an Alpine road in the dark. So finding points that are good to stop and that leave you well-positioned for the next day’s (or even several days’) riding does take some work.

Go little dot!

Tim Moore wrote a great book,French Revolutions, about a similar effort, Tim was not at all a serious biker…amazing

How’s he charging his devices? He has a Garmin and almost certainly a cell phone – they will need charging every day or two. Does he have a hub dynamo? Or is he eating on charging whilst eating in restaurants? Something else?

They said he’s charging a battery pack in cafe’s primarily, and then charges devices from that.

I can’t see a dynamo on the pre ride photos I’ve seen. Recharging at stops with a battery pack as cover works well – a battery pack can recharge your garmin 5 times. I don’t know how much night riding he is doing.

Indeed, and being at campsites nightly, many French campsites will have power outlets in shared areas. So throwing a battery pack in a laundry room or such to charge is pretty easy, if one doesn’t spend time at cafes.

I watched yesterday or the day before as he actually waited a while at a little town, to watch the Peloton go by (he had already completed that entire stage, and was on the transfer, which happened to double-back through that town).

If the film crew is with him, wouldn’t he just get power to recharge his devices from them? Plus I have so many battery packs that recharge with solar I could probably run the devices most days just by having a battery pack exposed to the daylight.

A 10,000 mAh battery pack will get you through a week of charges easy, and that’s before considering that the battery in the 1030 plus is massive already (and he’s likely not using his phone much).

When I’ve done ultra long distance stuff I’ve easily been able to keep the battery topped up at rest stops.

There is nothing solo and unassisted about this supported tour. Please, calling it such is just offensive to the many athletes that do partake in solo and unsupported events.

I always find it funny when groups of people like to redefine terms. It happens a lot, especially in endurance sports.

But here’s the thing: He’s riding the Tour de France route solo and unassisted, in comparison to a typical Tour de France rider who is in a peloton and with support vehicles mid-race to sort everything out. That’s literally the English language exact wording of what he’s doing. You might not like that, but that doesn’t change the reality of the situation.

You don’t get to redefine standard words like ‘solo’ to make your own efforts sound more grandeous than someone else’s. If you need to pad that definition, then come up with a longer sentence. Cause frankly, it’s these sorts of comments that do nothing to help the sport.

And get this final tidbit: It (using the term solo and unassisted) doesn’t take away from whatever it is your doing that you’re re-using those same terms to met your fancy. It’s not offensive to those “many athletes”, I’ve yet to hear anyone that’s “offended”. And frankly, if you’re (yourself) actually so easily offended by such a term – I’d seriously question you’re ability to do anything on this scale yourself.

Cheers, and happy Thursday!

Well said Ray.

Because it’s being filmed it’s not unassisted? From what I gather he’s doing his own repairs and camping etc. Besides filming what “support” do you think they are giving him? Obviously if something horrible happened they would help but if they are filming and just filming it’s not a help at all.

Having to tie your tubes in a knot when you get one too many punctures sounds unsupported to me!

I love what Lachlan is doing, and it’s great there are other trackers/ apps to watch dots with.

Races like the Transcontinental, and now many other events are pretty commonplace now (4200k , 14 days, 50,000m climbing through the alps, being chased by Bosnian and Albanian dogs, sleeping in 4 star hotels one night, behind a hay bale the next). These races have very specific definitions on solo/unassisted to ensure a level playing field ie it’s just you, on your own. Route planning before you start is totally recommended, but if things change, it’s up to you to sort it out…… Film crews are fine, if they just observe, but even then they provide mental ‘support’ just by being around.

However, Lachlan is not in a race, its his own event so he defines the parameters. I think its great exposure for bike packing, and also raising money for a good cause.

Film crews are more likely to be a pain in the butt for subject. And I’m speaking as a photographer/filmmaker.

It is always interesting to see the bike & gear choices made by the endurance riders. Apparently this same rider did a portion of the journey in a pair of Birkenstocks. I hope to ride the Topstone when they are reliably in stock again, but going to do a hard pass on the sandals.

Great write up, Ray!

Can you expand a bit on this part?

> impacts the planned address he must provide each night to WADA, for anti-doping measures

Why would the doping agency care about where he stays for a non-competition event?

