The joy of Gary Imlach’s Tour de France coverage

Posted on 15 July 2015 by Alex Murray

Gary Imlach has been part of my summer for 20 years now, so it feels right to praise one of the best broadcasters in sport.

Gary Imlach

Gary Imlach in Chartres, July 2012. By MikeEye on Flickr

A carrier bag for a hat

The image of him defying the elements – a thunderous storm in Northern Spain – with a carrier bag for a hat is burned into my memories as much as anything else from the Wild West before Texas – or the 1990s as it is also known.

I think the occasion was Indurain riding into Spain towards the end of his Tour de France career with nothing going according to the scripted glory. If anyone has this image or video somewhere, I’d love to see it again.

Perhaps that image is a stronger metaphor for reporting on that period in the sport than I’d thought before. Imlach’s was a thankless task trying to retain a degree of journalistic dignity in terrible conditions. He’s always been that to me: a journalist with integrity and honesty.

Discussing the Chris Froome data leak he alluded to the classic loaded question “when did you stop beating your wife?” to the consternation of his ITV colleagues – it was the sort of allusion any journalist would get.

Even in the Armstrong years, he keep a degree of journalistic distance which is difficult to maintain when presenting an event your employer is paying money for.

This stuff is too important to take seriously

One of the hallmarks of Gary’s coverage is his sense of perspective. Bike racing, like many other things in life is too important to take seriously.

His beautifully crafted links almost always involve playfulness, humour and a sense of the absurd circus that is the Tour.

When Tour coverage switched from Channel Four to ITV at short notice, his opening gambit was “No, you’re not watching the wrong channel” – a familiar yet dry way to cover the changes in one line and never need mention it again.

I’m sure you all have your favourite Imlach lines and moments, including the pedalo incident.

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London 2007 v Yorkshire 2014 – Tour de France compared

Posted on 4 December 2014 by Alex Murray

So the report into Yorkshire (and London and Cambridge) hosting the Grand Depart 2014 has finally surfaced.

You can read the full report here as a PDF file . Here’s the equivalent summary for London 2007 which is worth re-reading as a comparison.

Over the first two days

  • Yorkshire had 2.3m unique spectators across the two Yorkshire stages (although it claims 3.3m if you count people who viewed in more than one place)
  • London and Kent 2007 had 2.5m spectators across the two stages (although estimates go as wide as 2 million and 3 million)

Day visitor spend

  • Day visitors to Tour de France in London in 2007 spent £26.15 per person (these are people from outside the host region)
  • Day visitors to Yorkshire spent on average £27.13

Where were they from

  • 57% of people who watched in Yorkshire in 2014 were from Yorkshire
  • 69% of people who watched 2014’s Cambridge to London stage 3 were from Cambridge, London or Essex
  • 45% of people who watched in London in 2007 were from London
  • 61% of people who watched in Kent in 2007 were from Kent

Cost of staying

  • In London 2007, visitors staying in commercial accommodation spent £116.33 per person
  • In Yorkshire 2014, visitors staying in commercial accommodation spent £107.25  (£49.54 on accommodation, £57.71 in other expenditure)
  • People staying with friends/family spent £45.48 per person in 2007
  • People staying with family/friends in Yorkshire spent £45.26

 

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5 things you should know about that Colombian cycling kit

Posted on 15 September 2014 by Alex Murray

1. It’s not the national team or the national team kit

It’s the colours of IDRD-Bogotá Humana-San Mateo-Solgar, who the Colombian Federation proudly announced would be competing in the Giro Del Toscana

2. It’s not flesh or nude, it’s gold

There are numerous tweets to this effect from people who have been paying attention. Lycra done as gold effect never photographs well. It’s unfortunate, but there you are. It’s not “unacceptable by any standard of decency” as the UCI boss Brian Cookson seems to suggest.

3. They’ve apparently been wearing it for up to 9 months

Here’s a picture of it being raced to victory in Colombia in August in the Carrera de la Mujer in Bogota. The rider with the bottle in her mouth is wearing it and wins the race. Here’s the report from Las Bielas

Carrera de la Mujer, Bogota

Jono Coulter tweeted this picture of the kit in El Salvador earlier this year.

 

4. It seems to have been designed by one of the riders on the team

ABC.es quotes several Colombia sources in its report on the kerfuffle (via Frontier Sports)

5. There is still no minimum wage for women in professional cycling

Events deemed “Women’s Elite” – like the Giro del Toscana at which they were competing –  are roughly equivalent to the top two tiers of the men’s sport.

In 2011, second tier men’s teams were required to pay a minimum around 32,000 euro, according to the Inner Ring. A woman who wins every event in their top tier World Cup Series probably would fall short of that sum in prize money.

Most women in the top tier of professional cycling aren’t even making what most countries would describe as a minimum wage.

So you can be outraged by an unflattering photo.

Or you can be outraged by the fact that the people running the sport still haven’t bought forward meaningful change to ensure that women are not on the end of enduring sexism in the sport where their right to a fair wage for a professional job is still considered less important than the design of their kit.

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