If I look back to when I first got into DH racing I remember how difficult it was to see any coverage of World Cup races. The odd race was shown (badly) on Eurosport, but back then nobody I knew had Sky TV. It was like some kind of magical moment though when someone said they’d managed to get hold of a video copy off a mate of a mate of a mate, even if it was several months after the race has happened, and I already knew the results thanks to a copy of Dirt. The most reliable form of World Cup footage though was the videos that came out at the end of each season. That was as good a fix as any DH junkie was going to get.
Why am I telling you all this? Cos it does my head in when all certain people can do is complain about the quality of the live feed that Red Bull provide us with from the World Cups. After what I’ve had to put up with in the past I think it’s incredible what we get, and that’s before you even consider that we get it for free. Yes for FREE! I really don’t get what people are complaining about.
Ok, so Freecaster kicked the whole live feed thing off, and some people will argue that we’ve taken a step back in respect to that we no longer get to see the women’s race live, or the entire men’s field, but personally I think the quality of the footage we get now is far superior in terms of the number of cameras etc, and if I had to choose between the two I would go for what we’ve got now. At the end of the day they’re doing all this for free, so you can’t realistically expect everything. In my eyes we should just be thankful for all the amazing footage that we do get, both live and in highlights videos. Just enjoy it!
Anyway, partly because of continuous questions along the lines of “why don’t we get to see full runs?”, Red Bull have produced the video below to help give everyone a better idea of exactly how much work goes into covering each race, and how even with all the money and tech in the world it would be impossible to produce a full run live feed for every rider. So sit back, and get ready to appreciate what you get…
