Behind The Scenes: Tour of the Basque Country

First, a big thank you to Universal Sports for providing live, daily coverage of the Tour of the Basque Country. Not only is each stage being streamed live (without commentary, but with natural sound) on Universalsports.com, but it is also broadcast tape-delayed on the network with commentary at least two more times.

For the second straight day, an incident caught the attention of viewers posting on the live thread on the Podium Cafe forum. Thursday, it was an officials car nearly taking out the three riders in the breakaway. Friday, it was Marco Pinoti's post-race change in the "green room" that sparked a flurry of posts.

Here's the screen grab of the moment that generated all the attention:

But more interesting to me was actually this shot of team cars at the finish of the race:


Notice the satellite dish on the Caisse d'Epargne team car. It reminded me of the time Toyota-United Team Director Harm Jansen went out and purchased a small TV the night before the International Championship in Philadelphia. We mounted it in the team car to take advantage of the five-plus hours of live coverage on the local ABC affiliate. Curiously, the TV didn't meet with our satisfaction, though, and was promptly returned to the store later that night.