Beautiful Data
Re-constructed designs from two decades of performance, progress and panache: the Data Print collection.
05 July 2024
First released in 2015, the Data Print was inspired by the journey of British professional Peter Kennaugh at the 2013 Tour. Using measurements of an anonymous rider’s distance, elevation gain and TSS (Training Stress Score) levels, London-based design studio Accept & Proceed mapped this data to generate a series of chevrons and a unique geometric pattern. Kennaugh’s team at that time was operating at the pinnacle of the sport, renowned for their exhaustive application of statistics and exacting eye for details. In 2024 the Data Print now represents a milestone moment in the sport and a grand departure for Rapha’s design approach, fusing art and science to visualise pro bike racing in a completely new way.
““We knew we wanted to get across the energy and speed of his performance so we looked for a way of filtering and displaying the data that could tell this story.”
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– Nigel Cottier, Accept & Proceed
The graphics represent the daily battles riders like Kennaugh fought in the three-week race, across approximately 2300 miles and 86 hours of riding. Each stage of the 2013 Tour is symbolised by one of the chevrons, starting at Porto-Vecchio in Corsica at the base and finishing in Paris at the line’s summit. The length of each stage relates to the height of this chevron, and the stage’s elevation to how far the chevron extends from the central line. The day’s intensity and duration governs the thickness of the arrow heads’ shaded lines. This dynamic profile was then applied as a pattern to a selection of Rapha’s Pro Team range.
For an often unpredictable sport, one thing is certain in bike racing: numbers count. Technology and the data that drives it cannot be overlooked by teams on the hunt for the competitive edge. From VO2 max and lactate threshold analysis deciding the best place to attack to Computational Fluid Dynamics informing how high your sock length should be, the truth is out there for those who seek it. Even amateur racers and weekend warriors have a galaxy of options to measure performance. Wearable tech, the ubiquity of power meters and immersive virtual platforms make cycling an interconnected, always-on experience. Even the amount of ride ‘sharing’ on social channels means cycling has a dual-reality of being in both the digital and analogue worlds. But is it all a big distraction? Or does it enhance the experience and crucially, elevate performance?
For those numbers to mean something, to be executed on the world’s biggest stage requires other values, namely racing instinct and skill.
““Cycling to me is not just about the numbers and winning races, it’s about the style. The sense of freedom when you are off the front, when you are driving the peloton and knowing you are putting others in pain, putting it all on the line in the little hope that you might pull off something legendary.”
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– Peter Kennaugh.
Some may dismiss today’s stars and water carriers as automatons, guided by real-time data, advanced metrics and sporting directors loaded to the gills with analytics. But in that decisive moment, where the athlete must know what their body is capable of, how their own organic computations feed information to their eyes, heart, lungs and legs. That counts for a lot. The emotion is still there at the finish line for all to see.
Bike racing’s romantic appeal, the emotional value many fans and athletes are hooked on, is not so easy to figure out. The Data Print’s interpretation of numbers is an attempt to show the human story that links electronic pulses and the world’s greatest race. For all the technological innovation and information currently at our disposal, cycling is fundamentally about human power and imagination, and without that, the numbers mean nothing.