Paris-Roubaix 2024 ***Spoilers***
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Oh I don't think anyone said he was MORE annoying. Kirby's got his own thread on here!
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I'd love Hatch's job, but on days like Sunday I wouldn't be any good at it. . . I honestly fell asleep on the sofa with approx 30km to go.
Give me a mic and a crowd and I am happy. . .
. . . Unless I am in Harlow and it's the 6th sprinter stage in a row.
I honestly think he is the best we have at telling the story of a race. Lloyd & Blythe doa brilliant job woth technical and tactics, Boulting is a journalist, Miller I'd love Hatch's job, but on days like Sunday I wouldn't be any good at it after 50km to go . . I honestly fell asleep on the sofa with approx 30km to go.
Give me a mic and a roadside crowd and I am a very happy man. . .
. . . Unless I am in Harlow and it's the 6th flat stage in a row.
I honestly think he is the best we have at telling the story of a race. Lloyd & Blythe do a brilliant job with technical and tactics and jokes, Boulting is a journalist who tells the story of a sport, Miller has racers input. But Hatch is an enthusiast, who knows his stuff, and does his best to spread his passion & knowledge.
As someone who has had to speak non stop about bike races for 8hrs... None of us here could do it on the telly day after day after day and not irritate a decent percentage of fans.
There .. it was a great race until 50km to go. Had a monumental victory that we will talk about for years. But also had a boring final hour of inevitability.
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I flicked between Belgian and Eurosport coverage.
The Eurosport call really missed out on the atomosphere of commentating from the velodrome.
They used to go and you could hear the bell for all the mini velodrome races bleeding into the comms and Kelly was always audibly much more excited there than in the booth.
Belgians were there obviously, as it's only 30km down the road.
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The first time I heard the bell in the middle of Paris-Roubaix coverage I was so confused, kept thinking they were coming to a rail crossing or something. Now it feels wrong if it isn't there.
It's not "mini velodrome races" though - it's the Espoirs and Jnrs coming in
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It's epic, it's not entertaining. It is quite literally this...
Are You Not Entertained? | Gladiator (2000) | Screen Bites (youtube.com)
(one could have quite a good game matching group fodder to dying gladiators there...)
We're in danger of confusing passion with incompetence
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You fell asleep twice?! I do like Millar's input.
So Hatchimol's hyperbole didn't work then.
seanoconn - gruagach craic!0 -
There was something far more atmospheric when the commentary was broadcast near the finishing line.
seanoconn - gruagach craic!1 -
He rarely wears gloves. Makes me feel part of an elite group of riders. Boonen, MDVP and TheBigBean.
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Tbf to Hatch, he did say towards the end of the race on Sunday that some might have found it boring. It was good and surprising to hear him say it.
"Unfortunately these days a lot of people don’t understand the real quality of a bike" Ernesto Colnago1 -
Cf Lizzie Deignan's hands when she did the 'just go for it' win in P-R.
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Is it fair to say that, whilst I was as cynical as most about it, the chicane before Arenburg did its job?
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It's probably hard to say, because the peloton was already decimated by Alpecin to just 30-40 riders by then.
PTP Champion 2019, 2022 & 20230 -
Yeah fair point. I wondered at the time if part of the reason Alpecin drove so hard was to avoid a full peloton going into the chicane although I suspect it was more that the wind conditions just allowed them to thin it out and ensure no-one else had strength in depth.
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Yeah I agree. I'd guess they would have seen the chicane as something positive with MvdP's CX background. He used it to move up several positions for basically no effort in the race as well.
PTP Champion 2019, 2022 & 20230 -
According to INRNG next year they will go down the side streets next to the mine heads.
Apparently this year there wasn't enough time to remove the traffic calming infrastructure, which suggests the teams only mentioned anything to the CPA after the Ronde
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According to the team themselves, the chicane didn't factor in to their tactics. All they were trying to do was to reach te later stages of the race with as many riders as possible. They weren't even trying to make it hard, they were just keeping out of trouble by riding at the front. It's pretty much what Sky used to try and do, though they always got screwed by the entire Quickstep team materialising as if from nowhere as they approached Arenberg.
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