An hour before The Breakaway goes live, the production crew forms a human shield across a noisy central London street so presenter Orla Chennaoui can record her opening link uninterrupted.
The Breakaway is TNT Sports’ live analysis show around each stage of the Tour de France and it has been taken out of the studio and in front of live audiences, swapping the Stockley Park studio in west London for a venue that is part café, part cycling shop, part clubhouse.
It feels less like the middle of London than a café encountered somewhere along the Tour route. It is a fitting image as cyclists stream past, the team is preparing to bring the show out of its usual studio and into cycling brand Rapha’s Soho clubhouse for a live edition during the Tour.
Scott Young, group senior vice president of content, production and business operations for Warner Bros. Discovery Sports Europe, describes the Tour as “the biggest travelling circus of any sport in broadcasting”.
Orla Chennaoui speaking to The Athletic before presenting duties (Amelie Claydon/The Athletic)
The show’s regular on-air team, presenter Chennaoui, 47, and former professional riders Adam Blythe and Matt Stephens, have to speak to two very different audiences.
“One is our traditional, hardcore cycling fan who is there for all the coverage,” Young says. “The other is an audience that isn’t really too sure what’s going on, but they love the spectacle of the Tour.”
For Young, bringing The Breakaway into Rapha’s clubhouse is part of an attempt to reach both groups more directly.
“The idea is: how do we leave the confines of our studio and connect with cycling fans?” he says.
At the centre of that task is Chennaoui, the presenter and the person responsible for steering the discussion between Blythe and Stephens. A journalist by trade rather than a former cyclist, she is covering her 17th Tour but remains careful not to position herself as the panel’s authority on racing.
“I’m not supposed to be the expert,” she says. “I’m supposed to be guiding the conversation. A big part of my job is making sure people at home leave the show with a better understanding of the bike race than they would have had without it.”
Blythe approaches the problem from the opposite direction. The 35-year-old won the British road race title in 2016 and competed at both the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a Espana before he transitioned into broadcasting after his retirement in 2019.
“You have to explain it to the person who is watching cycling for the first time, but also appeal to the person who sees themselves as a professional,” he says.
“It’s like a game of chess. You’re trying to explain the story to the viewer, get them attached and help them understand why something is happening.”
Instead of speaking into a mostly empty studio, the presenters are surrounded by around 50 people who ride, watch and argue about cycling themselves.
“In the studio, it’s great, but there are about seven people in the room at a time,” Blythe says. “When you’ve got an audience and get a bit more reaction, it’s nice to have people more involved.”
Before the programme begins, Chennaoui encourages the crowd to be as vocal as they like. She asks for cheers to gauge which riders they believe can challenge for the yellow jersey, with Tim Wellens, the 35-year old Belgian national cycling champion, emerging as a clear favourite.
Once the cameras roll for the build-up to Stage 7, a 175.1km flat route from Hagetmau to Bordeaux, the audience falls quiet, content to watch a familiar television programme being made only metres away. For Chennaoui, their presence is a useful reminder of who the programme is for.
“Sometimes you’re in the studio and you’re in your own little bubble,” she says. “It’s lovely to get that close proximity to some of the people who are enjoying the racing alongside you.”
Making that broadcast appear effortless depends on a production operation stretching far beyond the café.
Matt Stephens and Adam Blythe on stage broadcasting as the stage intensifies (Amelie Claydon/The Athletic)
Pictures and sound are sent to TNT Sports’ production control room at Stockley Park, where the director, producer and sound team assemble the final programme. The presenters are physically in central London, but much of the team guiding them remains miles away.
Even a routine conversation with a reporter at the Tour requires delays to be measured so the exchange feels natural.
Mehdi Syed, a production coordinator working on the programme, says the technical team tests every part of the system and prepares alternatives in case something fails.
“There are lots of little pieces that we have to test from the day before until the next day to make sure everything is in sync,” he says.
TNT Sports says its total Tour de France audience across television and streaming is up 59 per cent year on year, while unique streaming viewers have increased by 20 per cent. Its highlights partnership with Channel 5 has reached as many as 500,000 viewers a day.
