July 9, 2008 – I am writing to express my extreme disappointment with your road national championships coverage. Pedal Magazine calls itself “Canada’s premiere cycling magazine” but I very much have to beg to differ. Your live coverage was full of so many errors, corrections, and web site problems I had to give up using it. There were riders listed that I thought were in the break, for example, only to find out later they were not! Horrible!

Furthermore, your photos were few – and barely showed any of the action of the race. Most disappointing was the lack of any sort of suitable report after the race, two days later.

Finally, where are the interviews? Why is your reporter on site not conducting interviews with the riders after the race? Why are there no videos of the winners and so on? Nothing, nothing, nothing.

I am sorry to write a letter like this but seeing as this was the National road championships and Pedal calls itself what it does, I must send a complaint. I look forward to your reply, and explanation of what happened this year with Pedal and the biggest day of racing in Canada. I also hope this letter will be published and responded to publicly so you can provide an answer to other frustrated readers.

Andrew Barlett


Hi Andrew,

Thank you for your comments and sorry to hear of your disappointment. I presume you’re referring to our Elite men’s RR live updates where radio contact from the race vehicles was sporadic for the latter half of the race making reporting difficult. In addition the race blew apart 1/2 way through making it even more challenging to keep track of riders in various groups. Everyone including the team cars was experiencing difficulties and I thought our team did an commendable job under the circumstances.

We posted a total of 51 photos for the RR (31) and ITT (20) and in our humble opinion they provided a great mix of the race action. Sorry, but video coverage is not always possible given the logistics and variables involved, and while our ITT report was posted the day following the race we were also disappointed that our RR report was received later than planned (on Tuesday prior to your letter) as our reporter ran into difficulties, and we posted it in the early evening on Tuesday.

All of the national championships – Road, MTB, Track and BMX – are important and we strive to provide the most complete coverage of these and many other key races in Canada and abroad, including many other facets of the sport such as new products, bikes tests, calendar of events, adventure cycling such as the Ring of Fire etc. In addition, there’s coverage of some of Canada’s top riders such as Michael Barry (Team Columbia) currently at the Tour of Austria, and Ryder Hesjedal (Team Garmin-Chipotle) competing at the Tour de France — all of which can be challenging at times given that we publish 17 print issues each year in addition to our two web sites, pedalmag.com, and skitrax.com.

We’ve been covering Canadian cycling since 1989 and value the feedback from our readership in our effort to continually improve our coverage.

Regards,
Benjamin Sadavoy
editor/publisher