How do you watch cycling?

[RedheadDane]

Regarding how to watch, can we agree that there are three ways of watching, ranked - from best to worst:

A. Watching all of a race, or at least as much as has coverage. This of course requires you to be near a screen you can watch on.

II. Watching as much as you're able to catch










3. Watching re-runs.

 

[hayneplane]

Regarding how to watch, can we agree that there are three ways of watching, ranked - from best to worst:

A. Watching all of a race, or at least as much as has coverage. This of course requires you to be near a screen you can watch on.

II. Watching as much as you're able to catch










3. Watching re-runs.

Option 1 is obviously the best option if possible but option 3 is infinitely better than option 2.

If I am going to be out of the house until 3pm and a race is broadcast from 2-4pm why on earth would I just watch from 3pm when I have the facility to avoid hearing about what has happened in the race and start the streaming service from the beginning so as to watch the full 2 hours instead of just the last hour.

Deliberately depriving myself of coverage just to watch it ‘live’ instead of ‘as live’ is deeply illogical.

 

[YavorD]

If it's weekend, and you have the choice between watching the races that are on live, and "catching up" on races you missed during the week, what are you choosing?

I'm choosing what would be more entertaining. GC stage on Friday and Sprint stage in the weekend?
I ignore news, internet etc and watch that GC stage on rewind. I guess most of the cycling fans would do the same.

Heck, I watched GdL 2022 on TUESDAY 3 days after the race. And honestly it was as fun as if I watched it live.

 

[RedheadDane]

Deliberately depriving myself of coverage just to watch it ‘live’ instead of ‘as live’ is deeply illogical.

Deliberately depriving yourself of coverage, just to watch re-runs is deeply illogical.
Let's use the correct term here. It's re-run.

 

[hayneplane]

Deliberately depriving yourself of coverage, just to watch re-runs is deeply illogical.
Let's use the correct term here. It's re-run.

Watching more coverage is preferable to less. That it is a ‘re-run’ is not of any material significance when I am watching with no knowledge of the result or the shape of the events that occurred.

If you were at a family wedding that coincided with the Queen Stage of the Tour de France or a monument would you really not watch the race later just because you could not watch it at the exact moment it happened. That seems absurd to me but is the logical endpoint of your position.

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

@RedheadDane , @Libertine Seguros

You are both intelligent enough and long enough established as posters here to have a reasonable sense of when a tangent in a discussion has got out of proportion.

If it is an argument that involves nobody else, bring it to PM; if it is legitimate matter for wider discussion, move it to a thread where it is more relevant.

Same obviously applies as a principle for all users.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Regarding how to watch, can we agree that there are three ways of watching, ranked - from best to worst:

A. Watching all of a race, or at least as much as has coverage. This of course requires you to be near a screen you can watch on.

II. Watching as much as you're able to catch

It's not necessarily about watching "all that there is" but "all that you need to catch".

As a hypothetical, a race has a spectacular, GC-settling mountain stage on one day, and a sprint stage scheduled the next. Both are expected to finish around the same time of day. I have some shopping that I need to do at some point in the two days, and I've committed to meeting one of my friends for lunch. Both of us are otherwise free both days. They know I'm a cycling fan and want to catch the race, but we haven't seen each other in a while and have a lot to catch up on.

If commitments allow, I'm likely arranging doing my shopping and meeting my friend on the day of the sprint stage. The chance of me missing anything if we get too deep into chatting and overrun on the lunch meetup is much reduced, because if I don't get in until 5km to go, the chances are I didn't miss anything, and if I tune in and it isn't as expected, I can track back in the coverage to find out what happened. I can use previous examples as evidence and deduce that the likelihood of me missing important race action by extending the lunch meet is lower in the flat stage than it is in the mountain stage. I don't see the point in racing home and putting the rest of my life on hold to see coverage of nothing happening for two hours just because there is coverage, if I wanted to watch nothing happen for two hours I'd watch Formula 1.

Hell, the CN forum is quite helpful for this, if there aren't many posts in a thread for the race that day, the chances are nothing of great value or interest happened, but if the thread has swollen hugely in the number of posts, the chances are something worth checking out happened.

 

[wirral]

Assuming I let my Discovery + subscription lapse at the end of February (might continue if they offer me the half price deal), how much cycling can I watch playing the VPN game assuming I don't care about the language of the commentary?

 

[RedheadDane]

If you were at a family wedding that coincided with the Queen Stage of the Tour de France or a monument would you really not watch the race later just because you could not watch it at the exact moment it happened.

