Hola ¿que tal? Eurosport stopped as a stand-alone offer a year ago and in its place a year of surfing various channels to watch many races via VPN. Language lessons galore.
Background
Eurosport still exists ibut it’s been rolled into a bundle with Max, HBO or other brands of Warner-Discovery. This is not done yet with the media company set to demerge.
Old Eurosport subscribers have to opt for the general Max/HBO bundle and pay for the sports add-on. If you live in the UK or Ireland you don’t need to subscribe to the generalist channel but instead to TNT, a dedicated sports channel but with a substantial price hike in order to pay for the Premiership football rights.
Most people have been able to swap… but your blogger had a long-standing Eurosport subscription which rolled over every year despite having moved countries since. Once the Eurosport-alone deal was up the new options didn’t work.
So in it’s place comes a Virtual Private Network, software that routes your internet connection through a location of choice. So you can point your computer to Belgium to watch Belgian races, Italy for Italian races and so on.
I’ve used NordVPN and other providers seem good. Nord pays a good portion of the subscription fee for the first year back to the referrer which is why you might see the affiliate marketing on those “how to watch” articles on the likes of cyclingnews.com or hear about them as sponsors of a podcast. I’ve no such deal so just mentioning them in passing for no gain.
Small print
Watching broadcasters via VPN can be in breach of their rules. Some channels require a sign-up by email and maybe in the small print there might conditions about residency. It might sound like excuses but this doesn’t sound a heinous crime, it’s adding to the viewers, it’s sitting through their ad breaks. But it does mean you’re contributing to the domestic broadcaster via any licence or tax.
There are other options like pirate youtube channels or sites offering pirate streams but I’ve avoided those. A proper broadcaster usually has a stable connection and offers HD streams and more.
Do you speak cycling?
If you can clear that hurdle, the obvious issue is the language barrier. This seems like a tall one… but it’s proved less so. It’s also notable how some countries have different styles, some can’t have a couple of seconds without voices, others are happy to let back and let the images talk.
Audio commentary is a big part of the experience because often there’s little happening in a race as the peloton traverses the landscape. This means the presenters have to supply to filler and branch off into side conversations for much of the time. This can be interesting and relevant to the day’s sport but the point is if you don’t understand a word sometimes you’re not actually missing any of the racing. And there’s English coverage with Australia’s SBS for many European races.
When the action is on then you can often pick up a lot as the commentators name the riders. Still the Tour de Suisse in Schwyzerdütsch on SRF a challenge and Iztulia Basque Country on EITB is impenetrable, luckily Spain’s RTVE covers it too.
Channel hopping
One issue is knowing what channel a race is on, instead of Eurosport now it’s one of many across Europe and occasionally beyond. But cycling on TV tends to be on one channel per country. So if you want to watch a Belgian, French, Italian, Spanish or Swiss race it’s typically the same broadcaster in each country; one exception is Australia where the Tour Down Under is on Channel 7 but otherwise SBS seems to show many races.
Finding the right channel not be obvious to many but having done this blog for a while and looked at the media landscape it feels second nature to know that Een and its Sporza brand shows cycling in Flanders, that RAI rhymes with the Giro and so on.
Country hopping
One issue here is you almost have to chose the home broadcaster races are often shown in their home region and not beyond. So if you speak one European language don’t assume you can use that country’s cycling broadcaster and watch lots of races in other countries. For a recent example the Vuelta might have started in Italy but the Vuelta just isn’t on Italian TV, nor French. Some channels still have plenty of races but Eurosport’s “home of cycling” boast is honest, it really does have it all.
Local insight
Staying local does have its advantages. Even when I had a Eurosport subscription I’d often turn to local channels. France TV and RAI both have two moto reporters during their grand tour coverage so there’s more information on what is happening; Sporza for the Ronde just feels right. Similarly they’re often recording on the ground rather than a studio in another country and so are closer to local news and stories at the race.
