I’ll get to the headline news in just a moment, but first an announcement on Google’s MyTracks Android app:

Very soon, Google’s MyTracks sports tracking application will be updated to support both ANT+ and Bluetooth devices, making MyTracks one of the most versatile apps in its category.

Back to the headline… Exciting news surrounding Tour de France coverage! Google and High Road Sports have entered a collaboration, together with partnerships from HTC and SRM, to bring spectators of the Tour de France closer than ever seen before.

High Road Sports announces a new technology and marketing collaboration with Google Inc., supported by partners HTC and SRM, that brings a worldwide audience further inside the experience of racing in the Tour de France.

Fans and viewers will be able to follow Team HTC-Columbia riders in real time with speed, heart rate, power output and other data provided by SRM, presented and enhanced with Google’s leading applications – Google Maps, Street View, Google Earth, Android, and My Tracks.

As the title sponsor of Team HTC-Columbia, HTC has worked closely with SRM, Google and High Road’s technical team to develop HTC Legend smartphones that operate with HTC Sense with Android™ 2.1. These smartphones will collect real time racing and location information and transmit it wirelessly to Google’s servers.  The phones run Google’s mobile application ‘My Tracks’ which reads the racing data directly from the SRM sensors on the bike.   Racing information is then enhanced with Google’s leading applications and made public to all interested viewers and users via API’s made available by Google.

Google is encouraging Press, TV and web developers to take the data and build rich applications that make use of the data at this year’s Tour de France. The read only API can be accessed through the contacts listed below.

“I’m thrilled about the opportunity to leverage Google’s My Tracks application to deliver real-time racing information to fans watching the Tour de France,” said Dylan Casey, Product Manager at Google and former professional cyclist with the US Postal Service team. “This is a unique, engaging way to help cycling fans all around the world get a sense of what the riders go through during each stage of the race and follow the performance of the world-class riders on Team HTC-Columbia. We’re fortunate to work with such great partners – High Road Sports, HTC, SRM, and ANT+ – to make this possible.”

“Professional cycling is such an advanced technical sport and we’re excited for Team HTC-Columbia to be embracing innovative wireless and location-based technologies like Google’s My Tracks and HTC smartphones to deliver unprecedented rider data to the team, media and cycling fans around the world,” said John Wang, chief marketing officer, HTC Corporation.

“Google and HTC are ideal partners to further develop the sport of cycling and present it to a worldwide audience in an engaging way,” says Owner of HTC-Columbia Bob Stapleton. “The interest of such innovative partners  is very encouraging and we look forward to continuing to develop this project in the future.”

Source: High Road Sports

I purchased my Android mobile with Google’s apps and services integration as the main draw. The announcement above is exactly what I had been hoping for; Mobile sports tracking is about to get center stage attention.

MyTracks already combines a number of Google services to make it stand out in a competitive category. Google Docs, Maps, Maps Editor, and Google Earth all seamlessly integrate with the MyTracks application. Together with support for ANT+ and Bluetooth devices, you can immediately expect heart rate data to be added, as well as the potential for all sorts of new vital statistics to add to your recorded workouts.

Thanks to Rodrigo from the MyTracks team for the alert on the news!