{"id":244505,"date":"2026-05-21T11:44:49","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T11:44:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/21\/the-futures-so-bright-i-gotta-wear-ai-powered-shades\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T11:44:49","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T11:44:49","slug":"the-futures-so-bright-i-gotta-wear-ai-powered-shades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/21\/the-futures-so-bright-i-gotta-wear-ai-powered-shades\/","title":{"rendered":"The Future\u2019s So Bright, I Gotta Wear AI-Powered Shades"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It\u2019s AI week here on Tan Tenovo\u2019s House of Irritability, and once again we\u2019ll be taking a look at the profound ethical, legal, financial, and cultural implications of this controversial technology and its evolving impact on the cycling landscape.<\/p>\n

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Nah.<\/p>\n

But we are going to look at more zany AI stuff though<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Of course we all know that Cavendish has had a long relationship with glasses<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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But few appreciate just how long it has been:<\/p>\n

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\u201cI remember my first set of Oakleys. It was at the National Track Championships and I was about 14. It was at the Manchester Velodrome \u2014 there was a store there and there was a\u00a0pair of BMX chrome-end frames. I said to my dad, \u2018If I win, can I get them?\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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I was confused about the \u201cchrome-end frames\u201d until I realized he was probably just talking about M Frames and the transcription software screwed up.<\/p>\n

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AI off to a great start right out of the gate.<\/p>\n

In any case, he\u2019s been wearing them ever since:<\/p>\n

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He did win that day and his dad came good for his birthday. \u201cI still have them. And from that moment, I never wore anything else.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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And no, I will not ask the AI to generate an image of Mark Cavendish wearing nothing but a pair of M Frames.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Cavendish\u2019s dedication to Oakley he now seems to have a deep relationship with Luxottica, for whom he speaks at conferences and stuff:<\/p>\n

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Hosted in Monaco by the Italian eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica, which owns not only Oakley but also Ray-Ban and Persol, and makes many glasses for luxury brands too, Prada, Giorgio Armani and Ralph Lauren among them \u2014 this conference, called Switch, is attended by more than a thousand professionals in optometry, or eyecare, from opticians to doctors and scientists.<\/em><\/p>\n

And me, an amateur cyclist and full-time optical glasses wearer.<\/em><\/p>\n

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If you don\u2019t know about Luxottica, they\u2019re basically to glasses what Pon Holdings is to bikes, except they own all the glasses companies and not just some of them, and they make Pon look like three guys in a garage.<\/p>\n

Of course the next frontier in sports eyewear is AI, and so now Cavendish is pushing their Futuristic Space Glasses:<\/p>\n

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He explains how effectively these glasses bring real-time data to the user: speed, heart rate, recording stabilised video from your point of view, integration with fitness apps like Strava and Garmin, as well as connectivity to phone and messages \u2014 all this can be accessed through audio, hands free.<\/em><\/p>\n

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This technology promises to make your GPS and all that other stuff obsolete:<\/p>\n

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Getting your information through the glasses\u2019 microphones instead has safety implications, of course, but also more nuanced advantages. The sportsman who might otherwise be locked into their phone or computer is now free to be present in the environment they are actually inhabiting. Connect your glasses by Bluetooth to a smartphone or a Garmin smartwatch and then ask \u201cHey Meta\u201d for information like speed, distance travelled, heartrate or navigation guidance, and you\u2019ll hear a voice telling you the information through the speakers in the arms of the glasses.<\/em><\/p>\n

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And Cavendish finds this scary, though he\u2019s got enough of a handle on his fear to keep promoting the glasses:<\/p>\n

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Being able to concentrate 100 per cent on performance is one benefit of the Oakley Meta Vanguard glasses, which have taken the shield lens design so familiar from its non-AI Oakley predecessors. But being able to instantly access data about your performance, and log that data over time, is another. \u201cIt\u2019s actually quite scary,\u201d Cavendish says. \u201cAI will learn your body better than any coach, because it has the data there and then.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