One flipside of this is chauvinism and familiarity. When Marc Soler attacked yesterday in the Vuelta it was “Marc” this, “Marc” that, and so on. But it’s never too heavy or biased; although I didn’t watch Jasper Philipsen’s Tour exit on Belgian TV, apparently the commentators took it out on Bryan Coquard but later recanted. That said Eurosport is not neutral either, English commentary dwells on English-speaking riders, the French presenters on their home riders and so on. It’s also commentator dependent, rather than channel.
So far, so good
But… one thing missed from Eurosport is that it knows it is broadcasting largely to cycling enthusiasts and so offers more technical insight. There might be a good post-race explanation of a sprint finish, when the public broadcasters have a more general audience to appeal to and so might talk more about local cuisine or a monument more than some “inside cycling” issue.
The big lament is just not having everything in one place. The small one is if you set your VPN to watch a race in one country it’s harder to watch a race in another although with experience you discover some channels work on a localisation “handshake” when you open the page while others are reliant on a continuous connection.
Conclusion
Unable to roll-over to Max, it’s been a year of watching cycling races via local broadcasters. It helps although it means being able to sustain a conversation about the weather or directions for travel, or even branch out into specialist topics like chainrings or gradients. Plus ways to say the team did a super job in every tongue… but struggle to order food in a bar or other basics.
But the main point is to be able to watch the action and not a moment has been missed. Language isn’t a big barrier, the bigger issue is juggling. It’s brought home just how siloed the coverage can be, if you want to watch all the World Tour calendar you just can’t unless, maybe, you live in Belgium. You need a Eurosport subscription.
This makes Eurosport such a convenient service and remains so if you can still get it, even if it’s pricier and wrapped up inside other subscription bundles for things you don’t want. This feels where much of the internet is going. Rather than being open to every niche interest, it is consolidating behind paywalls and being restricted by location.
We got spoiled by GCN, and Warner Bros seem to have no idea what to do with pro-cycling so it’s a right old mess. As for language I normally watch without commentary as it tends to drive me nuts.
Yes. Watching without commentary but with a rewind function and one eye on a reliable live blogger is a way to keep abreast of live bike racing while getting other things done during the longueurs and not being driven mad by drivel.
This is where Eitb has an advantage over all broadcasters: you get the names while saved from the rest of the commentary; unless you speak euskara of course.
Yep, cycling coverage is enshittification personified nowadays ☹️
Now that Tour has left free to air, the UK has managed to get the worst of all worlds; ~£30 p/m for Discovery+/TNT Sport vs ~€9 p/m for Max in Europe, so if it’s cycling you want you have to pay a massive premium for a whole lot of unwanted football and then you don’t even get the HBO content (which is on Sky Atlantic). Terrible value and not good for cycling – or any other niche sporting interests covered by Eurosport – at all.
Once upon a time the promise of the internet was being able to reach people with targetted ads, so cycling coverage could have related ads and so on for every niche interest. But it’s never really worked out like that and increasingly feels like everything is going back into big generalist bundles.
I actually wish that Sky had been in the running, the specialist Tennis, Cricket and F1 categories the have feel like the’d have been a good and marginally cheaper fit…
Except Sky lose out on cricket rights relatively regularly – including the Ashes this winter.
The golden age was when all you needed was Sky and it wasn’t all that expensive. I’m cracking on nowadays but I can remember circa £40 a month getting you every conceivable football match, domestic and international cricket, golf pretty much 24/7, F1 when it was half watchable and Eurosport for your cycling and randomly interesting things like downhill skiing and skijumping! Now its like every football match requires a different subscription and they all cost a fortune. Dark days. I only have TNT now and if its not got cycling on it seems to be baseball pretty much permanently.
Guys…where do you all live?I pay like 10Eur/month and have all the cyclyng, F1, moto gp, hockey, NFL and futball I need.Have Vodafone TV…
I remember when Sky Sports had the rights to the giro highlights when Orla was presenting. It was treated as an afterthought, and wasn’t even on at the time advertised half the time despite them having a cycling team.
I doubt these days they would even consider it, and certainly wouldn’t invest in coverage like they do for football, cricket, golf and NFL.
What I hate about HBO Max is that even in the subscription service, they now have ad breaks. Fortunately they don’t have the right for either major football leagues or F1 here in the Netherlands, because those two tend to drive up the price astronomically.
