Goodbye to innocence: So long Eurosport, the TV channel as quirky, chaotic, and exhilarating as cycling itself

“That’s that. And there was nothing we could do about it.”

Uttered as the villainous Tommy DeVito lies face down and lifeless on a garage floor, the victim of his own frightening excesses, the film that line originates from, Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic Goodfellas, was shot in the spring of 1989. Around the same time, a plucky little channel called Eurosport stuttered somewhat more tepidly onto our screens; a weird, technicolour pan-European blip on the oh so British televisual landscape of the late 1980s.

Two years later, after a temporary shuttering following an anti-competitiveness dispute (plus ça change, and all that), the channel broadcast the Tour de France for the very first time. And the much-vaunted home of cycling was born.

But fast forward three and a half decades, and Eurosport – in the UK and Ireland at least – is no more, the victim of big sporting capitalism, product ‘integration’, and the allure of £30-a-month subscription fees.

If you had flicked over to Sky channel 417 or Virgin Media channel 521 in the early hours of Friday morning – after one final showing of the Nordic world ski championships and Magnus Cort’s second straight stage win at O Gran Camiño –  you’d have been greeted by an endless cycle of ads for TNT Sports (your ‘new home of sport’, apparently) and the ominous missive: “This channel has closed”.

By the time you sat down for your morning coffee, Eurosport had completely vanished. That’s that. And there was nothing we could do about it.

Cycling coverage moves to TNT Sports (credit: road.cc)

> How to watch cycling for less now it's moving to £30.99-a-month TNT Sports

Of course, unlike Tommy in Goodfellas, professional cycling on British TV isn’t sleeping with the fishes just yet.

As that 2am ad cycle informed us, bike racing has simply been shunted across – or ‘integrated’, as the execs would say – to the shiny, ever-expanding sporting empire that is TNT, where it will sit alongside football, rugby, cricket, and UFC. That first plug for Omloop Het Nieuwsblad during the Liverpool-Newcastle game was jarring, to say the least.

On the surface, not much will really change when it comes to cycling coverage in the UK – if you’re happy to fork out the extra cash, that is. In fact, Warner Bros. Discovery’s head honchos, those behind this integration project, boasted this week that more live cycling than ever before, including every men’s and women’s WorldTour race, will be broadcast as part of this new arrangement (again, if you can afford it).

But for anyone whose formative bike race watching years took place from the 1990s on, something substantial, if intangible, has been lost today.

I became obsessed with pro cycling as a teenager in the mid-2000s. So, naturally, I also became obsessed with Eurosport. It felt like the gateway to the entire weird and wonderful world of bike racing, from the grand tours to the classics and week-long stage races (ah, that 2008 edition of Paris-Nice, bliss).

Even during those three weeks in July, Eurosport was the channel of choice, the noughties commentating duo of Dave Harmon and Sean Kelly lightyears ahead, to my ears anyway, of the basic, ‘say what you see’, Armstrong-scented approach of Liggett and Sherwen on ITV. 

(I’ve come to fully appreciate the ITV broadcast’s charms in recent years, particularly its excellent, history-infused highlights package, and will be saddened to see it disappear from our screens after this year’s Tour, another victim of the Discovery land grab.)

> “The Tour is the only race that matters. And that’s gone now”: Ned Boulting on the end of free-to-air Tour de France coverage in the UK and his “deep sense of loss”

But at the time, Eurosport, like cycling itself, represented a whole new world, far removed from my other great sporting obsession of football. Just like pro cycling in those pre-2012 days, Eurosport seemed exotic, eclectic, unconventional, and distinctly European.

Everyone, from the presenters and commentators to the audience, felt like they were part of a community, all in on a little secret that was ours and ours alone, while opening up a whole new world of sporting discovery.

There was also a loveable, ramshackle, almost chaotic quality to the tone and presentation of its output, that set it apart from its more glossy competitors. If the Premier League and Sky Sports represented the gleaming, accessible high street burger chain, Eurosport was the tatty little restaurant down the alleyway, which served the best pasta you’ve ever had.

That almost homespun character was always part of the appeal.

I’ll never forget patiently waiting for the snooker to end so we could catch the final 25km (if we were lucky) of that day’s Tirreno–Adriatico stage.

David Duffield (credit: Tom Able-Green)

Or David Duffield lambasting the photo-hunting fan who felled Giuseppe Guerini on Alpe d’Huez in 1999.

James Richardson, the Football Italia guy, presenting from a nondescript studio during the Tour de France, as Sean Yates sat stony-faced, plugging his new book at every opportunity.

Stephen Roche having a meltdown as Marco Pantani stopped to put on a jacket at the top of the Galibier during his race-winning move in 1998.

Sean Kelly, in the pre-social media age, providing a daily recap of the biggest stories in the French newspapers.

Harmon shouting “That’s bollocks, JC” on air after being informed by his producer that they weren’t sticking around to cover Cadel Evans’ victorious appearance on the podium at the 2009 world road race championships.

Carlton Kirby chipping in from the ‘dungeons’ in Paris, in what is now the Jonathan Harris-Bass role (and before all the social media derision), to spend 20 minutes cracking us up about the summer when he was 17 spent working in a factory four kilometres from today’s intermediate sprint.

The regular asides to inform viewers of the latest doping scandal during the 2000s, followed by the obligatory ‘Anyway, back to the racing…’

The brilliantly entertaining teetering-on-the-brink-of-chaos on-site presenting duo of Ashley House and Juan Antonio Flecha.

The GCN sofa days.

Bradley Wiggins, stage ten (2022 Tour de France) (credit: road.cc)

Brad Wiggins calling a group of environmental protesters “imbeciles” from the back of a motorbike at the 2022 Tour de France.

And that advertisement with the cassette on the wrong side of the bike.

Of course, it wasn’t just cycling. Eurosport was the spiritual home of the sporting outsider of every stripe, where you fell down a quirky Belgian or Scandinavian rabbit hole, never to emerge. The punk scene to Sky and BT Sport’s Ed Sheeran and Lewis Capaldi.

And now, to paraphrase yet another Goodfellas line, it’s all over.

From 28 February, cycling – that weird, misunderstood creature – will be part of the slick, cool world of TNT, the home of the Champions League and Rio Ferdinand, of massive studios and big screens, the place that gave Jake Humphrey a platform to kickstart his high-performance empire.

Alright, cycling, biathlon, snooker, and the rest – pack your bags and off you pop, the football promises it’ll look after you. I hope.