Out of competition testing. Presumably he still has races this year. The vampires need to know where to find riders all year round.

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The most common question I receive outside of the “what’s the best GPS watch for me” variant, are photography-esq based. So in efforts to combat the amount of emails I need to sort through on a daily basis, I’ve complied this “ My Photography Gear ” post for your curious minds! It’s a nice break from the day to day sports-tech talk, and I hope you get something out of it!

The Swim/Bike/Run Gear I Use List

Many readers stumble into my website in search of information on the latest and greatest sports tech products. But at the end of the day, you might just be wondering “What does Ray use when not testing new products?”. So here is the most up to date list of products I like and fit the bill for me and my training needs best! DC Rainmaker 2023 swim, bike, run, and general gear list . But wait, are you a female and feel like these things might not apply to you? If that’s the case (but certainly not saying my choices aren’t good for women), and you just want to see a different gear junkies “picks”, check out The Girl’s Gear Guide too.

Tour de France 2021: Here's the technology making this year's race the most interactive yet

'Digital twin' of Tour de France route gives fans more data when they need it

With the Tour de France 2021 set to roll out this weekend, this year's race looks set to be the most interactive ever thanks to a host of new experiences and services designed to help fans get (virtually) closer to the action.

This weekend sees the 108th edition of the world's biggest cycling event start in Brittany, in the north-west of France, with 184 riders travelling 3300km over the course of the next three weeks.

After a year in which fans have been starved of in-person action, and with an expected global television audience numbering in the hundreds of millions, this year's Tour is looking to utilize big data like never before to offer fans a whole new view of the race.

• Check out our list of the  best cloud computing  services right now
• We’ve also rounded up the best  cloud analytics  services
• These are the  best cloud databases  on the market

Real-time data

NTT, the official technology partner to race organizers Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) since 2015, will once again look to offer broadcasters, digital channels and fans a wealth of real-time data on the race.

Using small sensors mounted beneath the saddle (pictured below), NTT is able to provide real-time data on speed and GPS location of each rider in the race every 400 milliseconds. 

This data is transmitted using a moving mesh-network through gateways on the television motorbikes, helicopters and aircraft, where it is multiplexed with the broadcast video and transmitted to NTT's own "Big Data Truck".

Here, the data is augmented on the NTT cloud platform with 53 calculated attributes such as course gradient, weather data, group calculations, and time gaps in order to offer fans and broadcasters alike the key information they need to stay up to date with the race.

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Digital twin

To supplement this, NTT has revealed that in 2021 it is creating a ‘digital twin’ of the race using IoT sensors, edge compute and networks alongside its own platforms and mapped against a geo-location model of each stage of the Tour. This will enable real-time visibility of key locations and assets, COVID-19 contact tracing and in-the-moment updates of caravan and race arrival times.

The company notes that the race is effectively the world’s largest connected stadium, albeit one that moves around France every day for three weeks, including savage mountain terrain in the Alps and the Pyrenees. It says creating a digital twin will offer detailed visualizations of the race as it happens, as well as improving digital experiences such as the ASO's live Race Center tracker system for fans.

• Discover how to watch a Tour de France live stream from anywhere

"Every year we have been able to take the technology to the next level, this year we are creating what is essentially a digital twin of the event," notes Peter Gray, Senior Vice President, Advanced Technology Group, Sport at NTT Ltd. "It’s a highly dynamic and changing environment that requires immediate access to information to ensure continuous and smooth operations, resulting in more informed and engaged fans.”

“Technology plays a vital part in helping us innovate at the speed fans expect from their mobile and cloud-based applications, all the while providing event insights, rich analytics and intelligent digital solutions," added Yann Le Moenner, Chief Executive, ASO.

"Since 2015, we’ve brought a whole host of digital enhancements to the event to create the best ‘connected fan’ experience. This year is no different, delivering a data-driven experience across any device, wherever you are in the world.”

• Can't-miss sport:  how to watch a  Euro 2020 free live stream

Mike Moore is Deputy Editor at TechRadar Pro. He has worked as a B2B and B2C tech journalist for nearly a decade, including at one of the UK's leading national newspapers and fellow Future title ITProPortal, and when he's not keeping track of all the latest enterprise and workplace trends, can most likely be found watching, following or taking part in some kind of sport.

