NBC is taking some flak for not airing live the medal ceremony for Simone Manuel, the first African-American woman to win a gold medal in an individual swimming event. They delayed it just over an hour, in which time dozens of internet commentators jumped on them about it.
Does anyone have any sense of how many other American gold medal ceremonies have been delayed, or aired live? I generally don’t bother watching medal ceremonies anyway, so i don’t know if this is typical for the network.
There’s actually precedent for NBC to delay airing of a medal ceremony, so that it can be the ceremony that they end their nightly coverage on. One of the reasons it became a thing with Simone Manuel is because most of the people complaining expected NBC to close their coverage with, like Phelps’ umpteenth ceremony, or something.
In other news, you’ll be happy to know that Hope Solo agrees with you.
There’s the Olympic Spirit[sup]TM[/sup] shining through!
She only agrees with me partly. The better team didn’t win, but playing a counter-attacking game is not remotely cowardly. I’m not at all surprised she yet again showed that she has no class.
Fair enough.
They’re also in something of a bind. For example, Deadspin complained that NBC didn’t show Manuel’s ceremony because they “felt it was more important to air seven-hour-old footage of Russians doing gymnastics badly.” But if NBC switches away from Russian gymnasts to show an American medal ceremony, they’ll probably cop flak for focusing too heavily on US athletes.
Why did Hope Solo call the Swedish soccer team cowards? other than because she’s a douche i mean.
Too lazy to look it up…didn’t somebody in one of these threads say that the fans in the first game played by the US women were shouting “Zika” at Solo? The poster’s comment, I’m pretty sure, was “Stay classy, Brazil.”
I know very little about Hope Solo, but that comment about Sweden is probably the most jerkish and sore-loserish I’ve seen during these Games. “Stay classy, Solo,” anyone?
Sweden played a counter-attacking style. They defended with a lot of people and tried to score on a counter attack. It’s an extremely popular tactic and absolutely the correct thing for Sweden to do.
Calling a counter-attacking team cowards is also common. See Portugal vs Greece in this Summer’s Euros.
It’s just sour grapes and Solo being Solo.
I figured it was something like that, thanks.
Has nothing to do with Rio: they removed the thousandth of a second from swimming events many years ago.
Oh dear…
I just listened to that and cringed. Feel horrible for the guy.
Dammit. I really wanted Brady Ellison to win gold. He still had a chance at bronze, but I’m afraid to watch.
On the bright side, I had to laugh at this, from the link:
“Phelps, meanwhile, broke a 2,168-year-old record for the most all-time individual Olympic titles with the victory.”
I can see some guy on Mt. Olympus going, “Fuck!”
In fairness to him, he may not have had the best seat to recognize the swimmers. Awful job by his producers to not alert him. He was a great sport about it.
Eta: that was a funny quote about the record. Didn’t read the article.
The article couldn’t even bother to spell Leonidas of Rhodes correctly. That must have be the oldest record in all of sports…
Yay for Canada women’s soccer. Huge win over France!
Why are so many of the stadiums so empty during even the big events? When they pan the shots to the ‘crowds’, they are small and concentrated into just a few lower levels even during the most popular events. I know Rio has problems in general and some people were told to stay away but I thought that other brave people not at risk would use it as an opportunity to score cheap tickets to events that are normally very difficult to get.
Yep, nice win by Canada. I’m watching the Australia versus Brazil match now, and hoping that the Aussies can advance to the semis against Sweden. As a Canadian-born Australian, I’d be very happy to see Canada and Australia in the gold medal game.
Those types of games are awesome when you are affiliated with both countries. As a Scottish-born Canadian about the only sport that comes up in for me is curling. It’s really weird to watch a game with such intensity, when in the end you don’t care who wins! A win feels good regardless. Weird, eh?
ETA: I think I secretly vote for Scotland though.
Katie Ledecky, wow, damn that was impressive. That was like Secretariat winning, she was done and the others were still near the center of the pool!
Not only did she also beat the WR by two seconds, none of the other swimmers were even *close *to the line!
How do they do the medal ceremony when there is a tie for Gold? I wanted to see the Simone Manuel one, do they play both anthems? And in the Phelps race where there was a three-way tie for 2nd, they give three silvers and one bronze? Or is there no bronze? Since the rankings said 1, 2, 2, 2, 5, 6, etc.