Yes, because sometimes you miss a race, that's just how it is.
In those cases I might watch highlights, what I definitely won't do is sitting down, watching a re-run of the entire race, pretending it's "as live", because the fact is, it isn't.
I was likely to have missed the 2020 Paris-Roubaix because one of my nephews was supposed to have been baptised on that day. Of course, well... 2020...

As a hypothetical, a race has a spectacular, GC-settling mountain stage on one day, and a sprint stage scheduled the next. Both are expected to finish around the same time of day. I have some shopping that I need to do at some point in the two days, and I've committed to meeting one of my friends for lunch. Both of us are otherwise free both days. They know I'm a cycling fan and want to catch the race, but we haven't seen each other in a while and have a lot to catch up on.

If commitments allow, I'm likely arranging doing my shopping and meeting my friend on the day of the sprint stage. The chance of me missing anything if we get too deep into chatting and overrun on the lunch meetup is much reduced, because if I don't get in until 5km to go, the chances are I didn't miss anything, and if I tune in and it isn't as expected, I can track back in the coverage to find out what happened. I can use previous examples as evidence and deduce that the likelihood of me missing important race action by extending the lunch meet is lower in the flat stage than it is in the mountain stage. I don't see the point in racing home and putting the rest of my life on hold to see coverage of nothing happening for two hours just because there is coverage, if I wanted to watch nothing happen for two hours I'd watch Formula 1.

This. Was. Always. About. Deliberately. Not. Watching. Even. If. You. Got. Nothing. Else. To. Do.
Like I said, sometimes, life happens.
Of course, the trick is; convince your friend to watch the race with you.

Besides, I thought you were a fan of watching nothing for hours, what with your weird obsession with XC skiing.

 

[Potomac]

Assuming I let my Discovery + subscription lapse at the end of February (might continue if they offer me the half price deal), how much cycling can I watch playing the VPN game assuming I don't care about the language of the commentary?

France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands and Australia (english language !!! (sort of)) have state broadcasters (meaning no paywall) that when combined seem to have almost every race. There are others too of course....too many to mention off the top of my head.
Some of them require you to register and provide an email and mabye a post code.

 

[RedheadDane]

Australia (english language !!! (sort of))

Come again?

 

[YavorD]

Yes, because sometimes you miss a race, that's just how it is.
In those cases I might watch highlights, what I definitely won't do is sitting down, watching a re-run of the entire race, pretending it's "as live", because the fact is, it isn't.
I was likely to have missed the 2020 Paris-Roubaix because one of my nephews was supposed to have been baptised on that day. Of course, well... 2020..

Don't want to sound rude, but to it seems you're not a fan of racing, you are just a fan of LIVE racing.
If you enjoyed racing as it is, it wouldn't matter if it's re-run or something, you would just watch it. You wouldn't split your attention over 3 devices trying to catch everything in the same time, you would simply watch all the races one after another (for as long as your time allows of course).
But apparently a race loses it's value to you if it's not live basically confirming you're interested in it only because it's live.


Nothing wrong with that, it's a personal choice but you're not the rule about how people watch cycling, you're the exception.
Most of the people enjoy racing for the value of it, for the views or anything hing else and would watch it regardless of being live or 2 days after it happened.. You seem to only watch it/enjoy it because it's live.

 

[RedheadDane]

Don't want to sound rude, but to it seems you're not a fan of racing, you are just a fan of LIVE racing.

Racing is live racing.

But I guess celebrating you guys' birthdays is very easy. You can just get a cardboard cutout and pretend it's basically cake.

 

[YavorD]

Racing is live racing.

But I guess celebrating you guys' birthdays is very easy. You can just get a cardboard cutout and pretend it's basically cake.

Racing ISN'T live racing.
Racing is just racing and if you watch the re-run you still have watched the race.

And as a matter of fact plenty of people celebrate their birthdays late for various of reasons. And can you believe that? They have fun.
Just as they have fun watching races after they happened.

 

[RedheadDane]

And as a matter of fact plenty of people celebrate their birthdays late for various of reasons. And can you believe that? They have fun.
Just as they have fun watching races after they happened.

I wasn't talking about celebrating late. Sometimes, celebrating late - or early - is just what works best. You're gonna get a year older no matter what you do, otherwise... I suspect some people would simply... not celebrate their birthdays.
I was talking about having a cardboard cut-out and pretending it's cake. Like watching a re-run and pretending it's "as live".