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SBS ŠKODA Tour Tracker - The place to watch Tour de France in full

The sbs škoda tour tracker returns in 2023, bringing exclusive live start-to-finish coverage of every stage, from the first stage of the men's race in bilbao to the last of the women's tour de france femmes in pau..

24/07/2022 - Tour de France 2022 - Etape 21 - Paris La Defense Arena / Paris Champs-Elysees (115,6km) Credit: A.S.O./Charly Lopez/A.S.O./Charly Lopez

2023 Tour de France live streaming times via SBS ŠKODA Tour Tracker

2023 tour de france femmes live streaming times via sbs škoda tour tracker, have a story or comment contact us.

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Top Apps For Following The Tour de France

The Superbowl of cycling kicked off this past Saturday and for die-hard fans of the Tour de France who cannot get enough of the action, you can follow it all right on your phone or iPad.

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Tour de France All Access

Cycling enthusiasts can track the peloton in real-time with every rider’s position at each stage with NBC Sport’s Group app. Also available are stage results, overall standings and interviews. $14.99 in iTunes.

Versus Tour de France LIVE

This app features live streaming video of every stage with no commercial interruptions, highlight videos and live GPS tracking showing the riders and breakaway time gaps. $6.99 at apps.su.

An inexpensive option is the Tour 2011 featuring live race information, rider profiles and Twitter feed integration. $0.99 in iTunes.

Team RadioShack

Fans of the American team can get behind-the-scenes coverage of Team RadioShack and track team finishes and events complete with team photos. Free at iTunes.

You can also get complete coverage of the Tour de France over at Velonews.com .

PHOTOS: Tour de France Time Trial Gear

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Tour de France

Moving maps: meet the team who helps keep the tour de france vehicles, riders, and motorcycles on course, ntt provides more than just the live race tracking data, it tracks the whole race from the publicity caravan to the in-race vehicles. they can even forecast the weather..

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The Tour de France is more than just a bike race, it is a traveling village of thousands that moves from town to town en masse every day.

A significant portion of that village population moves along the stage route each day, from the publicity caravan to the in-race vehicles.

On a perfect day, the riders and the mass of vehicles ahead and behind them will be able to get from the stage start to the finish without any issues, but that isn’t always possible.

Vehicles in the publicity caravan can break down on the route, protesters might be sitting on the road, weather can cause the course to be impassable like it did in 2019, or an emergency vehicle may need access to the route.

These are just a small number of issues that may arise on a daily basis, some of which are captured on television, like last year’s protests, and others are not, like a publicity caravan vehicle that was stuck ahead of the race and obstructing the road.

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With so much that can happen on any given day, it’s important for the organizers to know where the race is, and that includes its vehicles.

“Last year, one of the lead vehicles in the caravan broke down and everyone’s now watching our screens really closely because you can basically see the whole race getting closer and closer, as the caravan is parked up on a nice single track that in somewhere in the mountains. They got it moving again and they got out the way in time, but suddenly everyone’s attention focuses,” Rob Webster, who works with the Tour’s technology partner NTT, told Velo .

NTT provides the equipment and know-how to track the riders, providing data for the television coverage and the live tracking on the race center on the race’s website.

However, it’s also tracking a multitude of race vehicles all along the route, making it easier to move around obstacles and decide if the race needs to be halted for whatever reason.

Webster and Tim Wade are two of the people responsible to working with the tracking data and helping race organizer the ASO to utilize it. Webster and Wade are co-founders, along with another man called Peter Gray, of a start-up company called TwinLabs.ai.

The company was spawned out of NTT’s partnership with the Tour de France and the technology it developed to help ASO run the race. It is now a separate company after it was spun out of NTT at the start of last month, but it still works with the technology giant on events such as the Tour de France.

From a truck in the technical zone at the end of each stage, NTT will follow the day’s stage to help it traverse across France as unhindered as possible.

“Every year, somewhere along the line, the Tour will bump into someone having a protest that’s blocked that route for a bit,” Webster said. “Just being able to see where all the race vehicles are at on a map, are there alternative routes, do they want to divert, or what will they just hold it?

