This better be a fast helmet because its is ugly as sin.

It's so ugly that it's crossing over and now I think it's half good.

Also yes, Liggett needs to retire. His NBC TdF coverage last year was painful.

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Ugh. I'm dreading having to hear Liggett again. And Roll. And van de Velde. It's been years due to the glory of GCN. I recently subscribed to Max and was going to leave it at that until I saw this. I'll never sub to Flo but about to succumb to Peacock so as not to miss the ASO races.

2024 USA Streaming Cycling Services
Max (plus B/R Live Sports Tier): $219.99 per year
FloBikes: $149.99 pear year
Peacock: $59.99 per year
Annual Total: $429.97

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cock-up before conspiracy

I hear you. At least 2/3 of the Peacock TdU crew are solid: Anna Meares and Robbie McEwen. Even then I turned the sound off until the last 10K. Granted I was doing other stuff and had the extremely boring first ~120K or whatever in the background, so I might have muted it anyway.

I did catch the bit where Anna Meares said her sprint wattage was 1600W. That was sobering. (Granted this is track sprinting, so it's like 1.5 laps of soft pedalling, then half a lap of Wattage Bazooka).

He is just completely intolerable now. If there is absolutely no alternative to coverage with him on the team, the sound goes off.

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Dammit....

Flobikes has my spring one day jams locked up. But the 'Cock is free to me so there's my rationalization for paying up. Phew....

My rationalization for Max is there's a bunch of content on there my wife has wanted to see. This is what "they" want - everyone having like 4-5 streaming subscriptions. Sigh.

Thanks for that chart on TV coverage.
I gave up on Liggett about 8 years ago. It's tough to take that being the dude who was already there (old white man) is more qualifying for the job than just how awful he is with the riders and the tactics around the race. I actually like VdV - he seems to have good perspective of what the riders are going through and seems to root for the efforts of the non stars. I think I might like that he seemed to get relegated to the motorcycle and seemed to do well with it (imo). Roll is a bit too much of a fan boy for me. to each his own?
I watched the australian feed of the tour about 6 years ago (Mcewen and keenen (I think)). Once I heard how much better commentary could be, I could never go back to Liggett.

I'm going to be depressed not watching some great races live, but I can't justify such expenses. I'll probably just keep the peacock sub. I sure hope youtube gets race highlights quickly - bc as an addict I know withdrawal is tough.

That helmet is pretty rough (looks pretty hot also). I don't when (if ever?) aero is everything will slow its roll, but the speeds in cycling are crazy high and I have to think much more dangerous than they ever used to be. I have to think the draft just gets more and more important as the speeds go up - making it even more dangerous.

Keenen is fantastic. There was that year or two years where he did some feeds through GCN. Like you say, 6 or so years ago. He did one TdF and one Vuelta, I believe, solo. I couldn't believe one person could pull that off. And so well. His knowledge is exceptional and voice a pleasure.

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cock-up before conspiracy

Good news/bad news for us north of the border. The good: Flobikes also has all the stuff that's listed under Peacock above, so that at least gets us somewhat closer to justifying the expense. The bad news is that anything listed under Max above is unavailable to us.

I already subscribe to Peacock and have Max. I looked at my Max account and didn't see how to add the sports subscription. It said it was already included (I definitely haven't signed up for it in the past, but I had signed up for Max pretty early on). I'm wondering if I'm grandfathered in or if I'll get a notification to sign-up later in this year.

Worlds and Flanders are really going to be the only things I'm really going to miss that's exclusively on Flo, and I definitely can't justify the cost to signup for those two events. It's feeling like for those two events, I'm going to have to find race recap show and use that to see who wins.

The bad news/bad news is that its still Flo.

Thankfully my brother signed me back up for Eurosport and I just sent him the money to cover my subscription.

[quote)

Thankfully my brother signed me back up for Eurosport and I just sent him the money to cover my subscription.[/quote]
That's the hook up!

Just watched TDU. Nice to be watching the road again. G Zimmy is a beast. I expect big things from this young man this year. No pressure.....

As for Phil, he could use a little mercy now. Yes, he should step back, maybe be a commentator emeritus or something, tell a few back in the day stories. He pulled a 1975 TdF anecdote where half the field thought they had critical mass that would keep them in the race but they got pulled when the French officials wouldn't budge. Pearls, when he's not losing track of things. I still remember Paul Sherwin being very gentle with him, correcting him 3 or 4 times a stage. Classy.

UAE has next stud with Raging Del Toro. That was an impressive move.

It's wild that Del Toro attacked as a domestique in the last 10k pulling Fisher-Black behind him. Attack didn't stick but Del Toro was back to attack again 1k out. Incredible win

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"and he's riding on the handlebars... he's not even on the hooks, he's riding on the handlebars, the tops!"

1984 called, they want their announcer back.


It's pretty much 3 or 4 times a segment now. Sigh.

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Tech writer/support on this here site. FIST school instructor and certified bike fitter. Formerly at Diamondback Bikes, LeMond Fitness, FSA, TiCycles, etc.
Coaching and bike fit - http://source-e.net/ Cyclocross blog - https://crosssports.net/ BJJ instruction - https://ballardbjj.com/

del Toro showed how strong he was last year, but damn, I was not expecting to see him take a win so early as a neo-pro. Agreed, it was very impressive.

The hooks!

As for his new "golf voice" I'm guessing his producer just said, Phil, relax, less is more. I really enjoyed the team. McEwen is great and Meares (?) is good too, great laugh, great sense of humor.

I still miss Orla though. .

I sent them another angry email. Logged in this morning to catch the race and am immediately greeted with a big "Isaac Del Toro takes the win!". Doesn't matter whether it's on the website or my Roku app, you can't watch a race replay without spoilers. Complained last year too but they don't seem to care.

Great move by Del Toro. Looked good in the crit on the weekend, and super strong/tactically savvy today. Solid overall package. UAE with a wealth of young talent these days.

I was worried he was going to mess it up at the line celebrating early but the kid knew exactly what he was doing.

As for Phil, yeah he should retire. "I call this a cheeky move" I don't know Phil... a ~1,200 W on the saddle counter-attack timed to perfection, I would rather call it a strong and brilliant move.

I think they enjoy ragemail. There's a fetish thing going on over there.

I thought the same. His race craft is so good he even times posting up to perfection. Gonna be tough for anyone to take the jersey from him if he keeps riding that strong.

They have done that for years. Such garbage.

Can't believe they still do that. I was subscribed in their early years and sent that same email several times. Nothing worse than settling in for an epic day of Paris Roubaix only to see the winner when you cue it up. Infuriating.

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cock-up before conspiracy

I don't do the GCN+ VPN broadcasts so I've not heard Orla's play-by-play, but Hannah Walker + Ant McCrossans's Peacock calls are nice too

Anna Meares is missing from PCS for some reason(?) but Phil reviewed her palmares

From Wikipedia "During the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, she won a gold medal, and set a new world record in the Women's 500-metre time trial of 33.952 seconds. Meares had to beat a new Olympic record set just minutes previously by the reigning World Record holder, Yonghua Jiang of China. (See Cycling at the 2004 Summer Olympics)"

She said, "my race was two laps, and I did six victory laps"

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