Another WTF?

 Another in the WTF? series

This. WTF?

Really? The UCI lets this go on? Guy racing at speed on a twitchy chrono bike depending on a man in the follow-car's guidance via his radio earpiece?

Zio's been ranting against various electronic gizmos pretty much since the Motorola team introduced the team radio to the pro peloton years ago. Things have only gotten worse with touchscreen gizmos mounted on the handlebar stem to provide all kinds of data to the rider: heart rate, power output, GPS-mapping of the route and gawd-knows what else?

Zio is concerned about how dull racing can be with riders looking at these gizmos instead of where they are going, not to mention being directed by instructions through their radio earpiece, something noted in a recent issue of Bicisport magazine feature on Giuseppe Saronni who laments these things turning riders into marionettes.

But is Zio the only one that thinks these things are dangerous rather than just mostly useless "tech" for "tech"s sake? Kung's crash is one thing, then there was this. And Zana mentions Gino Mader who similarly missed a turn and crashed, losing his life in the process?

We'll never know if poor Gino was doing the same thing as Zana, but will it take another incident like these to make the UCI seriously consider banning these things? How do they make bike racing better or more exciting to watch?

Riders do a lot of talking about their safety and how nobody is looking out for them. How seriously do they expect their complaints to be received when they do things like these, putting their own lives in danger?

Update: Kung says UCI should "do something" Read it HERE. Zio thinks the answer is simply to do away with these silly, mostly useless bikes, but what does he know?