This. I’m in Portugal where Eurosport comes with the standard cable bundle so I kind of didn’t need to do anything and I’d still get my cycling. But I got Max because it’s more convenient when I’m watching outside the house, on devices, travelling or hum… at work. And also because it had continuous coverage! But now they brought ads. I feel sort of scammed. I feel I’m paying twice. I’ll be dropping Max at the end of this season and roll with just my normal broadcast Eurosport while it lasts here.
Also in Portugal and outside the house I just watch Eurosport in the Nos app on the phone. Same for people who have Meo I think.
Nos and Meo are local cable providers. When I say phone I mean tablet too.
SBS have been promoting the TDU for a month or so which must mean that they have taken 7 network out of it.
Some things are simpler at the bottom of the world.
That’s good news. Even if it’s the same commentary and production team or not, it should be an improvement. 7 was pretty quick to cut to ad breaks.
The advertising side of things probably won’t change. SBS has the same limit on advertising as the other networks in Australia – a maximum of 288 minutes per off-peak day (i.e. an average of 16 minutes per hour from midnight to 6pm) and a maximum of 17 minutes in any hour.
Hopefully the race has an ironclad contract with substantial penalties in place for SBS if anything less than every stage is broadcast live. SBS used to have the rights to the race, but they lost the deal because they only did a live broadcast for the final stage of each year’s race.
I know nothing of the rules but adds on SBS are fewer across the board for normal broadcasting.
Certain categories of programming which come under a community service obligation for SBS and can therefore have taxpayer funds spent on them. Professional sport is not one of those categories, and is required to pay its way.
During the Tour de France this year they went right up to the night limit of 15 minutes per hour.
The Road Nationals at the start of the year were the same, they used the full 17 minutes per hour.
They were a little under on the last motorsport broadcast I watched, but that might be because they managed to classify the AASA Super Series as being community sport and therefore eligible for taxpayer funding.
Might be a good one to keep an eye on when the World Athletics Championships are on in a couple of weeks time.
I was thinking the same when the ads began. It’s for the best. The SBS production team seems to understand cycling & how races play out.
I love cycling and I love watching cycling but the current state of affairs is just not fair. I opted to pay the £30 per month, and now it’s going up AND they’ve added adverts – in the name of providing better coverage?!?!
The problem seems to be cycling as a whole just doesn’t seem to care or be able to organise itself. When GCN was around, you paid about £50-60 per year – I’d happily pay triple as I know lots would. But it all goes back to the fact there is no central organisation to sell TV rights and we’re all dancing to WBD and ASOs tune.
I really don’t see a solution, but I am cancelling my subscription so may try vpns but I love the commentary (at least when Carlton is not on) and can honestly see a world where I give up on watching.
This has coincided with a stage of my life when I have young children so I don’t have much time to spend weekend afternoons on the sofa. So a switch to £30 largely for something I’m not interested in was the end. Watched end of the giro on holiday. The tour on ITV (not an option next year). But this might be it. Oldest has really got into riding his own bike so looks like we’ll spend more time on the bike!
If you’re willing to watch a race delayed, it’s worthwhile looking into https://cyclingarchive.club. It’s next day viewing, which can be useful when you’re not in the same timezone, but it does also mean avoiding social media for spoilers.
@INRNG Eurosport is (was in my case) only the home of cycling until a first round junior mixed doubles match at Roland Garros that has gone on longer than anticipated – then cycling can do one!
Presumably badminton fans feel the same when the peloton is slow and running behind the slowest schedule (a rare thing these days)?
Maybe. There was of course Eurosport’s tendency in the UK to move highlights in the schedule without telling anyone.
My point is the “home of cycling” slogan is laughable.
The televisual side of the sport has lost me and my £.
If you care to look around at other VPN providers, I’ve been using Mullvad to circumvent geo restrictions. They’re as far as I know the ones that afford you the most privacy, and have the least controversies about ownership and business models. (Not affiliated with them in any way)
A shout out to Amnezia, excellent bandwidth and works even in Russia and, I’m told, China.
