I figured that as he was never in the frame to do the race they probably don’t have any footage of him, remember they were running an A and B team for sprinters that year.
I’m halfway through the bad news bears French episode. The fake AG2R vs FDJ rivalry is annoying to watch.
I can swear it sounds like they have added extra sounds to the crashes as special effects.
Sidenote: Anyone know what they were using to get the “gopro” footage? Where they, in fact, gopros? I tried looking for evidence of them and couldn’t spot one. Something smaller?
Those shots were my favorite part… except that they often used it to show crashes up close, so by the end, whenever they showed the bike-level footage, I flinched.
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It’s the Velon footage, captured with 4k go pro hero’s.
There Instagram account is worth a follow: Velon CC (@veloncc) • Instagram photos and videos
Also worth a follow
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I really enjoyed the show. Some of the criticisms above are likely due to the various contracts. UAE didn’t participate. Seems like teams were limited to 2 riders on the show (except Jumbo had 3). It does seem like a major oversight to skip the jerseys (apart from yellow). It’s too bad that Kuss and McNulty were not included, but UAE wasn’t included and Jumbo already had 3 (2.5?) stories to tell. It was odd to omit Pog’s crash on Stage 19. As for Wout drama, I don’t think it was manufactured. On Stage 4, that was a major WTF moment. He could drag Jonas to put some time into Pog by waiting 2 seconds but then just took off. I felt the same way watching it last year. Obviously, Wout was a HUGE help to the team last season, but he wants to do WVA things and sometimes that’s at odds with what the team and certainly the GC leader wants (ie - G and Pidcock episode).
I liked getting to know Jasper and Fabio. You kind of get to know who the GC guys and the multi-discipline guys are based on repeated exposure. Sprinters just pop up once in a while and need a lot of success over an extended period (Cav, Sagan) before they reach the same level of familiarity. Also felt heartbreak for 2019 Pinot TdF with the flashback.
Some of the videos were really amazing in giving a sense of the speed and chaos. The helicopter shot of normal coverage lets you know what’s going on with the race, but not what it’s like to be in the race.
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I’ve not got round to watching it yet but it’s prodcued by the same team that did the F1 “Drive to Survive” so it’s not really aimed at us (people who have a big interest in cycling)
I was with a mate last night who has no interest in cycling and never watched it and he was hooked on it and though it was amazing. It’s the non-cyclists it’s aimed at.
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The term sports washing really irks me as it’s not applied equally. Firstly I am not pro - UAE, Bahrain, Astana or Israel. I know too well the issues in those countries. I avoid going to places like Dubai for some of those reasons. Also if you really dig deeper into sport-washing and many of the other teams finances you would find significant government support for many pro teams.
One example is Team Sky/Ineos who according to some reports basically leached of British Cycling. No where have I read any criticism on the team and called it sport-washing to cover up the fact that the country essentially went to Iraq on made up reasons that caused as estimated one million people to die. You can take this further with greenwashing. The company TotalEnergies has caused communities in the continent I live in: Africa, to basically murder each other to win contracts while they want to dig up the ocean affecting thousands who rely on the areas to feed themselves. Then there are gambling companies - Lotto who try to wash their image by investing in cycling while those with addiction issues blow their life savings away. I could go on.
The fact of the matter is that people need to remember as the world, corporations and sports move East or into Africa , you are dealing with individuals who have a completely different world view. Some sports would honestly not be invested in if it was not heavily supported by their governments or monarchies. It’s a different hierarchy in those countries.
There is a reason that the longest continuous cycling paths in the world are in places like UAE, Qatar and Turkey.
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Haven’t seen any criticism of Sky/Ineos based on links to British Cycling and by (long and tenuous!) extension to British foreign policy in Iraq. Have seen plenty of criticism about green washing given that Ineos make a lot of plastic and that the Grenadier is an offroad vehicle where the only engine options are 3 litre petrol or diesel, and how that’s at odds with Team Sky’s previous stance on the environment such as wearing green jerseys one year to promote the Rainforest Initiative. I think that’s all well and good - companies sponsor teams to get their brand more noticed, if that also brings to attention aspects of their company that people don’t like then hopefully that raises awareness of the issue and either more people can avoid them if they don’t like what they see and/or the company/country can do something to improve. E.g. Nothing I’ve seen from watching Astana race bikes over the last 15 years has made me want to visit or do business there!
UAE is an interesting one. They get a lot of criticism for their treatment of women but they’ve also set up a women’s world tour team (which some of the other big men’s teams still haven’t done). And domestically nearly every amateur race they put on has a separate women’s race with equal prize money (up to and including the Abu Dhabi Gran Fondo with it’s >$500,000 prize pool) which is a lot more than can be side for many countries. They’ve built a lot of dedicated cycling facilities and are doing a lot to encourage more people to cycle. They also haven’t just bought success by throwing millions at established riders (which is the model that Liv golf have followed), they’ve identified and developed young riders like Pogacar and Ayuso. And no evidence (yet) that they’ve achieved success at any cost by doping either. So while they may well have originally invested in cycling to burnish their image, there are some good aspects to that as well.
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None of what you said is actually in disagreement with what I said, other than that you don’t like the term. The bottom line is that the sponsor of that team would be better off if they agreed to highlight Pogacar.
