Hi Chris,

Why do you want live feeds?
This would only be usefull for racing against the head of the race, which is not related to a particular athlete. Without pejudicing your skills but I would believe that pace would be a little high.

What you in fact need is a full set of waypoints covering the racetrack as accurate as possible.

Go into the Google Earth placemark for the Tour de France.
( A placemark is anything put into a KML/KMZ file to be viewed in GE. Or any single point within such a file.)

Open the Folder for a stage

--�tape 2, Lundi 3 juillet
|
---Route �tape 2

Here you find a placemark (One of the Items in the Folder) named "Route �tape 2"
Right Klick on this Item and choose "save as..."
Save the file as "*.KML" with the name you want.

in this file you have a section like this

<LineString id="khLineString1012">
<coordinates>
7.43994,48.46145000000001,0
7.43928,48.4613,0
7.43887,48.46122,0
7.438690000000001,48.46119,0
7.43815,48.46111,0
7.43805,48.46109000000001,0
7.43757,48.46104,0
7.436950000000001,48.46099,0
.
.
.
</coordinates>
</LineString>
but much much longer
(in fact with 6634 points for Stage 2 ! that is an average of 35m between 2 points!)

Each line is a point of the trackline in the format "longitude,latitude,altitude"

Basically you do not have to understand this file format! Just go to
http://gpsvisualizer.com/convert
choose the file you just saved in GE and convert it to GPX format.
Download the attached GPX File of stage 2 as example for testing


Normally you should be able to import the GPX file into your trainer Software.
However, remember we do not have altitude information and can not get it.

regarding the altitude problem look here:
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/311913/an/page/page//vc/1


Live position is only published in the internet as progress in the race as a distance from start, therefore no coordinates!

I hope this clarifies a little your view of the situation.

Hello everybody,

I too saw the possibilty of multiple views for the live tracking...
Personally I only use the "close follow view" but I am curious about the "split positions" option...

What is the objective of this option?? And when will it work?? Excuse me if I seem unpatient

If it is what I hope (the position of every group) I would be very excited!!

Keep up the good work!!

Hi Lunie,

Well the split positions is my try to follow not only the head of the race but all groups forming. This was for the last 2 stages the head group and behind the peloton. Basically it can be more groups.

This tracking is working from time to time and crashingdue to parse errors.
You see the rules to set up to extract the time gap between the groups is quite tricky, because I never know in andvance how many groups there are.

As I am at work during the stages I have no chance of relaunching the script upon failure.

On Saturday we have a contre la montre where we will not have live coverage, but on Sunday I should be able to follow the race and debug the script and work out a reliable solution.

Hi Lucifer,

thanks for your answer! I'm hoping you will succeed in making a reliable solution.
It is very nice to see the difference between the groups in the TdF.

Greetz,
Lunie

Sorry,
My FTP on the web account is temporarily down.

I can do nothing but wait.
Scripts are running and trying to upload. As soon the FTP is back online tracking will continue.

Everything back to normal. Sorry for missing the beginning of Stage 6.

First of all, thanks for this excelent Placemark!

If one is interested in some photos of the tour, you can find some of the "Caravane Publicitaire" and the "Prolog" on my website.
It would be nice if other could share there website of tour photos here, too.

Hi Lucifer:

The split tracking worked great today. Thanks for adding that feature, it really enhances the visual experience.

Will

I confirm! Great Idea.

Thanks for the feedback,

I am glad it works finally after 4 Stages of testing...
I will see to upgrade the other views to include the diferent groups of the race.

Unfortunately I could not follow todays stage, Family comes first.

Thanks for the input.. the prolog is completed after writing code to access the site, and alot of manual editing!!

I am now working on the Stage 7 ITT...

A question though.. the stage Was 52KM, but the route on google earth only shows 46.67KM for some reason...

Any ideas?

Thanks!!!

Chris