So I canceled my Peacock Premium at the end of July (costing me $10 a month for the Premium Plus which has NO commercials!), which I was using to watch le Tour the last few years. I saw a comment on Strava a few days back by a guy over in Spain right now road-touring with his wife (on Mt bikes, doing almost all dirt roads) and he mentioned watching the Vuelta Hilights on Peacock...didn't know that was an option. So I logged into my 'free' Peacock account and sure enough, there is a 20 minute daily Highlights that I can see with my free account!!! I had NO IDEA!! It's commentated by Bobke and CVV too! They haven't shown them in person so I'm assuming they are in a room (or rooms, not certain they are even actually in the same room) and obviously not in Spain.
ANYWAY, as good as the race is, turn on your Closed Caption and watch the text as the video unfolds each day...OMG! Whatever speech-recognition software they are using is attempting to convert real-time audio-commentating into text is SO overwhelmed with the names of the riders, and the things it comes up with is just HILARIOUS! Roman Bardet is mentioned a LOT in the first few stage highlights, and holy smokes, each time it converts it into something else (most of the names come across as at least two words). If it wouldn't be so time-consuming I'd start a log of each rider and the attempts at his name throughout the Vuelta...seriously, it's as entertaining as the race! I'm only up thru Stage 6 so far.
I won't talk about any of the race in case you want to start going thru the highlights (in case you already aren't)...but I will talk briefly about Stage 1...a Team Time Trial in Barcelona. It started late in the afternoon if not in the actual evening. The first few teams got daylight, but it started to rain, and then was raining pretty hard as it got dark, and the final teams finishing in utter darkness in the rain. That was just INSANE! It's not like the riders have lights on their helmets and/or handlebars like recreational riders do. LOTS of crashes as the guy in front sets the pace and the guys behind can't see anything and try to take the line of the guy in front of him...which is difficult to do even in daylight on a dry road (thus the crashes in the descending turns we see all the time in races). Everybody has different turning skills and confidence...some guys are born descenders and just FLY thru the turns...others without the skills and confidence are much more tentative descenders (such as myself). If I were to TRY to follow a fast descender thru a twisty descent and hold the same speed on the same line, I'd be crashed out in no-time. You'd think it would be easy to just take the same exact line as the guy in front of you, but it doesn't work that way.
Anyway...Stage 1 has a pretty surprising result and a lot of angry racers after. And being the Vuelta, after that things start to go UP pretty quickly (much like this years Tour)...I know the Vuelta and the Giro both are notorious for a LOT of huge days.
OK...I'll end this for now but hope to see you come back here and there to talk about the race...I will say that Jumbo has BOTH Roglic and Vingegaard (just watch the CC text whenever either of those names are mentioned...you'd think Roglic wouldn't be too bad...NOT SO! But Vingegaard...that's usually a three word concoction of whatever words the software can come up with).
