The Absa Cape Epic is eight unforgiving days in the saddle – and is the original stage race to stream live footage from out in the field, thanks to Dimension Data. Lindsey Schutters visited the Oak Valley race village to find out more.
FROM AN AIRCRAFT, everything looks peaceful. Meanwhile, the airspace below the Bell 206L is turbulent with data. Dimension Data specialises in dealing with information coming from a cycle race. The company’s management of Tour de France 2016 saw 127,8 million data records processed in the cloud. Tracking 198 riders in 22 teams that generate 42 000 geospacial points and 75 million GPS readings is no easy task.
That data then had to be interpreted to the 17,8 million viewers on the website at a rate of 2 000 page requests per second. Live tracking one of the most watched sporting events on the planet is one thing, but relaying the raw data in an entertaining way is a completely different thing. And that’s what Dimension Data is trying to do: tell stories with data.
We’re not in Europe, though. Here at Oak Valley Estate in the Western Cape Overberg, you can barely get a 3G signal. It’s the finish line for stages 4 and 5 of the 2017 Absa Cape Epic and the area around the race village is an oak and pine forest. The Elgin Valley is a great place for growing fruit, but terrible for broadcasting live from a mountain-bike stage race.
The man expected to achieve the impossible task of getting the information from the race out into the world is Wolf Stinnes and he has an interesting track record. He heads up Didata’s so-called Black Ops team in Cape Town and it is safe to say he has a thing for sport. That interest led the company’s involvement in building five of the seven stadiums for the 2010 football World Cup. Well before the Internet of Things was coined as a buzzword, he helped fit smart building solutions to sports stadiums.
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