"Dan Gregory" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:I was rather surprised that Sean recognised so few of the faces in the
Elite race though,
That's the problem I have with WCSN commentators in the women's race. Unlike
RAI-3 which I have a lot of races in the past, WCSN can't seem to recognize
the faces. Duffy at UK Eurosports had the same problem, having to look up
numbers after a long pause to get the names right. However Russell Williams
was excellent, he knew the riders. In the women's race, Worrack, Cantele,
Pooley were always pulling at the front, but you never heard a word about
them, especially Pooley, a big puller in that race. They mentioned Cantele,
but they missed the first two breaks, it seems like they went silent for two
minutes, well they did. When Eneritz Iturriaga broke away, they ignored it
for at least a minute. At the end when Willock broke away, finally they
covered that as well as Marta, but the coverage was lackluster. They didn't
seem to know the riders, and it seems all they did was rehash a story about
Neben misfortune as a child, and some stuff about Armstrong. They didn't
mention much about why Cooke was missing from the worlds, and often when I
saw a number of riders at the front working the lead, they couldn't tell us
who they were. There were a lot of good riders at the front at different
times during the race, but it seems they ignored just about everyone up
there, I think mostly because they just didn't know these girls by sight,
and couldn't see the numbers in time, or didn't care enough to call the
action at the front.
That's the different between RAI-3, and Eurosports, WCSN. I didn't see
Eurosports women's race this year, and I heard Duffy was canned, probably
since he spent 30 minutes during the women's world road race one time
talking about men's racing. That's enough to [censored] a preacher off, when there
are breaks going on and the commentators are insulting enough to not cover
the action and talk about things totally unrelated to the race. It's the
friggin world championships for crying out loud, and they should be wearing
the action on their sleeves. That's what RAI-3 have done in at least ten
years of videos I have of women's racing. They always call the action at the
front, they constantly update who the riders are at the front, and they
really cover the breaks well. They seem to be fully focused on the race, and
they get pretty loud and excited. And for good reason. Italian fans are
rabid and need good commentators who know the riders well, and can call the
action and cover the breaks. However the Italian cameramen are also artists
when to comes to covering stage races too. They are excellent in the
mountains. I understand enough of what is being said to figure things out
for myself, so all I need is a good commentator who can call the racers by
name, who's in front, and cover the breaks. I can't ever remember a women's
race called in English which was superb. English speaking commentators never
seem to know the Euro women that well, but Phil and Paul aren't bad at
times, and Bobske really surprises me at times. He seems well informed, even
on the women side. He did Nature Valley, and that was decent enough.
GBMT
