I’m not surprised at all the hugging; the American gymnasts seemed to be about to wobble their way off the tracks entirely. That’s when you need some help from your teammates to get your head back in the game. The Chinese gymnasts rallied around their teammate who went flying off the uneven bars, too.
But the coverage was asinine, with the commentators talking up the American follies, and hardly commenting on anything else going on. Hello! I can see the other events going on in the background, dolts! The floor exercise music is even playing. Gah. I think they showed a few bits of the Russian gymnasts, later in the evening, too.
And it’s only day three, and I just realized I’ve already been rooting for whomever the commentator’s aren’t hyping. American girls gymnasts the little darlings of NBC? Go, go China! Hansen going to win one last time in his “rivalry”? Yea, Katajima!
I think people should actually watch the coverage before spouting off about it. The first hour of NBC’s prime time coverage was the Chinese gymnastics team interspersed with the Chinese, Russian, and German synchronised diving teams. The only up-close-and-personal spot I saw was about a gymnastics school in rural China. I had the TV on all weekend and saw (on NBC) weightlifting, rowing, badminton, cycling, soccer, etc. You’re all complaining about the 2000 and 2004 coverage. NBC is doing it right this year.
14 year old Tom Daley, and his partner Blake Aldridge came last in the synchronised 10m dive? No they didn’t; they came 8th in the world! Go on lads. Now pack your squabbling in.
p.s. Great comeback by the USA for Phelps to keep his dream alive.
With the Women’s (and I use that term loosely) gymnastics, they showed just as much of the Chinese girls. The Chinese were part of the first rotation on the apparatuses. The Americans were on the second rotation. Although the Americans were deliberately trying to lose, it seemed - I will say that on the floor exercise, they seemed to stick the landings of their tumbling runs better than the Chinese, who seemed to take steps on each landing.
And the older I get, the harder it is for me to watch beam. It just looks so dangerous! And I wonder what the spotters in the uneven bars are supposed to do if something goes wrong? Try and catch them? That seems improbable.
Not disputing this, but it sounds like many viewers had the same experience I did: turned on the TV around 8 PM, and the only gymnastics we saw was US women’s.
Even those of us who turned in early enough to catch the Chinese, US, and Russian women’s gymnastics might also be annoyed because we realize there are more than three countries competing.
They could have easily cut out that puff-piece on Chinese acrobatics (annoying narrator; somewhat interesting content), the head-scratching bio about the swimmer from San Fran who also cooks (!), and the agonizing Costas interview of Bush, and had time to fit in a whole other country’s rotation.
I know they’re there – they did a (cool) bio piece on the 33-year old gymnast, and I can see other outfits on the competitors in the background on the other rotations.
NBC just can’t win. They’ve been hearing people complain that the women’s gymnastics coverage is over the top, and they decided that, at least for the friggin qualifying round, they’d show some swimming and diving as well. On top of that, they’ve seriously reduced the number of “human interest” stories they’ve done this year vs. years past. They can only air so much stuff.
Quite frankly, I didn’t give two craps about any other team’s qualifying routines. They’re scaled back on the difficulty level, and they’re monotonous as hell. I barely cared about the ones they showed.
Certainly, NBC can win. They can announce “primetime coverage of women’s gymnastics prelims”. And then they can actually show women’s gymnastics prelims. Not just a fraction of it.
And let’s contrast with the swimming, also aired in primetime. In which they were showing both heats of the prelims. If they did swimming similarly to the women’s gymnastics, they would have only shown one heat of each prelim – and probably the heat with an American in it. Assuming it was an American they expected to medal.
Yes, they’ve seriously reduced the “human interest” stories. And they can air only so much stuff. I’m rather gobsmacked that people seem to think NBC is doing a good job by only having a few “human interest” fluff pieces instead of airing actual Olympic competition.
You think it would be a popular and wise move for them to show every routine of every competitor from every country?
It would be one thing if the two best countries in the world were at womens’ gymanstics were Japan and China, but they showed only the US women. But as it happens the two best (by far) (I think, I don’t really follow it) are the US and China, who are also the host country and our home country, and are also rivals these days.
I think they should have given some cursory coverage to the other countries, but for once I think their basic decision makes sense.
I’m watching the Cross Country portion of the Eventing, and I can say that they’re showing a number of nations that aren’t in the top tier. I’ve seen Irish, Swedish, Belarus and Chinese riders.
There is an excluded middle between “NBC pretends there are only two countries competing” and “NBC must show every. last. routine.” that would suit me just fine, thank you.
i’m bummed i missed the drumming in the opening ceremony. i’ll catch it on dvd.
i mostly watch the sports that i’ve tried. so i watch a lot of the swimming. that water cube is so very cool. i was a bit concerned that mr. phelps would lose his suit celebrating the relay win.
i enjoy the beach volleyball. i do wonder once again why the guys wear more clothes than the girls. and why on earth were the guys playing in a downpour with lighting? i thought they would stop play in those conditions. it must be really icky to be sweaty and sandy, but sweaty, sandy, in a downpour with lightning? yuck.
in the woman’s bike road race, i was thinking: “huh! a bunch of people riding bikes really fast in the rain, that’s an accident waiting to happen.” an accident happened less than a minute later.
why do they even play music during floor in gymnastics? there is no, not a teeny bit of dance involved anymore. just lots of tumbling runs. there seems to be more dance type moves on the beam.
2 cute facts so far.
one of the us women (may i believe) lost her wedding ring in the sand during the game.
it was later found and returned to her.
2 champion shooters are married. the wife is shooting for the ch. republic, the husband for the usa.
larsen jensen? seriously. his parent named him larsen jensen? oy! that’s scary danish.
That’s ridiculous. Nobody knows anything at all about any of these athletes not named Phelps, and only a moron of a producer would try to air the olympics with zero human interest stories. Most viewers (like women & casual sports fans) want to have some sort of knowledge of the people they’re watching on TV. Dan Patrick just spent about an hour talking about just that on the radio, along with what a genius Dick Ebersol is for introducing the concept. Too much of it may turn off people, but it’s almost a necessity for a viewing audience in a country that has several hundred competitors.
Well, they’re doing a pretty good job with the online coverage, anyway. Just raw video with the stadium announcements.It’s really helping in my quest to watch at least one match/game/race/competition unit of every sport.
ooops, it was walsh who lost the ring. she has it taped for the game against cuba. bikini alert! for those enjoying the scenery at the beach volleyball venue.
I may have to fly to China to stab Al Trautwig in the eyes – after complaining for three days how difficult it is to understand the “new” gymnastics scores (where you have to add two numbers together) – he actually mocked one of the US gymnasts who was trying to add up the team scores. As if we’d think someone offcamera wasn’t feeding Al the same damn numbers he just had difficulty getting out. At least the two other talking monkeys are hasbeen Olympians. Ass.
However, how awesome were the US men’s gymnasts? whooping and freaking out like the bronze they’d won was gold. I think they became my favorite Olympians so far, just for that.