I used to feel jealous of European tv viewers, but now it seems that being in the US isn’t that bad. I do have to pay for HBO and Peacock, but they both have other content that the rest of the family enjoys anyway. On the downside, we still have to pay even more to see all the classics on Flobikes, which is a bridge too far for me.
I’m in Brazil and most of what I watch is trough SBS, they are saving the day for we since the end of the GCN app.
I live in Canada but subscribed to British Europort for many years and watched it via VPN. I paid the $7 a month on my Canadian credit card, but eventually they stopped accepting it.
So now I subscribe to Flobikes; a lot more expensive, but they show virtually everything, there are no ads, and the commentators are way better. I consider myself lucky after hearing what others have to say.
+1 to Flobikes. In the US thus went the VPN route. Tour coverage (Nico Roche and Anthony McCrossan) was so much better than NBC/Peacock (Phil / Bob Roll) so it’s well worth the spend IMO, especially with no ads.
+1 to Flobikes. McCrossan and Roche compliment each other well. Occasionally, while speaking about regional cheeses that graced his palate during the previous evening’s dinner, the Irishman succumbs to the excitement of an attack and inadvertently assumes the role of play-by-play announcer.
I live in France and increasingly watch cycling on my iPad or even iPhone. I have a subscription to the HBO Max app for 10.99 € a month and can choose the language I want the commentary in. However I find that French commentators are no better than their English counterparts even the more irritating ones. If I want to watch on the television I can connect the iPad to the television with an HDMI cable. No it’s not GCN but there is still enough to satiate my appetite for the sport.
Each to their own taste but I’ve enjoyed Jacky Durand’s analysis in the past, often on the money and delivered with some humour.
In places where the only option for cycling is a very expensive subscription including soccer i can imagine the viewing figures being very low if the cyclist fan is not always a big soccer fan. Possibly resulting in the sport being dropped completely unless its free for the broadcaster.
In Ireland you can only get TNT through a television package, no online only option. I get away with piggybacking on my brother’s Sky Sports subscription but listening to Orla Chennaoui singing the praises of the multi-screen options on the app in her fine Derry accent is beyond annoying.
That annoys me during F1 broadcasts, as Australian viewers get a cut down version of the Sky Sports F1 package that doesn’t include the features that the presenters advertise during the coverage.
Whats wrong with a Derry accent…
I’m a rare watcher of live cycling and was a big on demand user. I’ve taken to watching most of my cycling in the form of 5-8 min highlights on YouTube, topped up with ITV highlights of the tour and a bit of pirate for the more obscure races. Podcasts fill in the gaps.
On the upside I have quite a lot more time on my hands as a result of not being able to watch an hour of cycling most evenings.
I’ve recently become this as well, though even highlights I often skip. I wish there was good journalism that summarized a day’s racing like old baseball writing would summarize games. I did a lot of travelling in my 20s and loved getting the paper to follow the Phillies (mostly the box score because the Philly papers were not sold outside of Philadelphia) and the Yankees back when the NY Times had good sports writing. (Remember the old Seinfeld episode where he said he could read the sports page even if his hair were on fire?) The Phils only got a few lines summary there, if anything, but the Yankees had prodigious coverage by writers with character. This blog goes a long way toward filling that hole, thankfully.
Something happened this summer–at some point during the tour–where I just stopped watching. I only really look at the standings of the Vuelta… (I’ll watch Lombardia though) Partly it’s just gotten boring and partly it’s just nauseating to see the names of authoritarian/autocratic countries etc on the jerseys and to hear people like Pogacar, a rider I liked watching, when asked about UAE’s politics, embarrassingly point to the promotion of cycling in the UAE as a positive effect of the UAE sponsorship… Since the takeover in the US, my home country (I’m an expat in Canada, thankfully), it all feels more sickening. As does the entire super-management of the riders’ performances, health, nutrition, weight, etc. etc. etc. Often the only thing that seems to remind us that riders are humans is when they get injured and actually bleed…
+1 to this. I loved being able to watch extended race highlights but reverting to shorter YouTube highlights hasn’t been as bad as feared (except when they spoil the suspense by announcing the race winner at the start of the clip. TNT: I’m looking at you!). Flobikes’ highlights, or official race channel highlights, are better at not spoiling things.
