Last years series was great to watch a lot of the behind the scenes footage and see how the producers created a story line with the various racers, men and women, and how it all played out. Another year in and I think it’s safe to say most of us are pretty informed about the placings, races results and even the racers themselves as there have been podcast and vlogs non-stop.
I’m pretty hyped up to see the premier tonight that’s featuring the Seat Otter Classic. Curious as to how the show itself will have evolved from last year and get into the story.
I’ll be having watch party with my 4-year-old as I prepare for my first gravel event of the year tomorrow.
It’s obvious Sofia wasn’t happy with the way they portrayed here last year/what they offered for compensation. She’s nonexistent in this years first episode.
I’m glad they are covering both Women’s and Men’s race for each event(so far at least)
I think some of the other female racers were great personalities and were under highlighted last year. It might be that they’re trying to spread the love a bit.
I’ve just watched the first episode. Great video. A little light on the race coverage for me, but not out of line with what I expected.
Impressed they dropped the whole lot at once and I’m already looking forward to my next endurance session on the trainer to watch the rest.
I got to say, great series of videos.
One thing that’s obviously clear, is that Keegan is in the male competitors heads.
He’s good, don’t get me wrong, but psychological, they have already been beat before showing up.
I don’t personally know Sofia or how she’s wired, but she doesn’t seem to prioritize being a “media darling”. That’s cool if she doesn’t want to dance to that tune and her sponsors are fine with it, but it’s not surprising she wouldn’t be a focus. Also, I’m assuming whatever coverage she does get will grow in the later episodes when she is the clear leader in the series.
I’ve just watched the first 3 episodes and Lifetime has definitely stepped up it’s game since last year. Very well done in my opinion and seemed to address some of the criticism from last year.
Quality stuff mostly. Visually superb, well music was absolutely crap no taste at all.
Did I see right Finsterwald divebombs Swenson and himself down in one service point in Big Sugar. Didn’t knew this at all from earlier reports?
Unbound finishline crowded sprinting…Man, that aerial shot was quite telling and horrifying same time. Looks clear they need major accident, before things change, yikes.
Kinda pisses me off this too incestuous attitude towards outside visitors and skipping them in finish line footage completely. It’s too obvious. Like Vakoc getting second in Unbound or Niewiadoma winning in Big Sugar. Must’ve been enormous gritting of teeth when Slik took Unbound 2022 edition and production was forced to film him.
That’s the first time I saw the aerial footage of the finish, really good view. Honestly, it looked a lot less sketchy from that angle compared to previous views I’ve seen, but agree that they need to figure out a way to clear things out to make it safer and more fair.
Lifetime is building this thing from nothing. The only way it turns into something is if more people become interested in the athletes that are participating. Right or wrong, they are focusing on certain riders that they believe will spark an interest (not focused on results in many cases). From my perspective, it’s hard to blame them for focusing their resources and airtime on athletes that are competing in their series. This isn’t really race coverage, it’s more about story-telling and reality TV. As a bike racer, I’d really like to see proper (start to end) race coverage of these events, but I can appreciate that this format is probably more appealing to the masses and lifetime had to start somewhere.
Because of this topic, I watched the first episode of season 1. There just seems like so much fluff. I like the personal anecdotes of the athletes but they are often inserting clips that say nothing nor add to the story. I felt like it was 10 minutes of content and 20 minutes of stuff I could have fast forwarded through.
Does it get better?
Edit: watched a little bit of ep. 2. It was a little better.
Watching the Unbound episodes just reminded how annoying and tone deaf the organizers were to the complaints that were legitimately raised re: the mid section.
Yeah, that clip they snuck in of the morning conversation on leaving that garbage part of the race in says it all. They left that road in to be controversial.
They certainly doubled down on their position, but I personally don’t see their position as tone deaf. They heard and acknowledged the legitimate complaints and made it very clear that they will continue the same approach to the event going forward even if a significant number of riders don’t like it. Kind of a “buyer beware, don’t sign up again if you are going to complain about tough conditions”. It’s their race and they used the video to highlight that it’s intentionally designed for some to fail (especially when conditions are tough). What I think is crazy is all the people who complained last year who signed up for the exact same thing this year (might be better conditions, but might be worse).
Really like the changes for this year, covering both the men’s and women’s story lines from a race. Also I think they’ve picked out some great personalities on the women’s side, I thought they were all super engaging and had really interesting contributions.
I’m hopeful the men’s side gets a little more competitive and lends itself to more story telling. The last 2 seasons have been the Keegan show. And apart from that it was all about building up riders and them falling short.
