TV Coverage of Vuelta

[Spanky]

I found the TV coverage in Ireland (British Eurosport) to be quite poor. Firstly the Spanish TV feed was at times very badly shot with inaccurate graphics and crazy editing, whereby we often missed the action with the GC riders at the business end of stages. Still thats what is provided so we have to live with it. Eurosport I found very disappointing. The highlights were often on at 11pm/midnight and the live coverage often started much to late. With yesterday being such a big stage I had thought coverage would start earlier, however British Eurosport persisted with some cricket match until almost 4pm before joining the Vuelta with 13km's to go. You could argue that this was where the action started but you really want to see the bunch driving into the bottom of the climb rather than picking it up half way up.

Anyway what was the coverage like in your regions. Is Eurosport International better?

 

[the student]

I always watch belgian tv... they have good coverage... shame the producers in spain were just clueless this year... not showing the important attacks, blank screen and no imaging at all... but the overall coverage by beligian tv is quite good... Shame they only started at 4pm ( dutch tv is worse than belgian imo... eurosport should just be banned for showing commercials during the race!! there is nothing worse than that. Not to speak of the commentaters... they dont know a **** about cycling )

 

[Spanky]

Not to speak of the commentaters... they dont know a **** about cycling )

That I can't agree with - Mr Sean Kelly!! What that man doesn't know about bike racing ain't worth knowing.

 

[the student]

its about the dutch eurosport commentators... srry if you where mistaken

 

[joy118118]

Eurosport showed snooker. I had to watch TDP

 

[Francois the Postman]

I found the TV coverage in Ireland (British Eurosport) to be quite poor. Firstly the Spanish TV feed was at times very badly shot with inaccurate graphics and crazy editing, whereby we often missed the action with the GC riders at the business end of stages. Still thats what is provided so we have to live with it. Eurosport I found very disappointing. The highlights were often on at 11pm/midnight and the live coverage often started much to late. With yesterday being such a big stage I had thought coverage would start earlier, however British Eurosport persisted with some cricket match until almost 4pm before joining the Vuelta with 13km's to go. You could argue that this was where the action started but you really want to see the bunch driving into the bottom of the climb rather than picking it up half way up.

Anyway what was the coverage like in your regions. Is Eurosport International better?

British Eurosport comes in 3 flavours these days, and Eurosport HD went live to the Vuelta earlier than their regular 3pm slot. Eurosport also makes a point of trying to get the commercial blocks out of the way well before the finale. And without those blocks we wouldn't have Eurosport, and I would not be getting any cycling beyond the TdF and the Olympics here, and the odd track race if the Brits were involved.

If you don't have a HD option, or your local provider doesn't supply you with all the Eurosport stations, you always have the option to pay the pricey subscription that equals roughly the price of one pint of Guinness each month, and subscribe to their website. Watching HD through the internet.

For the live entertainment it is giving me, £3 per month is a small sacrifice in the grand scheme of things. It's only annoying that you can't get it when you leave the shores here.

British Eurosport usually goes to cycling races much earlier than the "international" version of Eurosport. I grew up avoiding the NOS, watching BRT's coverage instead (yes, I'm that old), and still much prefer Sporza when I can get it, but have little beef with Eurosport's coverage. No ads, unfortunately, is a pipe-dream here.

And as far as commentators go, once you've been stuck with ITV, the (English speaking) Eurosport crews are a breath of fresh air. They aren't perfect, and their style with grate with some, but you can't say that commentating teams which include ex-riders with glowing palmares know nothing about cycling. They certainly have blind spots, but for all but the self-proclaimed experts amongst their audience, they are more than adequate. And arguably, getting better too, and more open about the darker side of the sport.

Their TdF coverage this year was almost wall to wall. The channel has embraced cycling as a core activity, and is getting more and more commited.

Given the alternatives here on the Isles, I am more than happy to have access to them, even if it stops me from -well- very little really.

 

[The Hitch]

Eurosport sure does have its faults but i still am eternally grateful for the fact that they show this thing of ours, a sport that in GB ranks somewhere between poker and speed skating for press coverage, all year round. I mean how many times do they disapoint.
No tour down under. Pssss so what.
No classic San Sebastian- minor annoyance at best.
No Montreal - same.
less coverage of 1 or 2 stages in giro and Vuelta namely Belo
No Zoncolan, though they showed the highlights 1 hour later.

Oh and in the Tour of Romandie they missed the queen stage, but showed highlights later which worked out fine because that was an epic stage which was fun to watch right before nightime.

And i cant help but think that their main rartings come not from the live, but from the late afternoon highlights which people watch after they have come back from work. Those are always on.

