UCI grant Discovery WC rights from 2023 to 2030

F*ck I miss Rob.

Quick report from watching the XCC (XC short track) race today on Eurosport (which I get as part of my cable TV package, so technically, "on TV" haha):

-The race was on Eurosport 1, immediately after the end of today's Giro stage - say what you will, it's pretty cool to see "our" little sport treated this way.

-the production/camera work was good, and it was easy to get excited about the racing even though there were a few awkward lulls just as the broadcast started (just graphics with no VO for a couple of minutes).

-Ric McLaughlin was the anchor with Bart Brentjens on the technical commentary. It all went reasonably well. Ric's pretty knowledgeable, but Rob's shoes are hard to fill...

-right after the racing, I got a bunch of notifications on my phone from my Eurosport app (which I just have for sports news in general, no streaming subscription). Again, kinda surreal to see "our" MTB notifications among the mainstream sports notifications like soccer, Giro, tennis, etc.

 All in all, I'd have to say it was a successful first appearance on this platform. I can only imagine that it makes it easier to convince potential sponsors to back teams when this kind of media exposure is available. Time will tell if it has any real impact I guess, but it does seem like something the industry and the racers would ultimately get behind. Your thoughts? 

Awful nice of them to spam you with SPOILERS.

 well there are things you can do there, turn off notifications, and run the app in “spoiler free mode”, which means it always opens in “watch” mode and won’t display headlines unless you go looking for them. 

I'm amazed they (GCN et all) haven't given you a sub. I mean it's in their best interest to have the media watching isn't it?

They did send us an invite actually, I was just personally very curious about how it would all be running on Eurosport, so I didn’t check it out on GCN yet.

First free webcast on the World Series channel coming up in a couple of hours: https://www.vitalmtb.com/features/live-u23-xco-world-cup-racing.

Watching from NZ on the GCN+, I was reasonably happy with the delivery, clean & professional site set up on the ground in NM, new course marking, lots of cameras, good coverage, good commentary that worked (no Rob which is sad, but thats life), For XC it seemed like a good delivery.

Im really keen now to see what the DH will be like, if its anything like the XC, it will be a very good start, then build from there. The additional coverage, pre/post show, social media and segments, takes it steps closer to the structures around other sports, like F1 athletes & teams media. I will be lucky to see it first hand on the ground in a couple of weeks, will be interesting to compare it to the on screen show. 

I loved it. 

Didn't hurt that the racing was great, and that it's been gone for so long, but they absolutely nailed it. The heart rate stuff was tasteful, they actually mentioned some bike tech / brands in interesting ways, Ric Mc was not only passable--he's really good!, I love the amp lord track preview guy whatever his name is the enduro racer he's awesome, and anyways that's all gravy because all I really care about is the coverage. And the coverage was great. The cameras and direction were very good. 

That said, this was just a different team covering the same XC stuff. And XC is unimportant. They've changed the format of the only bike racing that matters in this galaxy, so we gotta see how that shakes out. 

Still the headline reads: Chrisball Makes Internetter Look Silly with Stellar Debut

Kinda off topic, but Cranwork Cairns is on right now, the DH finals live on YouTube. There is only 5,000 watching. So we can complain all we want about ESO/Discovery whatever, but Crankworx just isn't capturing peoples attention in the same way as WCs and never has?

I've got two comments on that:

1. I check Vital, PB and other cycling related websites almost daily, but I still missed that the DH race was on. I feel like it wasn't advertised the same way a world cup race would have been.

2. For people in central Europe, the race was early on a sunday morning. Most are in bed that time in the day. But granted, I would have gotten up early to watch if I had known.

Gonna go watch the replay now.

The expanded crankworks model got announced pretty late.  Hopefully next season and going forward more teams will budget to get their riders to the race and on camera.  Fans are only going to tune in if the field is deep.

It's 74k views on youtube now. And it can also be viewed live or replayed on redbull tv app, which doesn't have a public view counter, so no idea how many views there. Viewership is probably a lot less than a world cup (anyone know this number?), but still decent. 

HBO Max combined with Discover+ and was re-launched as the streaming service Max in the U.S. today.  I haven't seen definitively whether UCI mtb events will be available on this service.  But from what I can see when I login, there isn't any evidence there will be live event coverage or anything MTB or cycling related.  I'm guessing this means GCN+ is now the only viewing option in the U.S., but interested in any other information anyone has.

