Universal Sports covering Vuelta...

[TRDean]

Via Twitter Universal Sports has announced over that they will broadcast the Vuelta a Espana for the next four years. I hope this is not already common knowledge and a new thread...

 

[hfer07]

Good news there - I hope this time around they have a better commentator on board- rather than that Idiot from this year's Giro...

 

[Bala Verde]

Good news there - I hope this time around they have a better commentator on board- rather than that Idiot from this year's Giro...

I agree, but in retrospect, it was much better than VS

Since the Giro was - as I perceived it - a rather last minute deal, they could/should have the Vuelta figured out a little better. Over the course of 3 weeks, I think the Giro coverage improved significantly...

Let's hope for the best, but thumbs up for Universal! Great work, they seem to show a genuine interest...

 

[Cobber]

Good news there - I hope this time around they have a better commentator on board- rather than that Idiot from this year's Giro...

They seemed to change commentators about 3 times during the Giro coverage. I remember one of them being pretty good.

 

[Cobblestones]

Will they do streaming as well? That's how I watched the Giro. I'm getting excited.

I agree their first-week commentator wasn't great, but the guy in week 2 was fine. Actually, I don't really care. At this time, I think anybody is an improvement over Phil Liggett.

 

[TRDean]

Will they do streaming as well? That's how I watched the Giro. I'm getting excited.

I agree their first-week commentator wasn't great, but the guy in week 2 was fine. Actually, I don't really care. At this time, I think anybody is an improvement over Phil Liggett.

Apparently they will be streaming.

 

[jilbiker]

I agree, but in retrospect, it was much better than VS

Since the Giro was - as I perceived it - a rather last minute deal, they could/should have the Vuelta figured out a little better. Over the course of 3 weeks, I think the Giro coverage improved significantly...

Let's hope for the best, but thumbs up for Universal! Great work, they seem to show a genuine interest...

Yes Universal's coverage of the Giro was first class especially compared to VS which seems to be all about LA

 

[GoGarmin]

This is excellent news.

 

[Anonymous]

Yes Universal's coverage of the Giro was first class especially compared to VS which seems to be all about LA

Well, it was a bit better once they got rid of the guy who would comment about Armstrongs chances for winning the stage every time the camera was on him. It bordered on 70 IQ kind of stupidity. He did it on sprint stages, at the beginning of stages, in the middle, at the feed zone. I wanted to kill him. The good thing is that you could mute it and put on Eurosport audio.

 

[CiclismoDeCalifornia]

fantastic news, Universal's coverage of this past Giro was way better than VS' coverage of Lance at the Tour, I am also glad I won't have to listen to Phil Liggett's nonsense. As someone else mentioned the coverage did improved in the last two weeks.

 

[richwagmn]

Yes Universal's coverage of the Giro was first class especially compared to VS which seems to be all about LA

It was strange to have just one guy calling the race (as they did in the Giro). At least have a couple of guys.

I've really enjoyed the guys from cycling.tv. It was Magnus Backstedt (sp?) and an english guy.

Excellent coverage of the race and minimal fanboyism.

 

[CiclismoDeCalifornia]

Here is a small article about it from bike world news:

http://www.bikeworldnews.com/index.php/2009/07/29/universal-sports-broadcast-vuelta/

 

[racerralph]

I can barely maintain myself, I'm besides myself with Glee!!!!!! I ski race also, and Universal began coverage of the Ski Racing World Cup last season, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. They covered everything, with absolutely excellent commentators too. They are the hottest Sports channel on earth, and working hard to get better.
One of the best things they do is combine the online access with the TV access, so it's up to you. And as somebody has already mentioned, if their commentator is not up to your standard, you can always mute it, and listen to another audio feed!!! BRAVO, made my day!

 

[Nick C.]

Great news. Who's riding? All I've heard is Boonen among the big names.

 

[amp300]

Great news. Who's riding? All I've heard is Boonen among the big names.

Velonews published a list today of prospective riders, from what I remember:
Boonen
Basso
Danielson
Dan Martin
Valverde
A Schleck (who says he is going for wolrds prep not podium)
Vino is rumored
Albisini
Gesinck

They did say that last years podium is not racing, so AC, Levi and Carlos are out.