Interesting would be, what happens with the money? Do they pay more for the coverage or the rights? Or is it going into the own pocket?
Before Bora started its sponsorship, they made a survey, amount of money they have to spend compared to money, they would get out. Cycling was far ahead of all other sports, because of the free coverage. As we all know, today it is harder to find a sponsor, because you have to spend more money into it.
ASO wants the tour free to air, that is why they split the rights and give it to the Eurovision channels, too.
A note on this and the bizarre work arounds you can find.
We are Sky subscribers, largely because Eurosport was dropped from BT TV (ironically) here in the UK, and we enjoy the functionality of the Sky Q system. When Eurosport on Sky ended we looked for an alternative but there wasn’t a viable one in our area. However, I remembered that my phone provider used to do deals on BT Sport (now TNT). But here’s the only deal I could get…
I had to buy a 42 inch TV through my phone contract which had ‘free’ TNT and Discovery plus subscriptions bundled with it. It costs me £9.99 a month over two years.
I asked if I could just add the tenner on to my bill and not have the TV, but that was a firm no. So anyway, the TV was worth about £250. Free TNT for two years.
I saw that deal also. A most bizarre outcome, but the cheapest way to get D+ (and a ‘free’ TV).
Those kinds of deals are so funny. Other than having to come up with the cash up front, that a fantastic value! But you probably won’t need a new tv in two years…
“But it does mean you’re contributing to the domestic broadcaster via any licence or tax.” – how exactly are you contributing?
Is violating broadcaster terms of use the online equivalent of red light jumping? Seems harmless, but risks enforcement or laws being tightened to all cycling fans?
MJR – I think there’s a “not” missing from that sentence, i.e. you’re bypassing the contributions by using a VPN.
Enjoyed the post, but it’s not true that you are condemned to watch the Tour de Suisse in Schwyzerdütsch! Swiss national TV has six channels, two each for German (SRF 1 & 2, French (RTS 1 & 2) and Italian (RTI la 1 et la 2). I watched the whole thing in French. Also, the Vuelta is available on Eurosport in French, with Jacky Durand and David Moncoutié commenting.
Having watched pro cycling since the early 90’s and for me it was a matter of life or death to watch it all, nowadays I’m just not bothered in fact I think i’v grown out of it. Certainly not paying the fat cats what their asking now!
For once I’m happy to live in Germany. 4,99 / 7,99 (without ads) a month for Discover+.
The thing that drives me mad is the corporate jargon from TNT about offering consumers choice blah blah blah. The simple fact is they’re trying to gouge minority sports fans to subsidise the ludicrous amounts of money they pay for Champions League rights.
There’s an amusing article on Cyclingnews that’s ostensibly investigative journalism about the rise of illegal cycling streaming sites but ends up reading like an advert for one.
Exactly what I thought! “Here are links to lots of illegal sites that you definitely shouldn’t use…”
If you understood Bulgarian, I think you would have like the Bulgarian commentary on Eurosport, they are great. Them and your blog is what got me into watching road cycling.
After a few years of only watching the Tour and highlights of a couple of other races that were free to view on ITV, I decided to try a Eurosport subscription in 2020 (when due to the pandemic my main hobby of theatregoing was halted). I rapidly became quite addicted & have watched pretty much all the road cycling boradcast on Eurosport/Discovery+/TNT since. However the half price offer that TNT had when they abruptly skyrocketed the prices earlier this year ends in a month & that’ll be it for me, as I’m not prepared to pay £30.99 per month. In hindsight I rather wish I’d never started subscribing to Eurosport in the first place as it’s now going to be a real wrench to give it up.
You may be surprised. I had Eurosport as part of my standard TV bundle and watched quite a lot of cycling, along with BSB, WSBK and various other sports that happened to be on, particularly in winter. Now that’s all gone, and presumably by coincidence MotoGP highlights seem to have disappeared from terrestrial TV in the UK as well. I thought I would be devastated to miss the spring classics and live coverage of two Grand Tours, but it’s freed up more time to actually ride my bike. Although I’m a football fan I’ve never paid for Sky Sports because it would give me an excuse to never leave my sofa, and the same applies to TNT now.
