Not everything is going completely wrong in sport this summer, well not quite all anyway. England maybe out of the World Cup, but Andy Murray’s still in Wimbledon, and the 2006 edition of Le Tour has started.
OK, not everything’s beautiful in the world of cycling with a massive fallout from an ongoing to Spanish blood doping investigation. So no Basso, Ulrich or Vinokourov amongst others. It all leaves this year’s race very open.
Britain is represented by the humbled David Millar, who’s returning to professional cycling following a two year drugs ban. He knows that he has rebuild trust with the public. Making his Tour debut is British Olympian Bradley Wiggins. Despite both being tipped as possible winners to the prologue time-trial, they finished a second apart in 16th and 17th place. Norwegian Thor Hushovd of Credit Agricole won the stage.
As usual ITV and Eurosport have coverage and despite ITV’s recent claims that they’re going to save £30m on their sports coverage (largely virtue of the fact that there’s no World Cup next year), they still seem to be doing fine with live coverage on ITV, amid repeats of Rumpole of the Bailey and Jeeves & Wooster. As usual, it’s a clever way of sharing the commentary talents of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin with US network OLN. Effectively we dip and out of the coverage with extended periods of commentary from Sherwin when Liggett is doing something specifically for OLN. The coverage is fronted excellently by Gary Imlach with Chris Boardman, and I’ve noticed Graham Bell doing some stuff – perhaps until Ned Boulting gets back from the World Cup.
Nightly highlights are on ITV4, although it seems that “gaming” TV has pushed out the weekly terrestrial ITV1 wrap up shows. But ITV is doing a podcast this year which is a nice addition.