“The decision as to whether you neutralize and slow down or hold both groups becomes a whole lot easier if you can see where stuff is on a map in real-time.”

It’s not just ASO that is using the technology in the race, neutral service supplier Shimano has also taken advantage of it in an effort to get support to riders as quickly as possible.

“Shimano are using it as well for themselves so that they can manage their vehicles,” Webster said. “They’re constantly managing it to make sure that their bikes and car support bikes and cars are always going to be close to potential issues with the riders. They’re not held to any kind of strict [rule] that you’ve got to be there within a minute, but they set themselves a fairly high target around how quickly they can get to any rider who’s had a mechanical or an accident.”

In addition to tracking the race, NTT also helps with logistics within the technical zone at the finish so everything goes where it needs to, as well as helping to do crowd counting in the VIP areas.

The NTT truck also has a mini weather station on top of it to get local weather predictions, which came in very handy when the 2019 race was halted during stage 19 when extreme weather caused landslides.

Tracking the Tour de France

In the past, tracking the Tour de France’s huge caravan was done with radios and maps.

Obstacles and issues would be sent in over the radio and those on the other end would have to work quickly to find that on a map and plan around it.

With the new technology that has come in over the last decade, that process is now far easier. The NTT truck at the finish line is effectively a mini command center that receives the GPS data and has it laid out a digital map that updates live with the location of all of the riders and vehicles.

To get all of this data, each vehicle is fitted with a GPS unit that is placed in the trunk. In the case of the motorbikes, they can be fitted with some very adhesive tape or by using some specially designed 3D printed mounts. So far, they’ve never had one come off during a race.

While the focus on the GPS units for the bikes was to make them as light as possible and easy to put on and remove, NTT had a bit more freedom in how it designed the hardware for the vehicles.

It means that the bike units are fairly small with a weak signal that has to be received by the nearest television bike before being broadcast to the NTT trick. They’ve got minimal battery life too at just eight hours, enough to get to the end of a stage but they need to be charged each night and redistributed to the teams.

“The riders don’t want an extra couple of 100 grams sit on the back of their bike, so the emphasis on the device on the back of the bike was really about being robust, but within certain parameters,” Wade explained. “The one in the cars is plugged and it’s got a battery backup. It’s a slightly different design brief, [the bike unit] is robust, lightweight, small, easy to put on and take off, whereas the stuff in the car can be big, we don’t really care how big it is, obviously, within limits. The goal of that is to be super accurate.”

The units are a little bigger than the height and width of the average cell phone, though they are significantly chunkier to house all the tech it needs to work. They run off the power of the vehicle, so they shouldn’t run out during a stage, with a backup battery that lasts a couple of days.

It means that they can sit in the vehicle without the need to be charged nightly like the units used on the bikes. They also have to be pretty robust to survive the rigors of the race as people chuck heavy items into the trunk as they travel from place to place.

Getting it right

As well as being bigger and having a longer battery life, the units also transmit their data much farther by using the cellular network.

That comes with its own issues, especially when the race is traveling through densely populated areas where the cellular network is operating under a heavy load, as well as passing through areas where the signal may be quite poor.

“There’s a couple of different ways that we work within the parameters that we’ve got. We’ve got multi-provider sims that will span all the networks. So, if we lose network connectivity from one it will check to see if there’s another one available,” Wade said.

“There was quite a bit of optimization that went on regarding the packet structure, so the data that we send from the device we kept it really small. What that means is, we don’t actually send a lot of data. We can use a 2G connection, with a really low data rate, which means when there’s a congested cell, there’s still enough space for us to send information through.

“And then if it’s even got to the point where we do lose connectivity, which of course does happen, we’ll then interpolate that data based on what things are going on in the race around it. We can then make a prediction on where assets going to be until it pops back up on the map.”

Tunnels obviously cause their own issues, but Webster explains that the biggest challenge is remote mountaintop finishes where there are very few cell towers around and a lot of people using them.

On top of getting the data back to the truck, there is an additional challenge in making sure that the information being received is correct. Tunnels again are an issue, but tall buildings, heavy tree cover, and bad weather can also impact the accuracy of GPS coordinates.

