March 22, 2012 by Irish Peloton

This Week in Cycling History

I am a big football fan. I watch a football match most days of the week. This is primarily because there is a football match on the telly most days of the week. There are also countless shows about football on, even when there are no live games to show – weekly round up shows, interview specials, highlight reels. The big clubs like Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea even have their own TV channels.

There is more football on telly than I have time to watch even if I had absolutely nothing else to do. The same is most certainly not true of cycling.

The number of races which Eurosport cover is increasing every year. The Tour of Taiwan and the Tour of the Algarve are new additions already this year, to add to the dozens of other races for which they have coverage of. But besides the live coverage, there are no shows about cycling. There is no regular panel of guests who roundup the week’s action and provide in depth analysis. There are no cycling phone-in shows on the radio to listen to on the commute home. And needless to say, there are no dedicated cycling TV channels.

This is where cycling podcasts can fill the void.

Over the last couple of years I’ve gotten my fix of cycling related chat and news via podcasts such as Flammecast, Velo Club Don Logan, Real Peloton and the Velocast. But there are also several others, most of which have been reviewed on the Inner Ring blog.

Last year, I was fortunate enough to be approached by John from the Velocast to contribute a few snippets to their show every week entitled ‘This Week in Cycling History’. I happily obliged and I’ve been a feature on the show for more than six months now. My contribution consisted of delivering three pre-recorded soliloquies referencing cycling stories over the years which (tentatively) relate to this week in the calendar.

But over the past few weeks, Scott and John suggested the idea of creating a new show altogether which focuses solely on This Week in Cycling History.

So this is what we’ve done and it’s available now on iTunes. Instead of slotting in three sections into the existing Velocast show, there is an entirely new podcast. I still deliver the three snippets, but following each one now, myself and John have a bit of chat back and forth which hopefully colours the events a bit more than talking on my own could ever achieve.

We’ve done four shows up until now and are due to sit down and record the fifth tonight. Here’s a mashup of the type of stuff you’re likely to find. Why not give it a listen? Sure there’s no football on the telly tonight anyway….

[mp3j track=”irishpeloton.com/This Week in Cycling History.mp3″]