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Saturday, August 21, 2004
The fluff goes down, the rules get explained, and
the benefits of tape-delay, today on the Olympic Watch! Let's get started.
- The evening begins back at the pool with coverage
of the Men's 1500-meter Freestyle. Whenever one of the swimming events
comes on, I do the math in my head to figure out about how long it will
be. Typically, 100 meters takes about a minute to swim (for Olympians,
not for me). So, 1500 meters should be about 15 minutes long. Wow! NBC
is going to show a swimming race for 15 minutes? Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! How
foolish of you.
They do indeed show the start of the race, where Australian Grant Hackett,
the heavy favorite, builds up what seems to be an insurmountable lead
in the first three minutes. So, with the favorite in a comfortable lead
and 12 minutes left in the event, it's time for a commercial! NBC leaves
the event at an elapsed time of 3:39 and after two minutes of commericals
comes back at...
11:17? Okay, let's be honest. Did anyone want to see
Grant Hackett slowly lap the pool for the eight minutes? But wait! The
United States' Larsen Jensen has closed the gap! No longer is the Aussie
way out in front, now he's only kind of in front, and his lead is shrinking!
With only two laps to go, could Jensen steal the gold?
Uh...no. Hackett pulls away the final 100 meters and wins, as predicted.
Anyway, I don't particularly mind edited-for-time sports, as long as
they don't cut out anything exciting. In this case, I think NBC made
a good decision.
- More beach volleyball with Misty May and Kerri
Walsh. Did you know that there's another U.S. team
and that they too are undefeated? That's not to say that I'm tired
of watching May and Walsh (believe me, I could watch Walsh all
day), just that it seems odd that NBC has deemed them unworthy
of prime time coverage.
- Zoom! Off to the track! Look at that! Three completely
different events in the first hour. Very nice, NBC. Anyway, we're off
to watch Jeremy Wariner of the U.S. once again completely blow out
his competitors in the Men's 400-meter semifinal. I only bring this
event up because announcer Tom Hammond explains that there are three
semifinals and that the top two runners from each race advance to the
final, as well as the two other fastest remaining times. Explanation
of the rules is good! Thanks Tom!
- We get two-and-a-half minutes of fluff on Stacy
Dragila, American pole vaulter, and then she doesn't even qualify for
the finals. Still Dwight Stones does a good job on the analysis.
- And not to get all Joe Theisman-like, but
part of the reason given for Stacy missing the finals was that she
had to wait 30 minutes to
vault because a Russian vaulter broke her leg during the competition
and delayed the event. Why didn't we see that?
- Men's sprinting fluff! American Shawn Crawford
is not only fast, but once ran a stunt race touted as "Man
Versus Beast," where he ran against both a giraffe and a zebra.
Obviously he has a good sense of humor about the whole thing, although
he did put on a mock-serious face while saying that the only reason
the zebra beat him is because it didn't get called for the false start.
Oddly enough, the replay showed he was right. Stupid cheating zebra.
- Shawn went on the win his heat in the Men's
100-meter dash, and then, in one of the weirdest moments of the night,
appeared to invite random people up to his room. "C-12! It's where
(he's) staying at in the village!" Okaaaaaay, Shawn. We'll be right
up (backing away slowly).
- NBC wasted 30 seconds of our time with quick
edits on Maurice Green, but then showed us something fascinating, which
was Mo measuring out how far back to put his starting blocks by using
his fists as a measurement. NBC, I would much rather
see details like this than see just how good your editors are with
their slow-motion effects and flash edits. Maurice Green posing, backlit,
in slow-motion shows me nothing. Maurice Green meticulously measuring
out the exact placement of his starting blocks shows me that maybe
there's more to running quickly down the track than just running quickly
down the track.
- Jimmy Roberts spoils some more of my evening
with "Chevrolet Olympic Moments." Today's platitudes come at the expense
of women in the Olympics. Afghanistan sent their first woman to the
Olympics, ever, this year. This is a good thing, but
once again Jimmy makes me feel guilty for hating having to hear about
it from him. But, to summarize, women used to not be part of the Olympics
at all way back in ancient Greece, but now they're almost 40 percent
of the athletes.
So, now that we've got that out of the way, let's get back to picking
apart Jimmy's schmaltzy writing. Today's bad line: "Sometimes the
things that happen quietly end up making the most noise." Oh please.
Let me try...sometimes the ideas that start off great end up being
the lamest. Sometimes the things that start off as hard news end up
being the cheesy, throw-away story. Why is NBC letting The
Sphinx from Mystery Men take five minutes of their broadcast every night?
- Fluff on American Laura Wilkinson on the secret
to success. Don't think too much. She calls it "diving stupid." Does
Jimmy Roberts write stupid? Oh, that was just mean, wasn't it?
- Diving coverage is using every trick it can.
First they used the synchronized dive-cam, where they superimpose one
video over another. Then they used their "strobe-motion" trick (which
I've commented on before but didn't know the name of until today) to
show the position of a single diver all the way down to the water.
Very nice.
- Admittedly in the diving area there's not a lot
of ground to cover, but the handheld camera did a good job of catching
American Sara Hildebrand's reaction to her advancing to the final.
She was crying because she thought, like in Sydney, that she'd missed
it again. And when teammate Laura Wilkinson came over to tell her she
had made it, she audibly said, "Are you sure?" Good camera work!
- The announcers get a little cliche-y as the diving
closes though. "Sara reminds us that sometimes Olympic dreams aren't
measured in medals, but in just doing better than you've ever done
before." Uh-huh. Let me check my extensive list of Olympic notes for
people who were just happy to have finished fourth. Nope! Nobody!
- Women swimmers from all countries remind us of
just how tough the Women's 50-meter Freestyle race will be. This piece
is twice as long as the race it's promoting! Fluff!
- Lauryn Williams won silver in the Women's 100-meter
dash. Her interview wasn't particularly coherent, but she sure was
excited, wasn't she? It's good to see someone who actually is appreciative
that she's the second fastest woman on the planet, instead of complaining
about how something or someone ripped her off for first place.
- It's the last day of swimming, so any fluff that
needs to get in better get in now. Sure enough, we get both fluff on
the Women's 4x100 team and the Men's 4x100 team. That's two-and-a-half
minutes gone.
- Rowdy Gaines goes way out on a limb and says
that the U.S. Men's team with their three world record holders is the
team to beat. Sure enough, they won handily. Better yet, during the
medal ceremony, they all sang! But, unlike his teammates,
Jason Lezak left his olive-branch wreath on his head. Jason! It goes
over your heart! Look at your teammates!
- Now that swimming is over, we get to see
three-and-a-half minutes of highlight fluff. Hmm...in some of these
highlights, NBC actually
shows "highlights" of its previous fluff pieces. Fluff within fluff.
Double fluff. Should I count this twice? Nah. Too hard.
- Bob interviews Natalie Coughlin on the
Olympic "Later" set. She's dressed up to go out on the town because
she said she didn't know she was
going to be on TV tonight. Really? How could you not know something
like that? Olympian schedules must be very strange. Oh, and her birthday
is on Monday. Happy Birthday, Natalie! Yeah, like she's reading this.
- We close the night with one more fluff piece on Michael Phelps, because
it's the last chance NBC has to use any extra Phelps footage. Well,
at least until the closing ceremonies, but I'm sure we won't see any
then, right? Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
We're halfway done now, and NBC has pleasantly surprised
me with their coverage of events. It makes me pretty optimistic about
the rest of the games. Well, that and the fact that I actually got some
sleep this weekend. Doing this is exhausting!
© Copyright
2004 Brian Lundmark, all images and text on this page.
All rights reserved. Tell
me about it!
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