CBS Sports announced today that it has obtained exclusive broadcast rights to the 2019 Dirty Kanza 200 and will be airing the June 1 race live on its broadcast network.
The rights purchase represents the latest sign of the growth of gravel cycling in the U.S., as it will be the first gravel race broadcast live on television and the footage will be some of the first video of the discipline not made on shaky GoPros.
“Ever since the demise of Lance Armstrong, U.S. cycling fans have been looking for a product to fall in love with,” CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus said. “With gravel exploding in popularity, we think the Dirty Kanza 200 is the perfect vehicle for new stars.”
“We are excited for this partnership between the Dirty Kanza and CBS Sports,” Dirty Kanza race director Jim Cummins said. “One could say I am as excited about this broadcast as I am about the new seasons of Madam Secretary and God Friended Me coming to CBS this fall.”
There will be a lot more cameras than just those belonging to Trek at this year’s DK200. 2018 Men’s Dirty Kanza 200. © Z. Schuster / Cyclocross Magazine
The purchase by CBS Sports came as a bit of a surprise in the industry, given that NBC Sports holds the rights to the Tour de France, UCI Cyclocross World Cups and other events.
According to McManus, the success of CBS Sports’ hour-long broadcast of the 2018 Iceman Cometh mountain bike race last year played a role in the company’s decision making.
“We learned a lot from that Iceman show,” McManus said. “Sure DK is like 20 times longer, but how different can it really be? Geoff Kabush on a drop bar bike at Iceman, Geoff Kabush on a drop bar bike at Kanza, basically the same thing.”
A Historic Broadcast
Full details about the broadcast have not been finalized yet, but a release from the network outlined its plans for the June 1 broadcast.
Whereas cycling events used to be broadcast on the NBC Sports Network cable station and are now only available via the NBC Gold subscription service, the Dirty Kanza 200 will be shown on the CBS broadcast network station.
The race will be shown live, with the show going on the air at 6:30 a.m. Eastern with the “Groad to Kansas” pre-race show—named as such to avoid copyright conflicts with Ted King’s “Groad to Kanza.”
It will then broadcast the 206-mile race in its entirety, from the start in Emporia to the Flint Hills all the way to the finish back in Emporia.
The broadcast will start from the early morning streets of Emporia and keep going well into the night until the last rider finishes. 2018 Men’s Dirty Kanza 200. © Z. Schuster / Cyclocross Magazine
According to the company, “in its entirety,” means “in its entirety.”
Race cameras will follow the Women and Men’s leaders for the roughly 11-12 hours they are expected to be on course, and then coverage will shift to the 700-plus participants racing the sun, then midnight and then finishing in the wee hours of Sunday morning.
“This is an unprecedented move in U.S. sports broadcasting,” McManus said. “In gravel racing, 500th-place is just as important as 1st, so we think all participants are worthy of camera time. We all remember images of Ironman athletes crawling across the finish line. We think dust-covered faces coasting into Emporia will be equally compelling.”
“Plus, ABC has the NBA Finals, baseball games already take like 12 hours and what other sports are there out there? What else are we going to show on a Saturday afternoon in June?” he added.
All riders will get their time on camera, not just the leaders. 2018 Dirty Kanza 200. © Z. Schuster / Cyclocross Magazine
With plenty of air time to fill, CBS Sports subtly indicated it plans to take a page out of rival NBC’s focus on the human-interest stories of the athletes. CBS Sports said it will focus on pre-race favorites for the first half of the broadcast, but since gravel racing’s success is built on the stories of all riders, getting the backstories of those finishing in the early hours of the morning may be a bigger challenge.
“People eat up those personal interest stories during the Olympics. Why reinvent the wheel?” McManus said. “Admittedly, we may have to take some creative license with some of the amateurs.”
Broadcast Team of Legends
Early reports are that CBS Sports plans to pull out all the stops with its broadcast team.
Anchoring the desk will be an international duo of Englishman Phil Liggett and American Brad Sohner.
“Phil is a legend,” McManus said. “If he can do three weeks at the Tour, he can do one day in Kansas. And Sohner, we’ve heard lots of good things about him, and we saw that coverage of his Cat 5 crit on Twitter. If a man can cover a Cat 5 crit, the biggest gravel race in the U.S. should be no problem.”
Liggett and Sohner might not know it yet, but the two will be on the mic for the entire 20-plus hour broadcast. Calling the steady-moving action at the pointy end of the race and then helping bring home the amateurs accomplishing their bucket-list feat of finishing the DK200.
“Hire two broadcast teams? What do you think this is, an NFL pre-game show?” McManus said.
“We are, to be honest, looking at Red Bull as a potential sponsor,” he added.
The broadcast team will not be limited to a desk team in Emporia.
Georgia Gould will be joining the team as the Women’s on-course correspondent. Gould will be following the Women’s leaders in a moto outfitted with special DK200 gravel tires designed by Challenge Tires specifically for the rigors of the Flint Hills gravel.
“I enjoyed commentating during the Iceman Cometh last fall, so they pretty much had me at ‘gravel moto,'” Gould said. “I thought about asking Helen Wyman to help, she’s been great on those GCN cyclocross steams, but she said she would never do the Dirty Kanza 200, so she’s out.”
Jens Voigt will be bringing his experience from the 2018 Dirty Kanza 200 to the gravel roads as the Men’s correspondent. Voigt will be traveling in one of the Jeep club vehicles, which will carry a Trek Checkpoint—specially outfitted with mics and cameras and a strong wireless connection for the remote Kansas plains—that will allow Voigt to do in-race interviews.
“Jens brings knowledge of what it’s like to suffer through the Dirty Kanza. We think the in-race interviews will add another dimension to our broadcast,” McManus. “Riders often say they hear voices in the second half of the course. This year, that voice will be Jens yelling at other riders’ legs.”
Jens Voigt will bring his DK experience to the broadcast. 2018 Men’s Dirty Kanza 200. © Z. Schuster / Cyclocross Magazine
A Big Move for Gravel
The broadcast television debut of the Dirty Kanza 200 is the latest big step for the annual Kansas gravel race.
Two years ago, the race went to a lottery due to the overwhelming number of gravel riders interested in the race, and last fall, race director Jim Cummins announced the sale of the Dirty Kanza to Life Time Events.
At the beginning of the year, the EF Education First WorldTour team announced that some of its riders will be racing the Dirty Kanza 200, giving the race additional prestige for 2019.
“I’d be lying if I said EF Education first racing did not influence our decision to broadcast the race,” McManus said. “We saw how much attention Lawson Craddock got for finishing DFL at the Tour last year, so we figured if it worked then, showing all the riders at DK would be a good move as well. Think of all the Velodromes we could help fund.”
One current gravel star who will be in the spotlight this year is Ted King. After leaving the WorldTour, King kicked off a gravel career that already has two DK200 titles on its list of accomplishments. After winning last year, King is expected to be challenged by the EF Education First riders.
“The more the merrier, that’s my approach,” King said from his Vermont home. “Knowing that Phil [Liggett] is on the mic will help bring back that Tour de France feeling. Fortunately, this is just one day instead of three.”
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