The great international cycling in Italy opened with the four well-known spring races in March. The first, the classic Strade Bianche, takes place every year at the beginning of the month on the hills of Siena and involves the arrival in the incredible setting of Piazza del Campo.
This unique race, which takes place partly on paved roads and partly on dirt roads, is followed by the Tirreno-Adriatico, the “Corsa dei Due Mari” in 7 stages, then by the Milan-Turin and finally by the best known and most important competition, the Milan-Sanremo.
Alongside RCS Sport
RCS Sport, the leading organizer of Italian sporting events of global renown, manages all these events on two wheels and owns the rights. Since the 2022 edition, the year of the turning point by choosing to detach itself from the historic partnership with RAI, RCS Sport has joined with the international EMG group in a total co-production path of all the UCI World Tour races in Italy and, to put it simply, the qualitative improvement project of all the competitions that count has started, where the best teams compete for prizes and fame.
This choice has the aim of bringing the Giro closer to the splendours of the Tour, using the technical and editorial expertise of EMG which has been producing the major races in the world for many years, and above all the most famous with the iconic yellow jersey which ends with the last stage in front of the Eiffel Tower.
Communication and production
“EMG needs no introduction in the international broadcast sector and EMG Italy is the reference for the Italian market for its multiple manufacturing capabilities in every sector of communication and production”, begins Davide Furlan, Outdoor Production Director. “Our proprietary technical infrastructures of absolute reference and our specialized professionals allow us to propose ourselves as a global partner, safe for every playground and TV market, and for different types of live events, in sports and entertainment. Having become a real Group through the process of unification of the Companies under the EMG logo, but above all having activated the connections between the different “ways and worlds of the Countries” to create “everyone’s style and policy” in this great international reality, brought us back alongside RCS Sport again for the first four important cycling events in March: Strade Bianche, Tirreno-Adriatico, Milan-Turin and Milan-Sanremo.
These are events that have involved us with 125 technicians from a truly international crew, at the TV Compound and along the way we speak Italian, French, Flemish, Dutch and English. EMG Italy has the complete technical/production management and management control of the cycling event for the Group, a real pride and a great effort considering the multiple coincidences of other major events such as the Superbike World Championship, with stops in Australia and Indonesia, and with the Ski World Cup Finals in Andorra.
World Tour cycling has a technical/editorial and production standard that only big companies like EMG can guarantee, there are many economic interests at stake and expectations are very high. For this reason, investments in technology and professionalism are constant in this Group, as demonstrated by the birth of EMG Connectivity a few months ago, the result of the union of the best internal world realities in EMG in the management of moving images, French expertise and equipment, British, Belgian and Dutch are now a single wireless reality.
Producing these great cycling events makes us very proud of our work: races that take place over a truly impressive kilometre radius, straddling different regions and with incredible atmospheric excursions, very high-quality images and sounds that travel along the most beautiful roads in the world LIVE shooting with impressive and inimitable stability for many.
In just one day you can easily pass from the snow on the passes to the scorching sun along the coasts, to rain and the wind at 120Km/h which in one test in particular (arrival in Sassotetto during the Tirreno-Adriatico) forced RCS to move the 2.5km further downstream (at the original high altitude finish the wind was blowing too hard). In any case, the stage was able to be seen because the reliability of the technologies and the experience of the EMG men were able to make up for and react even to the adverse and demanding weather conditions”.
Mentions of other important production innovations
One of the innovations introduced by EMG Italy compared to last year was the use of the Group’s proprietary OL270 vehicles also for the SNG section, supplied by the Dutch division EMG Connectivity, an important topic that deserves dedicated in-depth analysis elsewhere.
These are state-of-the-art means deployed for connecting the satellites and the retransmission of the signals received from the motorbikes towards the intermediate stations and the TV compound, and vice versa. Furthermore, like last year, EMG Italy, as co-producer, is also involved on the editorial level and, in fact, the Belgian director Gunther Herregodts, an EMG collaborator, works on board the mobile vehicles, who has always signed important events such as the Tour of Flanders, the Olympics, and other historic UCI World Tours.
The setup on the ground
The Orion 209 main gallery mobile vehicle, deployed at each arrival, has a Kahuna mixer and 4 EVS XT-VIA stations with 14 channels each on board. Eleven cameras are placed in the final area, two of which in super Slowmo Sony 4300 HFR 8X configuration, here used as 3X, and a Pov micro camera is used for the photo finish.
They are used to narrate the last km, the arrival, the podium, the interviews, and for “colour” images. Each camera also picks up two audio signals in stereo, embedded audio. The Spring Classics involve a total of 125 technical crew professionals for production, including motorcycle operators, motorcyclists, drivers, train drivers, EVS operators, etc.
On board, the vehicle following each race are the director, the assistant director, the video mixer, three EVS operators, three camera controls, and two content editors for post-production which is created on two Avids in the EVS network via a NAS which makes clips instantly available for news feeds, magazines and highlights. Also worth mentioning is the entire social media section that RCS is expanding and enhancing to then reach full capacity with the Giro d’Italia.
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