ITV4 will not be covering this year’s Giro d’Italia. The race is run by a different organisation from the Tour de France and many other major races and they don’t have the rights. That isn’t to say you can’t see it though. You still have options.
Live TV coverage
Eurosport do a great job of covering professional road racing. A lot of people have Eurosport as part of their TV package, but if you don’t, you can sign up for what is now called the Discovery+ Player. It’s £6.99 a month – which will cover the entire race – or £59.99 for a whole year (for which you would get live coverage of pretty much all the other major bike races this season and for most of next season). The Discovery+ Player means you can follow the entire race on your phone, your laptop or via a TV app (or even on your telly plugged into your laptop as a workaround).
You can also get much the same sort of thing for the same monthly price from Global Cycling Network (GCN) – although at £39.99, it’s cheaper for a full year. GCN is owned by Discovery, so there’s not a huge difference between them when it comes to the race itself. The main difference is that a Eurosport subscription will also give you access to other sports, while a GCN subscription will give you access to a bunch of cycling documentaries.
The race is also again being broadcast live – or at least some stages are – on S4C and S4CHD, which are available free in the UK. Here’s where you can find it. It’ll be Welsh commentary, but there may be an option to toggle to English. (They offer that option with rugby.)
Highlights
(Update: As per Sockfan in the comments, the equivalent of the Quest highlights are now being broadcast on DMAX, which is available on Freeview and also via the Discovery+ and Freeview apps.)
The daily one-hour highlights programme that was previously broadcast on Quest doesn’t seem to be an option this year, unfortunately.
If you go for the Eurosport or GCN apps then full stages and highlights will be available on-demand.
Here
I’ll be covering the Giro, so why not follow it here? If you haven’t done so already, here’s why you should sign up for email updates and if you do already subscribe, please forward today’s email to someone who might be interested by way of recommendation. This act of kindness would be greatly appreciated and I’ll reward you by just sort of carrying on much as I would have done even if you hadn’t bothered.
This is an updated version of last year’s article about UK TV coverage of the Giro d’Italia.
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