Ken Brown

Spoiler below

Nibali gained 6 seconds on Chris Horner in Stage 4 of the Vuelta, taking over the red jersey by 3 seconds. Schlanger and Gogoluski (sp?) didn't think it was possible and ran a replay comparing the seconds between the two. It was not 6 seconds. But both failed to understand that Nibali got the same time as the first person in his group while Horner got the same time as the first person in his group. Come on guys, understand how scoring works.

Now I think there is an argument that there was not a significant gap between the two groups, but that is not what they were arguing. I thought it looked like a one-second+ gap between Moreno and Cancellera, and another 1+ second to the Nibali group, but they all got the same time as Moreno, and I thought there was less than a second between Nibali's group and Horner's, but the camera angle might have skewed those gaps. I see possible grounds for appeal there, but not using the announcers' flawed logic.

Cat4Lifer

Not sure how Todd Gogulski managed to became a pro-cyclist without knowing how scoring works in cycling.
Weird.

Caretaker

If it was Nibali losing out to Horner would they have made such a fuss?

They were just playing to their audience IMO.

canam73

I believe the six seconds is the gap between the first guy in Nibali's group (Moreno) and the first guy in Horner's group (Nerz).

cafzali

The only intelligent coverage of cycling I've seen is on Eurosport. Sometimes I watch the online feeds they have for races even when I can get U.S. coverage because I can't stand Todd Gogoulski.

As an aside, why the hell they feel compelled to wear headphones inside a studio as if they're covering an outdoor event where traditional IFBs (earpieces for anchors) is beyond me.

Ken Brown

They don't want you to know that they are not in Spain. The announcer who filled in for Schlenger on Saturday made a boo boo and said "here in the states...".

cafzali

You may be right, but it's painfully obvious they're sitting in a windowless room in California. That's why using those headsets looks even more ridiculous. When you're in a studio and not outside in a loud environment, a standard IFB is what any decent broadcasting operation would do. All networks that broadcast cycling use the same feed that's arranged by the event organizer. So it's actually very common for cycling commentators to not actually be on site at the event they're covering.

They really should merge Universal Sports and Versus and get rid of the rodeo junk and some of the paid programming on Versus. On the plus side, at least the video quality on Universal Sports has improved.