The other option for the UK based is to only pay for TNT for the months of the year you are actually interested in. I decided this year that I only cared enough about the Spring Classics and the GTs to pay for them. So I had three months from Het Neiwsblad to end of Giro, then cancelled, reset up for the Vuelta for one month then that’ll be it for me until next year. For everything in between i can get enough from the Cycling Podcast and the internet to keep me satisfied. There does not seem to be any restriction on how many times you can join and cancel. I will miss the Autumn Italian races but as Lombardia will likely be a dull 80k Pog solo attack that is not worth shelling out for.
Pretty much the same as me, signed up for the spring classics and cancelled from after the Vuelta. Plan to do that again next year.
It did encourage me to look hard at all my media subscriptions and once I had cancelled a few I actually ended up saving money.
+1
That was my plan, but worked out slightly cheaper to have TNT for the whole year via BT as part of broadband package.
Niche moan – why are the extended Vuelta highlights on TNT not on till 10pm, paying nearly triple the price for and this is the only difference in coverage between GCN and TNT that I can spot – once I worked out which livestream doesn’t have adverts (avoid the one that say TNT1 or TNT2 etc)
So what are the chances of Almeida finding a team mate to support him on the final climb today … and will any of you be able to watch?
Fortunately, we can catch it here in Denmark on TV2 without any hassle. As for Almeida, he’ll rely heavily on Vine in the final weeks. While I’m glad Ayuso has managed to break free from the UAE dungeons, it will be fascinating to see how the rest of the Vuelta unfolds.
Shifting focus from the VPN talks, it’s clear Ayuso is in hot water now. This has to be one of the most predictable fallouts in modern cycling, and both sides are going all in. If even a fraction of these stories hold up, UAE must be an absolute madhouse. It really feels like their top riders – Pog, Almeida, and Ayuso – come across as spoiled kids.
I’m very curious about what our intrepid host thinks of all this, not to mention some of the older (er-more experienced) posters. Is this Vuelta really so boring that there’s this little interest? Personally, I’ve generally enjoyed it. For my part, I’m happy to see Ayuso moving on, although I can’t help thinking that he “threw his toys out the pram” a bit.
Pog? Spoiled kid?? Shurely shome mishtake – we’re supposed to worship the blacklist he stands on!
Pretty much everyone on the team gets along with Pogacar and with Almeida. I don’t know why MediumMig has a different view. But Ayuso has a less good relationship with his some of his teammates. And I get the impression that Gianetti, especially, has not been impressed with the behaviour of Ayuso since at least last July.
Letting Ayuso leave, I think, is clearly the best for all parties. The situation had become untenable.
Everyone gets on with Almeida? Sure that’ll be why they’re all in for him in this race and why Bjerg publicly dumped on Christen at the Tour de Suisse. Even Joao doesn’t get on very well with Joao and his wolfpack chops were hardly obvious at Quickstep where that Giro with Remco wasn’t a million miles away from what we’re seeing here. Ayuso is taking the palm at the moment on the team for being the mardarse’s mardarse but it’s not like he has no competition for top spot!
We know that in the UK ITV couldn’t afford or weren’t willing to bid for the ASO rights, do we know what TNT paid? As i understand all races provide the coverage and then you are just buying the feed so the cost of production is world feed cost, plus broadcast plus presenters. I’m a keen cricket fan so for me tha analogy here is the winter test radio coverage which is a bunch of presenters watching the Sky(?) coverage and relaying that to the listeners.
If GCN launched now then it would have a good chance of being a success, they were having to compete with free to air on the biggest race for viewing numbers. Its a hyper UK issue but i’m intrigued as to whether TNT get exclusive rights and those are TV or TV and streaming. Could another anglophone streaming channel set up an all cycling offer via streaming that i could watch with a legitimate world feed. Could a radio commentary exist in English that works over the top of a local feed.
From what I remember of comments from Ned Boulting and some others who did the ITV4 show, the issue was not the ASO fee, the issue was the cost of production to ITV. I.e., ITV were baulking at the cost of sending the presenters and crew all around France + other associated TV broadcast production costs.
