Today’s Tour of Ireland stage took the riders 200k from Ballinrobe to Galway, via Louisburgh, Westport, Leenane and Connemara, with several climbs along the way. Yesterday Mark Cavendish added to his win in Waterford on Wednesday with a perfectly timed sprint finish in Loughrea – and today he’s made it three stage victories out of three, winning in Galway. Shane Stokes’ detailed account of the stage is available on Irish Cycling.
Today’s win bucked the predictions being made during the television coverage of the race yesterday, with most commentators agreeing that the Manx sprinter would find today’s course significantly more difficult and expecting to see the climbers coming to the fore.
Thus far, the Tour of Ireland has been really enjoyable – Wednesday’s and yesterday’s stages were of great quality, and each stage route has been well chosen. The late night TV coverage on RTE 2 (or ITV4, depending on your preference) has been great (and has nicely filled the gaping hole in my daily schedule previously occupied by TG4’s excellent Tour de France nightly highlights). However, the attitude of the national media towards the race has tended to make the Tour of Ireland feel a bit like some sort of occult gathering, known only to a small, select group of initiates.
Take sports bulletins on radio news, for example. I listen to Today FM in the mornings, and I have as yet still to hear so much as a mention of the Tour during their regular sports bulletins. Golf, snooker, changes in the captaincy of the Leinster rugby team (!) – they’re all covered. A challenging, competitive cycling event featuring some of the best known cyclists and cycling teams in the world, taking place on our doorsteps?
Not a whiff of it. RTE features a brief update on the result of each stage on nightly television news bulletins, but neglects to mention the fact that they’re screening extended highlights of the race later. The sports section of their news site is worse. Although Cavendish won the first stage at around 3:50pm on Wednesday, by 5:00pm RTE still hadn’t updated their sports headlines page to inform readers of the result.
As it happens, it fell to Karl of this very blog to get them to put something up. It’s not like it’s hard to find out who won. For the benefit of the RTE sports news people, though, who have obviously missed this, there are live daily updates from the Tour here. Yes! Live updates just a click of a mouse away! Technology is amazing, isn’t it? They haven’t learned their lesson, either. Their coverage of “Friday’s Live Sport” includes golf, snooker and the Eircom League. That’s all.
Now, here’s the thing. I know that the Tour of Ireland is not, in the eyes of most people, considered as a significant sporting event on a par with, say, the World Cup or something. But the fact remains that it is an international sporting event, featuring internationally renowned riders, and it is happening in Ireland, right now. So why aren’t the various organs of the national (and international, seeing as the BBC don’t have anything about it on their cycling news page) media giving it a bit more attention? It’s ridiculous to argue that the reason is that no one cares about cycling.
Lots of people care about cycling. Lots of people ride a bike every day, be it for commuting purposes or for pleasure. Lots of people spend their weekends taking their bike up and down hills, or out to the sea, or around the Phoenix Park. And those are just the non-competitive cyclists. Then there are the non-cyclists who enjoy the spectacle of competitive racing, be it road or track.
The key players in competitive cycling clearly think the Tour of Ireland is a worthwhile endeavour. Otherwise, teams like Columbia and Garmin Chipotle wouldn’t be here and wouldn’t be fielding some of their most important riders. So why can’t the media see it like that?
The Dublin Bike Blog 