Giro highlights on Discovery +

Apart from some of the spring classics I mostly watch highlights, especially for the grand tours. I was hoping the highlights on Discovery would be the same ones that used to be on GCN, but they’re not, and worse they have ads in. Is this the best available at the moment? If so doesn’t seem much better than the ITV ones when it comes round to the Tour, especially given that it’s more expensive than GCN was.

Or am I missing something?

I was also disappointed with this earlier. DMax have highlights at 19:00 but it’s in SD and awful to watch.

Watch the full coverage but use the timeline markers to jump to interesting bits. See the giro thread for examples

having said that, not all races have timeline markers, indeed not all races even have highlights programmes

Yeh we got D+ on prime to watch giro highlights but have ended up watching them on DMAX and record and watch just after they’ve been on to fast forward the ads.

Oddly we actually prefer the ITV highlights for the tour (and sometimes Vuelta?) with Ned, David and Garry.

that’s not odd, Ned and David are a great commentary team

Oddly we actually prefer the ITV highlights for the tour (and sometimes Vuelta?) with Ned, David and Garry.

I am mostly in it for the theme tune, makes me think I’m 13 again!

Yeh the theme tune, but also they talk about the next days stage at the end,  and then there’s the cool outro montage to music too.

Also the highlights seem to arrive days late. But you can forward wind the adverts

The time line seems the best option

Oddly we actually prefer the ITV highlights for the tour (and sometimes Vuelta?) with Ned, David and Garry.

ITV have a much-higher production budget and take the time to put the day’s racing into context.

Eurosport do it on the cheap, as ever.

Watch the full coverage but use the timeline markers to jump to interesting bits

This. It’s pretty intuitive and I even manage to do it riding the rollers. Rollers, not turbo (although I do that too), with the Apple TV remote taped to an old Garmin and mounted on the K-edge out front mount. Makes 90-120 minutes fly by. The pros are about 25% faster than I am on Zwift group rides, so it makes for easy identification of when to skip to the end and watch the finish run in.

I also have a soft spot for the ITV coverage, going back to the early nineties when I was getting into it!

More recently I used to like the little segments Chris Boardman used to do. But yeah, Boulting and Millar are carrying that on very nicely.

For once, I decided I could afford to shell out 7 quid for a month’s pass to watch proper highlights rather than YouTube videos or skipping through yesterday’s coverage trying to find the exciting bits with the commentary in Welsh.

Disappointed then to find that there’s still ads (though you can skip through), it’s not very well edited (e.g. when Girmay abandoned, they showed his second crash, but nothing to show or say whether he’d abandoned or not, unless I missed it), and often doesn’t appear till 8 or 9 in the evening, so I’m watching a day behind anyway.

Not sure I’ll bother for the Tour.

Yeah as above the highlights are awful on Discovery+ – at least for the giro they do make a vague attempt to show important bits, but quite often the “highlights” are “the last XX minutes of racing”. For the Tour, ITV4 for the win – theyhave ads, but the commentary is far superior, and the highlights prograames are great

In terms of commentary – the ITV team comprising Ned, David and Pete Kennaugh is great. The Discovery+ team has some great presenters and commentator, but there are some that make me want to pull my teeth out without pain relief. Having been a great rider 20 or 30 year ago does not mean you have any useful insight into modern racing.

I quite like the Tour highlights on ITV (especially Gary Imlach), however 7pm is peak putting kids to bed hour for me and then they don’t seem to come up on ITVX until after I have gone to bed myself. ITV are also just as guilty of spending two minutes filling you in on what has happened during the day and then just showing the last 20 minutes of the race as highlights (often just the final climb on a mountain day) even if all the attacking has happened earlier in the day. Plus the little magazine pieces take up a bit of their alloted time too.

I imagine it’s actually quite difficult to edit a highlights package to show all the significant incidents of a 4-5 hr race including cogent commentary down into an hour show, and to do it within a couple of hours of the race ending. If you have a bit longer then Discovery have the Breakaway as a seperate 30 minute show too for the post-race analysis which they do very well.

There was a time towards the end of the GCN era where they would have both a short highlights and a long highlights for World Tour races which was really useful. Eurosport generally have a 5-6 min highlights that show up on YouTube but not Discovery+ which are good for nailed on sprint stages, not that there have been any of those this Giro.

