If Sean Kelly ever starts a sentence without saying “Yes, well…” he can have a right to be annoyed by anyone else. As it stands…I guess not!
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Agree - I like both Rob Hatch and Carlton Kirby in different ways…they each bring different things to the role.
I don’t get the thing about ‘over pronouncing’ names … you have a guy who speaks most European languages fluently, so why shouldn’t he pronounce names as a native speaker would do?
FWIW there’s a good interview with Rob Hatch from a while ago here: ‘The biggest problem in our business is ego’: Rob Hatch Q&A | Cyclist
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Kinda ridiculous when there are complaints about Rob Hatch pronouncing people’s names correctly.
You don’t always have to pronounce everything perfectly, but making no effort at all is disrespectful in my opinion.
He can go OTT but he does ramp up towards a finale nicely. I’d say he’s one of the most professional English language commentators.
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I was going to make the same comment, Rob is fluent in at least 4 languages, so why shouldn’t he pronounce things correctly. Does everything need to be anglophied?
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I can recommend Carlton’s book Magic Spanner, it’s very revealing and funny.
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Yes I read it a while ago 
It’s awesome. So many funny anecdotes from the road.
Woow, tough battle for the bonus seconds
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Not at all, but he doesn’t need to be a pretentious prick either. I get it you speak many languages. Still, I don’t need to hear “fileeeepo gaaaanaaaaah” 30x a broadcast.
Perhaps if that was his only flaw it wouldn’t be so bad. Still waiting to hear what he was mentioning about some story regarding the cofidis rider lafey in the french press. Apparently it was very bad, but don’t worry, he’ll tell that story if there’s ever time (during a 5hr commercial free broadcast mind you)
He’s a clown. Now… Relatively speaking, I’ll take him over a bunch of other hosts (looking right at you NBC sports). But man he’s SO annoying. Wish Dan Lloyd was the ft broadcaster for this. Or Hannah Walker. Or matt Stevens.
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Fun drinking game - every time Kirby says ‘meanwhile’ you drink. See if you can make it through the first 50k of any stage, impossible I say
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What a treat that sprint bonus seconds fight was on Campello sul Clitunno. 
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Yeah that was awesome. Always nice to see the favourites fight for every second and not just sit back and let the team steamroll start to finish.
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Disagree. Horses for courses, I guess. Hatch has a beautiful Italian accent - and regarding rider’s names, his point is that he makes the effort to pronounce them correctly (as in how the rider themselves pronounce it) out of respect, rather than just anglicising everything.
Kirby, on the other hand - I mute him regularly. Large parts of the time he has no clue what’s going on, regularly calls out the wrong rider, and is only interested in how Ineos are riding, or how another rider’s performance affects Ineos’ tactics. British myopia in extremis.
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Replace ‘meanwhile’ with ‘Chris Froome’ and you won’t get out of the neutral zone
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100% agree with you there. However it makes it so hard to go back to the NBC Sports guys who pronounce all the names like how a typical American would if presented with those string of characters for the first time. Absolutely brutal especially knowing how the names should be pronounced.
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I was interested to hear that Thomas De Gent never warms up before a TT. Not sure why that is allowed by his DS. Even a short warm up must be better than nothing.
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“It’ll be a sprint day. They’ll roll to the line for a bunch sprint.”
Queue Bora hitting the front and ripping the legs off of the fastest sprinters in the peloton. I love how Bora continues to make stages I expect to be boring into something enjoyable and entertaining to watch. They did it last year in the Tour and twice so far in this year’s Giro. That the execution led to the desired outcome is just icing on the cake. Loved it.
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After using semi-legit EuroSport streams, I can’t go back to NBC Sports, they are just sooooo bad. It’s VPN and GCN for as long as possible.
Let us see how the Belgian press spins this disaster for the wonder kid. H
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Is that a legitimate comment or just your dig at someone not from Colombia?
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Quite the shake out.
Vlasov now the main contender
Yates quietly nice top 5
Wonder boy has some work to do
Ciccone (Meh)…getting a lot of press for being Italian
Martinez in top 10 at 3 min is not good, but he is a good climber and he might manage a top 5
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