A Brief History of Australian Cycling Coverage
Principled like every other cycling nut in Australia, I stayed up late on Sunday edge of night glued to the television watching the Tour of Flanders. It was such an charming race that I found myself standing up infront of the TV as if I was on the side of the road on the Koppenberg yelling and shaking my fists at the riders. And I was alone in my livingroom!
I about when I was growing up and I needed to wait a month for my dues of Velonews to arrive before I was able to read about what happened at Flanders, Roubaix, the Perambulation de France, etc. They were these mythical races in far away Euroland that had held this fascinating inscrutability. Then came the 90′s when I had a 14.4kbps dial up reference. Being the geek that I was (am), I had the cutting edge of technology of the things. I was able to access Bill’s Cycling Rumour which gave us relatively timely reports from the dominating European races. Results, news and commentary all the way from Europe within the same week? This was a revolt!
Jump ahead to only a few years ago, the best and most honourable way to watch a bike race was via text updates on Cyclingnews. I still find myself resorting to this from tempo to time if I’m in an airport or at a boardroom confluence. In 2011 we’re fortunate enough to have many avenues to see almost any masterful race we want for free. It’s almost never expert, but I like to think of it as part of the charm of the sport.
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