If I may venture an observation, bicycle racing -- at least as broadcast by VS -- isn't a very interesting television sport.
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Tour de Dull
13 Jul 2007 02:23 pm
Comments (50)
Like most sports, it's an acquired taste that requires a lot of understanding about what's really going on. The other thing is that this is the part of the Tour that's usually pretty dull, long flat stages with big sprint finishes.
But I always find this kind of thing amusing. Most sports, if you're not into them, are dreadfully dull on TV. It always amuses me when baseball types deride soccer as being dull. Similarly, my wife's Brit friends think basketball is ridiculous because of too much scoring, but love cricket. There's no normative value to these things.
Case in point: golf. If you don't golf, its very dull. If you're really into it, every shot is exciting.
Case in point: golf. If you don't golf, its very dull. If you're really into it, every shot is exciting.
Playing on the course for the first time completely revolutionized my ability to enjoy televised golf. It just doesn't make sense until you understand from personal experience how hard it is.
Heretic! For cyclists, it's terribly exciting. But I must concede that for ordinary people it's probably quite dull.
If I may venture an observation, Americans always seem to find dull all and only the sports they don't really understand. Maybe the latter has something to do with the former?
I happen to really like watching cycling.
Valid points about sports-appreciation subjectivity aside, Yglesias' qualifier here - at least as broadcast by VS - is crucial. Versus - formerly the Outdoor Life Network (OLN) - has an incredible knack for butchering their sports coverage. "Incredible" because they purport to be a sports network, so one would (perhaps too quickly) assume they had some kind of competence to offer their viewers. Sadly, this is not the case, as anyone subjected to their NHL coverage can attest.
See, that's a good one. I hate watching hockey because to me its just one turnover after another with ridiculous amounts of hitting, but I can watch NASCAR for 4 hours, something that amazes (and embarasses) my more erudite and cosmopolitan friends. Go figure.
Playing on the course for the first time completely revolutionized my ability to enjoy televised golf. It just doesn't make sense until you understand from personal experience how hard it is.
I haven't "played golf" since I was about ten or eleven (my dad used to play, and sometimes he'd take me along and I'd just do everything with a nine iron and the putter), so I can't speak to that, but I'm pretty sure the most improbably difficult things to do in all major sports are (a) throw, and (b) hit MLB-quality pitching. Despite my belief that these are ridiculously difficult things to do, I don't find baseball very interesting to watch.
It really is a matter of taste. I am in love with baseball, and can't get enough of it, but I know plenty of people who would rather watch paint dry.
I follow NASCAR and cycling (used to like cycling more, during the runs of LeMond and Indurain, before it was obvious what a druggie cesspool the sport is), but can't abide watching either on TV. NASCAR is good on the radio, if you are working in the yard or out running errands while the race is on.
I'm a pretty avid cyclist, and find TdF pretty boring unless someone crashes.
However, I saw this clip a few months back and found it really quite exciting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkkTSVVrPYk
I think another thing working against an appreciation of cycling is the notion that anybody can do it. Especially when what is being shown is the racers riding through a verdant countryside you get the impression that all they're doing is, well, riding their bikes in the country. What's hard to understand about this is that these aren't just guys who, because of superior equipment, insane training and, yeah, drugs, can ride faster than the rest of us. You could give me all of that and make me twenty years younger and I still wouldn't be able to ride half as fast as these guys. Championship level cyclists, like major league baseball players and pro football and basketball players, are athletically superior beings who are doing something at a level that the rest of us could never achieve. Recognizing that helps make watching them ride more interesting.
"If I may venture an observation, Americans always seem to find dull all and only the sports they don't really understand. Maybe the latter has something to do with the former?"-Posted by Scott E
I've played a lot of baseball and soccer, enough to "understand" them, and I find them both dull. I haven't got the slightest clue about hurling(the Irish sport, not competitive projectile vomitting), but I think it is interesting.
Al Trautwig can make anything boring.
