Winter Olympics
Judging by the ratings, I was the only one watching the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Turin Torino. I guess it’s just me, but I find skiing events (which seem to make up half of the Olympics) a lot more compelling than 99 percent of the summer games.
One of my favorites is the biathlon, which grew out of real-world concerns (“Hey, Ingmar, the family’s hungry and we’re snowed in. Go shoot us some food and do it before dark!”) instead of dubious events like Aerobic Dance and 99,000 different gymnastics events. Cross-country skiing, for those who haven’t done it, only looks easy: In reality, it’s exhausting and hard. Combine that with precision shooting — five bullets, five targets, and a lap around the penalty loop for every miss — and you’ve got a race where the sub-events actually make the other one harder. Trying to shoot steady after racing through the snow for 30 minutes ain’t easy. (In comparison, the triathlon, while certainly a demanding event, is three cardiovascular events that are mostly complimentary.) Great stuff.
And while the summer games have been marred in recent years by an obsession with Americans-only in the TV coverage, in the winter games, since the Americans didn’t have a chance in many of the events, they just went with the folks who were contenders. It was great seeing Estonia win their first winter games medals ever and watching the travails of Norway and Austria, two powerhouses having rough years. (Even though I haven’t been to Austria in decades, I find myself rooting for them in the winter games.) Maybe the lack of American focus hurt the ratings — I’m sure some TV executive is saying they should have spent all their time on #14 or whatever, medals be damned — but I’d like to think there are more people like myself, Jenn and Peter who actually enjoy seeing the smaller countries (without tour buses for individual athletes) excel.
TiVo was practically a must-have for the games, with some events only running in the middle of the night, but often being nearly uncut if so.
Now I have to start counting down the days to Vancouver in 2010.
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Blame NBC for this. In a world where results are almost instantly available
over the Internet and can be seen on 24-hour cable news shortly thereafter,
the concept of tape-delaying events to the extent they do, then forcing viewers
to stay up until almost midnight to see an event that ended roughly 14 hours
earlier is just asking for crap ratings. I used to love the Olympics. I was one
of the 143 people in the United States who purchased the TripleCast in
1992. NBC has completely driven me away. I actually enjoyed watching the Turin
Games on Canadian television — we had the feed in the newsroom. Maybe one-third
of the sappy feel-good features, no Bob Costas reminding us what a genius he is
and (gasp!) real-time events.
Comment by Todd — February 28, 2006 @ 9:05
CBC’s coverage did indeed kick ass, and best of all, was made available commercial free to cable subscribers via video on demand 24 hours after live-to-air. This made it incredibly easy for me to keep track of the events I was interested in, despite my wacky work schedule. My only complaint with the real-time approach was their frequent decision to cut away from a pivotal moment in one event to feature a Canadian ice-dancing pair who, if they’re lucky, might place in the top 30.
It’s a shame CBC won’t be covering the Vancouver games–a conglomerate of rival commercial networks outbid them for the rights to 2010, and frankly I expect their approach will be very similar to NBC’s.
Comment by Stephen — February 28, 2006 @ 10:05
See, I still like Bob Costas. Everyone else I could take or leave.
And if I worried about getting the scores in a timely fashion — i.e. if I was a normal person — yeah, the delays would be a bigger issue for me. As it is, I still haven’t worked my way through all the stuff from the games on my TiVo. I enjoy watching it at my own pace, although it seems like the entire media (including NBC, bizarrely) conspired to try and spoil the results for me, at least when an American had a shot at a medal.
Vancouver will certainly be more satisfying in that regard.
Comment by Beau — February 28, 2006 @ 12:03
Glad to see that you are conceding the point that you are, in fact, not a
normal person.
And I understand the need to tape delay to a certain extent when you’re talking
about a nine-hour difference between Los Angeles and Turin.
What I hate — other than being forced to watch the figure skating competition by
Lauren — is the aforementioned figure skating competition being unnecessarily
dragged out through all four hours of NBC’s prime time programming for that
evening.
Comment by Todd — February 28, 2006 @ 13:09
Yeah, that annoyed me too, especially when it was applied to manly events, involving skiing, shooting or, even better, the combination of skiing and shooting.
Comment by Beau — February 28, 2006 @ 14:11
Speaking of manly Winter Olympics sports that have their basis in real-life applications, I am reminded of a quote from legendary sportswriter Dan Jenkins:
“Cross-country skiing isn’t a sport, it’s how a Swede gets to the f—ing 7-11.”
With that in mind, I’m a little embarrassed as an American that we had to create a whole bunch of new Olympic sports so we could actually win them. If you threw out all the snowboarding stuff, the freestyle skiing and women’s hockey, the U.S. would have about the same number of medals as Switzerland.
I keep waiting for the Americans to go full on X-Games and try to get modified shovel racing and that motocross on ice sport added so we can snag a few more medals.
Comment by Todd — February 28, 2006 @ 15:55
Yeah, I skipped all the skiing events where they were judged by anything other than a stopwatch and someone making sure that Bode Miller didn’t straddle a slalom gate.
On the other hand, I think speed skating is a nicely legitimate sport — the NBC video segment talking about how crazy the Dutch are about the sport was one of the best video segments — and America does well there, thanks to a nation of in-line skaters. The very public drama on the men’s team was kind of embarassing, though. Argue behind closed doors, not via sound bite.
Comment by Beau — February 28, 2006 @ 17:35
I actually really dug the snowboarding, to my surprise, and found the half-pipe events to be amoung the most fun and exciting of the entire games (even if our ‘boarders had to learn the hard way that showboating across the finish line can make you look reeeaaaally stoopid–and cost you a medal–if you slip and fall on your ass in the process). And the speed skating was fun to watch, if only to see Canadians kicking ass and taking names instead of winding up fourth, for a change. (Okay, one Canadian, but still…)
Comment by Stephen — February 28, 2006 @ 21:12
When I was little, there were only 2 winter sports worth a damn in my eyes. Luge and biathalon. Had posters of both in my room. Grew up and when I learned to shoot competitively, actually thought about training for both the winter and desert versions of the biathalon. As any shooter will tell you, controlling your breath and pulse and body even in the best of conditions to get a sight picture on a target is a bitch. Now throw X-country skiing or long-distance trail running into it….
And now it’s a Sport for the Ages.
And while I like the X-Games spice of some of the newer winter events, those two, now joined by skeleton, are still the best damn sports ever.
Well, that and hurling.
J
Comment by John — March 1, 2006 @ 23:00
Hopefully Stephen can comment on this… I heard that there was a female cross-country skier from Canada who in the course of the race, got clipped from behind by another racer and had her ski pole snap. Despite this, she powered on in the lead. At some point, a coach from the other team ran on the course and gave her another pole, just because it was clear she was truly giving it her all and the win was going to epic if she made it.
Is this true? Because it never made the news down here, and DAMN, that’s a fucking great story.
J
Comment by John — March 1, 2006 @ 23:05
It’s even better than that, actually: it was actually the Norwegian coach who, watching from the sidelines, immediately ran out and gave the Canadian the ski pole, without hesitation. The Canadian pair (this was in pursuit), who’d been in the lead, fought hard to make up the time they’d lost, and wound up grabbing the silver medal, missing gold by only a fraction of a second.
The Norwegian team? Placed fourth, just out of the medals. Would likely have had at least a bronze had the coach not acted.
It was a pretty amazing moment, one that got played over and over again up here. I hope the IOC recognizes that coach for sportsmanship in some fashion, though, because he’s likely in for it at home.
Comment by Stephen — March 2, 2006 @ 0:53
That is OUTSTANDING!
J
Comment by John — March 2, 2006 @ 8:09