Thursday, August 21, 2008

Olympic Beef

I am perhaps the biggest Olympics fan ever. I have watched every single broadcast in its entirety, every night. I have watched it all. I think this is one of the greatest Olympics of all-time, barring the disastrous performance of the US track and field team. All that being said, I have a beef. It's not with the Olympics per se, but rather with NBC. While I understand why they need to focus a majority of airtime on the "desireable" sports: volleyball, swimming, track, and gymnastics, primarily, I really think they have missed the boat by not showing some fo the 'secondary" and "tertiary" sports, many of which have offered their own drama.

Granted, I'm a bit unique (read: weird) in terms of my love for esoteric sports, but it;s ridiculous to me that the only way I was able to watch certain sports, namely men's and women's triathlon and the marathon swims, was via the NBC website. To add insult to injury, these broadcast didn't even feature an audio feed. I had to watch them in utter silence. And as it happens, men's triathlon and the men's 10k open water swim (my new favorite sport) were unbelievable races that were decided in the final meter. If you can find them on Youtube, I suggest you check them out -- they are both well worth watching.

It's not that I don't get it -- I fully recognize where the ratings come from -- but I think they could have showed these sports a little love, if only in even recapping their respective finishes. The beauty of the Olympics in my opinion is recognizing human achievement, and I don't think achievement is limited singularly to top tier sports.

That's one man's opinion.

And once again; men's 10k marathon swim. Wow is that badass. The dude who won is a cancer survivor who at the time was given a very dire diagnosis. Today he's a gold medal winner. Nothing quite like the Olympics.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

poor baby.gs