“Combining Eurosport and TNT Sports content in the UK and Ireland will enable us to offer a single, premium viewing experience,” it claimed, before talking more nonsense about giving audiences “a slightly simpler journey to find the sports they love”.
Martin Kelner, formerly of this parish, once questioned whether Eurosport was part of a cunning government plan to soften us up for full economic union with Europe: “If that plan includes the majority of us holding the Tour close to our hearts, I shouldn’t hold my breath if I was Tony Blair.”.
Au revoir, Eurosport: home of the magnificent, pioneering and strange After 36 glorious years we will miss this defiantly different programming once it has been swallowed up by TNT Sports.
The channel also showed the Africa Cup of Nations before many football hipsters were even born, all the qualifying sessions in Formula One long before Sky made it a thing, and cycling’s grand tours in their directors-cut-length glory for the first time.
“It would be the most resistible invitation you will ever receive, and it could only come from Eurosport, the completists television channel, whose boast that their coverage of the world athletics championship in Athens will be ‘comprehensive’ is on a par with George Best revealing he is fond of a tipple.”.
