Monday, June 19, 2006

The CapTech Classic

So what is the CapTech Classic? It's a bike race that happens in Richmond, Va. Like the bike race here in Philly, it has a lot of professional presence. Unlike the Philly Bike race, it is really boring and the course is just sad. But you know what? Unlike the Philly bike race this year, the coverage on OLN was so good that I watched every last second of the race and thoroughly enjoyed it.

There were cameras all over the course, motorcycles with cameras, professional commentary, the works. There even was a 2 minute infomercial in the middle of it for Richmond. Richmond. Are you getting this? Not that Richmond is a pathetic city, but compared to Philly it really shouldn't be getting event coverage that is light years better.

The city should be ashamed at how poor our coverage was. I was ok with this at first, thinking, well, we don't deserve good coverage since America doesn't care much about cycling, but that until I saw this damn race on OLN on Saturday! What the hell man?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nice to see a post about Bicycle racing. I few things of note. The Philadelphia race is a different style of bike race, with the riders spread out on a 14 mile + course, doing 10 laps for 156 miles. The Caps Classic race is a very exciting 1.2 mile lap, tech. circuit race. With a very tough eight corner course + a climb with-in the race, and the men raced at night. A circuit race is a dangerous, tough demaniding race. With a large pack of riders at a high speed hitting corner after corner there are a lot of crashes. Many of the riders can't keep up the pace and are shelled off the back of the pack. As a spectator you can easy walk the 1.2 mile course and catch all the action. I did not get to see the philly race coverage, but I am sure as you said it was quite poor.
The cap classic event (OLN was one of the sponsors of the race) was a taped and edited show, with great commentary added, making it a better race to watch on Tv. The commentary was very colorful and insightful into the tatics and what was happening in the race. With Comcast ( don't they own OLN?) here in Philadelphia, they could, and should, easily put out a 1st class race show. Show casing the Philadelphia race and this great city.