The figures suggest the audience is growing, but the appeal of the Soho show is easier to see at close range. For a few hours, the people usually watching from home are allowed inside the programme — close enough to question the pundits and discover what happens when the cameras stop rolling.
A programme from a central London café relies heavily on internet connectivity. A broadcast staged in the Alps may require satellite trucks and an entirely different technical plan.
Minesh Varsani has a key responsibility on sound and technology in the production (Amelie Claydon/The Athletic)
Those back home watched from the café bar, where the race played on a television above the coffee machine. Happy murmurs moved through the room whenever the Tour passed a place someone recognised, turning the stage into a shared travelogue.
The Soho programme is only one part of a much larger European operation.
Guy Voisin, vice president of cycling at Warner Bros. Discovery Sports, oversees cycling coverage across the UK and Europe.
“We have five shows on right now,” Voisin says. “There is Germany, France, Spain, the UK and a pan-European show which goes across the rest of Europe.”
Around 15 staff are working on site at the Tour while others remain in studios across Europe.
The conversation between Chennaoui, Blythe and Stephens is intended to feel like the discussion viewers might have while watching with friends.
“What we’re doing is recreating the relationship you would have with anyone you’re watching with at home,” Chennaoui says. “If I’m watching a bike race with friends, we’re talking about it, pointing out different moves and analysing it among ourselves.”
That depends on the presenters trusting one another enough to disagree without the discussion feeling forced.
Blythe describes Chennaoui as being like a sister. During a Grand Tour, they can spend almost every evening eating together and discussing the day’s racing after the cameras have stopped.
“We can be very honest and brutal with each other,” he says. “We can say when someone is being an idiot.”
The closeness of the team helps soften one of the more difficult parts of the job. Covering a Grand Tour means weeks away from home, something Blythe feels strongly as the father of four children — twin daughters aged seven, a nine-year-old son and a five-year-old.
“The hardest part is being away from family,” he says. “Three weeks is a long time. They like seeing Daddy on TV, then they’re off to play football or do gymnastics.”
Stephens brings another perspective. Before becoming a broadcaster, he competed at the 1992 Olympics, won the British national road race title in 1998 and later spent 12 years as a police officer with Cheshire Constabulary.
His police work required him to build trust with people in difficult circumstances, a skill he says remains central to interviewing riders.
“Rapport is so important,” Stephens says. “There’s an art to interviewing and getting people to open up, and that art takes time.”
While the production around him relies on control rooms, satellite feeds and live communications, Stephens prepares with a school-style jotter filled with handwritten notes.
During the audience question-and-answer session, Chennaoui holds it up for the room to see.
“It’s quite old school, but it’s my little anchor,” Stephens tells the audience. “In my garage, I have a special box where I keep all my old jotters.”
“It’s almost like osmosis in the opening stages of the Tour,” he says. “The information is there and then it just flows.”
Orla Chennaoui shows off Matt Stephens detailed notebook (Amelie Claydon/The Athletic)
What looks like a casual discussion to viewers is built on hours of preparation: handwritten notes, production meetings, rehearsals, technical tests and teams spread between London, France and Stockley Park.
The audience offers its own cross-section of cycling culture.
Among them is Nicolas Georgiou, a cyclist known for plotting rides that form elaborate images on Strava. He has arrived in full Lycra, although even that is not enough to make one of Rapha’s metal stools comfortable.
Nearby, 26-year-old John Pang and 61-year-old Mark Newton meet over coffee before the show.
Both belong to Rapha Cycling Club, although they usually ride with different groups north and south of the capital.
“It’s such a cool community and it’s very diverse,” Pang says. “We meet at Regent’s Park at 7.15 in the morning, go for a ride and then have breakfast at the café.
“I work in sales and do a normal nine-to-five in the City, so it’s a sport you can fit in early before work.”
Newton is a regular on routes through Richmond Park and towards Box Hill in Surrey, although the previous week’s heatwave had made riding less appealing.
Mark Newton, left, and John Pang were part of The Breakaway’s audience (Amelie Claydon/The Athletic)
Together, they reflect the range of riders The Breakaway is trying to reach: the dedicated cyclist and the casual fan.