The other thing about televised golf is that it's just not possible to show every single shot in a big tournament, so they end up just cutting to the critical moments and showing the amazing shots. I think it's actually pretty good on TV, and I don't follow the sport and only play disc golf.
And road bicycle racing is pretty dull, though I'll admit that I know not a damn thing about the sport. OTOH, go search youtube for some match sprint velodrome races and prepare to have your mind blown.
I think sports that measure pure athletic ability and conditioning, or something close to them (cycling, track & field, etc.) as opposed to a mix of athleticism and skill (ball sports & combat sports) are generally fairly boring to watch on TV. And no, I'm not suggesting that cycling or hurdling doesn't require a level of coordination, skill and strategy, but that level is way below that demanded in ball sports. Anyone who tries to dispute that point is kidding themselves.
We want to see something a little more complex than someone pedaling as fast as he can for as long as he can, even if he is a world-class athlete.
Road cycling is all about teams and strategies and working deals with the riders on your breakaway. If you don't have a working knowledge of what all's going on, it's just a bunch of guys on bikes with pretty scenery. Good TV coverage can make up for a lot of the deficit, but bad coverage can actually make things worse.
Since I don't have cable, I get my Tour de France news on the tdfblog, which is actually a pretty good way to follow it. I also like the BBC's TdF coverage, particularly their "as it happened" pieces, which are basically live-blogs.
Then, too, Doug-E-fresh is right, this is the boring part of the tour. Me, I could care less who wins the green (sprint) jersey, so I barely pay attention until they get into the mountains. Saturday is when the real Tour begins.
Agree completely with mw: Trying to watch a cycling race in the real world is ... well, boring. If you can see anything.
In my opinion, the sprinter stages of the TdF would also benefit from being shortened significantly - to, say, something like 1 kilometre.
The mountain stages brings the added entertainment that we can start wondering whatever the cyclists have been smoking.
Yes, watching the TdF can be boring, especially during the first week when most of the action comes near the end of the day, after 4-6 hours of relative tedium. But as some have observed in the previous comments, nearly any televised sporting event can be boring, particularly to the uninitiated.
Us Americans have largely been brought brought up to appreciate sports with lots of scoring and lots of violence. To expand on MrGumby's observation, many people seem to think that everyone can ride a bike, but not just anyone can tomahawk dunk over a defender, or knock a 220 lb running back five yards out of bounds, right? Well, viewers might be more impressed if they appreciated that in, say, yesterday's sprint to the line, the winner, Pozzato, was clocked at over 45 miles an hour (as were those around him). This after riding 190 kilometers over a few climbs for the fifth day in a row, and then fighting for position with bumping, pedals and derailleurs into spokes in the final kilometers. Yeah, sure anyone can ride a bike. In fairness to those who find it boring, it is difficult to capture the speed and danger of a sprint on television; if you've seen it in person, I suspect you'd have a better appreciation for the speeds both in the sprints and up the climbs -- it is simply unbelievable (even when done drug-free).
It is a beautiful sport, but it does seem to require some knowledge of it to really appreciate it. Try watching it with someone steeped in the sport -- I've converted many a skeptic into semi-rabid fans over the years, and that was without waxing philosophical about how the race mirrors the human condition or some such esoteric nonsense (which may very well be true).;)
As for VS. coverage of it, they actually do a decent job, I think, especially in the live morning coverage with Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin. Things do go a bit downhill in the evening when the rebroadcast is retooled for a broader audience, but the coverage is still vastly better than what ABC/ESPN has offered up in the past.
Oh,and Jake H., I take your point, but you clearly don't understand a thing about bicycle racing. It is far more complex than someone "pedaling as fast as he can for as far as he can." If that's what you think bike racing consists of, then yeah, watching it on t.v. is going to be boring. Come on over, I'll pour you a Leffe, and we can watch some racing.
Road racing is a highly strategic sport. The key fact is that a road bike has almost no friction. The tires are thin, and the bearings and chain are as frictionless as modern technology will allow. A racing bike's contact with the ground is about a square centimeter for each tire.