He even sees the day when a competing cyclist will be able to ditch their radio set-up \u2014 earpieces connected to radio units they are carrying in their jerseys, which they use to keep in\u00a0touch with their team cars and teammates to discuss strategy and exchange information. In future you will be able to communicate direct through your Oakley Meta Vanguard glasses. Incidentally, these have the speakers and microphone enhanced to compensate for the noise from activity, like wind.\u00a0\u201cGoing forward, there might not be a need for a\u00a0<\/em>directeur sportif\u00a0\u2014 the bosses in the cars \u2014 because AI is actually going to know what\u2019s happening.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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And it\u2019s not just for pros, either:<\/p>\n

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But at present, says Diogo Guimaraes the VP global brand activation at Oakley, the official cycling bodies are not allowing Oakley Meta to be worn for competitions. \u201cIt feels like an unfair advantage,\u201d he explains \u2014 even though they do not give you any physical edge. Nonetheless Guimaraes thinks that cycling will have to embrace them at some point: \u201cThe adoption is super strong, especially among the high level of athletes,\u201d he says. However, the technology is not just for the elite, he explains. \u201cThe beauty of it is that exactly the same data is available for me and you as for a guy like Mark Cavendish.\u201d For the everyday athlete, there is also the convenience of hands-free connectivity and the ability to take pictures and film and post to social media without slowing down.<\/em><\/p>\n

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I will certainly admit that as a former semi-professional bike blogger turned leisure blogger I do like the pictures and film part, even if I do think fishing your phone out of your jersey pocket and trying not to drop it or crash or both is an integral part of the blogging experience. But I do strongly disagree with Oakley\u2019s brand guy in the sense that the data that is available to Cavendish is absolutely not available to me. Cavendish is an elite athlete, whereas the only data available to me is this:<\/p>\n

\"Motorcycle<\/figure>\n

That was the AI\u2019s second crack at the prompt, in case you\u2019re wondering. The first one was this:<\/p>\n

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A few more passes and it would have been perfect, but I\u2019m too lazy even for AI, so some problems remain. For example, why are all the cars from the 1970s? Still, I\u2019m torn between being afraid of AI and being in awe of it because it gives me god-like photo editing power. Image curation has always been the weakest of my many weak points, which is why the images on this blog used to look like this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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And yes, I realize the lo-fi aspect is part of the charm, but like many of your favorite rock artists I probably never would have bothered with it had I access to more resources and better technology at the time.<\/p>\n

Anyway, Cavendish has brought us much enjoyment over the years, so I\u2019m glad he\u2019s gainfully employed and enjoying his retirement from the sport:<\/p>\n

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Now that Cavendish has retired from pro competition, what he enjoys the most about Oakley Meta is the \u201clittle stuff\u201d, he says. \u201cYou can ask it, \u2018If I\u2019m going at this speed and at this power, how long will it take to get home?\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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Though now that he\u2019s no longer racing why doesn\u2019t he ditch the metrics and JBARA? And if he still needs a pair of smart glasses he can wear Rivendell\u2019s version, which is a paper cue sheet binder-clipped to a pair of wire-rim spectacles you found at an estate sale.<\/p>\n

As for the current pros, most of them seem to be represented by this guy<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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I found this part particularly noteworthy:<\/p>\n

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And when he speaks, people take note.<\/em><\/p>\n

Recently, he caused minor uproar for suggesting that a Visma-Lease a Bike team car crashed into Poga\u010dar on stage 18 of last year\u2019s Tour de France, despite Poga\u010dar stating he suffered a knee injury before the apparent incident. Carera also slammed efforts to monitor riders\u2019 power files in an attempt to detect cheating, stating that \u201cwe do not have a doping problem\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes people like my opinion, sometimes they don\u2019t,\u201d he says. \u201cSometimes people don\u2019t have the balls to say it. For this reason, journalists call and ask me. I only have one face.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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Notice he didn\u2019t say there\u2019s no doping in cycling, he just said it wasn\u2019t a problem.<\/p>\n

Now that\u2019s what you call a pragmatist.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s AI week here on Tan Tenovo\u2019s House of Irritability, and once again we\u2019ll be taking a look at the profound ethical, legal, financial, and cultural implications of this controversial technology and its evolving impact on the cycling landscape. Nah. But we are going to look at more zany AI stuff though: Of course we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":244506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6804],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-244505","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}