How good is this!!!!

Aussies get Tour live
By John Stevenson

Australian broadcaster SBS has announced that starting in 2005 it plans to broadcast the Tour de France live in its entirety, making it the only free-to-air broadcaster in the English-speaking world to do so.

Since 1991 SBS has screened the Tour de France as a daily edited highlights package; a few years ago it started screening two or three live stages each year, an event that was an excuse for some lengthy beer and pizza evenings among Australian cycling fans.

SBS head of sport Les Murray explained to Cyclingnews that the broadcaster has decided to ramp up its coverage for a number of reasons. The popularity of the show was one of them, but more significant was the quality of Australian cyclists in the Tour for the last several years. "The high quality presence of the [Australian] cyclists drove us to decide that we have to do more than what we have been doing," said Murray. "Half hour highlights per day, two or three live stages per year simply didn't do justice to the event.

"It became clear that because Australia was the most represented country among successful riders in the Tour de France - which is quite remarkable given that cycling is supposed to be a minority sport in this country - we had to do more than what we'd been doing. It was not right that French television, Italian television, German television, Spanish television was doing this blanket coverage when their riders were inferior, in terms of success, to our riders."

Another factor was the desire of Tour organizer ASO for SBS to do more with the Tour. It's no coincidence that this initiative comes alongside the news that SBS has renewed for five years its contract with ASO to screen the Tour. "Yes, there was pressure from ASO [to do more]" said Murray. "ASO is always keen for us to do more than we were doing. ASO is very keen on promoting the event globally, it's very keen on gaining exposure for the event globally on free to air TV. We always had a very willing partner in ASO if we wanted to take this event up one notch."

That said, Murray told Cyclingnews the decision was, "primarily driven by saying 'we have exposed this event for 13 years, lets see if we can capitalize on that and get some reward for our investment.'"

ASO also organizes several other major races, including Paris-Roubaix and Paris-Nice, and the deal includes the rights to screen those races live too. However, at the moment SBS intends to show those events on a delayed basis. "Live access is available if we want to do it," said Murray. "It depends on the programmers, my colleagues at SBS who sit in judgment of program scheduling. If they want to schedule it live we can do that."

The 2005 Tour de France starts in Vendée with a 19km individual time trial from Fromentine to Ile de Noirmoutier on Saturday July 2. Time zone differences mean this stage will screen on SBS in the very early morning of Sunday July 3.