Having been a great rider 20 or 30 year ago does not mean you have any useful insight into modern racing.

Don’t you talk about Sean Kelly like that  😉

Don’t you talk about Sean Kelly like that

Look at the shock on my face that you have singled out the very person I was thinking of when I wrote that.

But he’s not alone, and it’s not just the ex-riders, certain commentators are overdue some quality retirement time

Disappointed then to find that there’s still ads

I’ve not had ads in the highlights. Watched yesterdays standard length highlights (30 odd mins) on my phone this morning and previous days on the D+ app on my roku stick. Neither had ads.

The Roku app is gash though – lots of navigating through TNT nonsense I don’t subscribe to and the thumbnails for the on demands don’t show you the length or any summary. click on it and it goes straight into it and you then have to pause it to find out how long it is. Also in the classics when there was a mens and womens version the thumbnails were so small you can’t see the gender of the riders and the title does not tell you what’s what.

And Sean Kelly….how is he still going? Back in the day when he was about the only native english speaking successful retired pro I could understand it….but we are not that short of possibilities now are we?

certain commentators are overdue some quality retirement time

Don’t you talk about Carlton Kirby like that   ;

I’m watching the 1hr highlights programme on DMax for free, and I’m really happy with it – apart from day 1 when they didn’t show it until midnight so my PVR missed it. Set it to record, start watching the recording at 7:10, fast forward through the ads and you finish about 8.
Orla does a good job of summing up the early action, you get a reasonable look at the important bits, then 10 minutes of analysis and a quick look at what’s coming tomorrow. Perfect – apart from the elderly ex-cyclist mentioned above. And cheap.

The highlights on discovery+ are just the highlights from eurosport in the evening that get uploaded when they’re broadcast. They’re pretty bad but better than they used to be. Used to just be the last however many km’s would fit into 40 mins, sometimes something massive would have happened and you’d only know about it if the commentators mentioned it again it was crap.

It’s still not as bad as the add free coverage of the british superbikes a 5 hour long program that just goes to a holding screen between races and doesn’t even have the features that the TV coverage has, useless.

Agree that ITV coverage is loads better. Dan Lloyd was good on GCN+ too. I know Sean Kelly’s commentary is terrible, but how can anyone be mad at that accent?! The other guy (can’t remember who it is now) has made a couple of very dry, subtle quips that have made me laugh. Thinking of something to say about people riding bikes for 5 hours must be fairly difficult TBF.

I’ve not had ads in the highlights. Watched yesterdays standard length highlights (30 odd mins) on my phone this morning and previous days on the D+ app on my roku stick. Neither had ads

Interesting. It’s only now I’ve looked again that I see there’s a 30 min highlights program as well as the 1h extended highlights, so maybe that doesn’t have adds. I’m watching on the TV via a laptop, so maybe it’s an app thing.

Never heard of DMax… Seems it’s a Freeview channel. I’m not sure my TV has a Freeview receiver built-in. Is the only way to get it to buy a separate receiver? Can you tell I don’t watch TV unless it’s cycling? 🤣

Edit: also had no idea the Breakaway is still on there… It doesn’t come up on the Giro page on D+ 🙄

Seems it’s a Freeview channel. I’m not sure my TV has a Freeview receiver built-in

If your TV still works at all (other than casting to it, or watching a DVD, then it has Freeview. It’s the only free to air broadcast network these days. And I think the paid TV services (Sky, Virgin) carry almost all the Freeview channels too.

Pretty sick of the D+ highlights, definitely won’t be subscribing again. The editing’s all over the place.

As above, the 30 minute highlights don’t have ads, which is nice, but they’re even worse. For some reason they insist on showing the podiums every day, as if we needed to see Pog putting a pink top on AGAIN. Presumably some sort of contractual obligation.

Back to the extended highlights the last couple of days since the others haven’t appeared (and more interesting stages anyway). You get the finish, and Orla saying “analysis after the break”, then 5 minutes of ads, and the program ends.

Forgot about Dmax – just checked and our TV receives it, so will try and catch it tomorrow.

As above for  the giro just watch the full coverage then use timeline highlights to skip to important bits

I’m not missing GCN+ or D+ but I do have a lot of recordings from Eurosport to catch up on. Either watch the highlights or spin on through the live shows. Ads are just an opportunity to go make a cuppa.