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I think cycling being so niche is what makes it endure & prosper with its own little safe space carved out among all the other sports. You get to say "hey, I saw Hindley blow the Giro to pieces on the final mountain stage" whilst everyone else gushes over the prospect of Nadal winning his 114th French Open, Real Madrid winning their 114th European Cup or the Monaco GP's 114th boring edition of expensive race cars driving around in circles for almost two hours.
And I'd much rather have the sport like this than witness the total cr*p which happened in the champions league final last night, i.e. undiluted stupidity, incompetence & chaos which always seems to follow the so-called 'beautiful game' wherever it goes all too often. Add the fact these other so-called more mediatized sports feature sportsmen so rich & so disconnected from reality it makes them difficult to root for.
Cycling is a people's sport & I like it as it is (insofar as the spectators on the climbs aren't too crazy, i.e. yesterday was borderline with a couple of 'interesting' specimens).
I agree with the general sentiment here but let's be honest, the twilight of this Giro is not the best of times to criticize another sport for being boring.
I agree, but it's still weird though, in the sense that in Europe road cycling is probably fairly equal in popularity to F1, tennis, golf and basketball (though well behind football), and for the fact that Australia has a lot of success in it. We probably make up 5% of most pelotons, throwing our weight around more often than we do in those other sports (apart from Barty really). But if an Aussie wins the 114th biggest golf tournament in the world it's a big deal, but apart from the Tour de France (or Olympic races every four years), cycling barely rates a mention.
Even the best of football leagues will have its share of dour 0-0s, but one thing cycling has is that the cast of thousands element to it means that even if a race is boring, it seldom gets to the point of predictability where there's only three or four people (or teams) that can win absolutely every time, because there's also secondary jerseys, stage wins and so on to compete for.
The flip side is, in football, tennis and other H2H sports only two players or teams face off at any one time so if I don't want to watch Real Madrid vs. Barcelona I can always watch, say, Getafe vs. Espanyol on another channel and avoid the teams or players that don't interest me, which is harder to do with cycling. Except, paradoxically, with the camera crew of this Giro, who've elected not to show what little GC battle we've actually had for most of the race, in favour of the breakaway and those contesting the stage win.
Not sure if even Cuddles received much Australian attention, until after he won the Tour. Everything else that he'd achieved before, then became a bigger deal, in media retrospect.
It's not that the other sports I mentioned are "boring" per se (perhaps I worded my sardonic post incorrectly), it's that they're sh*t.
IMO. Since I've been watching all sports since I was a kid in the 1990's I have developed a sort of detached view & I see the other sports for what they are: f1 is the playground for the sons of former champions, manufactured "stars" given the best equipment & billionaire children, football since the Bosman ruling is totally detached from its roots, no team represents its town/city/region /culture/country anymore (& they're all overpaid mercenaries & self centred prima donnas), tennis is also rich kid playground.
I could rant forever about this but cycling is still a sport with normal people who aren't filthy rich & most aren't unlikeable.
3 minutes.
Just click on the link in post number two to find out, or just read that post and deduce the answer.
El Pistolero: "If it's got clasico in its name, then it's not a clasico."
I don't know the Spanish schedule and how many games overlap in any given round, but with 20 teams in the league (right?) it is plainly obvious that it's not very often a possibility.
You do get games overlapping, obviously El Clásico is one of the games that tends not to get scheduled against too many (other than potentially if they meet in the draw in things like Cup scenarios and the schedule is already set for those) because of the higher level of interest in it.
But given the choice of Getafe vs. Espanyol and Barcelona vs. Real Madrid? Yea, I'd watch Getafe. I hate the media circus that comes with El Clásico and until they invent a scoring system whereby both teams are able to lose, I'm not invested in the outcome when the two teams play each other.
El Clasico hasn't been the same since the Pep vs Mourinho days, especially now that Sergio Ramos and Pepe disasterclasses are gone too
Let's not forget TV audiences & overall interest in football is falling, hard (notably in the "youth" demographic). It's one of the reasons they attempted to create a super league last year. Everything isn't rosy in those other sports (& the media often has a vested interest in pushing football for business reasons).
Cycling meanwhile trundles on at its own pace with its own economy. I was there yesterday, sitting on my couch, when Guillaume Martin attacked, again. How many worldwide will remember this man? I will.
Cycling meanwhile trundles on at its own pace with its own economy. I was there yesterday, sitting on my couch, when Guillaume Martin attacked, again. How many worldwide will remember this man? I will.
I'm hoping for an appearance of the Dumoulin/WVA meme after Carapaz's TT performance.
Is it? All my male students hardly ever talk about anything else than football.
Not a chance.
Carapaz is a fighter & he'll want to get the jersey back but 17km isn't long enough.
Planche des Belles Filles was 36km. Big difference.
From Wiggins and Blythe after Landa steals his second place.
Yes it is. There are loads of articles & graphs on the subject, but here's Florentino Perez giving his opinion last year:
Real Madrid | European Super League: Florentino Perez's ten messages | Marca
There was an article in L'Equipe recently which featured "ideas" designed to make football attractive again because its audience scores are falling.
I don't see cycling having such existential crisis. It just goes on & on, with its niche audience & 'relatable'' champions.
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