Even if you don’t care for cycling, even if you think that watching cycling on TV (or in real life) is as boring as watching the grass grow – only with more lycra and crazy looking sunglasses, you might still want to head over to VS. tonight (yes, the TV network) and watch today’s Tour De France coverage.
Judging from the RSS feed of today’s stage, Stage 17 sounds epic. No… not epic. EPIC: Not one, not two, but THREE major (HC) mountain climbs (the crushing Col du Galibier, the leg-shredding Col de la Croix de Fer, and the Holy Grail of cycling: Alpe D’Huez), the best riders in the world struggling to stay in the race, crashes galore, cyclists misjudging turns in 70mph descents and flying off mountainsides… It is absolutely insane.
Sure, I miss the early days of Lance Armstrong’s dominance – when the show was all about his crushing superiority on the climbs and in the time-trial, but this is spectacle. Pure, raw warfare on wheels. No engines. No time-outs. No half-times. No substitutions. Just sweat, blood and grit against some of the most spectacular vistas in the world. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know one rider from the next. This kind of stage is so intense, so pure, that you will find yourself rooting and cheering for the guy with the most heart. The most huevos. The guy who wants the stage win the most. You will find yourself cheering for a guy whose name you can’t even pronounce and whom you have never heard of before. That dude in green, or that dude in white or orange or blue. Who knows.
Whether you’re into cycling or not, this is truly sport at its best. Skip the sitcom re-runs tonight and tune in to VS. for a couple of hours. If the climbing portions bore you, stick around for the descents. (Between the full speed motorbike cameras and the sweeping helicopter shots, you are sure to gain a whole new appreciation for what is without a doubt one of the toughest and most dangerous sports in the world.)
Seriously. Wow.
There’s a marketing message in here somewhere–listening to you talk about this with such passion makes me want to watch.
I normally only watch Vs. for college football games, but you’ve made a compelling argument.
I’m sure the cycling teams sponsors hope so.
The human condition is probably the most compelling thing we all share, which is why stories (or footage) of courage and beating the odds is always so compelling to us. It is probably why we like to root for the underdog brands and cynically shy away from mega-brands when things become too easy for them.
Lance was a hero when he beat cancer and won his first few Tours against the kings of Grand Tour Cycling. Once he became the king of cycling instead of the underdog, people kind of stopped rooting for him because his role (and hence our relationship with him) changed.
This type of relationship we all share with underdogs has been true since antiquity. Samson. Hercules. Ulysses. David vs. Goliath. All the way up to the Colonies vs. the British Empire circa in the 1770′s. Even the story of Rocky Balboa is based on our need to root for the guy who crushes impossible odds.
Brands that can tap into that cultural consciousness can definitely do something special. If your company’s story is “smaller but better,” this might be worth another look. Apple has done a pretty decent job of it, though the underdog role it once played is starting to fade – if not in market share, in our cultural consiousness. Saturn (the car maker) has been flirting with that message for years.
The challenge is to take a human trait and a human (character-based) theme and transposing onto a brand, which lacks the human components that makes it work to begin with. Is this an opportunity to leverage user communities by projecting the story onto them rather than the brands they embrace? That’s a question I will let you ponder.
As far as cycling on TV, I’ll be honest: Even as a competitive cyclist, I find most stages of the Tour pretty boring to watch on the tube. The sprint finishes are always exciting, but that’s about 1% of the coverage. The rest is just guys sitting on bicycles spinning their little feet round and round for hours on end. The really tough mountain stages are pretty cool though because the pain and level of effort are so obvious. Always inspiring at the very least.
Yesterday’s stage coverage featured some pretty incredible descents, and the camera angles were KILLER. Probably the best descents I have ever seen on TV. The lead guys were flying down rugged mountain roads and using every millimeter of each turn. One guy went overboard with his speed (literally) and completely missed a turn and landed face first on a rocky slope that was so steep he couldn’t get back up on his own. I’m not sure if they ever rescued his bike.
Good stuff.
*gasp* Don’t you know that So You Think You Can Dance is on tonight?
Zut alors! I missed it.
Actually, now that I’ve seen it, yesterday’s stage was a little more exciting.
Olivier:
You DO make it sound interesting…I just wish I had VS.
I remember stumbling across TDF coverage – on CBS, I think, or was it ABC – years ago…even before Lance Armstrong dominated it, and found it to be a fascinating sport. And fascinating coverage. I would watch if for an hour or so and not be the least bit bored.
In the late 1980s, I volunteered at a local criterium race here in Des Moines. My job was to make sure pedestrians didn’t cross the street when the road racers were coming by on the downtown streets. Imagine my surprise when I looked up once and saw one group of cyclists heading straight for another! Someone took a wrong turn on the course and, now that they were near the finish line in downtown, they were headed straight on at each other! Now THAT was exciting! Luckily nobody was seriously injured.
I’ll have to watch was I can on Sportscenter.
Thanks for the reminder.
-Mark
@ Mark: Wow. I’ve seen that with swimmers during a triathlon. Funny to watch.
In a cycling race, that must have made for a few very tense seconds.
Quick update — My wife and I caught about 20 minutes of the Tour de France coverage last night.
The descents WERE amazing.
Going down a mountain at 50+ MPH (sorry, I’m American, I still don’t do kilometers
), hunched over a titanium frame, with nary 2 inches of rubber creating traction for you?
You cyclers have more cajones than I gave you credit for.
Or less brain.