Sucks even harder when you're on the West Coast, and delayed another 3 hours beyond the East Coast broadcast.
NBC coverage just blows anyways - I watch only on Tivo delay, so I can ff through all the schmaltz and individual hype.
I'm also mad at the CBC for not being the Canadian broadcasters for the Olympics this year - I watched the 2006 and 2008 games nearly exclusively with them.
What about the proliferation of people not competing for their actual countries? Watching today alone, we saw a French gold medal winner who was born in Missoula, MT, an Australian silver medalist who was Canadian but apparently so ticked off at the ski federation that he defected at age 15, and then a Russian pairs figure skater who gave up her Japanese citizenship in 2009 in order to get a better partner to be able to compete in the Olympics.
Is this a new phenomenon? Do most people think it is legit? Is there something inherently un-Olympian about it?
Pairs figure skating is OK, but it's kind of always the same but for the selection of the music, and it always makes me antsy that I have to wait till week two for Ice Dance. (The order always goes Pairs, Men, Dance, Women).
Fortunately there's Youtube.
Outside of Torvill/Dean and Klimova/Ponomarenko, and Tanith Belbin's otherwordly hawtness aside, I think my favorite routine in recent Olympics was Grishuk and Platov's Olympic Gold- and World Championship-winning routine in 1998:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M01NrtgB9Fc
Klimova/Ponomarenko 1992 long program (JSB - Air from the Suite in d Minor)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnvBMefCngc
And of course there's always T/D Bolero in 1984. It no longer looks as revolutionary as it was then, but it's still amazing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAXTBiKwmgc...feature=related
It amazes my Winter Olympics working memory goes back that far.
A movie is not about what it's about; it's about how it's about it.
---Roger Ebert
Some questions cannot be answered
Who’s gonna bury who
We need a love like Johnny, Johnny and June
---Over the Rhine
http://www.time.com/time/specials/pa...00.html?hpt=T2
This is the story of the man that at age 51 skis for Mexico despite being a German prince.
The bible on figure skater hawtess was written by Kati Witt. What on earth were you watching in 1984/88 instead? Debi Thomas falling?
The "free agent" phenomenon in the Winter games has been prevalent at least since Lillehammer ('94) in alpine and Nordic sports. That was the first Olympics when pretty much everyone was professional and nobody was Communist.
Musically speaking, Firebird & Carmen should be permanently banned from figure skating.
Sue's right.
Witt always looked mannish to me, like Brooke Shields or Kelly McGillis. No offense to you or her. Even in Playboy...well that look was in back then.
I'll telly you who was my first skater crush. When I was 7 Rossalyn Sumners won silver in Sarajevo and got the only 6. (Italian judge IIRC). Witt won gold, but no 6s.
A movie is not about what it's about; it's about how it's about it.
---Roger Ebert
Some questions cannot be answered
Who’s gonna bury who
We need a love like Johnny, Johnny and June
---Over the Rhine
I'm going to throw Swan Lake in there as another that should be banned.
My favorite Olympic skating moment was the Battle of the Brians. Brian Boitano could never do any skating wrong in my eyes after that. The Food Network show he had was another story.
Don't know if it's just me, but the moguls seemed a heck of alot more fun to watch this year than I remember from previous olympics.
On a completely different olympic subject...how hard must it be to go straight from busting your butt on a cross country ski race to dropping and shooting a target? Your heart and lungs are chugging and you have to steady your aim...and the penalty for a missed shot is brutal. Kudos to the biatholon guys...that's a challenge!
Send in the Clowns should also be banned.
I can just imagine little 8-year old throatybeard (throatypeachfuzz?) running around his living room grooving to Toville and Dean.
I'm going to have to start avoiding the Internet during the day at work. One of the events I was looking forward to the coverage of tonight was apparently actually held during the day today, and when I signed on to check email about 5pm today, there was the result I didn't want to see (and didn't even know had already occurred) in big and bold and practically unavoidable print all over the front page at msn.com.
Sigh. So much for surprises!
The premiere alpine skiing event and NBC only shows 30 minutes of coverage (and it was a medal round!). How is this possible? They showed 8 or 9 skiiers (and only 2 Americans).
And then we come to find out 20 minutes later it was the closest race every in the Olympics from first to third. I know it's tape delayed and the announcers in the booth can't know that off the top of their head, but at least end the alpine event with that fact/story. It's not like Colinsworth discovered that during the polar bear and snowboard segments.
In my opinion there are too many of these segments and not enough sports coverage. No wonder ratings are expected to be down, we tune in to watch sports, I can see videos of polar bears anytime I want.
Sheherezad (sp?) should also be banned. We should give awards for the most overused music for figure skating.
And yes, I'd agree that last night's moguls were insane. I can't say I'm a connoisseur of moguls skiing, but wow. My knees hurt just watching.