Turn, turn, turn

Watched the Omloop Het Volk today on cycling.tv. (According to Babel Fish, omloop means ‘turn’ in English; Het Volk is the name of the sponsoring newspaper, in English ‘The People’.)

It was a very exciting race, especially as Filippo Pozzato of Liquigas zoomed from the chase group to the leaders, overtook them, and rode away with the race, all in the last few hundred metres. (His official Web site is very Flash, literally, and seems to me very Italian.)

It’s also a tough race, with long and frequent sections of wet paving stones, and very steep grades (at one point, 16%). It would be hard to imagine covering it on my road bike with skinny tires, but the pros manage.

The most interesting thing, though, is how the Web will change people’s viewing habits. Cycling.tv can offer live professional cyling at high data rates world wide for a small sum of money (and at low rates for free). I can watch near-TV-quality images on my computer anywhere I have a broadband connection, so I can follow the sport more than I ever could before.