MinnMan

In the past year I have watched a lot of Chris Horner's Butterfly Effect reviews of races, and I tend to like them. He certainly has his idiosyncracies, which I know are not to everybody's taste, but I appreciate his experience and I learn a lot. Also, his videos tend to be about 10-15 minutes long, which is about the right duration for me. The biggest downside is that Horner doesn't pay for video rights, so he depends just on still capture to illustrate his discusion.

The big upside of the Lanterne Rouge is that he pays for video rights. For major races, the downside is that he drones on and on, making the reports 30-40 minutes long, often in a monotone. I don't have the patience. He's not as knowledgeable as Horner, but I do like some of his commentary. In the last few days, he's been doing shorter videos about Le Tour de Provence, and they are just about perfect. If only he would stick to this shorter format for the major races,

The GCN videos tend to be too breezy and superficial. I don' find them as interesting or learn much.

What do you folks watch? Or do you just watch the races themselves and do your own commentary?

Iride01 

I watch them all every now and then. But not enough to really say. But in general, I agree with your views of Chris Horner's Butterfly Effect and Lanterne Rouge. And GCN as well.

I've watched Chris since he joined NBCSports as a commentator for cycling races. And for the most part he does well and brings another viewpoint from a former pro-cyclist perspective. And it's interesting when the three of them, Bob, Christian and Chris disagree. Then we sometimes get to listen to various and interesting ways a issue can be looked at from differing perspectives.

Ed Wiser

Chris is my favorite of the three. He brings an actual riders view to the races.

slcbob

I will give Lanterne Rouge another look based on your comment, MinnMan . Previously, I found the signal to noise ratio intolerable.

I like Horner in the same way I like Will Ferrell: a lot in really small doses. I have found his insights to be super interesting -- occasionally conjecture or hyperbole masquerading as fact, but always bringing a true insider's look to things in ways that I find fascinating. There's almost always a minute worth of genius crammed into his 10-15 min of scattered presentation, weak visualization through stills and poor editing, no video, and flogging his personae and personal history.

Most of the GCN "summaries" I've seen have been race recaps with minimal analysis. The same stuff is posting up in steephill.tv from Flo for various races. They're in a completely different niche than the other two. I don't remember seeing standalone GCN "analysis" very often in the various links that go around. GCN has had some really good analyses in some major stage races in the studio sofa session, both after the race for the day's stage and before the race for yesterday's stage. The latter is in the ball park of the post-race analysis that I think you're after here. Again, generally only available at the start/end of the full coverage link rather than a stand-alone wrap up.

rm -rf

I couldn't take too much of Lantern Rouge's voice, so I pretty much quit looking at his videos. But this Cavendish one showed up today.

I Cannot Believe Mark Cavendish Won This Race | Incredible Sprint | Tour of Oman 2022 Stage 2 (starting at t=1s to bypass the annoying BF video window that it adds.)

Not bad, a 6 minute video, a quick stage summary, some talk about the teams for 2022, then just the finishing sprint. Nice overhead helicopter video. Wow, Cavendish had some power!
(I do like how he adds identifying pointers to the relevant racers in the clips.)
~~
Chris Horner seems way too loud and excited for me. Maybe I'll try a few more.

MinnMan

Alas, I think LR will go back to long and verbose when the big races come along. Right now, these short ones are great.

ooga-booga

been passed and dropped quickly and cheaply by chris horner back in the day in the san diego backcountry pre-vuelta win on a bad-*ss hill/ascent.
it was beyond ridiculously impressive. i'll stick with him.

slcbob

Speaking of great analysis, I miss John Madden.
Even if he never passed me on a hill climb.

PJay120

I was surprised when I first saw LR and heard genuine analysis. I like how he reviews races.

datlas 

I do like LR and Chris Horner.

I suppose Bobke's Broom Wagon is not coming back?

MinnMan

My bad. Will delete.

Iride01 

PCS uses the same La FlammeRouge for it's graphics. In fact it says at the bottom right corner, designed for PCS ProCyclingStats.

https://www.procyclingstats.com/race...today/profiles

I'd assume La FlammeRouge is either a software tool to design the graphs or a company that provides them already made.

slcbob

^ Good assumption. It looks like a bit of both.

https://www.la-flamme-rouge.eu/

MinnMan

Oh dear lord- the last few days of Lanterne Rouge have been his other side. Races where he doesn't have video rights, and he is hardly even using still images. Just chatter between him and his sidekick (Benji?) for half and hour or more. No thanks. Not for me.

GrainBrain

Lol I like it but it's a podcast so I'll listen while working. Benji sometimes doesn't provide a lot of depth I think this is his side gig. E3 Benji was generic and LR visibly annoyed by it?

Anyway did you see Horner rip Brian Smith's commentating on Brugge de panne (? I think?). Oof I noticed Brian was a little more subdued after that recently.

I'm excited that Robbie McEwen is on GCN providing commentary now.

HeyItsSara

I also prefer Chris Horner to LR.

MinnMan

If only Chris would learn a few synonyms for "knucklehead"

slcbob

I didn't listen to Horner after DDV but, every time Campanaerts took a flyer on the run-in, I could hear him in my head saying "my man Victor Camp uh nuts" from some race last year.

I assume he didn't disappoint.

MinnMan

No, he didn't. He has all these verbal tics and he's not capable of skipping them. If he says "Pogacar" 5 times in two minutes, he has to say, each time, "Two time Tour de France Winner Tadej Pogcar".

His videos would be noticeably shorter if he could overcome these.