Therefore the force a racer has to overcome in order to move forward on the flat is not friction - it's wind resistance. And the faster you go, the more the wind fights back.
But if you can draft behind another rider, you can reduce your energy expenditure - by up to 40%, thereby saving your precious energy reserves for climbs or sprints.
On the flat (which is where the race is now), the whole sport turns on drafting: team members allowing the team leader to draft, break-away groups drafting each other, pacelines drafting in choreographed precision.
If you've never ridden in a group, it's very hard to see this, because wind resistance is invisible.
VS doesn't even try to explain it. They assume their audience won't understand.
Of course it's dull in the first week. Nothing happens until the last 30-60 seconds of the race. Wait until the mountains. One problem the tour has had for years now is that one team and one individual rider has thoroughly dominated and taken all of the drama out of the last week. But I vaguely remember (I was like 10 years old at the time) the last Tour that Lemond won when Claudio Ciapucci was attacking in the mountains and a real GC threat until the last time trial on the next to last day. Last year, whatever one may think about Floyd, was a taste of that kind of action. If you didn't go nuts when Floyd just destroyed any one ad was positively (and, in all likelihood, actually) superhuman. It was unthinkable and you couldn't believe your eyes as you saw it. You sound like a non-football fan who walks in during the 2nd quarter of the game when both teams are trying to establish the run and complains that all football players do is fall down on each other. Watch the whole game and wait for these guys to get a chance to air it out, Matt.
I think there should be a rule that every blog post should begin with "If I may venture an observation..."
Just this afternoon I was in the pool, wishing that there was more & better coverage of endurance sports in America. There apparently will be a baseball network. Why not an Endurance Network for Tdf, the Giro, etc.; the major marathons; Badwater, Comrades, & the Western States 100; Kona & the major triathlons? Fewer spectators than the team sports but quite a few fanatic participants.
Oh, and while VS coverage is far from perfect and still a little too watered down, it's infintely better than the old espn days when they would spend 10 of the 22 minutes of air time letting Adrian Karsten yammer on about whatever pastry he ate for breakfast that morning and take viewers on sight-seeing tours of the French countryside. At least VS knows to give Phil and Paul have enough time to actually discuss all the significant breaks and explain a little about team and race dynamics during the coverage. All they really need to do is fire Trautwig and hire a non-American to balance out the coverage with Bob Roll and give more perspective.
Versus has an interesting approach. I find the evening 'extended edition' with Bobke and Trautwig unwatchable, but I suspect it's a bit more accessible to newcomers. The morning live coverage is probably best for cyclists and cycling fans. (And Vs. is nothing if not committed to the sport: getting to see coverage of Paris-Roubaix or the Dauphiné Libéré is sweet.)
I still think that the Liggett/Sherwin presentation on Channel 4 back in the early 90s -- one-hour nightly recaps -- hit a kind of sweet spot, because you'd get all the coverage that mattered from the day's stage, along with explanations of tactics. But the live coverage means you do get the grand sweep of the French countryside.
Still, an event that turned out hundreds of thousands on the streets of London isn't to be sniffed at. (A friend got to ride in one of the official cars. They bomb the prologue.)
my wife's Brit friends think basketball is ridiculous because of too much scoring
'sfunny. The problem that people have identified with flat stages -- it all comes down to the final sprint -- is the problem you often get with basketball; it's just that the final clock minute will last half an hour in real time.
"Us Americans have largely been brought brought up to appreciate sports with lots of scoring and lots of violence"
I would posit that "lots of scoring and lots of violence" is inherently more entertaining than watching grown men ride bicycles.
The action starts this weekend. The flat stages are boring compared to the mountains. But Saturday and Sunday are in the Alps, so there should be some fireworks.
I agree that the Tour is kind of boring, even for a cycling fan (like I used to be before all the drug scandals soured me). I think the one-day races are much, much more exciting...not sure why the tour is so much more popular worldwide than Paris-Roubaix or Liege-Bastogne-Liege.
