Televising the Amgen Tour of California a massive endeavor

Televising and webcasting an event as massive as the Amgen Tour of California, which will be strung out over more than 100 miles of rural roads and coastal canyons for Saturday’s Sonoma County stage, requires a small army of technical whizzes and their equipment.

“One of the challenges is maintaining a rolling local network of connectivity,” said Gavin Chilcott, the chief operating officer of Santa Rosa-based BMC Racing, which has a team in the tour.

Video from moto-cams - mobile cameras from motorcycles that are on the course with the peloton and lead riders - is uploaded to a helicopter or plane flying above that serves as a repeater, retransmitting the electronic signal at a higher power to satellite trucks at the communications center downtown.

Inside the sat truck is a cadre of producers and directors, deciding on the fly which cameras to switch to for the most dynamic coverage of the race.

In addition to the satellite transmissions, broadcasting the pinpoint location of each rider is accomplished through GPS and telemetry devices that monitor and transmit data on speed, location and other race details.

Sonic, the Santa Rosa Internet provider, has for several years donated its high-speed data services to the city as part of the application to serve as a stage host.

“The city reached out to Sonic as we are the local infrastructure provider and asked us to provide the big pipe to uplink all this information,” said Dane Jasper, Sonic’s co-founder and CEO.

Sonic provides “a big broadband pipe,” he said, for the tour’s high-definition video and massive data-transmission needs. That pipe is some 20 times faster than a quality home connection.

“Each year, their needs have gotten bigger and we’ve delivered more each year,” Jasper said.

“They know where every rider is at every moment,” he said. “They are generating maps every second, which is pushed to the (communication) tents, for people to watch locally and on the Internet. The same feed is being viewed live on television worldwide. It’s fascinating to watch.”