Carlton Kirby

daniel_b

takethehighroad said:

The best one yesterday was when he corrected himself and announced that Rally Cycling and Raleigh were different spellings, after speaking for some time about the bike brand being in the race.

Wow, that's another level.

andyrr

For me having him on commentary duties feels as if I’m not actually receiving any useful information at all , whilst pretty much every single other cycling commentator does inform me to a greater or lesser extent. He throws out his stock words and phrases like “bouncing” and “refinding himself” which adds words yet adding no useful info or “colour” to what we are watching. Maybe he’s paid by the word?
Genuinely makes me frequently feel as if he’s not actually got knowledge of pro bike racing despite having obviously watched and commentated on many hours of it.

Pross

yorkshireraw said:

Pross said:

I only watch the final 1.5k and it was just a series of sentences rolling into each other with no gap. I'm sure he's getting worse but it could just be that I've grown used to better from Harmon, Blythe, Stephens, Lloyd, Backstedt and even Been.

Assume you mean Hatch, not Harmon (who was binned years ago).

Yeah, don't know where that came from!

Pross

Seems a bit more toned down today. He's knocked the volume down, is taking breaths between sentences and is even inviting Smith to do some talking.

Pross

Seems he was saving himself. I had to check the distance marker as I assumed it was coming into the final km or two rather than 12k at the time of the one attack.

stage_hunter

He’s definitely toned down the shouty stuff at the finish. But the rest is unlistenable. Thankfully I found the world feed for catalunya. I hope I can do the same for RVV.

orraloon

What is his fixation with risky roundabouts, 'I was worried there' etc? It's only a roundabout, one of those changes of direction in the road.

Found myself on today's catch up viewing uttering the FFS STFU more than once. No likee.

Pross

orraloon said:

What is his fixation with risky roundabouts, 'I was worried there' etc? It's only a roundabout, one of those changes of direction in the road.

Found myself on today's catch up viewing uttering the FFS STFU more than once. No likee.

They can be a bit gnarly, people need to work on their roundabout stylee and make sure they aren't taking a toot on their bidon whilst riding around one.

diplodicus

Pross said:

orraloon said:

What is his fixation with risky roundabouts, 'I was worried there' etc? It's only a roundabout, one of those changes of direction in the road.

Found myself on today's catch up viewing uttering the FFS STFU more than once. No likee.

They can be a bit gnarly, people need to work on their roundabout stylee and make sure they aren't taking a toot on their bidon whilst riding around one.

while investing on a day such as this..

kingstongraham

Just informed us that Barcelona is "not that far away from the coast, just slightly inland, nothing too serious. As you see from the boats."

Pross

Well there is that strip of sand between the sea and the city I suppose.

mechanism

Excuse the slightly ignorant question but is the commentary the same on GCN+ and Eurosport (through Eurosport Player)?

RichN95.

mechanism said:

Excuse the slightly ignorant question but is the commentary the same on GCN+ and Eurosport (through Eurosport Player)?

It’s the same toady

thejimmymethod

Mostly I can just about tolerate him but by heck it was bad today; beef, fish, soup, beetles.
Especially jarring after I'd enjoyed an hour of Lloyd and Blythe before the changeover

RichN95.

Eurosport picking Kirby to be the main commentator is like Quick Step picking Tim DeClerq as their Classics leader. He’s fine for the long boring bits when you have a nap, but he’s not what you need when it’s kicking off

Pross

I think the newer batch of commentators are highlighting just how bad he is if it wasn't apparent before. Lloyd and Blthye were just like two knowledgeable mates chatting about the race, meandering off every now and then to discuss general cycling or chat about the area. Most importantly their tone reflects what is happening so you can just have an ear out for changes to tell if something important has happened.

That's my real bugbear with Kirby; you can't tell if there has been a big attack, a favourite has crashed or if someone has just dropped off the back of bunch to get something from the car. It's like having Davina McCall commentating.

blazing_saddles

Apparently Rob Hatch has been doing the host's English language feed for all of their races.
Today he had Matt Stephen's in the co commentators seat.

Kirby has also caused much anger and despair over on the Cyclingnews forum.
The frustration and fury being expressed for the exact same reasons folks complain on here.

I very much enjoyed the final 70kms with the restrain Dutch commentators.
You didn't need the language to extract more race information than Kirby can supply over the course of a Grand Tour.
It is an excellent option offered with the Eurosport player

stage_hunter

blazing_saddles said:

Apparently Rob Hatch has been doing the host's English language feed for all of their races.
Today he had Matt Stephen's in the co commentators seat.

Kirby has also caused much anger and despair over on the Cyclingnews forum.
The frustration and fury being expressed for the exact same reasons folks complain on here.

I very much enjoyed the final 70kms with the restrain Dutch commentators.
You didn't need the language to extract more race information than Kirby can supply over the course of a Grand Tour.
It is an excellent option offered with the Eurosport player

Thankfully, I found the world feed with Rob Hatch and Matt Stephens. Kirby made me want to get drinking at 0930. Which wasn’t a good idea.

ddraver

blazing_saddles said:

Kirby has also caused much anger and despair over on the Cyclingnews forum.
The frustration and fury being expressed for the exact same reasons folks complain on here.