Track cycling is even better, and is even better in person. But it barely gets on TV even during the olympics.
Strategy is indeed important in much of bike racing in general, but for an overall contender in the Tour it's about as boring as can be...99% of the time it's just staying out of trouble and conserving energy.
Bloix, Angry Socrates...
I don't think you really appreciate Jake H's point. There are some people, myself included, who just don't appreciate sports that don't involve a lot of skill or strategy. Yeah, I know you think biking involves a lot of strategy. Not compared to football. Yeah, drafting is not easy. Not compared to playing basketball or baseball. I would say 99.99% of the sport is training and physical ability. And I'm not exaggerating- less than 1/100 of humans have the cardio genetics necessary to compete at that level. For the top riders maybe 1/10000. For Lance... 1. So I just don't appreciate the fact that its a competition as much. Close finishes can still be exciting to watch b/c there's a lot of drama. But my desire there is pretty limited.
Its fine if you enjoy it. But this is what Jake is talking about, I think.
Can we declare a moratorium on "you need to understand it to appreciate it?" Every defender of a boring sport always trots this out. It's such an inane statement. Of course, every sport is better the more you know about it. That's not the issue here. The issue here is that it's a bunch of guys pedaling and that's never going to be compelling to an audience beyond people that cycle themselves.
What do you think, if the guys on VS start talking about drafting and wind resistance all of a sudden people are going to be glued to their TVs?
When I first started watching the Tour a few years ago, I, too, thought it was boring.
Then I learned about some of the strategies, the team dynamics, etc.
So now I know that it's STILL boring -- during these flat stages. You can have all the fancy breakaways and team deals you want, but at the end of the day (like many others have pointed out), it's six hours of 180 guys riding bikes followed by thirty seconds of ten guys sprinting for the line, none of whom will be competing for the General Classification.
The mountain stages are far more dramatic. And the scenery is still quite nice. And I find the coverage mesmerizing. But there's very little exciting in these early stages.
And mpowell's right. There may be strategy and skill involved in cycling (as I acknowledged), but it doesn't even approach something like football, baseball or basketball in terms of the coordination and decision-making involved. If you disagree, then I would question your knowledge of those sports.
The Europeans seem to like it.
People keep saying that baseball has a lot of "strategy." What like it takes some kind of genius to tag up or put in a pinch hitter? In fact statistical analysis has shown that many "strategic" moves, like bunting and stealing, have negative payoff.
What it does take is lots of coordination and skill.
[troll bait]When it comes right down to it, anything associated with roadies is brightly-colored, but otherwise pretty dull.[/troll bait]
If you want to watch *real* BicyclingAction, you're going to have to get out the FatTires, like this guy does:
youtube.com/profile?user=OutdoorLifestyleCom
Sure, he doesn't do BigJumps, or TrialsWork, or, come to think of it, anything very advanced at all, but unlike others he isn't just on some groomed course. I have no idea who he is, but he's my idol. He's even got a clip of him biking at 13,000'!
Others' videos that are pretty good include:
youtube.com/watch?v=yrtOKtTPCAg (big fall, requires sign up)
youtube.com/watch?v=Odc9yHXq5Lo
youtube.com/watch?v=mPq0qH3cwTM
youtube.com/watch?v=mYIKfEU8yl8
youtube.com/watch?v=Zu2Qqi9bzkc
youtube.com/watch?v=TrxKePPmnys
I raced in the late 1980s (LeMond's TdF heyday). Never got anywhere--stayed in USCF Category 4--but I trained with Cat.1/2 guys and rode in enough races that I understand what's going on when I watch a race on TV. Drafting, team tactics--yeah, I know.
Even then, here's my experience watching cycling on TV:
The flats are, as everyone says, boring.
Mountain stages are boring, unless they're going downhill ("fireworks" in the mountains? please.).
Sprints are inherently exciting.
