How many major pro cycling events are you going to see first-hand this season? Though I titled this "cycling on TV," certainly include any events you might see in person (none for me). I'm a little curious to see how woefully low the number of events I'm getting to see really is
Right now, Universal Sports is airing an hour a day from the Tirreno-Adriatico (actually, *right now* they're airing some stupid Paralympic skiing thing), which I'm enjoying. I could use more, but the last hour of any stage is going to be the most entertaining, so it's still nice. Hopefully they will do two hours a day during the Giro - that was just about perfect last year. Yeah, it's nice to see all or mostly all of a Tour de France stage on Versus, but really, how much of it (unless it's a major mountain stage) is just the peloton tapping out a tempo, the breakaway getting to 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 4 minutes, 5 minutes, ohh, that's enough, 4 minutes, 3 minutes, 2 minutes, 1 minute, oh look, Cavendish won the sprint. Universal Sports is also going to air Milan-Sanremo, the Tour of the Basque Country, the Vuelta a Espana (I about want to cry not being able to put a tilde on that n), and the world championships road race. I've never watched any of those events first-hand before. Versus also gets me the Levi Leipheimer Cla....I mean, the Tour of California.
So that's eight major events. The rest will just be reading race reports, unless I've overlooked some way of seeing other events. Oddly though, there's not really many races I'd be dying to see that aren't going to be available to me. The big one I feel I'm missing out on is the Giro di Lombardia, considering its kissing cousin Milan-Sanremo _will_ be on American TV. Paris-Roubaix and Flanders would be nice, too, as would Paris-Nice. That's really it, though. I'm not a huge fan of single-day racing, so I can safely do without races like Gent-Wevelgem or Liege-Bastogne-Liege or the Amstel Gold Race. I wouldn't be going crazy for the Dauphine Libere, either, since that seems to have a history of being a race for riders who _aren't_ aiming big at La Grande Boucle.
What events are you all going to see first-hand this season? Any you're missing out on?