For the benefit of cycling, race radios should be banned. They give us boring races, boring riders and don’t improve safety.

For many years, cycling was one of the most conservative sport disciplines. The bikes of the eighties looked more or less like the bikes of the seventies or sixties, just as the riders approached racing, training, eating and doping in quite conventional ways.

In the nineties, everything exploded. Bikes were made of new materials like aluminum and carbon and came in a wealth of new shapes. Wheels sometimes had as little as 4 (carbon) spokes. And the widespread use of EPO in the professional peloton changed what riders where capable of: Grand Tours were won or nearly won by riders who wouldn’t normally have had a chance to succeed, and the highest mountain stages were won by riders “with asses as big as helicopters”.

The use of EPO and similar doping products now seems more under control, just as the UCI has governed quite rigorously what a bike should look like. But one innovation from the nineties remains: The use of race radios.

It was the Motorola team which first brought the use of radios into the peloton. The successor to the Motorola Team, US Postal, used them as well and the use of race radios were an integral part of Lance Armstrong’s 7 Tour de France victories.

Lance Armstrong’s race tactic was all about control. Racing to cover his opponents, letting the insignificant breaks go clear and crushing the other GC contenders on targeted stages. Lance Armstrong would never go on an unplanned attack just because he felt he had good legs on the day. He would wait until the moment he got the “GO!” from Johan Bruyneel, and then he would go 100%.

With seven Tour de France victories one has to admit the tactic works, but it’s also one which often brings boring racing – because nothing happens until the moments chosen out in advance by the GC contenders and their directeurs sportifs.

And that’s basically where we are today. We’re looking at one stage after the other in the Tour de France in the hope of something happening, something which is not according to schedule, but it rarely does. There is the usual breakaway, but you know for sure that the sprinter teams will have it under control and real it in within the last kilometers.

In the mountains, we witness one stage after the other with the GC contenders watching each other – and waiting. In the Tour of 2011, this is how the stages in the Pyrenees were run.

Apart from boring races, what the race radios give us are boring riders. A rider like Thomas Voeckler doesn’t need someone in the team car telling when to attack; neither does Philippe Gilbert. But they are a minority. For each Gilbert, you have ten Andy Schleck. Talented riders, but riders who have never had to rely on their racing instinct. And are therefore unable to seize the opportunity when it presents itself.

Apart from GC contenders watching each other for most of a stage race, what race radios bring are sprint stages being controlled almost 100% by the sprinters’ teams. Last year, you were 99% sure that HTC-Highroad had the sprint stages under control, since they were constantly up to date with the gap to the breakaway and the ability of the riders in the break to share the workload. You still had the early breaks, but everybody – including the escapees – knew that it was just for TV exposure. The days where it sometimes pays off to take a chance in an early break on a flat stage are gone, and radios are a huge part of that.

A lot of people agree on these disadvantages of race radios. The organisers, the UCI, some of the riders and I guess most of the people watching cycling. However, the proponents of radios (especially the directeur sportifs, i.e. the ones behind the microphones) have one argument in favour of radios which has been hard to counter: The argument of rider safety.

The argument goes that it’s imperative to the riders’ safety that they can be warned in case of dangerous situations. If radios are banned, the argument goes, we will see more crashes and possibly fatal accidents. In fact, the ban on race radios has been compared to removing the brake cables.

But if we look at the argument about rider’s safety, it doesn’t hold up.

First of all: Riders crash. They always have and they always will; it’s a simple consequence of riding fast in a bunch constantly changing speed and direction. It has nothing to do with radios.

Secondly: It has been suggested that we see more crashes than we used to. But if so, this is a consequence of the rapidly expanding use of road furniture on public roads and possibly a change of mentality among the riders more than anything else. The days where a Bernard Hinault could dictate how the peloton should behave are gone. Ten or fifteen years ago, we would never have seen a move like the one Karpets made on Contador in the Tour de France 2011, sending him down and ruining the chances of a GC contender due to the following knee problems. The lack of leadership in the peloton leads to more aggressive riding and less respect mutual among the riders, meaning more crashes.

Third, if the safety of the riders were the main concern, it could easily be solved by communication between the race organisers and the capitaine de route of each team. Remember, the race organisers see the potentially dangerous parts of the road before the riders, not after like the directeur sportifs in the caravan behind the peloton. The directeur sportifs only become aware of a new danger when someone has already crashed. An example of this was stage 2 to Spa in the Tour de France 2010, which saw numerous riders crashing on a slippery descent. An early warning would have given them the opportunity to lower the tempo, but they were only told about the danger after dozens of riders had crashed.

Third, one could turn the argument around: That race radios lead to more crashes, not less. This is because all riders are told by their Directeur Sportifs to go to the front before potentially dangerous parts of the course, where you don’t want to be stuck in the back of the peloton if there’s a crash. If you have your boss shouting in your ear to get to the front that’s what you do…except that if the whole peloton tries to be at the front at the same time, there will be a lot of pushing and fighting for position. It has often been the case that the crashes occur before the potentially dangerous sectors.

In fact, some teams (especially Italian, to my knowledge) are rumoured to use the dangerous parts of the road as points of attack, especially in the mountains. Among these teams are Liquigas, who should have used this tactic intensely in the Giro d’Italia. Going hard before a dangerous sector gives you an advantage, even more so if some of the opponents get stuck in or behind a crash.

As we all remember, the only death during a race in cycling in a decade was Wouter Weylandt crashing downhill in the Giro, trying to bridge to a faster group after being stuck in the back of the peloton, though it should be emphasized that there has not been made any connection between his death and Liquigas or any other team for that matter.

To sum up, the use of race radios give us boring races and boring riders. And they don’t really prevent crashes. It would be a huge benefit to cycling if they were banned.

…but since the race radios have become part of the power struggle between the UCI and the teams, nothing much is probably going to happen in the Pro Tour races. This year should have been the first without radios, but they’re still here and no ban is in sight.