I was wondering the same thing, although to be clear, the real question is about the commentary, not the video feed. There is only one Olympics video feed, which is supplied to all broadcasters across the world. Imagine the chaos if 200 countries each wanted to place a camera crew at the end of the 100m track!
The main commentator in the clip an Australian, and the other guy is a Brit, but it’s not clear to me where the feed comes from. It’s certainly not the same commentators we get on NBC’s TV coverage. And this is the case with quite a lot of NBC’s online clips. I’m not sure why they wouldn’t use their own TV commentary footage for their internet highlight clips.
It could be that they have more than one commentary team for track and field, and that they use one for TV and one for web clips. This story talks about the fact that some of the commentary we get for the Olympics is actually done in NBC Sports Group’s Connecticut headquarters. The commentators just sit in a sound studio, watch the video feed, and give their commentary based on that.
It seems that NBC’s streaming, when it has commentary, has British commentary. I assume this is an artifact of how NBC covers things: they only actually broadcast small bits of events, so they only have commentary for those bits (probably done, as mhendo points out, after the fact in Connecticut), while other broadcasting agencies that aren’t, you know, terrible, actually cover the entire event.
There is definitely an official Olympic stream at every event. If you look at youtube and London 2012 it’s difficult to find examples of the BBC, it’s all the official Olympic channel.
I don’t know how much, for example, the BBC augment that with their own cameras, though they definitely do at the stadiums because even today I was looking at both simultaneously for the Triathlon and they were different… I’ve also noticed in the earlier rounds of less familiar sports the occasional Aussie accent so I assume there is some limited pooling of commentators - we see in sports like cricket the style of broadcasting in Commonwealth contries is heavily influenced by ‘BBC style’.
The BBC wouldn’t even think of trying to bluff commentary from other than at an event. Interestingly, for the first time ever there were 4 helicopters covering the womens Triathlon - never been more than 2 before at Triathlon.
On he subject of GB success, it now looks like GB will end up second in the table above China (!!!) which is a heck of a performance but perhaps even more incredible is the that we are the first nation to increase the number of medals in the Olympics following a home games.
I was optimistic we’d do well but that is pretty damn good.
Oh, and Mo Farah is a bloody legend.
Double (5k/10k)
Double ( Olympics/World Champs)
Double (for two full cycles) champion.
He isn’t the most elegant, nor the fastest by the clock but he is probably the best middle-distance tactician I’ve ever seen.
The other interesting fact is it’s the only time in Olympic history a country has increased it’s medal total in 5 consecutive Games, albeit from a very low base at Atlanta.
So obv. the funding model works, brutal as it is - but that’s only part of the story; te key is feeding the model with a conveyor belt of new talent and I have to say the BBC are playing a blinder again banging the participation/inspiration drum.
We have 16-year old medalists at Rio because they watched London and their parents saw a way into the sport on the BBC - perhaps the most extraordinary thing about Team GB at Rio is it ordinary people with ordinary parents achieving extraordinary things.
That’s the real success of the UK model, the way it draws so many youngsters into sport, and into trying new sports.
Literally, in sport, it’s a glorious time to be young and alive
The gold medalist in the men’s marathon, Kipchoge, is probably the best marathoner in the world; no surprise there. But Galen Rupp, the bronze medalist, ran his first competitive marathon at the Olympic trials, and his second … today. He might be ok at this.
I was talking on the phone last night to my mother, who lives in Australia, and she was telling me that there has been some wailing and gnashing of teeth in the Aussie media and among some of the population over Australia’s below-expectations performance at the Rio games.
Apart from a minor dip in Seoul, Australia’s medal count basically increased every games between Montreal and Sydney—helped along by the founding of the Australian Institute of Sport—and has declined every games (though at a much slower rate) since then. Part of it is probably the fact that other countries like Great Britain are now paying more attention to their Olympics programs.
My mother told me that one of the suggestions made by some of the critics is that Australia should change its selection procedure. Apparently, the Aussie team is selected relatively early on, while countries like the United States have later selection processes and more rigorous competition among their own athletes for a place on the team. The belief, apparently, is that Australia’s selection process can lead to some complacency on the part of the athletes.
Now, i’m getting that second hand from my mum, who is relaying what she hears in the media. I know very little about the selection process for either country, and i don’t know whether they are as different as the above description suggests.
Anyway, she thinks that the media and public should shut up, appreciate the effort that their athletes are putting in, and not put so much pressure on them to get medals. I told her, good luck with that.
The Aussies were first to the game in the sense of adopting a centralised, well funded programme and did very well because of it.
Interesting, they have adopted the UK’s funding mechanism since London 2012 but pretty much the whole world still wants to understand how te UK is doing it.
Fwiw, I think it’s actually pretty simple; funding for each sport is based purely on Olympic medal expectation and result - most nations peak for the Worlds as well as the Olympics and Team GB, for the first time, is showing that costs precious fractions.
For example, Team GB cyclists have been 5% down at recent Worlds and on that basis were thought to be not competitive for Rio - it was actually exactly the opposite.
It’s surprising how few nations put the entire, nutrition, sports psychology, detailed analysis, equipment package together with a view to peaking on a day. Even the field hockey girls had Premiership football analysis of each individual opponent and what they would do in each match situation.
It has all been 20 years in development … but it’s some result.
In regards to the US DQ in the 4x100m relay, both Tyson Gay and Mike Rodgers on the team didn’t seem to understand what the rules are in terms of when the baton pass is allowed. Mike Rodgers (who was handing off in the early pass) kept saying that he still had control of the baton until they were in the passing zone, but the rule is that the receiver can’t touch the baton at all until the baton is in the passing zone. And Tyson Gay said he didn’t actually know what the rules are.
Sounds like a major coaching failure if the participating athletes don’t know what the rules are. The US has been disqualified in a relay something like 8 or 9 times since 1980, so maybe it’s not an isolated coaching failure. (Although DQ’s seem pretty common in the relays. I don’t know if the US has a worse track record in that regard than other countries.)
Speaking of coaching failures, did anyone see the 65kg bronze medal wrestling match? Apparently in wrestling, there’s no such thing as running out the clock; you have to engage at all times or you get penalty points assessed against you. Mandakhnaran Ganzorig from Mongolia, who was 1 point ahead, started running around cheering while there was still 10 seconds left in the match rather than engage his opponent, and he consequently got assessed a penalty point and lost the match (the tiebreaker rule is that the most recent scorer wins). Then the Mongolian coaches started taking off their clothes in protest(?!?!?). But there was no basis for their protest. Their wrestler celebrated too early and paid the price.
It was great to see Kyle Snyder win the 97kg wrestling gold medal at age 20. The next 3 finishers were all over 30, so I guess this is not a young man’s sport. He’s probably got many great years ahead of him.
The Japanese Prime Minister should should get an award for most awsome introduction of a head of state/government since Queen Elizabeth at the 2012 opening ceremonies.
USA Today is now asking if the media might have been little UNFAIR in its coverage of this:
In other words, the swim team members may have been drunken douches, but as TYPICAL in a crook state like Brazil, they were indeed accosted at gunpoint for cash.
Basketball