A review of the rest day reviews (July 2006)

Published on DerailedUK, July 17, 2006. Yes, we could’ve written a new one for 2021, but we’re not paid by the word on Cyclry.

We’ve decided to review the rest day reviews! How ironic! (It’s a bit long, sorry.)

In internet land, Pez Cycling News provided plenty of coverage. From the mundane (tech review) to the expected (wrap up of the current race situation) to the… err… expected again (Alpe d’Huez previews), Pez certainly got one over on its uncharismatic rivals, CyclingNews, who did some rubbish about the Etape, gossipped about some riders, and reproduced some barely passable rest day “wit” from another site:

Fat Cyclist did an obligatory “hilarious” rest day update, suggesting that this year’s Tour should just restart after the rest day since all the important riders (American) have been subject to “bad luck”. As much as we tried to dislike it, the update earns bonus points for having the audacity to imply that the “people left in the race […] lurch around haphazardly from stage to stage as if they were drug addicts who had suddenly gone cold turkey”.

The various Livejournal communities seemed less concerned with the race itself and more interested in sharing pictures of Thomas Lokvist and Philipe Gilbert to use as icons. There was a brief discussion of how well Savoldelli was going, before we got chastised for suggesting that his reputation as a descender might have been dented by him crashing into a spectator and having to retire from the race.

On the television front, Eurosport didn’t seem to put very much effort into their rest day coverage. In fact, there was little more to it than a discussion of what riders do on the rest day. (Duffield’s response? “The first thing they do is go out on their bike. Well, the first thing they do is wake up. Then they have some breakfast. They sign autographs and chat. Then they go out on their bikes. Then they have lunch…”)

ITV did a highlights package. Gary Imlach presented, doing his VER-y best to over EMPH-asise certain bits of WORDS for a dry, sarca-STIC tone. We also noticed the return of his characteristic pauses … for a similar eff-ECT.

THE WINNER:
The coverage of this second rest day was fairly reflective of this year’s Tour: no real competition, with being mediocre seeming to constitute a passing grade. We’ll say ITV are the winners this time, because they’ve got that mirror image twins thing going on between Imlach and Boardman, but the whole cycling media needs to do better.