How Adam Roberge Creates His Race Recap Videos + Goes Behind the Scenes for Each Race

Adam Roberge has become more and more well known for his video recaps of the races that he does.  On his YouTube channel, he shares in-race footage when he can, and he does in-depth race reports explaining what happened in each section. How does he put these videos together post-race… while already shifting focus to the next event?

I don't film anything during the race because I know it would take me out of the focus of the race. Some riders will do some GoPro footage, but I find it distracting. After the race, I usually try to find people who were filming on the course and get some of their footage—sometimes we work together on projects, sometimes I buy the footage. Depending on the race, sometimes I have one source of footage, sometimes I have three.

From there, I just look at the footage that I do have, and consider that as well as what I knew I wanted to say about the race. What I have for footage and the story I want to tell need to fit together somehow. Occasionally, I’ll end up talking ore about a section I didn’t think was that important at the time if there’s great footage—and sometimes watching the footage, I realize certain sections were more important than I thought! But even if I don't have the footage, I try to highlight the parts that were really crucial about the race, I think that's the most important thing.

Before the 2022 season, I would usually write a race report before filming. But this year, I felt like I wanted to focus more on telling a story around the footage I had. So now, I start with the footage, and the race report goes around that.

At some races, it’s pretty easy. At Unbound, for example, they gave me a big file that was two hours of footage, so I was able to start with just selecting the sections I needed. That was easy, since then I could say what I wanted to say and know I had the right footage.

Sometimes, there isn't any footage and I have to rely on photos or even just sit down and record my thoughts about what happened. It really depends on what's available.

Once I’ve looked over the footage that I do have, I turn on the camera, sit down, and just start talking through the race, starting at the beginning. I feel like it's become more natural for me. Sometimes I do have to do multiple takes, and if I mess up, I do edit afterwards. Sometimes, I'm about to say something and I realize I don't remember exactly how it really happened. So I'm like, 'Okay, I really need to think about that.' And I'll pause the camera, think about it for a few minutes, then start rolling once I have a better answer.

It’s hard to figure out exactly what goes on in a race sometimes: There's so much happening, so to pinpoint what was important is tough. And you can do a very short race report pretty easily but to really go through a races and give people in-depth insight into what happened throughout, that’s harder.

Make sure you check out Adam's latest video about being in the lead group at Midsouth last month!‍