I was going to check that right now.  Guess I don’t need too now 

So after getting all excited about seeing MTB on Eurosport, it doesn't look like the DH made the schedule this week. There's a little car race called "24 hours of Le Mans" or whatever that apparently took priority... pffff.... 

GCN+ it is then.

I'm in the UK and had to register/login to the Discovery+ 'app' on the sky box (seems to be included with whatever Sky package we have) and all the live coverage seems to be listed in there.

Quite a few gaffes during the Juniors coverage at this first World Cup, which is expected, of course, as this is the first one after all. Even got the commentators to fall silent when Tahnee Seagrave was shown on the graphic as being second for Junior Men.

Can't get to see Elites as I don't have GCN+ or Discovery+ so I hope the coverage improves.

Definitely not refined enough to even consider charging people.  It’s like Freecaster days with better visual images but how much is down to much better technology.  

i was in and out of consciousness for the juniors this morning but the cameras weren't better and the direction was a mess...and CG needs to chill on his Warner character.

still and yet: hyped!

thanks for the links.

Watching the DH world cup has been one of my favorite activities over the past years, but the introduction of paying for a product you do not know the quality of, at time shit commentary and questionable production quality just kills what little hype I have left for watching it.

Cedric is a nice guy, but his commentary leaves a lot to be desired. He talks too slow, his pronunciation is poor and while I'll give him credit for trying to bring insider knowledge about riding/setup/line choice, his commentary just gets worse the more hyped he is. That they show him like 40% of the track preview instead of showing the track they are trying to freaking preview is just simply unbelievable. Rick is tolerable as a scripted EWS commentator, but falls far short of Rob. He's more akin to Claudio, who was never that great (Claudio kept saying stuff that was just plain wrong). Eliot is also missed, he turned into quite the natural commentator.

yeah, I can't remember the last time I've been this little thrilled about watching DH racing... Dammit

Ugh... that commentary was... not good. 

And yet I found show was great. The racing is the thing, the racers are the stars, and it shows how awesome this sport is that they still shone despite the presentation. Racing bikes down hills. 
 

CG and Ric Mic are fine. 
the cameras were not better than Red Bull, or if they were, the direction let them down. —they were quick with replays of crashes though, that was better. 

It seemed to be missing a sense of immediacy that Red Bull had—like, were we there? 

one thing that was absolutely sick about the new format was the idea that Bruni could bust out a new line in semis, and there would be no time for anyone to try it themselves before finals: that’s fantastic. And how young Finnley said he was able to identify and clean up specific things from his semi run an hour later. That’s also great. “If only I could get another shot” is answered: you get another shot. Right now.

I find it to be a success overall, in that these dingdongs can’t kill DH racing. 
 

bKerr’s race day vlog—having his mechanic just film the intimate minutes before a race run, instead of POV of the run—is another unexpected bonus: that shit is absolutely spellbinding! 
 

Hyped for Leogang 
 

If Claudio was passable, CG is passable, but Ric leaves a lot to be desired. He did not convey a sense of the race, a build up of the event - the relation between what we were seeing and what we had just seen and what was coming, he did not seem to have any intimate knowledge of the track (what were the key sections, what parts were changing, what was different from past years), and he didn't seem to have any intimate knowledge of the riders. Overall, it felt like he was very new to the sport. It doesn't need to be Rob, but a commentator with some DH racing experience would likely be a better choice. Perhaps Ric can improve. I hope so. 

Disagree on that last opinion about Ric. The most difficult thing about being a presenter seems to keep talking for hours without falling into repeating lines, stats, etc. Ric has a natural way of keeping the commentary kind of neutral but still interesting, and  even some funny lines.

The chemistry with Gracia was good IMO. And both of them know about the sport, the riders and have lots of stories to tell.

CG has the most difficult job, the shadow of Warner is (literally) very large, and the hyped up style of commentary, can never be as fun as it was with Rob. More so when English is not his first language.

But hey, CG is a great character, a respected rider, and passionate about DH racing. He can improve for sure, developing his own personal style with the season. 

If you ask me, these two did a very good job on their first go of this new era. Keep it up!

But really Ric is replacing Rob and Cedric is replacing Claudio.