Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease A Bike), Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers), Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) and the other riders in this year’s O Gran Camiño are set to reap the potential benefits of a new live weather forecast system which the race organisers hope will allow them to avoid or anticipate stage cancellations.
The innovatory system of portable miniature weather stations, moved along the route to provide instant updates, will be used in the four-day 2.1 race, which starts Thursday with an individual time trial in A Coruña.
Last year, O Gran Camiño was forced to suspend the opening stage because of snow storms, which had battered the riders for two hours but which then ended just a few kilometres further on.
“We can’t change the dates of our race, because there just aren’t any others and we have an excellent participation at this time of year,” O Gran Camiño race director Ezequiel Mosquera told AS on Wednesday.
“So what we have to do is invest in race safety and that safety often includes getting live information about what is happening a few kilometres up the road. We had a meeting and we came up with the idea of these weather stations.”
Although races like those run by ASO often have live weather updates from different points in a stage on their live blogs, this system will apparently offer a much more detailed level of information. According to AS, portable weather stations have never been used before in a bike race. But in any case, in a region like Galicia, where the weather can vary enormously in a single day and on different parts of the route, it could prove to be especially invaluable.
AS also cites the case of the Giro d’Italia 2023, where forecasts of heavy rainfalls prevented a stage over the San Bernardo Pass being held in full, despite the far side of the mountain proving to be totally dry.
“The idea is to connect this all via a wi-fi network, post that information on the web and allow race followers get access to the weather in real time,” Mosquera told the newspaper.
“It will help us to take decisions although it’s true that sometimes you have to take them without knowing fully what the situation is further on. It’s a test this year, but I’m convinced, through the first experiments we did, that it’ll work well. We can’t change the weather, but we can keep a close eye on it.”
While it remains to be seen if the experiment works out – and if Spain’s often patchy data coverage in rural areas has any effect on its efficiency – the current weather forecasts for O Gran Camiño over the next four days, in any case, are not great. Rain is currently predicted for all four stages, with temperatures dropping to 3°C on Friday’s stage to Lugo.
