Potomac, I take it from your lack of comment that you also don’t understand the sport?
I just mean to give honest feedback to a sport that I have been trying to follow. If you know people who give tv commentary, please ask them to explain, to make the sport accessible.
Many people ( too many) share your frustration in trying to understand the sport. That as a baseline you have to understand that while basic principles of bike racing remain the same, professional racing, especially stage racing requires some homework from a fan or would be fan, someone who wants to enjoy it.
TV coverage and commentary are always doomed, passionate fans get furious when things like drafting are explained multiple times per broadcast or they mention how many calories are consumed by riders. After you have listened to that 10,000 times you really want to commit a hate crime on your TV.
The basics are.. Over the multiple days of racing the rider with the lowest overall accumulated time wins the overall, general classification. It gets confusing because of officiating and rules that make a guy that never comes in first, second or third , still wins overall because of having best average time over the multiple days of racing. And in 1_day events, exactly the opposite, it's all or nothing, but in professional racing top 20 is respectable and top 10 is excellent.. Podium,( top 3) is outstanding.
TDU has tried many things ( successfully) to make the race easier for you to watch and enjoy. Repeated race routes and circuits, big laps make it easier to see some action, also radio and TV coverage, Internet dashboard updates allow you to see who is leading and ultimately who wins without actually being at the finish line. Many cycling purists get pissed off it you say it, but it's much easier to learn about professional racing from first watching videos or TV coverage. Australia has plentiful amateur racing much of it in the form called crits- criteriums..usually shorter laps and it's easier to see who wins and how they did it.
Pro racing is often very very frustrating for people, they walk for long distances, stand around for hours, a big clump of bicycles whooshing by and that was it, those few seconds was the extent of the action you were going to see. And hard to pick out a favorite as they race past at @50k per hour.
Best thing to do as a new fan is do the 3 spots, 1 day see a start, another day see a finish and another day do homework to position yourself on some obstacle like a nasty uphill section @ half or 3\4 into a race where racers will be suffering with the gradient and in the case often in Australia ugly surprising temperatures because most bike racers associate January with cold winter temps, so Australia turns everything upside down literally, few riders are truly ready for hot weather.
The TV commentary people can't really make anyone happy, they don't explain racing basics for new fans, talk about endless stupid things including themselves or try to please everyone which ends up pleasing almost nobody. Most successful color people just call the race like everyone knows what is going on and do research as to what riders currently have good form and comment about riders who are historically good and are just re confirming their talent. Races are happening to fast and coverage is so abbreviated that trying to explain race principles is too difficult while still keeping up to the minute on action.
If it's any comfort besides having the worst bread in the world, America also has absolutely the worst bicycle racing commentators..US has really improved on coffee and beer.
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