Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Olympic Fever (muted)

While I am a fan of the Olympics, I've never really watched them as much as I am watching these. I've started to notice one thing... the announcers are annoying as hell. Take for instance, the female diving commentator telling the story about the America female synchronized diving team. She mentioned how one girl's family moved from California to the Midwest so that the two girls could train together because, "Its important to train in the same place for synchronized diving." Seriously?!? Or things like "this has never been seen before" when someone sets a world record. [edit] Joey's comment reminded me of another huge probel... The woman who interviews the swimmers after they win/lose a race. "What were you thinking on that final lap?". I bet he's thinking about whether or not they left the iron on in their room at the Olympic village. She asks the worst questions. Its already pretty hard to interview someone who is out of breath, but she makes it a much more excruciating process.

I've also noticed that the announcers for swimming, diving, gymnastics and track & field are obsessed with pointing out when their predictions are correct. Every time a race would finish, or the gymnasts would finish an event. The announcer had to point out, "Just as I predicted." So we've been watching most of it in fast forward to save time, but to also mute the announcers.

While I'm talking about the Olympics, why are they getting rid of Baseball and Softball, but keeping Equestrian? While it's impressive that they can make a horse jump over a wall, what is athletic about ride a horse? It seems like the horse should be getting the metal. Whats next? Auto racing?

1 comment:

joey said...

We could have a whole "Forum" discussion about the Olympics and the issues they raise. The announcers: ya, they have problems. The guy that does the gymnastic events has to be the worst, with the diving people running a close second. The saving grace is "Rowdy", the guy that does swimming. You look at the guy and think, wow, that shoe doesn't fit, but then he gets all fired up for swimming and you forget about the gymnastics guy telling you how blinking your eyes wrong can cost you a medal, or how the diving people won't stop showing super slow-mo replays and explaining the "past vertical" concept. Well, I could go on about the Olympics forever... I mean Russia is fighting with Georgia and Putin is at the Opening Ceremonies, Usain Bolt is fast, communist countries have excellent athletics programs, everyone has forgotten about the pollution in Beijing but not the polar bears dying because people drive SUV's (thank you WWF!), the Chinese gymnasts don't look 16 but the bigger issue is that the IOC used passports to verify age... I mean at least tell me you looked at some fake birth certificates or something, then I would feel better, Michael Phelps seemed to have a hard time answering questions during interviews... while one might think he could have come up with some clever one liners, you have to admit that it probably gets old being asked: How did you do it? How does it feel? Are you tired? How great did it feel to beat the French team that said they would smash you? Does this make all the training seem worthwhile? about Four Billion times... Wow, that run-on sentence has me feeling a lot better. Too bad the Olympics will be over soon, they are so much more entertaining than the Presidential race.