Thats it. Thats all their faults for a year. 3 gts - 93 days
5 monuments
5 or maybe more other classics
Oman, Quartar, PN TA Romandie, Pais Vasco, Turkey, California, Dauphine, Suisse, Poland, Eneco, = 12 stage races x 1 week aprox = 84 days.
.
Thats going on 200 days of cycling we have had on eurosport this year.
Considering Harmonn does a lot of this, i probably should forgive him for what i see as his big mistake this Vuelta (below), and the horrendous one in the Tour. But im not ready for forgiveness yet


My big problem was once again a Harmonn moment. In this case, on the day before Belo where Mosquera lost 11 seconds, Harmonn failed to identify Mosquera as a contender. He tells us Nibali and Velits came in together so all is good and hell see us tomorow. Meanwhile i am screaming, "where is Mosquera, how much time did he lose". At the time it seemed it could have been anywhere from 5 seconds to minutes as he wasnt in the front group. Only about a minute later does harmonn realise the man in the number 1 contenders spot had lost significant time.

 

[Spanky]

Completely agree that Eurosport are great to have and without them we would generally have no coverage. I enjoy Harmon in general - he's easy to listen to even on long flat stages when making conversation must be difficult!

My gripe is really with coverage of the Vuelta this year which I found patchy. Particuarily playing 2nd fiddle to snooker or worse cricket!

Thanks for heads up Postman on HD/Internet. Will look into it.

 

[Christian]

I always watch belgian tv... they have good coverage...

Do you mean RTBF 2? I thought they didn't show it. But I do like to watch cycling there, they're really good.

France 2 - no coverage.

So I mostly watched it on Eurosport Germany which is pretty decent. I used to like both of their speakers, especially "Janschi", but now they've replaced him by some Bavarian I don't really like.

 

[craig1985]

Eurosport sure does have its faults but i still am eternally grateful for the fact that they show this thing of ours, a sport that in GB ranks somewhere between poker and speed skating for press coverage, all year round. I mean how many times do they disapoint.
No tour down under. Pssss so what.
No classic San Sebastian- minor annoyance at best.
No Montreal - same.
less coverage of 1 or 2 stages in giro and Vuelta namely Belo
No Zoncolan, though they showed the highlights 1 hour later.

Oh and in the Tour of Romandie they missed the queen stage, but showed highlights later which worked out fine because that was an epic stage which was fun to watch right before nightime.

And i cant help but think that their main rartings come not from the live, but from the late afternoon highlights which people watch after they have come back from work. Those are always on.

Thats it. Thats all their faults for a year. 3 gts - 93 days
5 monuments
5 or maybe more other classics
Oman, Quartar, PN TA Romandie, Pais Vasco, Turkey, California, Dauphine, Suisse, Poland, Eneco, = 12 stage races x 1 week aprox = 84 days.
.
Thats going on 200 days of cycling we have had on eurosport this year.
Considering Harmonn does a lot of this, i probably should forgive him for what i see as his big mistake this Vuelta (below), and the horrendous one in the Tour. But im not ready for forgiveness yet


My big problem was once again a Harmonn moment. In this case, on the day before Belo where Mosquera lost 11 seconds, Harmonn failed to identify Mosquera as a contender. He tells us Nibali and Velits came in together so all is good and hell see us tomorow. Meanwhile i am screaming, "where is Mosquera, how much time did he lose". At the time it seemed it could have been anywhere from 5 seconds to minutes as he wasnt in the front group. Only about a minute later does harmonn realise the man in the number 1 contenders spot had lost significant time.

Harmon >>>> Carlton Kirby. Kirby's tirade during the TOC by calling Landis a 'liar' was extremely cringeworthy. On the weekends we get two hours live with Matt Keenan calling the shots. Unfortunately he really needed a wingman, instead of doing it all by himself.

 

[Mellow Velo]

Interesting that somebody has picked up on what I was going to post, over on the rate the GTs thread.
Until about 2003 or 4, I think, TVE used to show some of the mountain stages in their entirety.
Then the doping scandals hit, viewing figures dropped and TVE partially sold off the rights to broadcast, while retaining overall control.
Around 2005, the coverage was slashed to 90 minutes for every stage.
It has stayed like this, more or less, until this year.
The extended 3 hour coverage of several major stages, is the first step in the right direction, in 5 years. The downside is that TVE International no longer broadcast any coverage; TDP via a 3rd party serve being the only option for receiving the host.

Eurosport have seriously upped their game in the UK, this year. However, we remain at the mercy of the Sunday schedules, which tends to spoil mainly the major stages of GTs, or the classics.

I agree re Kirby. The man is a rampant US/Lance fanboy. His cringingly biased commentary throughout California was like the Chinese water torture.
Couple that with his innate lack of Pro R Racing, the race's poor parcours and we were served this year's leftover turkey, each evening.

 

[salixcycling]

Completely agree that Eurosport are great to have and without them we would generally have no coverage. I enjoy Harmon in general - he's easy to listen to even on long flat stages when making conversation must be difficult!

My gripe is really with coverage of the Vuelta this year which I found patchy. Particuarily playing 2nd fiddle to snooker or worse cricket!

Thanks for heads up Postman on HD/Internet. Will look into it.

£4.99 a rolling month for Eurosport Player ES1 ES2 and ES HD, plus you can cancel your subscription, say during the quiet months. Not a bad price, particularly if you can't get ES through DTV (eg, freeview). And since you can just use a modem cable to hook up (most?) TVs, you are not restricted to a small screen.

