New HBO Feature Called “Key Moments” Gets to the Bike Racing Good Stuff
By Stan Purdum
Knowing as we do of the “marginal gains” approach in the bike-racing industry, it’s no surprise that elite teams today use AI to optimize everything from rider pacing and real-time race strategy to hyper-personalized training and precise nutritional fuel.
But now AI is contributing to how we ordinary cyclists watch the racing on our viewing screens.
Specifically, AI’s contribution has shown up during the current (as of this writing) running of the 2026 Giro d’Italia broadcast on HBO-Max in the United States. It’s a feature called “Key Moments” (more about that shortly).
I’m old enough to remember when watching the Tour de France on TV was a matter of slogging through a time-delayed broadcast on NBC Sports or its predecessor networks, complete with commercial breaks in the evening hours of each day of the tour — which had taken place during the morning European time zones, too early to make live-viewing feasible for most US viewers. This was the schedule that prompted many of us to purchase VCRs (remember those?) so we could record the race to watch at our own convenience, including zooming through the commercials, but also skipping some pieces of the tour itself when the race was rolling along on the flats with not much of interest happening (NMOIH).
Most races have some NMOIH sections. Even the fast-paced, incident-filled one-day Paris-Roubaix race typically includes as much as 100 kilometers of smooth, asphalt roads before hitting the first cobblestone sector.
Now, with racing available through the streaming services, we have fast-forward and reverse functions that let us pick and choose which portions we will watch. (In the case of the tour, we can’t skip commercials in the portions we choose to view, but the in the US, the Giro is broadcast this year with just one brief commercial at the start, so, there are no ads to deal with otherwise.)
However, the assumption that NMOIH during some race segments overlooks incidents that do, in fact, occur. These include a well-placed rider losing time due to a mechanical issue, crashes that knock riders down or out of the race altogether, weather shifts that change the complexion of the race, problems caused by occasional unruly fans at roadside, sudden “attacks” by some riders (in bike-racing lingo, attacking means contenders riding abruptly away from other riders to gain distance on them), and even some funny moments.
Other happenings can include unforeseen complications such as the unrestrained dog who romped through the tour for a few moments one year, or as in the case of the Tour Down Under this year, the kangaroo that sprang out of the surrounding vegetation and took a rider down. And all this says nothing of some remarkable scenery and historic sites the race rolls through or by, even when the race is otherwise uneventful.
The new Key Moments feature, however, gathers up and identifies such unforeseens, allowing us to skip right to those scenes, one after another, if we wish. The video usually starts a moment or two in advance of the key event to provide some context. The feature also permits us to cut right to the last 20 or 5 minutes of the competition, which in many races, are the most exciting.
Thus far, I have only seen the Key Moments employed in the three-week long Giro d’Italia, which makes sense because this AI automated video highlights feature was developed by Warner Bros. Discovery Sports. which owns the exclusive broadcasting and digital streaming rights across global platforms like HBO Max and Eurosport, on which the Giro is broadcast. (You can also find some of the highlights on YouTube here. https://www.youtube.com/@TNTSportsCycling)
The other two three-week races — the Tour de France and the Vuelta Espana — are broadcast in the US on Peacock, the current successor to NBC Sports. But it’s likely that Peacock’s parent company, NBCUniversal, will soon offer its own version of the tech-forward viewing experience, and that other services that broadcast bicycle races will follow.
How do I know this? Google’s Gemini AI service told me so, saying, “As streaming infrastructures update, you can expect this timeline marker technology to become a standard feature on official apps across the entire professional cycling calendar.”
I’m not ready to say that AI has the gift of prophecy, but in the competitive world of streaming TV, this prediction seems like a no-brainer.
Stan Purdum has ridden several long-distance bike trips, including an across-America ride recounted in his book Roll Around Heaven All Day, and a trek on U.S. 62, from Niagara Falls, New York, to El Paso, Texas, the subject of his book Playing in Traffic. Stan, a freelance writer and editor, lives in Ohio. See more at www.StanPurdum.com.
