Showcase Cycling On Television

ROB HATCH

WorldTour races must be broadcast live for the sport to really grow

I’ll admit it. Until a few months ago, I’d never heard of Guangxi. But as WorldTour cycling returned to China in October, I was reaching for my atlas. The autonomous region borders Vietnam and boasts a population of almost 50 million people. Home to a varied landscape, its karst, conical hills and mountains are set behind land sun-kissed by a subtropical climate. Guangxi sounds like an interesting place to ride a bike.

After the last, much-maligned WorldTour adventure in the Far East, any new top-level Chinese race was always going to have to cope with immediate (if unjust) comparisons to the Tour of Beijing, which, for any newer followers of the sport, was a poor show at best. Would the new event develop its own personality, or be another soulless bore-fest? Would the organisers understand the sport or plan routes on empty motorways, as I’ve seen first hand at the Tour of Taihu?