Cycling is - once again - talking about race radios. Speaking in a L’Equipe documentary, ‘Crash, peloton sous tension’, last week, Groupama-FDJ boss Marc Madiot called for the restriction of radios, power meters and GPS during professional road races.
The debate around the use of radios has long raged on. Since their introduction in the 1990s, they have appeared in and out of the peloton. They were banned in 2011 by the then-president of the UCI, Pat McQuaid, only to reappear a few years later. In 2017, David Lappartient warned that gamblers could hack the radio lines, and campaigned for their ban once more. Only last year, the UCI trialled a restricted use of radios, and they are still not in use in World Championship and Olympic races, but are in professional ones.
