Tour De France 2014 Stage 3: Cambridge - London

[grouse mate]

I think he was hampered by the cavendish crash on the first stage and was never going to get near stage 2, what happened last night? I was expecting a second place from him, was he hindered at all on the run in?

I didn't see anything but didn't get much of a view of the crash towards the end, one report says he lost the wheel of his lead out somehow. If I was gonna pick somebody who had no luck at the finish I'd say Demare, just couldn't get a clear gap to sprint. Greipel was at the back of the final sprint bunch of 20 odd riders so he must have been close enough when they came into the straight. Maybe the weather put him off.

 

[Saladin sucks]

I'm not sure why they've been spending so much time in the commentary booth either. In the past, Matt Keenan has done the early commentary, until Phil & Paul rock up and take over. So far they've done all of the commentary on the 3 stages to date.

I don't mind them explaining the basics of cycling, such as drafting. I don't even mind them doing it every stage - there will always be some people who are watching the Tour for the first time, who don't have a great understanding of what they're watching. What does irritate me is the number of times they repeat themselves within the same stage - how many times did they tell us about the National Titles pedigree of the Czech rider in the breakaway last night?

Yes Phil and Paul are an outdated model. Unfortunately they do commentary for most English speaking countries and the networks are trying to bring in new viewers. The repeated anecdotes are there because lots of viewers only see the 30min highlight package product not the full live feed product. As in a lot of things we are at the mercy of what US networks want.

The tour organisers supply the feed vision and then the networks provide their own audio. So there are lots of commentators in a media room just looking at screens and talking about what they see on a small screen in front of them at any point in time. They have notes about every rider and just keep repeating those notes any time he is on the screen. They also have supplied media booklets about local buildings etc. that they read when the feed does the preorganised cuts to those buildings. Also the local regions have paid for the race to be there on the basis that their tourism and business opportunities will be promoted in the feed.

Keenan is doing some work for another organisation so they may be restricted how much they can use him.

I thought that the commentary was much worse in stage 2 when bunch got down to about 20 riders in final kms and they didn't make any effort to name all the riders there or even the team representation. So Kwiatkowski, Mollema, Bardet all finished in top 10 placings without ever being mentioned. I don't mind them getting names wrong, e.g. naming a BMC rider as Van Garderen and then correcting to Van Avermaet later, so much as not even trying to talk about riders that are there.

The big solution is to have a GPS chip incorporated into the rider's number that they already must have on their bikes at all times. And then the organisers provide a live online digital list of names in placing order (perhaps even with live time gaps from when leader passed that point) in addition to their live vision. It's not that hard. Although I suspect TV networks don't want that to happen as it will mean less attention to their ad breaks.

I thought McCrossin who did the livestream for Giro by himself was much better because he focussed on the race and the riders.

But we can rant all we want. Phil is incredibly popular with lots of folks who think he is "the voice of cycling". I've been to a few events where he has been and it is amazing the number of people (usually middle aged) who go up to him and line up waiting to get their pictures taken with him. Also I think he has just signed a new 5 year contract with US networks.

I actually think cycling coverage is going to get worse short term (except for the in peleton cameras of course). While we might see more cycling on TV, rights holders will pay more and be more aggressive shutting down other sources of info - as is happening with CyclingHub on YouTube.

 

[Vader]

I like the idea of the riders being GPS chipped. It would be good if that information was actually available to the general public. It would be more accurate than the time checks provided by the GPS equipment mounted on the motorcycles. It's remarkable how much the gaps change, by upwards of 30 seconds, depending on where the GPS motorcycle is located relative to the front of the group it's escorting. You sometimes see the times inexplicably go up (or down) by 30 seconds or more - and it's not due to the gap changing, just the motorbike having gone to the back of the group instead of riding at the front.

 

[Saladin sucks]

I didn't see anything but didn't get much of a view of the crash towards the end, one report says he lost the wheel of his lead out somehow. If I was gonna pick somebody who had no luck at the finish I'd say Demare, just couldn't get a clear gap to sprint. Greipel was at the back of the final sprint bunch of 20 odd riders so he must have been close enough when they came into the straight. Maybe the weather put him off.

