The thing I find lacking in nearly all of the race coverage for IM, PTO and Challenge is the excitement factor. They don’t know what is interesting for the fans and the commentators are about as flat as a pancake.

We need better people presenting and we need to see the action shots. Annie Haug chased down the leaders on the bike and run yesterday and passed loads of people, didn’t see much at all. I would rather see 30 seconds of an athlete passing than 30 minutes of a front pack ride line.

The last few races have been stacked with the podium spread over seconds and a couple of minutes rather than 5/10 mins. We don’t see that and we certainly don’t get to see the real energy of it.

I am not saying the ITU is perfect but on UK t.v we get the ITU footage with local presenters. At the moment they are quite good and much more professional. Heck they even do preparation homework and can discuss form, recent race results, knowledge of absences/come backs etc. They know what races are key in the Olympic cycle and often discuss building into the selection races. Often they know multiple selection policies across all the countries etc. One excellent point is they know who can run and who can’t, they can discuss off the cuff how big a gap one athlete will need over another coming out of T2 to win a race.

The LD is poor in comparison.

I would assume an organization would rather buy cameras once than pay employees hundreds of times. But how may cameras do you need? 20?

I assume you can prolong the footage you get from your cameras by zooming in as they are in the distance, zoom out as they approach, pan and zoom in on them as they ride/run away.

Figure each camera gets you 1minute of footage as the train passes through and let's assume that you have 3 packs that pass by each camera. Then the another 3 packs for the women's race.

So that's best case(?) 6 minutes per camera of footage.

So 120 minutes of footage across both a male and female race. Maybe you can incorporate some preposition drones into this to fill in some gaps?

It does feel like a pretty significant techno logistical operation. So I can see why... two bikes and a camera on each seems way simpler.

The thing I find lacking in nearly all of the race coverage for IM, PTO and Challenge is the excitement factor. They don’t know what is interesting for the fans and the commentators are about as flat as a pancake.



I do an extensive amount of Commentary and Live Announcing work for High Level, Track Cycling, Track & Field, and some Road Cycling with Streaming services such RunnerSpace and FloBikes and a number of Race/Event Organizers.

I was recently asked by the UCI to be part of the Live Venue Announcing Team for Track Cycling at the 2023 UCI World Cycling Championships this August in Glasgow!

I was lucky early on doing all this be it the Live Venue Announcing or the Live Stream Commentary to be paired up with the REALLY good, co-Announcers or Commentators. I learned a great deal working with them. Pacing is important. If you start at an level 8 - 9 with the Qualifying Rounds of the 200m on the Track - you don't have far to go to get to level 10 - 11!! Also - people may tune out or just find you annoying.

Ditto with Road Racing. I'll be covering the Women's Vuelta Burgos next week for FloBikes - and you can't open up a 3 hr Live Stream Broadcast going full bore - you build it up over the course of the Stage to the finale!

Same with the longer races on the Track in running - let the athletes animate it in terms of what they do, and build it all up until the final 200m to the finish!

I frequently pitch PTO, Super League, and IM on my services, but to no bites for a number of years! I got my start doing this sort of work at IRONMAN Canada years ago - both Live Announcing and Hosting the IMC Live Stream Broadcast for 3 years to 2012 - with a unique a novel format for IM Race Broadcast.

---

---

Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

I would assume an organization would rather buy cameras once than pay employees hundreds of times. But how may cameras do you need? 20?


Few folks seem to realize how expensive covering a real long distance triathlon is. The direct comparison is to Professional Bike Racing - and that is what the expectation is or perhaps some of the Big City Marathons - Boston, NYC, New York. The production costs for all of those are REALLY high. We see them all the time - the Giro is going on right now - but there is a LARGE amount of money going into it.

Triathlon does not have that HUGE audience. I will give the PTO credit here - they are doing their darndest to expand the viewer numbers with various deals they have struck. The production they are creating is reasonably good. Outside of Olympic Games Triathlon Coverage ( also BIG money!) - it's some of the best I have seen.

---

---

Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog