That list was of things that I am perplexed by. What it has to do with the other two is that it perplexes me. I am perplexed that people find it entertaining to watch or to participate in.
They probably also all fall in the category of “sports with chips on their shoulders because everyone thinks they are weird sports”. But that wasn’t my point.
I never said any of them weren’t “legitimate”. I know that synchronized swimming, for example, is extremely challenging athletically. It just seems rather odd. Lots of Olympic sports seem rather odd. Reenacting after-battle message runs where the messenger keels over dead, or reenacting Napoleonic soldier-behind-enemy-lines stuff seems rather odd, too. But surely just as legitimate as, say, curling. ( )
I don’t know if it’s necessarily better but it makes sense. The US is a major player in all the major events therefore our TV coverage is going to be heavily skewed to those best known events. There’s only so many hours in the day and they are going to show the USA basketball team, track and field and swimming every chance they get since we know who these guys are. Even if an American is a highly rated shooter, martial artist, wrestler or equestrian they aren’t going to preempt Kobe, D-Wade, CP3, Michael Phelps and the fastest man & woman in the world.
In Britain things are less complicated. BBC viewership isn’t going to have their national team at the top of that many of the major team sports or most broadly appealing events. They will however have a competitor in many of those smaller events and you can assume that those smaller events will get shown because of it. Even without a countryman to cheer for, it’s unlikely that the BBC is going to show 25 basketball games so it opens up much more time to indulge in those once-every-four-years sports just for the sake of novelty.
It’s not that the BBC is more worldly or more astute in their coverage, it’s just that the American networks have way more high profile athletes and sports to devote time to thereby neglecting the niche stuff.
Tritto on the judo. Back in '84 my cable company offered a special package of Olympic coverage. For just a few dollars, you could get a lot more of what you could watch on TV for free - even more gymnastics, even more track and field. Not even one extra moment of judo.
If anyone at the network is watching…I would definitely prefer to see the finals of an obscure sport (like badminton or judo) rather than the preliminaries of yet another heat in track & field. And I’d rather watch shooting, dressage, kayaking or weightlifting over any “up close & personal”, thank you very much.
The weird thing about race-walking is that it imposes an arbitrary restriction: how fast can you go, if you don’t get both feet off the ground. It’s like a competition for the fastest 100m hopping on one foot.
To be fair, the BBC doesn’t tend to devote too much time to fluffy background pieces (I’ve heard several American sports fans get a bit worked up about that aspect of domestic Olympic coverage) and there are no commercial breaks, so there’s more scope for variety. Your other points stand though. This year the UK has a very strong set of competitors in the various cycling events, so I guess we’ll see a lot of that.
Agreed. The mixed-doubles badminton final last time was one of the most exciting sporting contests I’d seen for years. It helped that a Brit pair were competing, but still.
Here’s an event that perplexes me: the steeplechase. You go over a hurdle with a big trough, and if you don’t clear the trough . . . your feet get wet! The horror!
As for equestrian, the jumping and cross-country events have a certain visual appeal, but dressage (horse ballet) is just about unwatchable. I don’t recall that it gets shown much during the Olympics.
My local Forest Preserve recently acquired the estate of a horsey-set millionaire who not only bought Muffy her own jodhpurs, but built her an indoor dressage arena on his property. So that she could practice year-round, don’t you know.
Freddy - Many, many facilities and private individuals have indoor arenas. Where I grew up in Minnesota and Michigan (and probably Illinois), often the ground is frozen, and you risk injuring your horse (especially jumping) on rock-hard ground. And in Tennessee where I live now, it’s often very hot. Having an indoor just provides year-round riding conditions. And since they’re usually just pole buildings, they aren’t all that expensive.
If I won the lottery, I’d build myself a heated and air-conditioned indoor arena. That’s the height of decadence to me.
The most common distinction between “walking” and “running” that I’ve heard is that walking has you with a foot on the ground at any time while running has both of your feet off the ground at some point. So… race-walking would unsurprisingly have that as a qualifier; any faster and your feet would be both off the ground and you’d be doing a slower jog/run.
Holy CRAP that shit’s unnatural!! And if it’s on TV, you can bet my husband’s going to want to watch it - ladies in supertight outfits arranging their limbs in previously-unseen configurations.
That’s my point, exactly. How did we (the athletic human in general) devise a competition to see how fast we could walk? What’s the point? If we want to compete to see who can go from A to B fastest, why put the one-foot-on-the-ground qualifier in place?
The same logic (or lack thereof) applies to swimming, actually. If you’re trying to flee from a shark, would you do the butterfly stroke?
I figure the ribbons-and-hoops-and-stuff gymnastics is kind of like ice dancing – athletically challenging, indeed, but a lot of people are mystified as to its purpose.
Mind you, if I had the chance to watch any of these at an Olympic level, I’d be there for sure.* They held quite a few of the Olympic trials in St. Louis a few times (last time, maybe?) back, and I was astonished at how much I enjoyed, say, modern pentathalon. And dressage.
That was in person, with the crowd and excitement and all. On TV it comes off somewhat… odd.
except curling. looks about as exciting as a cricket match. only colder, and without a picnic luncheon to enjoy whilst watching.
I just hope I get to see some Beach Volleyball this time around. Four years ago I got to watch a little, but there just wasn’t the depth of coverage I was hoping for. Fingers crossed.
So, there would be looting and burning and pillaging in the streets of Canada. (Do you have actually streets up there?) 15 people would get hurt; 25 tops.
The main thing I would like to watch more of is the Field part of Track and Field. No I don’t want a recap of the three best throws or the best vault. I actually want to watch the freaking event. Why do we need to watch the 100 a million times but not even one flight to Discus or the entire 7’ height of High Jump.
Of course, I want to watch Tae-Kwan-Do as well I got to watch it in person at the Soul Olympics which was an amazing experience. I really don’t care about any of the tournament sports until they get out of the first couple of rounds so they could be replaced with coverage of any event where the winner is not decided by a judge.
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The most common distinction between “walking” and “running” that I’ve heard is that walking has you with a foot on the ground at any time while running has both of your feet off the ground at some point. So… race-walking would unsurprisingly have that as a qualifier; any faster and your feet would be both off the ground and you’d be doing a slower jog/run.