The London Olympics

The worst of this was constantly replaying the 1 minute highlight of the few gold medals we did win. My boys would get up in the morning and switch the TV on and in the couple of hours before school, you'd see the same highlights 4 or 5 times, as if nothing else happened that day

Probably the worst Olympic coverage I've ever had to sit through.
--- merged: Aug 12, 2012 at 8:29 PM ---
oh, and the sickening "you must be disappointed with that silver" when you interview someone who has just come second in the world.

 

yeah, i barely watched TV in the morning since i was almost always up burning the midnight oil. I did miss one of my favourite events though, the womens high jump. It seemed like if there was no medal chance or no aussies involved, the whole sport got canned and didnt get any coverage. i can understand the need to televise medal winning events, but we have more interests that just aussie athletes.

but as spindles said, with the lack of aussie gold, there wasnt much to televise.

and yeah, some of the commentary was atrocious. eddie maguire was talking about chopping heads in old england while the marathon was run, and talked over much of the closing ceremony . ..and george michael lip synched his way through his songs. not a great end to the olympics.


free to air aussie coverage was shit, but i guess ive learnt that ill need to invest in pay TV for next time.

 

yep, I think I'll be forking out for pay TV and its 8 channels for the next Olympics.

 

I think there is a lot of pressure to perform - and the weight of expectation on our top athletes is enormous. We went for a few Olympics (especially in the swimming pool) where it seemed like we just turned up and got gold (kind of Michael Phelps like). Grant Hackett and Kieran Perkins pocketed the 1500m mens gold 4 or 5 times plus Ian Thorpe was unstoppable at his peak. I think the general public need to realise that athletes of that calibre don't just magically appear. It is a combination of genetics and a crap load of hard work. A lot of people expected James Magnussen to romp in the 100m and also the 4x100m, but medals aren't awarded om PBs and pre-olympic competition. Him getting silver by 1/100 of a second was seen as 'failure'. The attitude of the commentators, especially, is pretty poor IMO.

I think the population thing comes more into play because we spread our talent pretty thinly (e.g. our swimming and basketball stocks would be greatly reduced by team sports like AFL).

 

Can't help but pass on a couples of old jokes at the aussies expense.

'TeamGB have won gold!
Australia have one gold.'

'Australians, if they could run they wouldn't be Australians in the first place.'

Mind you the closing ceremony was absolute pants - how things have changed from us being crap at sports and good at music.

 

Tastefully Offensive: Olympic Commentators are Jerks

"Those who can't do, commentate."
-Tosh.0

For the foreigners who would like to see what American NBC commentators sound like when athletes make small or big mistakes...

 

I am seeing some pictures greenlit for Fark photoshop contests that show an actor playing Winston Churchill and Eric Idle in some kind of 70's era Buck Roger looking suit and thinking that I did not miss much based on the snapshots alone. Of course I know that my generally complete disinterest in most of the athletic events is the main factor in how I feel that way, and can understand on some level how exciting the running/swimming/etc must be to watch.

 

Memorabilia

Remains of The Games | Olympic Village Furniture Sale | London 2012

 

My wife made a special effort to get up early (5.30am ish) to watch both the opening and closing ceremonies. My thought? There is no sport involved whatsoever - what would you get up to watch that for?

 

I enjoyed the Olympics. I wasn't massively looking forward to them and feared the potential travel disruption (I could see the stadium from my office window and commute into London), but that wasn't too bad - mostly because a lot of people stayed away from their office for the two weeks.

I think the UK did well. Apart from the performance of so many athletes, what impressed me was the coverage we received here. As well as a couple of main channels, the BBC had 24 ultra-HD digital channels, broadcasting virtually every sport all the time, so any viewer could choose what to watch from all of the sports available. I enjoy a lot of the less well-known sports as well as the big events, so that was great.

I know that not everyone had that kind of access, and I heard that NBC was particularly bad. However, it does raise the bar for future events and I don't think broadcasters will be able to get away with the old-fashioned approach many took this time around when the next games come around.