I think Greipel ran out of leadouts rather than lost their wheel - Lotto went too early if that is all they had. Demare and Greipel were both alone at the end hoping to get a gap or tow from someone else. Greipel had his head up pretty early. I think he saw the wall of sprinters in front of him and knew he wasn't going to get in first 3 so gave up. Equally if he had plenty of energy he could have gone wide and passed a few. There was room on wings - looked like he didn't have the gas IMO.

Compare Demare and Greipel to Coquard. Coquard came up after Demare and Greipel were isolated, but behind an escort (Reza) who took him round the other sprinters all trying to get on Kittel's wheel, and dropped him where he had clear space to have a crack.

 

[Saladin sucks]

I like the idea of the riders being GPS chipped. It would be good if that information was actually available to the general public. It would be more accurate than the time checks provided by the GPS equipment mounted on the motorcycles. It's remarkable how much the gaps change, by upwards of 30 seconds, depending on where the GPS motorcycle is located relative to the front of the group it's escorting. You sometimes see the times inexplicably go up (or down) by 30 seconds or more - and it's not due to the gap changing, just the motorbike having gone to the back of the group instead of riding at the front.

Yes it has to be a publicly available online screen (which networks won't want).

Some races do something similar now for Time Trials, someone did it for Giro. They have full live online ranked lists of times for every rider passed every checkpoint. Lots of people aren't keen on watching time trials on TV, but with the live online time lists they are much better. Having all that info also showed how poor the actual live TT commentary was in describing the race and current standings (they only talked about current top 10 at finish point, and fastest time at each checkpoint).

 

[phantom13]

I still think they need speed checks, up climbs, in sprints, even just on the flat, in the graphics. Without anything to compare it to its just not helpful (especially to the noobs)

 

[grouse mate]

I think Greipel ran out of leadouts rather than lost their wheel - Lotto went too early if that is all they had. Demare and Greipel were both alone at the end hoping to get a gap or tow from someone else. Greipel had his head up pretty early. I think he saw the wall of sprinters in front of him and knew he wasn't going to get in first 3 so gave up. Equally if he had plenty of energy he could have gone wide and passed a few. There was room on wings - looked like he didn't have the gas IMO.

Compare Demare and Greipel to Coquard. Coquard came up after Demare and Greipel were isolated, but behind an escort (Reza) who took him round the other sprinters all trying to get on Kittel's wheel, and dropped him where he had clear space to have a crack.

I liked Europecar's move along the barrier, there was not a lot of space there and I think it ended up forcing katusha to change to the other side. Coquard deserves every point he is getting, is taking risks but he is putting himself in good positions. Greipel looks to me out of form, I'd say he has had better lead outs than Sagan and Coquard but hasn't really looked like winning one, even in the intermediates.

 

[Belnakor]

I like the idea of the riders being GPS chipped. It would be good if that iniformation was actually available to the general public. It would be more accurate than the time checks provided by the GPS equipment mounted on the motorcycles. It's remarkable how much the gaps change, by upwards of 30 seconds, depending on where the GPS motorcycle is located relative to the front of the group it's escorting. You sometimes see the times inexplicably go up (or down) by 30 seconds or more - and it's not due to the gap changing, just the motorbike having gone to the back of the group instead of riding at the front.

My dream would be to have a live feed of GPS data for every rider. Us at home analysts could calculate pretty much anything you would care to know, wattage, spilts etc. I doubt the tour organizers would like it too much though!

 

[Belnakor]

They have notes about every rider and just keep repeating those notes any time he is on the screen.

quintana's from last year must have just said "was born 5000m above sea level"

 

[iluvparis]

My fave repeated line is the classic Paul pulls out in the last 2km of EVERY sprint finish.

'Touch the breaks now and you'll immediately lose 10-20 positions'