Dimension Data flexes its number-crunching muscle with the Tour de France

To show off its data-processing muscle (and, presumable, because it likes cycling) Dimension Data has put trackers on the saddles of riders in this year’s Tour de France. With the race a little over the halfway mark, Dimension Data has released a summary of the statistics gleaned from processing and analysing the data coming from the riders for the first 11 stages of the race.

Some of the insights plucked from the data include the following:

• The highest speed in the first 11 stages was 109.08km/h by Lars Boom during the third stage at the 144km mark. This was followed by 93.38km/h by Alejando Valverde at the 149km mark of stage 11, and 78.48km/h by André Greipel on stage 5 at the 89.4km mark.
• The highest average speed achieved by a stage winner was 55.45km/h — recorded by Rohan Dennis during the first stage — while the average speed across all riders for the first 11 stages was 42.46km/h.
• The average speed of the riders during the big spill in last Wednesday’s third stage was 42.03km/h.
• The analysis of riders’ speed through a feed zone shows that, on average, riders slow down 20km/h when picking up musette bags.

“The complicated analytical information and processing on the beta live tracking site for the first half of the race has run smoothly,” says Jeremy Ord, Dimension Data’s executive chairman. “It’s very exciting to see the high speeds that riders are achieving. However, we think these speeds could be even higher. That’s because there have been areas along the route — especially in the mountains — that we did not receive transmission of signal from the trackers.”

Technical glitches notwithstanding, Ord says overall “the response from the public has been fantastic.”

According to Ord, Dimension Data’s analytics team on the ground is currently processing between 1.5 million and 2.5 million records per stage. And you thought you were busy.

Click here to see more stats from Dimension Data’s haul.