I haven’t watched the opening ceremonies yet but I heard about the Uyghur person helping to light the flame and I wondered if they are a graduate of the government’s re-education camps.
I too haven’t watched (never was interested in opening ceremonies, especially not Chinese), but I have to ask: did Chinese official Olympic TV put digital blinking arrows around the Uyghur person with the caption “Uyghur person! We treat them good!”? Or how does the world know that it was an Uyghur?
A lot of familiar western classical stuff. I recognized the theme song from Cabin Pressure* at one point and started laughing. I wonder if the parade ran longer than expected; I heard some repeats after a while.
As usual, the TV coverage sucked. Let’s cut away for a commercial while they’re bringing in the Olympic flag, and come back to show a montage of four-year-olds falling on their butts.
* Mikhail Glinka’s Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila
My favorite is giant slalom. I used to ski, and i feel like I’m flying when i watch them go.
But i love watching figure skating, too. I’ll probably pick up some curling for fun, and maybe a bit of speed skating. But my heart is in downhill skiing and figure skating.
My favorites are, also, downhill skiing, ski jumping, biathlon and hockey. I also like to watch some of the snowboard events, I’m just watching one. I never liked figure skating though, since I was a child. I appreciate what the skaters are able to and their athleticism , but it’s too much of dancing rather than sports for me. I mean, the music they pick itself has an influence on the scoring (even if subliminal), hasn’t it? That shouldn’t matter.
I thought we were rid of Lindsey Vonn. Enough of her.
I thought they could have had a longer playlist for the athletes to march in to. Could have had some non-western music, seemed very odd for China to feature western classical music so much.
Looking forward to downhill skiing, speed skating, and the luge/skeleton/bobsled events.
Well, to no one’s surprise, they released a small press release just before the lighting that was read on the broacast. You could tell the NBC commentators just got it and they were kind of surprised when they read it.
But, yes, they read a brief note indicating that the girl was Uyghur.
I’ll watch any event except hockey, and that’s cuz it moves too fast for me to follow. My faves are any of the downhill skiing and bobsled/luge/skeleton. I used to be a figure skating fanatic but interest dropped when the scoring system changed.
I accept that, but it’s one of my favorites to watch, whether it not it’s really “sports”.
I can’t accept that. Racing, hitting a target (javelin), and competitions of strength have been sports forever. In some sense, the truest moderne Olympic sport is biathlon, which demonstrates true military skill that remains relevant on several borders.
They can be competitions, and they can be great, and they can deserve Olympic medals, but I refuse to certify something as a sport where your other competitors aren’t right there, affecting the choices you make.
That’s a rather fine-pointed and I’d say idiosyncratic definition— I can’t find any dictionary that makes this distinction and it seems rather arbitrary to me. But even in at least some racing competitions, your opponents can somewhat dictate what you do, like how you set your pace, when to make a break, you can have racing lines cut off by competitors in front of you, etc. (The last point much more so in motor sports.)
Obligatory:
The BBC coverage is dreadful.
80% bios of the Brit athletes, 20% brief highlights of the actual winners. God help us if a brit actually gets a medal.
Unwatchable.
Rating the Australian opening ceremony uniforms at worst: green cammo with yellow beanies.
New Zealand: all black, of course. I’d love to see a haka done on skis
Samoa: no fleece, just body oil.
Austria and France: “I dunno, let’s just wear the flag.”
Best: Finland gray
I fully agree that it’s not a definition that many use. And I’m completely good with that.
I’m pretty iffy on races where they can’t affect your lines but pacing changes. I am fully on board with races where blocking and reacting to moves is a part of it. Most bike racing really works for me; I’m a sucker for the intentionally slow races where they all but stall out in the velodrome. Time trials (especially team time trials!) are impressive, but just not as good as blowing by a guy who tries to catch your wheel.
And then I almost always prefer objective scoring to judged sports. I appreciate that they’ve moved over time to defined points per move, with deductions for execution problems instead of just being an overall feel thing.
So for the winter olympics, short track speed skating > long track > figure skating (though I enjoy ice dancing more than I would expect). Ski cross > all the downhill races > the trick competitions.
The CBC coverage is terrific. Lots of whole events with knowledgeable commentary, where you get to see the tricky bits from lots of perspectives and in slowmo.
Cool! Thanks for the recommendation 
I’m pretty sure the beeping is there just to keep the skiers separated. The skier must start within 5 seconds on either side of the high-pitched beep. There’s a 10-second warning beep, then from five to one, then the high-pitched “zero” beep.
I DVR’ed a couple events overnite. The times they post are “approximate” it seems. Both events got the last few minutes chopped off. This is gonna be a bitch!
For $10, we got a one month subscription to Peacock and it is highly worth it for the Olympics.
It works great, everything is on replay, and we’ve seen a ton. Much better than the Summer Olympics app, to be honest.
How is Peacock’s coverage? Do you like the commentary?