Pro-cycling thread

Rob Hatch is as dull as ditch water

No, this is wrong. Kirby is bad. Hatch is good.

where's he said this?

Ha ha.

Don’t come near my riders without a lead out and a decent palmares you peasants.

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On Twitter after the Fabio Jakobsen crash.

I made the mistake of dipping in to the world's most tedious conversation: cycling commentators.

Speedbamps

I had one of those at a docklands rave in Rotterdam I think.

Half the fun of watching cycling is complaining about the commentators.

No, this is wrong. Kirby is bad. Hatch is good.

Carlton Kirby was really awful today, even by his standards. Total verbal diarrhoea.

I like bike racing with out a crowd, especially the mountain stages where the riders haven't got to thread their way though an alley of spectators single file. Watching them on tv have the spacer to move around across the road and attack in a much more fluid ways is a good thing to see. It just feels so much more natural. I know professional sport ultimately exists because people want to watch and pay for it but no or few crowds actually feel more enjoyable to me.

No drunken sunburnt blokes running uphill after bikes in their all so funny Mankinis, desperate to be on tv is for me one of the few real bonuses of this plague for me.

FWIW, I have no idea how Hindley and Kelderman are going to do in the future. Both are excellent riders, but as far as I can see, one major reason why they were beaten was because they were separated, whereas Tao and Rohan Dennis worked together. Sunweb might still not have won had Hindley worked for Kelderman, but they might have reduced the time loss for Kelderman, the much better time triallist (although he was only three seconds faster than Tao). I'm sure someone's already said this, and I certainly don't think it's a particularly great revelation.

As for Tao, he's going to win a lot more. He makes the right decisions under pressure and understands what's going on, which a lot of physically stronger riders than him don't do. He's also very disciplined and full of motivation that I'm sure such a great win so early won't dissipate.

I don't know what Kirby's like today, but when he was first partnered with Kelly, I thought their partnership worked well. Kirby didn't have a clue and asked Kelly genuine questions, to which Kelly could give good answers. Unfortunately, after a bit of this, and let's face it, cycling race strategy isn't rocket science, Kirby then took to anticipating answers to questions and effectively gave them in his questions, leading to Kelly to have to repeat what Kirby had just said and agreeing with him. No idea if that has changed, but I thought that was a real loss.

Kirby didn't have a clue

Kirby still doesn’t have a clue.

Not a fan of Horner, or the sound of his voice, but his analysis of the Bennett barge is pretty spot on TBF
https://youtu.be/d32P3PDbc6c

I can only judge Hatch's Italian pronunciation which to be fair is pretty good.

I don't have an issue with commentators pronouncing names correctly @tbc

As for Tao, he's going to win a lot more. He makes the right decisions under pressure and understands what's going on, which a lot of physically stronger riders than him don't do. He's also very disciplined and full of motivation that I'm sure such a great win so early won't dissipate.

Agree. He's also very mature for his age and very psychologically strong which has got to help.

I fully expect him to win more than one GT for Ineos.

I'm glad he makes the effort to pronounce names correctly, what grates me is that he says it in a way that sounds like you just asked him how it's pronounced. Really emphasising it rather than it just rolling off the tongue. Still better than getting the name wrong.

Oh, I look forward to this every year. More so than the racing.

i've been trying to see if there's any academic literature on this, because he uses (most of) the L2 phoneme inventory and phonology when pronouncing non-english names ("borrowed words"?) in the middle of L1 utterances, and as far as i know that's not a common strategy among... er... speakers of language.

^ seem to remember you're a linguistics person but stop me if not

exactly! because in the middle of an english sentence, he'll use a smush of unfamiliar sounds (phonemes) and break some of the sound-ordering rules of the language he's speaking in (phonemics) in order to pronounce these names "correctly"

It's called being a pedant and a bore

him.or me? both would be fair

I meant Hatch but if you identify with it then more power to you

With a little pause just before he says it to make sure everyone's listening.

"Nearly every Englishman of working-class origin considers it effeminate to pronounce a foreign word correctly."

• Orwell in 1941
  

Maybe it's our problem.

With a little pause just before he says it to make sure everyone's listening.

I bet if you studied it that's the minute pause to allow for code switching (I don't think it's technically code switching but you get what I mean)

Really emphasising it rather than it just rolling off the tongue.

At least in Italian (which is all I know about) a lot of names are really emphasised - they don't mumble like us Brits. I think he does overdo it a bit, but he's basically better than all other cycling commentators I can think of for Italian except Friebe.

Ganna is a good example, he gets the emphasis right but just overcooks it a bit and makes it too aggressive, which makes it sound like he's showing off. Italian pronunciation for reference in the first few seconds of this:
https://www.raisport.rai.it/dl/raiSport/media/Ganna-ad-un-passo-dal-podio-fc537305-3579-47ee-a1b2-7e798c870c6f.html

To be fair this varies in Italian, in the Veneto where I lived the accent is quite laid back so the pronunciation of a word like Ganna wouldn't be very aggressive but that's different elsewhere.