It requires a few high-tech solutions to make sure that the date is reading correctly when it is shown on the map in the truck.

“The little box that Tim waved around, has got pretty good GPS tracking, but you stick that in between a bunch of high-rise buildings in the middle of a town and it’s a bit like a canyon, nothing gets through,” Webster said. “You can lose the tracking, or all the tracking becomes less accurate. You can have the vehicle kind of on the route and then someone’s front garden. We don’t just simply take the raw data and shove that up on a map, we have to process it very quickly, to clean it up, and basically snap it to the route.

“For vehicles, we have a smart algorithm that goes, if you’re to the route, you’re probably on the route and if you’re definitely not on the route, you’re definitely not on there. They don’t always follow some of them go around [the route].

“We took what we initially developed for the cyclists, which apply some fairly tight algorithms, and we’ve had to adjust them a bit because cars can go faster than bicycles. But it’s a lot of the very similar algorithms around how do we have a degree of confidence around where we’re putting on the map?”

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Tour de France 2023: GPX

De 2023 edition of the Tour de France featured eight high mountain stages, six races in the medium mountains, six flat stages, and one ITT. You’ll find free downloads of the GPX files of all stages on this page. So you can ride the stages whenever you feel like it.

If you want to try out the routes for yourself, please be aware that pro-races are played out on closed roads. Sometimes the routes may take you the wrong way down one-way-streets, while other sections may be on roads that are closed to cyclists.

Please click on the links in the GPX column for the corresponding downloads.

Tour de France 2023 GPX – free downloads

More about the tour de france.

Big data comes to the Tour de France

Live GPS tracking and analysis for all riders, plus GoPro cameras on certain bikes

This article originally appeared on BikeRadar

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For the first time in Tour de France history, all riders racing in this year's event have GPS transponders on their bikes, with the live data streaming to Tour organisers thanks to technology group Dimension Data.

Each rider has a transponder mounted to his saddle rails. This will be used by every rider for every stage of the Tour.

The data collected from this will include:

• the stage winner’s top speed, average speed and time per kilometre
• the fastest riders up key climbs
• the speed of the winner at the finish line
• the top speed achieved by a rider on the day
• average speed across all riders

"The technology will allow cycling fans to follow the race in ways they’ve never been able to before," Dimension Data executive chairman Jeremy Ord said in a press release. "Until now it was difficult to understand what was happening outside of what could be shown on the live television coverage. The ability to follow riders, get accurate information about which riders are in a group, and see real-time speed are just some of the innovations that will be realized through this solution."

Transponders are assigned by team and rider number: transponders are assigned by team and rider number Each rider has his own GPS transponder for the Tour

Dimension Data is also offering a Daily Data Wrap analysis package, which you can sign up for here.

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Should a rider need to change bikes during a stage, teams are required to notify race officials, as the bikes also have a timing chip on them needed for scorekeeping. In this case, that rider's GPS transponder almost certainly won't be transferred to the space bike as time will be at a premium for the racers. But in between stages when riders change from time trial bikes to their standard race bikes to perhaps an endurance bike for stage four's cobbles, the transponders will go with them.

In related news, GoPro and Tour organizers ASO have partnered this year to deliver GoPro footage from bikes, team cars and more . There will be 12 GoPro Hero4 Black cameras that are used on bikes throughout the race, with each team having at least one rider using one at some point.

12 GoPro cameras will be making their rounds on various bikes throughout the race

Last year was the first time ASO allowed videocameras to be used on bikes during the race, and Shimano leapt at the opportunity with its CM-1000 videocamera used on Shimano-sponsored team bikes. 

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Polar rc3 gps tour de france edition review.

The RC3 was the first built-in GPS sports watch released by Polar in 2012 and this limited edition 2013 kit.

Just like Le Tour winner's yellow jersey, the limited Tour De France edition of the Polar RC3 GPS sports watch comes dressed in a similar bright yellow finish. The RC3 was the first built-in GPS sports watch released by Polar in 2012 and this limited edition 2013 kit - which celebrates the 100th year of the round-France bicycle race - comes complete with a heart rate monitor and cadence meter included in the box. It's got all the kit to measure your training, but is it as much of a winner as its jersey-yellow finish suggests?

