"Did I hear a 'Niner' In There?"

A voice crackles across the radio, "It's going to rain in five minutes. Come get jackets."We have Alessandro up the road in a breakaway of five. It's early in the stage and the peloton is still inching along without any real impetus, so the time to the breakaway ticks greater. Despite the poor reception, the same message has clearly been echoed from the commissionaire tending to the breakaway up the road back to the entire caravan of cars behind us and next up to we riders in between. Within fifteen seconds, a tenth of the peloton slows dramatically creating an immediate scrum of cyclists putting on their jackets and grabbing seven more for their teammates huddled in the peloton. On queue, five minutes later, the sky opens up something vicious.With all the press that's made about race radios, there's an assumption that the caravan of cars is a roving, tactical war room. Snaking along just feet behind the peloton at 25mph, it's understood that team directors can be found scheming with one another as their pawns up the road pedal some strategic choreographed dance like robotic lemmings.Mis-understood, rather. I'd estimate the tactics-to-general-information ratio that transmits across radios somewhere the range of 1:10.Road construction in ten kilometers. You'll only have the left lane.There might be a train blocking the road.Winds are changing, they'll be coming strong from the left after the next right turn.Alessandro says the climb is steeper than what's reported in the race bible.Three consecutive roundabouts coming up. Probably should take them all on the left.The news isn't always coming from the back forwards, from car to riders. The peloton often has such exciting things to say back to directors as, "Front flat. Ted coming back for a front flat tire. Oh hey, I'll grab a few bottles while I'm at it." Riveting.Safety provides a tremendous case for race radios. The most painful thing I ever experienced related to having a cable in my ear took place during an especially ridiculous stage of the 2009 Giro, as we tore up and down mountain after mountain on goat paths never more than one lane wide. Netting designed to slow ski racers from their 70mph crashes was haphazardly lined along the outside of knife edged cliffs. I still get chills thinking about what I heard on the radio in frantic Dutch, "What... who went off the cliff?!" Silence was deafening for a long long time as we stared at the wheel in front of us and pedaled on. Would that have had a different outcome with or without radios? I can sure tell you that he may never have been reported missing, 200+ feet down a cliff if we didn't have radios to message back to the cars.The three words that come comes across race radio more than anything else? Eat and drink. From seasoned vets to green rookies, everyone gets the same message, no matter the team, the language, the race: eat and drink. Directors are resolute in their steadfast commitment to keep us well fed and hydrated. We're also privy to such fabulous further insight such as, "Eat and drink guys. We're three hours into the stage. Don't forget to eat and drink." Convenient info in case riders have forgotten how to keep time.Bike racing, of course, isn't purely a mindless sprint to the line like the 100 meter dash, so inevitably there are tactics to be had. Those are assessed in meetings the evening before. They're again echoed on the bus at the start with each rider having a specific job or two for the day. Be in the breakaway, is a no brainer. Monitor breakaways, means allow it to be no more than some predetermined number, say, five riders. Be certain that team XYZ doesn't get into in the break needs no translation. Become so-and-so's shadow translates to, if he's in the breakaway, so are you. When attacks, you attack. Become someone's right hand man: a teammate of yours needs a shuttle to the front of the pack, then pull him up there. He needs to pee? Turns out so do you.Tactics can become mildly more complicated than that, and they often are when evening meetings drain on for hours on end. But let's be frank: there are 18 teams vying for victory and only one can come away with the win. If each team has everything go exactly as planned, there would be 18 winners and that ain't bike racing. (Or maybe it is, which is why there's a sprint jersey, mountains classification, individual stages, best French rider -- always, points jersey, general classification, and on and on down the list. But that's not the point here.)So what is the alternative to race radios? That cyclists have to think for themselves, or else drop back to the caravan and talk tactics with our director? That happens anyway, whether there are electronics in your pockets or otherwise. Not all races have radios, and very little happens differently in races with race radios as without. Here's an curious assessment: if radios are frowned upon because they're a modern advent to a traditional sport, then why do we have race officials radioing back information to the peloton that's displayed on a chalk board in the first place? That information tells the time splits between the breakaway and the pack, but the cutting edge technology that currently exists to calculate that (a stop watch) is laughable. I'm embarrassingly amazed when watching a bike race on TV and we hear the sterling analysis, "Well, there is a breakaway up the road of four riders... but we don't know where they are." Or when I've been in a race and over the course of five minutes, a breakaway will literally gain five minutes. Barring that we've literally stopped in our tracks for five minutes, that's impossible.Meanwhile, the telemetry in Formula One is measured down to the thousandth of a second whereas cycling can't establish within minutes where a breakaway stands. (Head slap.)I think radios represent a sliver of modernity in a sport steeped in the dark ages. Sure, make the information public, broadcast it to television... or play it at night and it'll probably help you go to sleep, because there ain't much interesting happening there in the first place. If for nothing else than safety's sake, keep 'em.Or don't.