Pretty rare we agree....

Lanterne_Rogue

ddraver said:

blazing_saddles said:

Kirby has also caused much anger and despair over on the Cyclingnews forum.
The frustration and fury being expressed for the exact same reasons folks complain on here.

Pretty rare we agree....

It's genuinely making me wonder if I need to reconsider.

daniel_b

thejimmymethod said:

Mostly I can just about tolerate him but by heck it was bad today; beef, fish, soup, beetles.
Especially jarring after I'd enjoyed an hour of Lloyd and Blythe before the changeover

Could not agree more - I watched on catch up from about 130km to go, Blythe and Lloyd were awesome, cracking amusing jokes, genuine chemistry, and actual insight and intelligent commentary - if a mistake was made, it was admitted and corrected by that commentator or the other one.
My heart sank when Lloys said they were about to hand over to Kirby.......

And as you rightly say, the difference could not have been anymore chalk and cheese if they had tried - normally it's not quite so obvious as the handover if there is one is not that instant.
One second we had knowledgable insight, some actual silences in the commentary, and then as soon as kirby took over, it was like a torrent of over used cliches, and so many badly timed observations I lost count, but didn't note them down.
Picking the wrong climb that Alaphilippe attacked on the year before, tactfully corrected by Magnus, no acknowledgement from kirby, JA is 'dancing on the pedals' when he was very clearly sat down in the saddle.
WVA being pulled in by a group, when magnus corrected and said he had gone through the group to try and lift the speed, having been absorbed a good few minutes ago.
There were countless others, it was pretty painful and did detract from the event for me.
Had I known, or had a way to switch to Hatch & Stephens commentary I would have done so in a flash.

If they could de-kirby themselves, they would have a really outstanding and formidable commentary team, depth wise as well.

orraloon

^ This. Totally.

andyrr

orraloon said:

^ This. Totally.

Seconded. I was also going to comment on how naturally the earlier commentary pairing worked together and mistakes were addressed briefly then put to the side for their useful commentary to then continue. Kirby just adds zero to the even with a stream of cliches, laughter at his own "amusing" verbosity, etc.
Today, when he was paired with Backsted, I found his comments and interjections fairly decent, showing Kirby's own as being so inane and cringe-worthy.

daniel_b

andyrr said:

orraloon said:

^ This. Totally.

Seconded. I was also going to comment on how naturally the earlier commentary pairing worked together and mistakes were addressed briefly then put to the side for their useful commentary to then continue. Kirby just adds zero to the even with a stream of cliches, laughter at his own "amusing" verbosity, etc.
Today, when he was paired with Backsted, I found his comments and interjections fairly decent, showing Kirby's own as being so inane and cringe-worthy.

Blythe and Lloyd were immense weren't they, could have listened to them all day, great chat, not having to fill the silences with inane ramblings, genuine chemistry, actual knowledge - recent in Blythe's case.

Backsted kept the last 69km bearable that is for sure.

I genuinely cannot understand the people who defend his commentary, it's mind boggling. You can't even say it's aimed at people who are new to the sport, it's generally inane tattle and horrendous puns, or alleged word play.

I'm pretty certain he must have a list of word play puns he is going to use during a race, and must surely tick them off/repeat them as the race goes on.
It's commentary by numbers, except the numbers are hexidecimal.

I might have a look and see if there is somewhere with ES you can give feedback - we can't be the only 3 people who pay for this service and feel this strongly about it.

I'm happy for him to commentate, but just not on cycling.

gweeds

I was willing Blythe to come back for the last 30km. No. We had the muppet instead and had the inevitable ‘time to invest’ which comes second to the ‘taking a toot on the bottle’ in my list of Kirby annoyances.

norvernrob

He’s an absolute buffoon. It’s not even the puns or crappy wordplay that are the worst thing, it’s his almost total lack of knowledge and ability to read a race and call what’s going on right in front of him. How can you still be that bad when you watch so much racing?

He completely misses attacks, screams someone is attacking when they’re just out of the saddle for a change of position, yesterday said VdP wouldn’t take another turn when he then came straight through, and that WvA was being caught by the group when he’d been sat at the back of said group for the last few minutes and had obviously gone off the front again.

He’s just a clueless t-urd.

yorkshireraw

Stephens' set-up for RVV commentary:

https://twitter.com/RealStephens/status/1378601418425253893?s=20

And Hatch's:

https://twitter.com/robhatchtv/status/1378616697737863177?s=20

Don't believe for 1 second Kirby does any of the same level of prep. Probably just has a bottle of Red and 12 espressos, with some scribbled notes:

'Turbo Durbo, Etixx Quickstep, er.... Eddie Boss!'

kingstongraham

Comment on this Carlton Kirby summary of DDV 2021 "Why this commentator feels like i'm watching an ASMR video?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3QlHlAnSMk

It's a very different feel to his live work.

RichN95.

Kirby's set up is much the same

yorkshireraw

RichN95. said:

Kirby's set up is much the same

He's sat in the co-commentators seat there..... ;-)

Plus he is morphing into Bjarne Riis!