We had weeks of awesome weather in January, yet for the Tour, it was pissing down rain for the Northern stages. I was sick and couldn’t go stand in the rain for hours to watch 30 seconds of cycling.

There were no truly epic climbs. I know it’s early in the season and the Sierra’s are out for February, but it would have been cool to have some kind of real mountain action. Is there a paved road up the side of Mt. Whitney?

They missed my county entirely and other than a few miles of the Silverado trail (with no video due to weather) I’ve not ridden a single mile of any of the stages. I wish they could have ridden something like Morgan Territory Road, up and over the lower half of Mt. Diablo, climb South Park Dr in Tilden, McEwen or Pig Farm in Martinez or some other Contra Costa or Alameda ride.

They have to do something about the idiots who crowd the road during the race. It’s a miracle that no rider went down because of a spectator.

And Versus, on the last stage, they were showing a bike race in Middle East rather than show the race live. What the heck was that about?

While it’s nice for the local boy to win the race, it would also be nice to someone other than Levi win. I rooted for him, but one of these days it would be nice to have some Italian or Aussie capture the hearts of the people of California and win the race in a dramatic fashion.

Anyway, enough of my babbling. I enjoyed both the race and your coverage.

Misses:
Hummer sux…. sux really bad!!
VS cutting away before the stage was over… other than that VS coverage was pretty darn good.
Bimbo Comedian… drop her like a bad habit.

…all we need are liggett, sherwin & roll in the booth w/ maybe a ventura or an andreau asking the questions from the field…we saw, what ???…a total of 10 min of bob roll all week ???…dumb…

…trautwig vs hummer…trautwig’s job is to ask the questions that the uninformed might like to know but he does it in a manner that sez he’s a fan, not just of the sport but of his erudite broadcast partners as well…
…hummer’s job is the same but he plays it as if ligget & sherwin are only there to compliment his work…& i find both his work & his style to be annoying…
…at least that’s my take on what i hear…

…re:- hummer…“Maybe he’s good as a hockey commentator?”…no, no, no, no, no…
…as a lifelong hockey fan (& as a lifelong cyclist who was appalled by the cutaway from the race), i’d say, no, not even close…that’s considered to be the hardest job in sports broadcasting…listen to the seamless flow of mike ‘doc’ emrick sometime…even if you don’t know the game, doc will have you appreciating it…

…anyway, to finish up…versus one hour evening rebroadcast was very poorly edited…they’d show the roll-out, maybe 15 seconds of what had been at least interesting action &/or scenery, leave huge gaps & then go staight to the last 40 minutes of the race…even on the long flat run-ins w/ virtually nothing happening…

…c’mon guys…we appreciate that you’re giving us the race but get some cycling enthusiasts manning the work stations…directors, editors, whatnot…

Loved your coverage of the race Fatty! That and the Amgen live tracker kept me going thru the workweek. I don’t recall the TDF VS coverage being so horrid (missing finishes, climbs, wrecks). Maybe they have a diff crew working it behind the scenes (ie: inexperienced). Don’t recall last years ToC sucking so bad either, but I also recall Bobke being IN THE BOOTH with Phil and Paul…which would make it OH SO MUCH BETTER. Can’t possibly fathom why the suits at VS think Hummer is ‘the man’ to have in the booth with P&P…when they’ve got Bob out doing little spots here and there. Maybe they’re trying to bring over some Nascar/bullriding fans to cycling?

And comedy girl was simply HORRID! Thank god for my DVR…able to swoosh over her dumb-ass lame spots. They (VS) need to get Robbie Ventura doing the spots and put Bob back in the booth. Simple solution. And if you want actual comedy spots, get Billy Crystal or Robin Williams (a cycling fan). Hell…Joe the Plumber would be infinetly better than what’s-her name. Overall it was the worst VS coverage of the 4 tours so far, but the best field and some of the best racing.

And as to mt-top finish…they need to add another stage next year, and do the same stage to Mt. Palomar only finish it there on top. THEN have the final 9th stage down near San Diego. There is lots of good area around Laguna for climbs, and a finish in downtown SD or suburb would be pretty cool. Bring in many more tens-of-thousands of spectators, and we would get the bitchin’ mt-top finish on Palomar…making it a meaningful stage for the GC guys with real potential for disaster if you don’t climb out front with the breakaway for the man in yellow.