I wouldn't be surprised if Intense tried pretty hard to recruit them. I mean, picking the Athertons would definitely make up for losing the Chain Reaction team.

Honestly, for me, the broadcast barely worked. I'd whine about it, but they got the replay up right away, which worked fine, and the recent race coverages have been great. Hopefully, they'll be able to sort out consistency issues soon.

In the post-race interview he said he went wide through the tape and came to a complete stop, and just rode angry all the rest of the way down.

Hence, "slow" under "langsam".

As far as I'm concerned, and as you said, in-house parts are great for lower-spec bikes, since it keeps cost down. However, if the manufacturer feels that their in-house stuff performs well enough relative to the name brand parts, I'm still ok with that, since, again it keeps the cost down. I mean, they're not stupid - if their own products aren't up to snuff, they won't put them on a top-of-the-line bike. Well, hopefully not, lol. Besides, worse case scenario: you just have your LBS switch out the parts you don't like when you buy it. That's what we usually do anyways, right?

You get this kind of discussion if a really young rider, a rider back from injury, or a complete unknown places really well. You also get this discussion if guys like Gee, Minaar, Hill, Peaty, etc. do really, really poorly.

I think that's what the second commentator is there to do - provide serious commentary. But Warner just gets so worked up that he just starts talking over them. I hope they find someone to stay on as a long-term second commentator who doesn't get talked over so easily. More importantly, Freecaster needs to sort their technical issues out. I'm glad their site/feed isn't dying all the time like last year, but the timing and mic issues should be simple to do right....

Why don't you guys just compromise, and blame the French?

I suspect that after what happened last year, Hill only rode at 95% or so. I don't really blame him. I think Warner mentioned something about Sam saying that he would essentially do just that. It's also possible that he's not in prime fitness for whatever reason. I'm sure he'll get a lot stronger as the season goes on.

Clearly you accidentally the point of my post.