How many Emirati women on that team? How many compete in the UAE Tour? (Spoiler: one, and zero, respectively.) How many Emirati women using those cycling facilities? It’s all part of the same gloss. It looks good internationally to have a big-budget women’s team and big-budget races, but their national championship this year had a field of seven (7) and marital rape is legal.
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That’s my point - them sponsoring a team is a good thing if it means both the good and bad aspects of that are discussed and hopefully encourages them to continue to improve. Even if you take the most cynical possible view of why they’ve set up a women’s team, it has still led to there at least being one Emirati woman on the world tour who hopefully inspires others to follow, and is not unrelated to them starting to hold a women’s national championship at all (first one was in 2019). That’s a lot better than no female professionals and no national championship.
Why would they “continue” to improve when they can get good girl-power press without improving?
I mean that’s rhetorical, this is the same green/sportswashing Discourse™ that’s been active for decades. Does good press for the green/sportswashing lead to actual improvements in the things that are terrible, or does it just lead to more outside economic investment with no real internal change? Is there any level of success INEOS could have that would make the Grenadier become a hybrid? (Also rhetorical, I don’t have answers or any confidence in your answers, no offense 
)
Yea the F1 show I know has been fairly popular. There has been data showing that the show drove a pretty significant increase in actual F1 viewership.
As a purely anecdotal example…my sister started watched Drive to Survive. I’m quite certain she had never watched 2 minutes of a car race in her life. Now she watches F1 every weekend…even has favorite drivers.
I’m still totally uninterested in car racing lol. But I did just recently learn that F1 and the Indianapolis 500 are not the same thing, so that’s progress in a way 
.
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I think Rob Hatch described it best during the stage of the Giro where Pinot “almost” won: “Once again, Pinot has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory…” I like Pinot well enough but agree that he often doesn’t make the best decisions regarding race tactics and keeping his emotions in check.
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I think it’s his poor decision making and racing with his heart not his head that is exactly why people love him!
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I suspect that those French guys don’t have the best doctors or pharma support like riders anchored in other countries.
I finished last night and I fully enjoyed the show. I have a couple of critiques, most of which have been covered already. However, I think they could have done a bit more education for non-cyclists.
I feel they could have done a better job showing how difficult the stages are and race is. Between stages 11 and 12 last year, they nearly climbed the height of Mount Everest. Over the entire tour, they climb the equivalent of roughly 4 Mount Everests. On the screen they would have a quick figure of 13km and elevation is 1500 meters or something. Well, without knowing the elevation at the base of the climb we don’t know how hard of a climb it actually is.
Other things I explained to my wife:
I further explained why the last stage is ceremonial but there is still a race. Without knowing that you can’t make up enough time on a flat stage she was kind of lost. If it is ceremonial, why are they racing? If they are racing, how is it ceremonial?
Why Wout was wearing a green jersey. I told her there are several races within the race but did not fully explain because it probably would have been more confusing. I think it was a huge mistake to not even discuss this, as it adds to the dilemma that Wout/Jumbo were facing.
Rest days. She asked if the stages are back to back or not. Seems like low hanging fruit. Maybe we both missed it?
Lastly: I think the focus on crashing is warranted. Yes, when we are watching it seems like most crashes are not that big of a deal. However, I would imagine it is extremely stressful to the racers and the broader team. For many of them, this race is what their entire year (or career) is built for. Continuing on after a crash highlights the extreme toughness of the racers and they did not have to go out of their way to capture them. It just so happened that the team that won had a ton of crashes.
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I agree on all point! 
At the same time I also really understand that it is incredibly hard to create a narrative on such scale, with limited material etc.
But yes, first episode could have been one of those flashy one to suck people in, then in the second and third one focus more on the whole tour itself, what it is, the extremes.
Would also like it to be a bit more focus on each team for each episode.
As someone who follows cycling everyday, even I felt like they missed some really important stuff:
- Vingegaard waiting for Pogacar after his crash (sportsmanship etc)
- How the classifications work
- More on how the racing works in general, they are teammates but also race against each other in a way
Can probably think of a few more, but those are the ones at the top of my mind.
Also of course, follow more teams
One thing that I feel really stood out, that I felt also after watching the Zwift Academy on GCN, is how much of an asshole the Alpecin Sports Director is.
As someone who leads a team at work myself, I could not stop thinking about how these people seem to completely lack people skills, motivation skills etc.
They bash the riders, put immense pressure on them, does practically nothing to aid them in reaching the goals, except just yelling on the radio.
And when they do win, its almost as the Sports Director thinks that he has done something to aid that.
Made me a bit sad honestly, seeing how many of these riders are struggling with pressure and then you have some dude screaming on the radio as support, or saying that something was “fucking stupid” when they get back to the bus.
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Phil Gaimon did a horrible video on this series but he had a few good stories. One was when he was called up to race Paris-Roubaix. The only reason EF did this was because they didn’t have enough riders and there was a 5000 euro fine for not showing up with enough riders. Apparently, it was cheaper to send Phil!
And then there was the story of Wegelius giving him a hard time on the team bus in front of everyone. You call up a climber who has never recon’d Paris Roubaix plus you give him a hard time.
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Understatement of the century! 
I grew up in Indianapolis and the 500 was like a religion. Ironically, we couldn’t watch the race on TV, being local.
Fast forward to discovering F1. I now find the Indy 500 boring. Going in circles with only left turns. Pit stops that take half an hour (ok 30 seconds vs 2.2 seconds).
And don’t even say NASCAR. F1 FTW!
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