Geez! Did anybody watch the opening Tour de France TT today on OLN? I've never seen timing graphics so poorly done.
The "ticking clock" not only did not have running tenths, it didn't even have running _FULL_SECONDS_. It would tick from 50:40 to 50:45, then 50:47, etc. Kind of a random jump every 2 - 4 seconds. When the athletes crossed the finish line, the clock would just sit there, and about 5-10 seconds later, a final time and rank would sometimes pop up. But half the time, the time/rank would come up so slowly that the director had already cut away to another rider and viewers didn't get the result at all.
There were no intermediate times.
When Lance finished, he was within a few seconds of Zabriskie, and Phil Ligget was so frustrated by the poor clock graphics that actually called out the ticking seconds (from the GAZ display) to the viewing audience, counting out the last 6 or 8 seconds of Lance's ride.
It is inconceivable that a timing contractor as experienced and professional as Matsport boogered the timing graphics up that badly. My guess is that OLN tried to cobble something together on the cheap with a Chyron or a Dekko back in their US studio in order to have their own graphic "look", and just totally embarrassed themselves.
I hope Secret Agent Fred can find out what happened, and post the answer in this space. It was really embarrassing.
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