I think much of the reason pro cycling isn't of bigger interest in America is that so few people understand the intricacy of the sport and the tactics and strategies involved.
In regards to spectatorship, we are more of a stadium society and bike races are pretty hard to watch (except for crits). There's also the fact that American TV has found the sponsor/viewer niche required to put more races on TV. Even if they did the time involved to watch and learn would probably put many folks to sleep. I'm that way with soccer. I've tried to watch a couple of matches at the highest level like World Cup and couldn't endure more than about 5 minutes. Also, the attempts to popularize cycling through movies like Breaking Away were pretty damn bad, in my opinion.
Looking at brands of bikes and equipment, there seems to be a lot of interest and a growing market, but I can't tell if it is translating to more actual riders and whether they are local competitors and aggressive recreational riders, or commuters who ride 15 -20 miles a day and can afford stylish gear.
Good points all. I’ve never been a serious rider.....could seldom afford good equipment, and didn’t have the nerve to ride in heavy traffic when I could.
Any idea where I can watch any kind of replay of today’s race, stage 9? Idiot Dish TV DVR programming cannot seem to handle when a program moves to a different channel.
I went to live TV an 8:30 Pacific, and the race was already over.
Went to watch Stage 8 today and NBC Sports was running the Mecum Auto Auctions all day and the TdF wasn’t running on any of the high channels. No TdF rerun late tonight either.
Total bummer.