Poorly Harmon

cal_stewart

i liked phil anderson wheres he gone

Rodrego Hernandez

Phil Anderson runs a farm in Victoria. AFAIK he hasn't commentated on eurosport.

inkyfingers

DaveyL wrote:

Harmon's the one at the back. Funny looking motorcycle.

He must be really hoping that the guy on the front hasn't been eating too many baked beans!

dougzz

Harmon's great, and I like Carlton too

Anyone that thinks differently should listen to Phil and Paul when ITV decides to cover the odd stage live, with more time for them to 'be interesting' with Lance anecdotes.

Rodrego Hernandez

Just because Phil and Paul are terrible doesn't make Hamron good.

We deserve professional commentary, Hamron has potential. He needs to leave his ego at home and tell us the facts about the races.

mroli

Rodrego - I disagree with you. I think Harmon does a good job and it is a difficult job. I certainly don't find his ego overpowering. Look at other similar sports (I would put cricket and golf in there). It is incredibly hard to get the mixture right and Harmon does a good job I think. I think some cycling fans are notoriously partisan and snobbish (Boulting talks about his difficulties when he started and the fact that he is only just getting accepted). The fact that Harmon has a motorbike is neither here nor there - I have one too, don't ride it half as much as my bike, but wouldn't be able to do half as good a job as Harmon.

hammerite

I had an interview once, one of the questions was "in two minutes describe your journey to this interview". I'd actually had a pretty eventful journey with a blow out on the way, but I finished talking - and the interviewers (bastards!) kept silent until the 2 mins was up. It felt like a very long time silent.

Anyway, my point is that it isn't too easy having to talk for 2-3 hours day in, day out for 3 weeks. Some of the talk is idle chit chat, some to do with the race. They can't stick to one subject - the race - the whole time it'd get boring, he does stick to the race though at the crunch times like the run ins to the finish or important climbs. I think he does a good job mixing up the conversations.

He's clearly in intelligent bloke, reads around the subject a lot - he must mention a different book he's read every day!

I actually quite liked it during the Tour of Turkey when he went into great detail about the ancient history of Turkey that he learnt when he was working as an archaeologist!!

deejay

hammerite wrote:

I had an interview once, one of the questions was "in two minutes describe your journey to this interview". I'd actually had a pretty eventful journey with a blow out on the way, but I finished talking - and the interviewers (bastards!) kept silent until the 2 mins was up. It felt like a very long time silent.

I thought this was going to be the one about - he threw a box of matches at me and said "sell that to me".
I did, I got the job (well it's got so many advantages over a Lighter)

hammerite wrote:

He's clearly in intelligent bloke, reads around the subject a lot - he must mention a different book he's read every day!

Yup that's how he learned cycle racing from the books and the job he had with Cycling tapes (probably at eurosport)

hammerite wrote:

I actually quite liked it during the Tour of Turkey when he went into great detail about the ancient history of Turkey that he learnt when he was working as an archaeologist!!

That I'm happy to agree with as he knows a lot about that one and if he were to try the same method of talking about cycle racing (matter of fact without the Ego) then he might become bearable for 3 hours.

ju5t1n

I love Eurosport and I think the commentators do an excellent job, especially David Harmon.

Try muting the sound on your TV one day and commentating yourself, it’s a lot harder than you think.

shmo

Same here. I've probably watched every live race on ES so far this year and not once has the company of DH, SK et al. become tiresome. This thread needs more love.

stagehopper

Personally think Harmon is one of the best commentators in any sport at present. Does a bloody difficult job very, very well.