Eurosport did pretty well with what they had on the Vuelta (not perfect though!)

 

[The Hitch]

Harmon >>>> Carlton Kirby. Kirby's tirade during the TOC by calling Landis a 'liar' was extremely cringeworthy. On the weekends we get two hours live with Matt Keenan calling the shots. Unfortunately he really needed a wingman, instead of doing it all by himself.

How did Backsted react to Kirby saying this. Did he agree or was he impartial?

 

[Izzy eviel]

I've found Eurosport to be much improved this year. Events tend to be on for when they say they'll be on. No more delays caused by highlights from the European Tractor pulling qualification round 2 from Latvia. As you can tell that used to really **** me off.

 

[salixcycling]

One minor gripe is Eurosport commentators referring to "the Tour of Italy" and "the Tour of Spain" - d*mmit Sean Kelly you should know better. I'm not sure which viewers this is aimed at, but the knowledgeable ones know what the races are really called, and maybe the ones that don't should be informed by the commentators not have their lack of knowledge re-inforced. It's a little insulting. /rant

Edit: and of course the Tour of France

 

[simo1733]

Harmon is ok.He is a bit of a smart *** and he makes the odd mistake, but he is way better than Duffield,Liggett or kirkby.

 

[therealtimshady]

harmon and kelly can just waffle on about nonsense sometimes and not commentate on the action. while i find them ok generally, harmon is very poor at commentating bunch sprints mainly because he almost always fails to pick up the names of those at the front going "is it hushovd, hinault - im not sure its difficult to sport" and then 15 seconds after the finish tell us who it was. phil liggett is much better and more dramatic on commentating on bunch finishes + kelly's voice is so dull.

liggett and sherwin any day for me

 

[dgodave]

Was it TWO major mtn top finishes where the TV editors somehow missed the live finish?
.

 

[salixcycling]

Commentators with the passion of the Spanish ones would be excellent. Watching the Vuelta a Burgos 2010, although I didn't understand a word of it apart from 'Sammy Sanchez', was helped a lot by the style of the commentary.

Eurosport have nothing in comparison, but the comparison may be unfair.

 

[Descender]

Spanish TV were clueless this year for some reason. They're not usually that bad.

However, the situation is pretty peculiar... if I'm not mistaken, the company that owns the Vuelta, Unipublic, is partly owned by another Spanish TV channel, Antena 3. So it's basically being broadcast by the competition.

 

[craig1985]

How did Backsted react to Kirby saying this. Did he agree or was he impartial?

I would say Magnus was being rather diplomatic.

 

[CatsNK]

I can't stand Sean Kelly. He likes to make snarky comments about Vino which ****es me off.

I watched on Universal Sports - didn't any one else? I love their coverage. It's Steve Schlanger and Todd Gogulski. Gogo provides the "insider look" at the peloton and Steve gets all excited over the racers. They do not play favorites, which I love. No fawning over the Schlecks, etc. I never hear them say anything negative about one rider or another, either.

There are a lot of annoying ads on Universal Sports and of course they rely on the Spanish feed, which was pretty poor. Not sure why they didn't use more helicopter shots of scenery during the dull moments and why there were so many shots of the crowd or the road at a funny angle, for example. But, overall - Universal Sports does a fantastic job, IMO. We also get the channel for free with our antenna.

 

[Nick C.]

I can't stand Sean Kelly. He likes to make snarky comments about Vino which ****es me off.

I watched on Universal Sports - didn't any one else? I love their coverage. It's Steve Schlanger and Todd Gogulski. Gogo provides the "insider look" at the peloton and Steve gets all excited over the racers. They do not play favorites, which I love. No fawning over the Schlecks, etc. I never hear them say anything negative about one rider or another, either.

There are a lot of annoying ads on Universal Sports and of course they rely on the Spanish feed, which was pretty poor. Not sure why they didn't use more helicopter shots of scenery during the dull moments and why there were so many shots of the crowd or the road at a funny angle, for example. But, overall - Universal Sports does a fantastic job, IMO. We also get the channel for free with our antenna.

I watched Universal they are awesome and this year of this Tour they ran the final 5-10K uninterrupted. Ditto what you said about the commentary. I like the lack of profiles or infomercials passing as segments on so and sos bike.

 

[Parrulo]

i am rather happy with the portuguese eurosport coverage.

i think i had the same 200 odd days of racing some1 mentioned on the firts page and the commenters are great. i was a bit desapointed cus i couldn't see the san sebastian classic tho.

 

[Oldman]

I watched Universal they are awesome and this year of this Tour they ran the final 5-10K uninterrupted. Ditto what you said about the commentary. I like the lack of profiles or infomercials passing as segments on so and sos bike.

They did OK with the Spanish feeds provided to them. Still a little too much basic education ala' Paul and Phil but much less fan/fawning.
Do have to note one thing: if I was a rider I'd want to kill some of the photo bike drivers-those a*sholes were in the way on some significant climbs, descents and corners seriously jeopardizing rider safety. Made for great TV but I wonder how many crashes were caused?