Is it just me or is Phil completely biased against Lance? I know that in the past that he as been behind Lance, but this Tour is different. No matter what Lance does, positive or negative, Phil hammers him. Thank goodness for Paul Sherwin to balance things. I hope that I am not the only one screaming at Phil saying, “What are you talking about Phil, that is not the face of agony, he’s kicking ass!” I hope that I am not alone here.
Today Lance epitomized his Power Bar ad from last year,“I once met threee guys named Pain, Suffering, and Sacrifice, now they are my best friends.”
That’s pretty funny. My biggest complaint about the OLN commentary (and it’s not a big complaint, mind you) is that it is so incredibly pro-postal. They might as well call it the Posties Channel. I get the feeling that Phil is trying to bring an alternative view, but that he is really as pro-Lance as the rest of them.
I agree w/ Pooks. Phil seems very pro-Lance (and definitely pro-Postal). In fact the only *small *complaint I have is that Phil and Paul seem so biased towards riders from English speaking countries(US, Britain, Australia - how much praise have they heaped on Michael Rogers?)
I don’t begrudge them their preferences, I just think commentators should be a little more neutral when on air. I figure OLN has told them to focus a little more on the English-speaking riders as that is who their primary audience is.
It doesn’t really bother me that much, though. It’s hard to find something to complain about with Tour coverage so good.
On the other end of the spectrum, has anyone caught CBS’ Sunday Coverage? Yuck.
I just arrived in Europe yesterday and watched the Tour on Eurosport. I couldn’t believe how awful the commentary was compared to OLN. Liggett and Sherwen are awesome. I tried to watch the TV and listen to OLN on the web, but my connection isn’t so great and the audio kept cutting out. So, I was forced to listen to long, long, long, long-winded stories about how some members of the Eurosport team experienced a car breakdown and didn’t get to their hotel until 2 am.
You’re probably talking about David Duffield. The man is legendary for his meaningless monologues and random comments. He’s so lousy he is something of an object of affection in his home country.
I hate to jump on bandwagons, but like most everyone else, I disagree. Phil has been unwavering in his support of Lance. At almost every turn, Phil has said things like, “He’s still going to win this tour, but…” when everybody else could see it slipping away. And frankly, this has not been his best year. Lance has even said so himself. (Yesterday was a HUGE relief for me. He’s BA-ack!)
He has said things like, “Oh, he’s really digging deep now. He can see the Tour slipping through his fingers…” and such, but he says that of everyone.
Frankly, if it weren’t for Phil, and the way he makes everything seem exciting, watching bicycle racing would be only slightly more interesting than watching baseball.
You may be right. I didn’t pick up on any of the names. I thought the two main guys were pretty bad though. There were a couple of folks on the team who seemed pretty good. These were the people who gave the special reports and side commentary. It was nice too, the American woman actually seemed to know something about cycling!!
Actually the guy commentating with Duffield is an unknown Irish cyclist called Sean Kelly and Christine, the lady in question, is married to another unknown cyclist called Phil Anderson…
I disagree. Duffers is far more interesting than Liggett et al. Especially when he starts talking about a nice cheese he had in 1983, or tricycle racing!!! He also comes up with some really good quotes. Example (much abridged version follows) in one of the spring classics, he was talking about EPO, and how it thickens the blood, such that when you go to sleep at night the blood will thicken more, and basically turns to strawberry jam. in the middle of the night you have a heart attack, and in the morning, you wake up dead!
Seriously, I find the commentary only supplemental to actually watching the race. It can be a lot of fun to decipher Sean Kelly’s mumbling.
By the way, did anyone get a transcript of yesterday’s gem along the lines of “…well, here’s the lovely Christine, and fortunately she’s not wearing too many clothes so i can still see her body…”? Priceless.
According to cyclingnews.com, Heras has been ill. I was hoping to see Heras dragging Lance up the mountains this year like he did last year, but that hasn’t happened. Here is a report that was posted on cyclingnews.com yesterday:
US Postal’s climbing ace Roberto Heras has been handicapped by bronchitis, suffering enough that he was dropped on the Col du Portillon Sunday and was unable to force the pace for yellow jersey Lance Armstrong as he did so brilliantly in 2002. Even at the beginning of Monday’s stage 15, Heras was seen at the back of the peloton, taking up some domestique duties and fetching bottles from the team car.
As directeur sportif Johan Bruyneel noted, “from this point on we’re down one climber.”
I may be hanging myself out to dry, but I think the USPS team is lacking since the TTT. They started out strong, but have not given the support LA needed at times. Ullrich was able to negate the team on several occasions by isolating Lance. Lance has riden alone far to often, and LUCKED into team support on a couple of occasions. Beltran has however saved the day / tour. He could have easily been supporting the big man on Bianchi.
USPS is not as strong as in year’s past, I think that’s fair to say. But they are the team that offers the strongest support to its team leader. Yes, Ullrich has isolated Lance a few times, but not after being isolated himself three climbs earlier. Very often this Tour, Lance is the only team leader with domestiques left, the only other team that is as impressive is Euskatel (except they don’t have domestiques, they just have three team leaders).
Bianchi’s support is quite pathetic, despite buying Felix Garcia Casas. Once had only Jaksche to support Beloki, Vino has half a Guerini.
That said, a team with great domestiques never wins the team ranking. The domestiques go until they blow, then loose ten minutes on the last climb. That hurts the team ranking. For the team ranking you need three solid climbers, and less important but handy are a few good time trialers and some breakaway guy. That’s why CSC is leading, Tyler, Carlos and Peter are top-20 in all the climbing stages, they have enough good time trialers and Piil was in a big breakaway.
I agree w/ Pooks. Phil seems very pro-Lance (and definitely pro-Postal). In fact the only *small *complaint I have is that Phil and Paul seem so biased towards riders from English speaking countries(US, Britain, Australia - how much praise have they heaped on Michael Rogers?)Have to agree on that. At the end of a stage, when they list the overall rankings, ever hear them go down the list of the top 10, then add “and our David Millar is in 72nd place.” They used to always keep track of Boardman’s GC rank, too, even though he was never a GC type rider.
But I can’t complain about Phil and Paul. I like them even more than John and Paul, with Ringo thrown in to boot.
Oh, and I dig Gary Imlach’s totally droll special reports. That guy kills me. But I gather he only appears on the Tour Extra segments in the videos and not while OLN is covering the tour.