ITV4 (and C4 before that – I assume the same production company behind it the whole time) did a great job over the years. They set a high bar. Though Eurosport put a _lot_ into it too. Possibly there’d be a chance for a much slimmer operation to have a go – unless TNT got exclusive rights for UK and Ireland? (Didn’t for the Tour, cause TG4 still do the Tour, though commentary “as gaeilge”, and what little Irish I ever had is long gone).
Good insight, a studio only commentary option could have better economics. That and a person on the ground to pick up interviews (shared with a podcast) feels like a formula worth trying. I was happy with the Eurosport/GCN cost, i’ve not seen any announcement the TNT package for next years tour but i’ve not been looking either. For post race analysis there’s no shortage of pods to pick from.
ASO were willing to provide the Tour to ITV (or another free-to-air broadcaster) for pretty much a peppercorn fee. But ITV decided the viewing numbers were too low to justify the huge amount of time assigned to the race. I don’t think the production cost was the issue, since it really isn’t that large (but who knows, I could be wrong on that).
VPN has changed my life. On Latin America the broadcast of races is pretty bad: three broadcasters (ESPN/Disney+ for ASO major races; DirecTV for RCS which is lockedin for those who have that satelite dish; and Claro Sports for small ASO races). Everything is pretty bad: commercial breaks on all of them except Disney+, the commentators are disastrous (they only know to shout like a football match or a horse race with zero knowledge of cycling, and their colombian nationalism is atrocious for those who are not colombians), and most of the calendar -except monuments, GT and some WT races- doesn´t have coverage at all.
Now i use NordVPN to watch races on RAI and RTVE (And Eurosport streams for other races) and is just another experience. Superior in all aspects.
A possibly great stage ruined by some idiots who won’t even face consequences for their behaviour. But that seems to be were this continent is heading unfortunately.
Not the worst description I’ve read of Netanyahu’s government and the Middle East as a whole 😉
[Guessing this comment, any replies including this one, and others on the subject may be best deleted to avoid a shitshow.]
the IPT riders are ‘shocked’ by the reaction of the Spanish public… come on, what did they expect, I’m amazed it’s taken this long.
It´s one thing to expect demonstrations and quite another thing to expect protesters who seem quite willing to risk the safety of the cyclists.
Besides, I´m pretty sure the IPT riders whom you purport to cite didn´t say they were shocked by the reaction of “the Spanish public”.
PS I agree with anonymous; none of us can bring any new, enlightening or vaguely interesting points of view into the discussion.
Well, there is the small fact that they were trying to draw attention to some other idiots who won’t face consequences for infinitely worse behaviour.
But hey, some of us struggle with perspective.
You think the Middle East needs more attention from us? I’m 48 and feel like it’s dominated the news my whole life, just sick of it now, we’ve got our own problems.
The problem is the UCI – having recently banned one national federation and affiliated teams and riders due to their state committing war crimes – refuses to similarly ban Israel, indisputably engaged in crimes of much greater magnitude (just based on civilian deaths, despite the much smaller population involved), and considered by all but a handful of states to plausibly be engaged in the highest crimes of genocide and extermination.
Israeli federations should be banned immediately from international sports.
Err…you do know that Hamas (proscribed as a terrorist organisation in most of the western world) has as one of its founding articles, the assertion that Israel should be obliterated as a state and the Jews exterminated. And that they have used their control of the Gaza strip to further these aims.
I don’t want this site to become a venue for this kind of debate, but…Hamas are hardly the innocent victims that is sometimes claimed.
Hamas has held that it would accept a two-state solution with recognition of Israel since 2017. So you’re talking bullshit.
Does Israel recognise the rights of Palestinians to have a state? No. Despite the fact Israel signed up to accords decades (1995) ago to move to a two-state solution within 5 years of those accords. It just violated those accords again and again, and has continued to pursue settlements.
Israel, always claiming to be the victim, even while it kills thousands to tens of thousands every year; while it steals and steals and steals.
And that’s thousands to tens+ thousands, year after year, decade after decade after decade. Never ending. And it holds thousands and thousands of Palestinians hostage in torture prisons.
Always crying victim, while being one of the most oppressive regimes in the world.
And btw, here is the founding statement of Likud – Benjamin “Netanyahu” Milekowsky’s party that has held power the most for the last 3 decades in Israel:
“The Right of the Jewish People to the Land of Israel (Eretz Israel)
a. The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable and is linked with the right to security and peace; therefore, Judea and Samaria will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.
b. A plan which relinquishes parts of western Eretz Israel, undermines our right to the country, unavoidably leads to the establishment of a “Palestinian State,” jeopardizes the security of the Jewish population, endangers the existence of the State of Israel. and frustrates any prospect of peace.”
So the leading political party of Israel, the current government and heading most goverments for decades, does not recognise the right of Palestinians to have a state. And you deceitfully whine that Hamas doesnt recognise Israel to exist – even though Hamas _would_ as part of a 2-state peace deal!
Wouldn’t crooked timber be a more appropriate forum for you Paul J?
VPN to Canada and watch Flobikes was the obvious choice. You get the same Eurosport coverage at a fraction of the bundled cost.
Returning to a theme of the previous blogpost, the racing in this Vuelta is so uneventful it’s in danger of rendering moot any dilemmas over how and where to watch it. Clock five minutes of highlights on youtube and you’ve missed nothing.
wonder if Almeida will ever get the respect he deserves?
first he plays second fiddle to Remco in his younger days despite being the stronger GC rider at the time…
then he spends recent years being forgotten while we talk about Pidcock, Ayuso, Cian and others (despite being an Almeida fan I’m as guilty as anyone)
meanwhile he’s slowly but surely elevating himself to the third best GC rider in the world, maybe even the second by the end of this Vuelta…
even today the amount of people fawning over Pidcock’s apparent breakthrough ride, despite Pidcock being 26 and Almeida being 27? surely Almeida needs to be given so much more respect than he gets?
is it because of his eyebrows?
or just that he doesn’t have sudden accelerations on the climbs?
few riders have been as consistently good during their careers as him while getting as regularly dismissed as also-rans
Definitely a top ride by Almeida but hard to see him regaining the 50 or so seconds from Barnable Bill.
I suppose Almeida’s issue is he is quietly consistent in a really undramatic way. He’s not one for the flashy attack and is rarely sighted in one day races, he accumulates steady finishes in the lesser observed GTs without winning (m)any stages and wins one week races nobody watches. Throw in that he is from a relatively small country with probably fairly limited cycling media, and he generally slips quietly under the radar. Its not necessarily fair, but its the way it is.
As an aside, I think he would need to win this Vuelta to move into the unofficial top 3 of GC men. Even if he pushes Vingegaard all the way and is a fairly close second he’d still be behind Remco, S. Yates and maybe still old man Rogla for now, in my book at least.
Itzulia, Romandie, Suisse, no one ever watch these unknown races. This comments section is becoming such a joke…
…what with all these “Anonymous” who cannot even be bother to make up some sort of distinguishable moniker.
But anyway, methinks Richard S. was describing how a certain type of cycling fan who was drawn into this sport by someone winning the Tour tends to view these things.
For such a fan there is the Tour, then nothing, then the two lesser GTs – and the only one week tour he watches is, of course, the Dauphiné.
I have the same doubts about Almeida as I have about Pogacar and Del Toro.
Maybe unfair, but I detest and distrust UAE all the way.
I’ve always given Almeida the respect he deserves.
Almeida has, relative to his strength, made as much progress in earlier years as Pogacar did compared to ’23.
Whatever they’re putting in the water at UAE, it’s clearly working…
I say this as a big Visma fan and an even bigger Jonas fan, but I’m extremely disappointed by the way Visma are riding this Vuelta. It brings back memories of the bad old days of the super boring Sky train tactics. The way UAE is performing definitely brings up questions of Giannetti’s magic beans, so maybe Visma are up against something more than just a great team, but they are one mechanical away from a total disaster. Very, very disappointing performance by Jorg.
Jonas was brutally honest in Danish media, both yesterday and today, admitting he didn’t have the legs to drop Almeida.
It somehow feels like UAE as a team is simply outgrowing all their competitors.