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Sporting journalists should stop putting TDF spoilers in the headline!
I remember tuning in to BBC Iplayer to catch up on the olympics after a hard day at work to be met with; "Watch Usain Bolt Storm to 100m victory". I didn't bother.
I, like many people who also have full time jobs and busy lives, watch most of my TDF on highlights shows or on catch up and it really takes the edge off when I know how the stage is going to end.
Journalists will often make the reader get to the end of an article to discover which tyre lever is the best on the latest consumer test but are falling over themselves to tell you the outcome of a sporting event. This is arguably one of the few headlines where clickbait is genuinely justified.
I don't want to have to avoid road.cc during the racing season so please stop giving the result away in the headline.
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19 comments
Have also had to unsubscribe from a certain nutrition company as any time one of their riders acheived anthing (which a few years ago was a lot!) they would email it out.
So even avoiding social media and cycling website wasn't enough. It was there as a headline in my emails. Froome wins on x, etc.
And they sent it out minutes after the finish as well, so there was no chance at all to watch the highlights.
Its annoying when a Brit wins a stage or is in the leader's jersey, as the mainstream media report on the stage result during the hourly news.
Sorry, but if you're going to browse a cycling website, the results are going to be the headlines. If you don't want spoilers, it's on you to avoid places where you might find them!
Reports on football matches, cricket matches, rugby matches etc. literally begin with the result and goal/run/try scorers given prominence at the top of the page.
It is how sport has always been reported on and I can't honestly see the benefit of changing that.
I don't think there is any other online publication covering any other sporting event on the planet that does this to my knowledge, so we won't be any time soon. Sorry!
It pains me to say it because it's very much in my interests for people to use our website, but I think you hit the nail on the head at the end... if you aren't able to disconnect WiFi and data during Tour de France season, it's best to avoid road.cc and all other websites that cover cycling until after you've watched the race.
Why not take a lead? Maybe even make it a profile preference?
Years ago I wrote a webscraper that removed TdF stories from the road.cc front page, and served me a private copy with no spoilers.
More recently, I've just avoided the site pretty much entirely for the duration of the Tour.
I might have a go at resurrecting it as a TamperMonkey extension.
might be one for us to consider. for subscribers, obvs.
Surely just wait until you've watched the highlights, then fill your boots, much as I do in the month of July.
It's a little more random if the result gets headlines in the month of May or August.
I'm also to cheap to pay to watch live F1, so I avoid scrolling down the guardian's website or watching BBC's news. Ch4 news don't report on the result as it's often on just after.
I'm ambivent to spoilers online.. I certainly don't want any spoilers (and I was caught out both times over the weekend, once by a road.cc post on FB and other by a Cofidis post, both GAH! moments.. ).. BUT it's a game, it's sport and I treat seeing getting spoliers as a bit of a game in itself.. yes, I lost the game on Saturday and Sunday, but I'll get back into the groove and be winning again soon enough.
It's literally the media's job to report on these things and get people reading.. the world doesn't revolve around my late night GCN catch up schedule.
you're not really comparing apples with apples there, though. if adam yates wins stage 1 of the tour, that's the story, and that's the headline. people looking for news about the tour de france stage 1 result are looking for that. google is looking for that. a minority of people don't want to know. you can't please everyone.
also, we don't do that thing with the tyre levers either.
https://road.cc/buyers-guide/best-tyre-levers
our top pick is in the second paragraph. but you wouldn't make the title "schwalbe tyre levers are the best tyre levers" because it's more nuanced than that, and there are a lot of other good tyre levers listed.
Exactly.
The OP's expectations are not realistic in this day and age.
Information is everywhere, and right as it happens. Other people sharing stuff on cocial media, the traditional media live blogging and posting articles minutes after it happened, that's just how it is now, and it is not realistic to think that you can avoid all 'spoilers' before you decide to watch it sometimes later on the day.
We used to live in a sort of news void between TV journals and newspapers, but that is just no longer the case.
I take the point, but presumably readers who are actively looking for TdF coverage want to know more than just who won, and so will still click on a headline that just says "TdF Stage 1 Report".
You might pick up some tips to avoiding the result here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0077jrd
<clickbait>
You won't BELIEVE what happened today...
</clickbait>
Yates brothers net worth will no doubt surprise me 🙄
Have you seen how they live now? Try not to gasp!!!
Only people with perfect vision can spot the "m" in this list of "n"s
Loads of those have been popping up for me.
So, do you spot the "m"?
Who said that?
(Funnier in person)