MTB
Romania's Vlad Dascălu goes head-to-head with a racing drone to see if the technology can be used as a training tool to aid performance.
The use of drones as a coaching aid has become more prevalent in professional sport in the past few years as teams and athletes have come to discover the benefits that technology can offer as an observational tool. The same kind of drones have been used by mountain bikers but mainly to shoot spectacular riding footage for film or clip segments. Do drones have a use beyond that in mountain biking? In training perhaps?
It's a question that Romania's cross-country mountain biker Vlad Dascălu sought to find out during a recent off-season training camp in his home country after being convinced that he should work a racing drone into his training by Romanian filmmaker Alexandru Prepeliță.
Watch Dascălu get into the zone as he trains with the racing drone in the video above.
A carrot on a stick approach
For the purpose of this training project, Dascălu would be chasing a drone (a racing drone) as opposed to it being over his head. Would chasing a drone motivate Dascălu to go fast as possible with a carrot, so to speak, dangling in front of him?
The location for the training camp would be in Păltiniș in Romania, an area rich with mountain biking and hiking trails. A route was set that was practical for both Dascălu and the racing drone to navigate.
Testing Dascălu's limits
The project team recorded the speed variation of the racing drone on different types of sections (downhill, flat, uphill) when Dascălu did runs on the chosen trail route. By turning the drone speed up a notch per run, the team would be able to see how Dascălu coped with the pace, and of course see if he could beat recorded times on those different sections or on a trail as a whole.
The racing drone tech
Standard drones aren't very fast so a racing drone was the machine of choice in this experiment with Dascălu. Drones used in FPV (first-person view) racing are super impressive in terms of the speed and agility they have and are the only things that can come close to the speeds mountain bikers can ride at when in full flow. The racing drone used in the training camp was custom-built for this project.
Not only did Dascălu have to get used to the course, but so did the pilots in operation of the drone. Racing drones have a camera at the front of the drone, which relays back a live stream camera feed to a pilot who can then see what's in front of him/her on a viewer. These drones aren't cheap and in this shoot there were just two spares on hand in case of damage to any drones that crashed into trees.
A thumbs up from Dascălu
After five days of training and filming the project was declared a success with Dascălu pleased by the results
"The benefit of using a racing drone is that it makes you push really hard to follow it. It motivates you to do your best on every section of the track. Based on my experience with the drone, it was more beneficial to me as a training aid when I had to go up hill."
Would Dascălu use a racing drone again in his training? It's a definite yes from the Romanian.
"I really enjoyed the time of training and filming with the drone and it will be very nice to do it again in the future."