- Mar 22, 2010
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Bike races are lengthy, and occur in the middle of the working day for many of us (and middle of the night for others). We have the joy of access to streaming of many hours of racing as if live, and cycling is a low enough profile sport at least where I am) that we are unlikely to be caught out by spoilers if we avoid certain media.
But watching playback of races in a limited amount of time in the evening is not only something anathema to Redhead Dane, it is also a delicate act of judgement: how to see the key events without spending many hours waiting for them. In an expected sprint, it is easy: scroll to 5 to 10 km to go, (thank you to the inventor of the distance remaining ticker in the top left corner) and you pretty much have seen all you need to. But in a race like yesterday's E3, that tactic would have had some interest for the minor places, but told you little of the real story.
My usual tactic is to cover much of the screen with my hand, go to the live page on PCS, still covering most of the screen until I scroll to the beginning of the race, and then read up from the bottom, until something seems consequential. But that means the nature of the key event is already revealed, and also I find myself watching potentially interesting breaks that dwindle to irrelevance when I didn't really have time to.
So what I hope this might become is a place where people can post, obviously without spoilers, suggestions about what bits of a race one really should not miss. As an example, one of the few times in which I had a work colleague interested in cycling coincided with the Doha World Championships. The first thing he said to me on the Monday morning was "Don't tell me anything, I haven't watched it yet," but I was able to tell him that he should watch from 5km before the bend where the echelons happened to 5km after, and then the last few km. An entry for yesterday might be "66 to 54 if you have time, definitely 45 to (where did WvA's chase become hopeless? 30?), and the last 8"
Of course it is not as good as the entire drama, but it could be a good service to those for whom work, their own cycling, other interests, or the expectations of family members that they occasionally interact make a multi-hour broadcast impractical.
Now, I'm off to watch yesterday's Catalunya stage from the beginning of the final climb onwards, not knowing whether I have missed the key events, or whether I am 45 minutes too early for them.
But watching playback of races in a limited amount of time in the evening is not only something anathema to Redhead Dane, it is also a delicate act of judgement: how to see the key events without spending many hours waiting for them. In an expected sprint, it is easy: scroll to 5 to 10 km to go, (thank you to the inventor of the distance remaining ticker in the top left corner) and you pretty much have seen all you need to. But in a race like yesterday's E3, that tactic would have had some interest for the minor places, but told you little of the real story.
My usual tactic is to cover much of the screen with my hand, go to the live page on PCS, still covering most of the screen until I scroll to the beginning of the race, and then read up from the bottom, until something seems consequential. But that means the nature of the key event is already revealed, and also I find myself watching potentially interesting breaks that dwindle to irrelevance when I didn't really have time to.
So what I hope this might become is a place where people can post, obviously without spoilers, suggestions about what bits of a race one really should not miss. As an example, one of the few times in which I had a work colleague interested in cycling coincided with the Doha World Championships. The first thing he said to me on the Monday morning was "Don't tell me anything, I haven't watched it yet," but I was able to tell him that he should watch from 5km before the bend where the echelons happened to 5km after, and then the last few km. An entry for yesterday might be "66 to 54 if you have time, definitely 45 to (where did WvA's chase become hopeless? 30?), and the last 8"
Of course it is not as good as the entire drama, but it could be a good service to those for whom work, their own cycling, other interests, or the expectations of family members that they occasionally interact make a multi-hour broadcast impractical.
Now, I'm off to watch yesterday's Catalunya stage from the beginning of the final climb onwards, not knowing whether I have missed the key events, or whether I am 45 minutes too early for them.
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