Track Racing on Universal

[MattTuck]

Happened to be flipping channels and I see track racing on Universal channel. Unfortunately, it only had a few minutes left. Cool to see coverage of it :)

[Mark McM]

The coverage of cycling (and skiing) on the Univeral HD is due to the recent demise of the Universal Sports channel.

For me, the demise of the Universal Sports channel has actually been a blessing. Universal Sports carried the so-called "Olympic Sports", including two of my favorite sports, cycling and skiing. A few years ago, the Universal Sports channel went to a cable-only model (it was previously an over-the air channel), but my local cable provider never picked it up - which is odd, since my local cable provider is Comcast, and the Universal Sports channel was owned by Comcast ever since they bought NBC/Universal.

However, now that Universal Sports has ceased operation, their rights to various sports have been distributed amongst other channels owned by NBC/Universal, namely NBC Sports and Universal HD (which are carried by my local cable operator). Now I'm getting cycling and skiing coverage with my cable TV package, as well as through streaming on the NBC Sports streaming App. The NBC Sports streaming App includes coverage of some of the more 'fringe' events like some cross country skiing and bob sled races, and even has daily coverage of the Tour Down Under.

[MattTuck]

It's on again tonight, right now, in case you are interested.

[Megalodon]

I just checked and it's not a re-run even though my DVR considers it a repeat. The events are different. Likewise, the hour of Santos TDU every morning is also marked as a re-run of the circuit race on Sunday but it turned out to be two hours of Tuesday's stage 1. So it seems that we have up to 4 hours of track racing rather than 1 hr + 3 re-runs and 6 hours of the TDU (7 if you count the Sunday circuit race).

Well, I'm sure it will all show up on bit torrent.

I didn't get Universal Sports Network and my DVR only recently started picking up cycling on Universal HD so I also get more cycling coverage after the demise of USN.