Breakaways, on the flats or in the mountains, are inherently exciting. Is the pack going to catch the break? That's interesting on its own; people don't need a lot of aerodynamic theory to understand it. WHY a pack does or does not catch a break, yeah, you need some explanations of drafting, team tactics, blocking, etc. But whether the pack will catch the break--I want to know.
I also rowed on a crew team in my last year of high school. A race in an 8 is very exciting to do--getting soaked by the splashing, working like hell, breathing like a steam engine--but even more boring to watch than cycling on the flats. Sprints mean the speed is ramped up by 1-2 m.p.h. Not much.
Yes, sports are usually more interesting to watch if you've also participated.
But I can watch women's curling all day.
too many steves:
"I would posit that "lots of scoring and lots of violence" is inherently more entertaining than watching grown men ride bicycles." Heheh, touche. Who doesn't love violence and scoring? (Oh, and by the way, I should have said, "*We* Americans" not "Us Americans", my apologies).
mpowell and Jake H., it's not just that I *think* that cycling involves strategy and skill, I know it does, much more than either of you seem to be willing to acknowledge. It is not just about riding fast, or knowing how to draft -- that like saying basketball is just about dribbling and shooting. I'm not willing to attempt to offer an ordering of sport by complexity of strategy required, but I am will assert that professional stage racing compares pretty favorably to any given game of football, baseball or basketball (I suspect you'll find that hard to believe, but I think a case may be made, and Jake, while I wouldn't claim to be an expert, in my younger days, I happen to have played all three of those sports and I still enjoy them). In bicycle racing, the strongest at fittest guy doesn't always win. Being strong and fit are necessary conditions, but one needs to be tactically smart, have a good team, have a good director, and have good luck. This is a familiar situation for NBA fans -- LeBron won't win without the proper supporting cast, just as MJ was unable to. While not impossible, it is difficult to win a grand tour without a great (or at least a good) supporting cast.
And Jake, it sounds like we agree that every sport (not just the boring ones) may be better appreciated the more you understand it. I make no claim that "appreciating a sport" means the same as "enjoying watching it." I appreciate the skill involved with golf, but I don't enjoy watching it. Actually, the same might be said for the NBA -- I appreciate the skill involved there, but these days really only enjoy watching the playoffs, when guys decide to start playing for real. I only encourage Matt and others who think the sport is boring to apply the truism you're willing to apply to other sports to cycling, and maybe you'll gain an appreciation for the sport. That doesn't mean you'll like watching it, though I know plenty of non-cyclists who have turned out to really enjoy it, once they knew what to look for. And of course, one can find cycling interesting and enjoyable to watch and *still* like those other sports too.
Versus - formerly the Outdoor Life Network (OLN) - has an incredible knack for butchering their sports coverage.
Their coverage of bull riding is quite good.
As for the TdF, I watched some of it last year and found it moderately interesting - not something I'd make a special effort to see, but watchable if there wasn't much else on. Stretches through cities and towns were more interesting, with the ever-changing backgrounds and large crowds.
mpowell- there are sports that are pure physical effort. Crew, for example. And there are cycling events that are nothing but endurance. The cycling leg of a triathlon is like that. But the Tour isn't. The Tour is endlessly complex and endlessly entertaining.
Every day is a new race, so the Tour is like a single event and an entire season rolled into one. Every rider is riding for individual success and for his team - conflicting roles that often create interesting story lines that play out over three weeks. And the strategy is not simple.
I'm not telling you that you should like it. I expect that you won't like it - it's very hard to be interested in cycling if you've never ridden. I'm just saying that people who do like it aren't idiots. They are seeing things that you don't see.
> If I may venture an observation, bicycle racing -- > at least as broadcast by VS -- isn't a very
> interesting television sport.
This kind of stupid comment reflects why I do not take Yglesias seriously. He is too young to be wise. Of course, all sports are interesting, to those who practice them and find them challenging. Personally I do not find the endless basketball posts on this blog interesting, but Yglesias does. Yet he cannot possibly imagine how others find other sports interesting. This is a failure of his imagination and ultimately, a failure of his wisdom -- a product of his immaturity.
