Tour of Britain 2014...on my doorstep (may contain SPOILERS)

[rich p]

Kittel from Cav

 

[smutchin]

I wonder if OPQS are riding for Renshaw or Cav

Looked almost like Renshaw was riding for Kittel.

 

[rich p]

Looked almost like Renshaw was riding for Kittel.

Yep, a bit of an odd lead out all round. Giant wasn't as slick as normal.

 

[suzeworld]

So all in all I thought is was really great week, very entertaining every day, great parcourse.

Sad that Cav couldn't pull off the sprint, but what a performance from the three of them on the line.

Enjoyed Brad's interview. Thought he shed some light on why it is hard to teams to control the stages on British roads and with smaller teams. It made for a very open race which was more fun to watch anyway ..

 

[Bollo]

I thought the crowd at the finish was.......slight. .....

I think people are learning that unless there's something to shake up the race being at the finish is not necessarily the best place to spectate.

The crowd at Camberley was good without being spectacular, but it was still better than either of the French TdF stages I watched this year. The Yorkshire TdF was a one-off - the marketing people played a blinder and it happened close enough to the Team Sky/Wiggins/Olympics afterglow from 2012 to create one of those 'I was there' moments. Sweetspot have certainly done an excellent job of promoting the ToB, but it may have reached maturity in terms of the crowds it can draw and the profile it can command.

I think the biggest problem the ToB faces over the next few years is the huge (WADA approved) dose of reality coming Team Sky/British Cycling/ Dave Brailsford's way. For all the talk of marginal gains, the recent high profile of competitive cycling in the UK has been built on a generation of exceptional and marketable talent. When we hit a period of fewer gold medals at the Olympics and no-one in sight of the maillot jaune, I suspect the casual support may drift away. That's not a problem in itself and I think there's now sufficient base support to sustain the ToB, but I doubt it will maintain the frenzy of recent years.

 

[blimpnoddle]

The TV is the best viewing-point overall.

If only that were true. ITV4's coverage was deplorable. For instance, Saturday's 'live' coverage' of the crucial Camberley-Brighton stage begins with 20 odd minutes of inane chit chat with Ned Boulting. When they eventually decide to cut to the race we've already missed the first 130km! Things got even worse. ITV also missed the decisive break up Ditching when they decide a commercial break is more important, and their coverage of the finish was a total fiasco, completely missing the 2nd and 3rd riders, particularly bad because Van Baarle was the guy who finished third, thus taking the yellow jersey and holding on to win the Tour on Sunday, and the dismal Hugh 'no preparation' Porter and co had no idea this had happened until a considerable time later. In fact things were so bad that the commentary had to be completely re-done and the finishing pictures re-edited for the evening's highlights show.

Sunday's coverage was just as bad. There was never going to be any change to the podium places in the final 88km parade through London, thus the morning's Individual Time Trial was the last opportunity for this, yet the whole ITT was summarized in about 5 minutes of highlights in the afternoon show. Without question the worst cycling coverage I've ever seen from ITV.

 

[smutchin]

inane chit chat with Ned Boulting

Those are my favourite bits!

The first 130km of a 225km stage are never going to be all that interesting.

 

[srw]

I've barely seen any of the live coverage - it's normally not desperately interesting except to dip into. I thought the ITV4 highlights packages this summer have been extremely good for the casual or semi-casual viewer (which is who they're aimed at). In particular the ToB highlights did a great job of contextualising the race - although the segments when Ned Boulting solemnly read out the host cities/regions PR cack were a waste of space.

 

[suzeworld]

I'm sure the solemn reading of tourist cack is part of the sponsorship deal.
I like the Itv4 summary programmes on general, but did think the choice of timing on the live stuff yesterday was back to front.

 

[HF2300]

I've barely seen any of the live coverage - it's normally not desperately interesting except to dip into. I thought the ITV4 highlights packages this summer have been extremely good for the casual or semi-casual viewer (which is who they're aimed at). In particular the ToB highlights did a great job of contextualising the race - although the segments when Ned Boulting solemnly read out the host cities/regions PR cack were a waste of space.

I was just about to say I thought the ITV4 ToB highlights were really poor - in fact there, I've said it. It can't be easy to edit a race for quick consumption the same day, but it seemed to me too many of the stage highlights tended to have large chunks of not a lot happening, show the early developments in the final, say, 40 km, then jump straight to 6 km without explanation. Often I was left thinking 'how did that happen? How did they get there, and what happened to X?' Oddly it seemed to be the opposite in the TdF, where the highlights were often the last 20 km as raced.

The point of the highlights seems to me to be to tell the story of the race, and should be edited accordingly. It's not really going to help bring the semi-casual viewer or the enthusiast in if it's not easy to follow.

 

[srw]

I think you've just summarised the story of the race on just about every day - an early breakaway which had a large lead at 40km, was still there at 6km and then either got caught or (just about) didn't in the final couple of miles. Which is why the race was won by someone no-one's ever heard of but had spotted that there were useful seconds available on one day.

For whatever reason (more testing terrain, a bigger spread of quality for the terrain) the TdF and the other grand tours have a longer lead-in to the finish.

 

[Bollo]

If we're having a go at the meejaa, then my prize goes to the BBC news. Ok, they don't do the cycling, but their nightly one sentence report on how Sir Brad didn't win began to grate at about Stage 5.

 

[HF2300]

I think you've just summarised the story of the race on just about every day - an early breakaway which had a large lead at 40km, was still there at 6km and then either got caught or (just about) didn't in the final couple of miles.

I take your point, but at the same time I think that misses the point, which is not what actually happened but how well the TV coverage showed us what happened. Take for example the Llandudno stage, where early on in the highlights we were shown not a lot happening; then at the end, the coverage jumped from the descent into town with the break over a minute ahead, to halfway round the Orme with Lastras and Chavanel jumping off the front; or the last stage, where one minute we were shown one breakaway, the next minute a completely different breakaway five laps later. OK, you could work out what happened if you stopped to think about it for a minute, but it still seemed poorly cobbled together.

 

[the_mikey]

OK, you could work out what happened if you stopped to think about it for a minute, but it still seemed poorly cobbled together.

The Tour of Britain highlights have always been this way, it's not often clear what part of the race you're watching and why, when watching the highlights of stage 4 it jumped from just outside of Cheltenham to 35 miles down the road in Winterbourne and then another unexplained jump of 13 miles, and the riders have changed position inexplicably and they're attacking on the final climb before the finish line, but it was all edited to look continuous. I realise they're trying to cover everything, but the continuous jump cuts without explanation creates some confusion.

 

[Hont]

Nifty dismount from Ben Swift...

http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/racing/tour-of-britain/avoid-crashing-ben-swift-way-136891