Our quick take

There's a lot to love about the Polar RC3 GPS Tour De France. This sports watch provides accurate tracking and has pushed not only our training but our understanding of our training sessions to another level.

Data comes in abundance via the Polar personal trainer hub. Whether you want bite-sized info or extensive detail of the collated data, it's all here. It's this level of detail combined with the reads from cadence and heart rate monitors that turn this Tour De France edition model into a true training machine - way beyond that of a GPS tracking app or similar.

The one main gripe we have with the device is that control over training views isn't possible - there are nine presets that, while detailed and as much as most will ever need, can't be adjusted to suit other purposes. It's quite the opposite to the detailed post-training data that's available.

And then, but of course, there's the price. At £270 it's not a cheap investment, but if you're serious about your training then it does make sense. Think of it as a replacement to six months' gym membership fees and it's not so bad. There's versatility too: the watch design opens up running and other sports too, so while the Polar is less specified than a Garmin Edge 810 is for cycling purposes and lacks route-mapping, it's a different proposition.

The RC3 Tour De France edition is the closest thing to Le Tour winner's yellow jersey that anyone in the Pocket-lint offices will ever get to wear. So we wear it proudly. It's not perfect, but there's a lot of detailed goodness to be had from this tri-sensor kit. C'est bon.

Polar RC3 GPS Tour De France edition - 4.0 / 5

Polar rc3 gps tour de france edition, cycle, run and more.

Sports gadgets are very much the in thing at the moment. The rising interest isn't a fad, though, it's down to a wider audience realising just how effective technology can be when it comes to fitness training. We can't all have support teams to help us along, and regular training is important if you have goals. When it comes to pushing yourself and measuring the true exertion the likes of the Polar RC3 GPS is an ideal concept.

But it's not alone, there are all manner of other GPS sports watches - and more to come - found in among the likes of dedicated bicycle computers such as the Garmin Edge 810 and more casual pedometers such as the Fitbit Ultra.

READ: Hands-on: Garmin Edge 810 review

Whether you like to run, cycle or engage in other sports, the RC3 has space for all - which is one of its key strengths. It's possible to have two bicycle setups, for example, that can be independently measured, alongside a running profile and two "other" sports - whatever they happen to be.

We've been using the RC3 Tour De France for a number of weeks now to get a feel for how it impacts cycle training. That's key for a product such as this: it's not casual kit for use when pottering down to the local shops. When that heart rate monitor is strapped around the chest and the watch is either wrapped around wrist or mounted on the handlebars via its adaptor it's training time.

Comfort-wise the watch feels just right to us. It's reasonably small, but not too small, has openings to keep the sweat at bay and is easy to view in all conditions, even if the screen resolution is basic at best. The strap-around-chest heart rate monitor can feel a little strange in use, as it needs to be tight enough to hold, but it's standard stuff - as much as we'd rather the watch itself was able to accurately detect pulse rate instead.

Like many sports watches the Polar RC3 is based around a five button interface, four to each corner of the watch face and one large red start button to the right. Each is marked on the watch face so it's possible to read their functions with ease. There are up and down buttons which each act as directional controls and a back button used to exit from menus or a training session. To the top left there's a "light" button which does exactly what it says on the tin, while the start button accesses the main menus and readies the GPS tracking.

Synching the watch with both the heart rate and cadence monitors is easy to do too. Within the settings - press the down button, the continue through the three-strong list to settings and use the start button to access - the monitors can be toggled on or off. The watch will then attempt to sync but errors can easily occur if the heart rate monitor's contacts aren't wet or the bicycle's pedals aren't turning when seeking out the cadence monitor. We were also further confused by the presence of a speed monitor setting - an optional wind-measuring Polar accessory that's not included - which we initially confused with being the cadence monitor. Cue dozens of failed sync attempts due to our stupidity, but we got there in the end.