But you go have fun watching re-runs. Don't worry, I'm not gonna "spoil" Jaén... I can only assume you won't actually watch it.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

But I guess celebrating you guys' birthdays is very easy. You can just get a cardboard cutout and pretend it's basically cake.

A bit rich coming from someone who's previously promised people cakes and just handed out digital ones.

 

[RedheadDane]

A bit rich coming from someone who's previously promised people cakes and just handed out digital ones.

I'm pretty sure what I've promised is the right for people to go buy their own cake.

 

[Wyndbrook]

I do watch full races when possible , but rarely watch live.
I avoid cycling media until I can catch up, I still make it a live experience.
Usually a life to live during the day including riding a bike if I can squeeze it in.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

This. Was. Always. About. Deliberately. Not. Watching. Even. If. You. Got. Nothing. Else. To. Do.
Like I said, sometimes, life happens.
Of course, the trick is; convince your friend to watch the race with you.

Besides, I thought you were a fan of watching nothing for hours, what with your weird obsession with XC skiing.

Sometimes a more productive use of my time is to choose to do something else even if I didn't have anything else I had to do, because then I have more time later on to dedicate to something that entertains me, and I can maintain my enthusiasm for cycling by only watching the part that entertains me and not watching the boring bit.

And I'd rather watch an entertaining XC skiing race than a boring cycling race - and I'd rather watch an entertaining cycling race than a boring XC skiing race. People who watch sport as entertainment prefer to be entertained than to not be entertained. Funny that.

 

[RedheadDane]

And I'd rather watch an entertaining XC skiing race than a boring cycling race - and I'd rather watch an entertaining cycling race than a boring XC skiing race. People who watch sport as entertainment prefer to be entertained than to not be entertained. Funny that.

I also prefer to be entertained, which is why I watch cycling, and not XC skiiing.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I also prefer to be entertained, which is why I watch cycling, and not XC skiiing.

Please list me the top 10 finest moments of the fifth stage of the 2020 Tour de France, and why it is essential to watch all four hours' coverage.

 

[YavorD]

I wasn't talking about celebrating late. Sometimes, celebrating late - or early - is just what works best

It's absolutely the same with racing. For various of reasons you watch it later because it works best.

But following your logic if you celebrate your birthday on Saturday because all of your friends are working on Friday, you aren't actually celebrating your birthday because, you know, "it's not live" and it's not your birthday anymore.

 

[RedheadDane]

Please list me the top 10 finest moments of the fifth stage of the 2020 Tour de France, and why it is essential to watch all four hours' coverage.

I never said it's essential to do so, I just said it doesn't make sense to not do so if you can. And of course, when a race it's over, it's over. On to the next one.
Might as well ask me to list the top-10 finest moment of Paris-Roubaix last year. I enjoyed it when it happened, but I'm not going to go around remembering everything.
Please list just one entertaining moment from some obscure XC skiing race... no wait, you can't.

But following your logic if you celebrate your birthday on Saturday because all of your friends are working on Friday, you aren't actually celebrating your birthday because, you know, "it's not live" and it's not your birthday anymore.

Like I said, celebrating doesn't have to happen on the exact day. You're getting older no matter what you do, your birthday isn't "levelling up". Celebrating your birthday is really just an excuse to have cake.
I usually celebrate my birthday on a Saturday, because that's when we meet up in my family for dinner anyway.
Of course, this year, I might actually celebrate it on the day, as it's a Holy Day.



Anyway, unlike you guys, I'm actually watching Jaén. You can go watch re-run later.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Please list just one entertaining moment from some obscure XC skiing race... no wait, you can't.

Of course I can. You just won't agree because you don't like cross country skiing. Nor tennis. Nor film (apparently all film is boring).

But you do like watching four hours of the péloton riding as a group without even a breakaway, and ridicule anybody that might find watching that to be a less productive use of their time than doing something else for three and a half hours, and then tuning in to watch the last half hour when something interesting happens.

I can name a lot of sports that I like and a lot of interesting moments from them. I can also name some boring events in those same sports because, just like cycling, they have their good moments and their bad moments. It's possible to accept that just because you like something doesn't mean it's totally flawless, and just because you don't like something doesn't mean it's completely irredeemably flawed.

Even Sepp Kuss.

 

[RedheadDane]

Of course I can. You just won't agree because you don't like cross country skiing. Nor tennis. Nor film (apparently all film is boring).

I never said that. Like I said; some films are cycling.