Originally Posted by
Giacomo 1
So I think the way to sell a sport is to get people to understand it - the strategies, tactics, the teams and riders, and IMHO you can only do that, if you watch the full event, the whole stage. You have to immerse yourself in it. Watching an hour re-cap is not going to make some newbie understand cycling and it's tactics or get all to excited by it.
Well I think you could do that in a summation and they used to do an excellent job at it when covering the old Coors Classics. They even showed team pre-race strategy sessions and had cyclists explaining rules and tactics. For taking a several day stage race and condensing it down into two hours they did a remarkable job at that back then and it was a part of growing the sport into what it is now. When I first started cycling the sport wasn't even televised at all in the US. And it wasn't just Lemond and Hampsten that got it rolling from their races in Europe. Their being exposed to an American audience in an American race had a lot to do with it.