Yeah, my partner and I were ruffled by it too. I wanted to stab ice-picks into my ears every time he said it.
The BBC’s snowboarding coverage is even weirder, because it’s done in the same sedate tones as the curling. They use all the specialist jargon, but in sensible RP tones. Very strange and incongruous with what’s actually on the screen.
Even though the word comes from Don Quixote, it is actually pronounced “kwiksotik.”
During the pairs skating, there was a long period of silence, broken by a completely random sentence fragment. So it sounded like…
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“… and the continuity is…”
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A definite WTF? moment.
I’m confused. Both your phonetics “sound” the same to my mind. Are you saying they mispronounced quixotic on the coverage?
Kwik - sot - ic is correct.
I know. I keep waiting to hear calles of “indy nosebone” and “late 360’ shove it to boneless’d”.
Kwik - sot - ic is, indeed, correct. However, Quixote is pronounced kee-HO-tay. Damned if I know why there’s such a discrepancy.
So far, two of the dumbest phrases that I’ve hear are:
“I’m Katie Couric…”
“…And I’m Matt Lauer…”
Why those two airheads need to be over there at the Olympics is beyond me.
Me? No, but I think that’s what gaucho was saying.
Really? I thought they let anyone in. I was thinking of giving the Skeleton a shot in 2010. Bummer.
just on a tangent, did you see Equatorial Guinea’s Eric Moussambani swimming the 100m freestyle in the Sydney Olympics in 2000? He managed a time of more than double that of most of his rivals - that year, at least, it certainly seemed they let anyone in.
Way back when, my Spanish teacher made a point that (as best I can remember) in some period, Quixote would have actually BEEN properly pronounced “kiwiksot.”
I can’t remember if he was speaking of classical, or current, proper Spanish. I’ve been corn-fused ever since.
I’ve had Olympic coverage on for about five minutes so far today, and I just heard the following during luge coverage:
REALLY??!
They don’t let just anyone in, but countries like Equatorial Guinea are allowed to send up one male and one female swimmer and one male and one female runner to the Olympics with much more relaxed standards than places like the US( which get to send several competitors in most events). The rules are complicated, but they do permit people like the swimmer you referenced, or the FOAF I know about.
Technically, the FOAF was the son of a friend, and he just coached the athlete. The athlete competed for some African nation, but had lived almost all of his life in the US and was competing in NCAA track events for his college. He’s an American citizen, but nowhere near good enough to make the trials in the US. But his mother is from mystery African nation, so they offered him a position, and he jumped on it. He performed about as well as could be expected, which means he didn’t get a medal but still got the Olympic experience.
So in other words, if you want to compete in the Olympics, but aren’t REALLY, REALLY, GOOD-- better have ties to some nation which doesn’t have a lot of athletes of its own.
To be fair, Dartmouth is actually a university, they just call themselves ‘Dartmouth College’ for historical reasons.
To be fair, the luge guys refer to those parts as the “steels” rather than something sensible like “blades” or “skates.”
I was listening to NPR. They were talking with someone (Sylvia Pajoli [don’t know spelling on that name]). She was live from Italy. She was talking about the opening ceremonies. There was an odd noise, Sylvia said, “Oh, shit–” and was gone.
Yeah, I heard an NPR person cuss. I laughed so hard I nearly drove into a building.
I just needed to share.
But a 1260 is only 3.5 rotations (or was that your point?) Has anyone ever doen a 1440?
During the Opening Ceremonies of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, there was this story about a young boy and the Spirit of the Games or something like that. Anyway, at one point of the story, the young boy is being chased by giant icicles (which looked like metallic Klansmen). I believe it was Katie Couric who made the comment that was used as a SDMB thread title about the ceremonies: “Being chased by giant icicles is never a good thing.” But then again, Opening Ceremonies often have bizarre imagery. How often is Bob Costas going to say “Here come the treemen” in his career?
It amuses me that some think it is stupid when jargon is used without explination and others think that explanation is stupid :D.