While there's certainly some correlation between one's knowledge and experience of a sport and how entertaining it is to watch on TV (as a baseball fan I can tell you that learning about the game will enhance anyone's enjoyment of it), by no means is that always true. Case in point, just look at the Olympics. How many people can jump on ice skates or do gymnastics? Yet those are the most popular events.
Or, as a case study, before the 2004 Olympics, I had never before seen snowbo-cross nor that one where snowboarders compete head-to-head on a slalom course. Nor have I ever snowboarded, myself. But while one event (snowbo-cross) was exciting as heck and became a big hit, the slalom snowboarding was as dull as dirt.
I've golfed four times in my life, and I can confidently say that I learned this about the sport: I hate it, and I hate golf culture. Before, watching golf on TV was just boring, now it's boring and it makes me want to shoot the TV. Sometimes, familiarity breeds contempt.
You're not Italian, or French. My would-be cyclist boyfriend watches the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France day by day, fascinated.
Cycling became popular in Europe before teevee, at a time when journalists specialized in writing epic pieces about superhuman heroes like Fausto Coppi. The main organizers of the Tour have always been a magazine (L'auto) and a newspaper (L'équipe). In short, it's a sport for readers.
Most sports are like short stories, a bit of entertainment for a relatively brief period of time.
Le Tour is like a novel, where the plot and subplots evolve over a long period of time. Green jersey, polka dot jersey, white jersey (best young rider). Crashes and blood, overcoming those crashes and injuries, friendships and enmity, all woven through the grand narrative of the yellow jersey tale.
Here is my suggestion for tour watching for those that don't appreciate it. Turn on the live coverage sunday, while you are sitting and surfing the web. When the announcers start to scream, pay attention.
Watch the pain on the faces. Watch man after man break on the mountain and give up the chase... and consider that they are among the top couple hundred at what they do in the world.
As straight up sport, it is good. As human drama, complex human drama beyond winner/loser, it is pretty darn fine.
The thing about road bike racing is that all of the teams play each other at the same time, which makes it unique as far as team sports go. So the strategy involves a lot of game theory stuff like you have in politics - collective action problems, prisoners dilemma, etc. I would think that readers of this site would dig that aspect of it. The Tour is great because you get to see all of the teams really working as teams which is something you don't really see when racing at the amateur level.
I love that VS. broadcasts each day's event like 5 times so you can watch the race again and again all day. Even the first week of "flat stages" has been pretty awesome this year - how cool was it when Fabian Cancellara attacked on the cobblestones to steal the win from the sprinters in stage 3?
Anyhow, I guess it's not for everybody. Have another hot dog and enjoy your baseball.
All sports are like opera: boring until you know what's going on...but once you know, they're all fascinating in their own way.
The coverage is provided by the race organizer, the commentary by the network. Just like the Olympics.
Covering the TdF is more like Air Traffic Control than any other sport: 180 riders (today) riding for 21 teams competing for 5 awards. Each day they ride for 4 1/2 - 6 hours without a single scheduled break, no half-times, no timeouts, no 7th inning stretch. If a rider stops, it's because they've crashed or broken down.
There's a lot going on: it's not a two-team 10 guy-at-a-time story like baseball or basketball.
To have found today, when the race leader burned himself out for his team, and a newcomer stole the stage and both the yellow and white jersey from the recognized stars, "boring" is more a statement of your understanding of the race than the coverage.
phil and paul are wonderful commentators -- knowledgable, great chemistry. the video is a pool feed. not sure how VS. really enters into it.
as far as baseball. what floyd landis did last year was like throwing a complete game and getting shelled only to come back with a no-hitter the next day. take all the steroids you like: you still can't duplicate that.
Comments closed July 27, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
yep--it's even more boring than baseball, for god's sake. all the performance enhancing drugs in the world can't make it better.
Posted by passing thru | July 13, 2007 2:31 PM