 

[Deagol]

this is good news. I loved being able to watch Giro stages at my own time on the computer (no cable TV). Way better than Versus.
no A. Contador, L Armstrong, L Leipheimer, C. Sastre in the race... I'm guessing I. Basso takes this Vuelta. Maybe we will see some great things from Garmin ??

 

[**Uru**]

They will be offering live streaming and recorded coverage at prime time in the states. The picture quality for the Giro was better on the computer than on TV, at least on an HD TV.

 

[Cobblestones]

Apparently they will be streaming.

Yes! Wonderful, excellent news.

 

[usedtobefast]

i too saw the entire universal giro broadcast. steve schlanger(sp) and todd gogulski did an ok job i thought, start to finish. they are not as seasoned as the versus guys, but "gogo" was a good rider back in the day. here in socal it is on digi channel 4.4 for free. way better than paying for cable.

 

[BroDeal]

I can barely maintain myself, I'm besides myself with Glee!!!!!! I ski race also, and Universal began coverage of the Ski Racing World Cup last season, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. They covered everything, with absolutely excellent commentators too. They are the hottest Sports channel on earth, and working hard to get better.
One of the best things they do is combine the online access with the TV access, so it's up to you. And as somebody has already mentioned, if their commentator is not up to your standard, you can always mute it, and listen to another audio feed!!! BRAVO, made my day!

+1 to all of that.

After streaming half of the Giro from US, I found out that I actually have the TV channel. If it were not for the Giro, I would not have realized that I get the channel on cable. It is like OLN used to be. This will be sweet.

 

[El Imbatido]

They should get Matt Keenan for the commentry. Since the tour is over he is probably just sittin on his arse doing nothing. he was pretty good at the tour

 

[ladyvader]

I didn't like the production of the Giro on US. I thought the first week was horrible, IMO. It did get better, but I did think it was a Lance lovefest, just not as bad as VS. US did have Lance's inside cam thing going on. They called the chase group the followers. Which annoyed me very much.

I do hope they have rider profiles which they didn't do for the Giro. Granted, they got the race on the 11th hour, but still could have been better. Another thing I hope doesn't happen this time is my local NBC station taking over at the weirdest times. The guys calling the race would be in the middle of sentence and bam local news promo for a minute then back to the race. This almost made me quit watching the race every day because it was so annoying.

I hope the production of the Vuelta is better than their production of the Giro.

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

Via Twitter Universal Sports has announced over that they will broadcast the Vuelta a Espana for the next four years. I hope this is not already common knowledge and a new thread...

Doesn't matter even if it were. This is great news for all cycling fans, and cause for huge celebration. Make a couple extra threads if you like.

I'm with Ralph and just giddy about this news, and love Universal. Also for their excellent coverage of XC skiing. Some of it with NO commentary, just crowd noise, and stadium announcers in the distance in a variety of languages, which was downright cool!

Universal really, really has the future lined up, blending the lines between TV and webcasting and doing a great job of both. They put Versus and ESPN to shame and make them look like their stuck in the 20 century (which they are). I worked for Turner Broadcasting at one point when they were setting up professional webcasting. The guys at Turner were awesome, and they were really forward thinking. But Universal has them topped. They really are doing great things.

Good news there - I hope this time around they have a better commentator on board- rather than that idiot from this year's Giro...

Two guys. The first guy was a guy they plucked at the last second from announcing Euro league soccer, so no wonder. The second guy did better. He got a lot of the names right, and I agree both probably would have done better with an expert to do commentary. John Paul Van Poppel, Stephen Roche, etc.

The US replay TV feed had two Americans doing commentary, and they were okay, especially Todd Gugorski's comments. He was very good.

But still, for being a last second deal, I'd say they all did as good if not better than P&P on Versus.

 

[Bala Verde]

I didn't like the production of the Giro on US. I thought the first week was horrible, IMO. It did get better, but I did think it was a Lance lovefest, just not as bad as VS. US did have Lance's inside cam thing going on. They called the chase group the followers. Which annoyed me very much.

I thought the screen panels were provided by 'the Giro' themselves, so they did the 'translations'. I assumed it was a literal, but in cycling jargon wrong translation of the Italian "inseguitore"...

 

[craig1985]

Am I able to get this via streaming even though I don't live in America?