However installing the cadence monitor onto your bicycle is one of the RC3 Tour De France's shortfalls. Instructions aren't available in the box, only via an online video, which is the first hurdle to clear. If you're not familiar with how a cadence monitor works then it's essentially just a counter that logs each full rotation by a pedal-mounted magnet registering in close-proximity to the sensor itself. However the included magnet (there is a second spare) and adhesive tape just aren't all that adhesive which made installing fiddly and positioning is integral for everything to work properly. Oh, and you'll want some wire clippers - or, as we used, some kitchen scissors, neither of which are included - to trim back the plastic cable ties needed to secure the cadence monitor onto the frame.

Once it's on, it's all go, no need to deal with such things again. Until, that is, the cadence monitor's battery dies - and then it's time for a new monitor as the battery can't be swapped out.

Detailed data hub

On the underside of the GPS watch unit there's a port to wire the watch to a computer where it can charge up and transfer data to the polarpersonaltrainer.com hub, which we'll refer to in full as Polar personal trainer hub. You will need to download an application to ensure this process runs smoothly which, for us, was an initial battle as there were some connection errors from time to time. However this resolved itself after a day.

Sending data from the watch is easy: plug it in, wait for the app to pop up on screen and click the sync button. That's it. No button presses on the device itself required.

We're impressed with the ways in which information can be displayed in the Polar personal trainer hub. It's the default service that the RC3 works with, but if you're keen to offload your data in order to plug into an existing service - such as Training Peaks which prior to undertaking this review was our go-to hub - then that's possible too. It is a bit of a faff, but it can be achieved by exporting the GPX and HRM files from the Polar application. That means more work than something like TomTom's forthcoming GPS watch, the Multi-Sport, which the company says is wide open to a variety of third party sites for added ease of use.

READ: TomTom Multi-Sport GPS sports watch pictures and hands-on

Despite this we've grown to like the Polar personal trainer hub's visuals and layout a lot - it's clean to look at and fast to use.

The initial open screen displays your activity feed with individual training sessions stacked up chronologically. As well as a training calendar individual training sessions can be accessed to view all the relevant data you could care for: map views plotted against time, graphs with optional heart rate, cadence, altitude and speed or pace plots, and full data views with calorie burn counts and all data averages.

This can be expanded into week, month of custom-set views to see how training is going over a period of time, while the training load section advises whether training is recommended based on rest periods and intensity of training. We're not totally sold on this, however, as our training was often well into the "training not recommended" zone, despite it being part of the usual ongoing plan.

But zones are what training is all about as you'll either already know or come to learn. Based on your theoretical heart rate maximum - accepted to be 220bpm minus your age - there are groupings of sustained heart rate zones which you may wish to target for a variety of reasons. Weight loss, for example, will benefit from sustained mid-zone training, whereas high-intensity training - usually in peaks and troughs - is a good way to develop aerobic capacity over time.

The RC3 can present live data to you in a number of ways across nine pre-set training views. It doesn't display averages in real-time, but can do pretty much everything else. Whether you want to view heart rate in bpm or as a percentage of capacity, or view which heart rate zone you are in at any given moment that can be done. Lap time, average speed, calories burnt, and altitude all have their own training views too, but these are pre-set and can't be adjusted. Why this is the case we don't know - if you wanted to view altitude against cadence and average speed it's not possible to do that until after training. A shame.

The data round-up at the end of a workout can be viewed on the RC3 itself by clicking up and down multiple screens, which is useful but, ultimately, we found less informative than the uploaded data in context to the rest of your training.

There can be the odd data hiccup. Most common for us was when a training quick start meant GPS hadn't yet locked on or the heart rate monitor suddenly kicking in with alleged beyond-100-per-cent maximum heart rate read. Both of these aren't really down to the product though, more our method of use. A press of the start button will activate GPS prior to then selecting a training session, whereas a rushed double press of the start button might mean you're half way up the road before the GPS kicks in. The heart rate monitor also has to have wet contacts and be positioned properly to the centre of the chest and left to do its thing throughout training.

The closest thing to Le Tour winner's yellow jersey that we'll ever get to, we've got a lot of respect for the Polar RC3. It's upped our training by providing stacks of detail to sessions and is only really let down by a high price, compared to watch competitors, non-customisable training screens and the not-so-sticky adhesive elements needed to install a working cadence sensor. Once it's all up and running we found the RC3's trio of sensors to deliver data where it mattered and provide detail way beyond lesser devices. C'est bon.