Oh well, may as well try and keep the Olympic momentum going.

Virginia Wade is on the world feed for the US Open.

Does anyone know if the BBC will put the Five Live Sport Extra commentary of the Challenge Cup Final as an interactive option on tv this Saturday?

Details are here

I was watching the US Open on Sky last night and you can see how much Greg Rusedski has improved as a pundit in the year or so he has been doing it since his retirement. He has enthusiasm, his criticism is constructive and shows good rapport with Buckland and Croft.

He is much more relaxed and he is good value. Keep it up Greg.

I liked him as a player but I find Nick Knight a really irritating cricket commentator.
I hate the way he goes all breathy and hushed when he thinks he is saying something really profound.

He's much more interesting than the indescribably bland Tim "Timmy" Henman.

I also think Peter Fleming on the Sky coverage is very good too. But the presenter guy, whose name escapes me, just annoys me on some fundamental level - not sure why though!

Marcus Buckland


I've only just switched this on (not that big a fan if the US Open (but Love the French/Australian Open) and see that some of the streams have no commentary at all. Are Sky Sports simply taking a clean feed then?


Edit: Doug Adler and Rene Stubbs (CBS Sports) suddenly pipe up on Mardy Fish Vs Paul-Henri Mathieu (2nd Round)
Last edited by Ian Cleverly : 28-08-2008 at 18:45

On a cycling front, it's Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen on Tour of Ireland duty for ITV4 (highlights at 7pm) and RTE2 (highlights at midnight, nice to see your priorites are right boys)

Phil blurted out at a bash last night though that he's retiring next year... I hope he was joking!

So, is Dr Stuart Storey lined up to commentate tomorrow on the British Grand Prix?

I'm not sure, but he did commentate on the Golden League meeting in Zurich on Friday night. It would be nice to hear him.

Yeah, I heard clips of him commentating thanks to Setanta Sports News and he was in good form. The BBC Athletics team wouldn't be the same without him so fingers crossed he'll be there.

Mike Costello, Jonathan Edwards, Brendan Foster and Stuart Storey commentating for the BBC tomorrow.

Presumably Costello drafted in because Cram and Dickenson are at the Paralympics.

The Paralympics don't start until next weekend so I guess they are having some time off before going back.

I really, truly hope that this isn't Stuart Storey's last BBC commentary. He is still a great voice on the big occasion. I know he is n Setanta now but surely the BBC cannot replace him with Mike Costello, he isn't fit to carry his headphones.

Me too, he's one of the great commentators like Davies and Storey. He covers masses of miles covering races all over the each year and that footage of Steven Roache in the tour wouldn't be same without his commentary.

Stuart Storey was back on Golden League duty last night once more, from Brussels

The audio on the US Open has been awful. Sound dips as soon as the crowd cheers. It is so annoying. I like listening to Petch and Fleming but the dips just spoil it a great amount as it takes away so much of the atmosphere.

Just watched some of the Athletics from Friday night and Stuart Storey was superb. He really is a class act. BBC's loss will be Setanta's gain.

I do very much enjoy watching the Golden League on Setanta.

I wonder though if it's a world feed that Storey and Hutchings provide, or if it's primarily for Setanta?

Hugh Porter and Anthony McCrossan are doing the commentary for ITV4's highlights of the Tour of Britain all this week.

Said it during the Olympics, but I'll say it again here, Porter is great at track cycling but pretty bad for road events. His pronunciation of some of the team names is awful, and he continually gets riders names wrong. It's even worse considering the commentary is not live!

Anthony McCrossan is not bad, though. He usually commentates on the internet TV channel, cycling.tv, which shows a lot of the smaller continental races throughout the year. First time I've ever heard him on "proper" TV.

Come to think about it, I'm a bit surprised Hugh Porter is not commentating on the Paralympic cycling. Anyone knows who's doing that?

Ah, interesting - it was the A team of Liggett, Sherwen and Imlach at the Tour of Ireland, with V-squared doing the production.

If Hugh Porter's involved, it suggests a different production company is doing it for ITV, and ITV don't have a call on who commentates? As surely they would go for their usual crew....

Yeah, I know it's only been one stage so far, but you could definitely tell it was a different team doing the Tour of Britain than the one doing the Tour of Ireland.

The ToB seems a lot less polished. Some of the editing was really ropey. We didn't see the breakaway attacking, nor did we see it getting caught... which, y'know, in a bike race is quite important. At one point McCrossan was cut off mid-sentence.

Nor were there many graphics and there was a barely a mention of what tomorrow's stage was going to be like (how long is it, where does it start, what climbs are included... nothing like that). Ireland's highlights seemed much better.

Is John Rawling going to be involved in Setanta's Athletics coverage?

I definitely agree with the previous comments on the Tour of Britain - everything about the coverage said third rate. The waffle went on far too long and suffered from excessive use of childish gimmicky graphical effects and frequent cuts between camera angles, then we had a dead loss commentator for the actual racing. Cycling just ain't cycling without Phil and Paul.

The recent Tour of Ireland coverage was far superior IMHO.

John

It's a World Feed.


I'd like to know how they managed to keep the picture whilst the riders went through some of the underpasses.

It was on tape.