XXIX Olympic Blogpodge
August 14th, 2008Sorry it’s been awhile; I just haven’t been awash with ideas. I have, however, been awash with Olympic Fever (a mild strain of it, at least). Like most Olympics viewers, I’ve seen a bunch of competitions that I normally don’t. For those unfamiliar with some of these sports, I have included a handy guide.
FENCING: Regardless of the style of the weapon, the setup is the same — a fencer must be the first to touch his/her opponent with the sword. Since we’re dealing with really quick fencers, touches happen after about a second and a half. You can tell that a touch occurred by the lights that go off in response to the wireless device in each fencer’s sword. Alternatively, if you’re watching women’s fencing, a touch is apparent whenever both fencers simultaneously yelp in victory. Here’s what it’s like to watch women’s fencing: [beep], [lunge], “Hyaah!”, wait for video confirmation, repeat fifty times. You see, touches happen right on top of one another, so the judge has to consult the video pretty much every time. This makes me wonder how fencing was scored before instant replay was available. Did the judge just flip a coin? I doubt it — I’m thinking that back then, every judge was paid off by the Soviets, so it didn’t matter anyway.
WOMEN’S GYMNASTICS: More like infants’ gymnastics…! [High-five!] Yeah, so the Chinese are cheaters. Like Adam said to me yesterday, they’re the opposite of Dominican pitchers. Orlando Hernandez could be fifty for all we know, but he still insists that he’s 39 (maybe he thinks he’s Jack Benny). Meanwhile, a Chinese gymnast’s first words are always, “I’m this many– I mean, fifteen!”
One more thing about women’s gymnastics. During the team competition, whenever a gymnast was waiting for a score, she would repeatedly yell, “Come on, Shawn!” to cheer on Shawn Johnson. It led me to believe that American gymnasts know only those three words.
EQUESTRIAN DRESSAGE: Sucks. This isn’t the equestrian event with jumping and whatnot. Oh, no — for a good five minutes, I watched horses walk, turn around slowly, and trot jauntily across a flat dirt lot. It’s basically a dog show. All that’s fine and good if you’re interested in breeding and training genetically perfect horses, but let me remind you of something: the people on top of those slowly trotting horses are Olympic athletes. In 2012, baseball and softball will be gone, but there will still be slow trotters earning gold medals.
ROWING: Watching rowing is frustrating. The course (track?) is so large and the boats go so fast, no camera can accurately keep up. They have a few cameras stationed along the water, but they cover such a wide range, it’s impossible to tell who’s winning until the boats are exactly in front. NBC tried to compensate for that by having a helicopter shot, but it doesn’t really help. I’m guessing that the only people enjoying the show are the dozens of people on bikes who ride alongside the rowers.
BADMINTON: Way cooler than I expected. I think I like it even more than table tennis for short-term enjoyment. My only complaint is that the announcers made a big deal about how the arena in Beijing is perfect for badminton because it had such slow air flow that the AC couldn’t fuck with the flight of the shuttlecock. I’m all for good sporting conditions, but really — shouldn’t an Olympic badminton player be able to take something like a slight draft into account? Isn’t badminton traditionally played outside anyway?
FIELD HOCKEY: This will come as no surprise, but it’s basically right between ice hockey and soccer, in both gameplay and level of interest. It’s pretty interesting for awhile. One odd thing: you can’t score a goal unless an attacking player touches the ball inside the scoring arc. To me, that’s like outlawing full-court shots in basketball. If you can make a goal from that far away, why shouldn’t you be rewarded? Besides, if a goalie can’t handle a shot from across the pitch, fire her ass.
CANOEING: Just like skiing, but with boats!
SOCCER: Going in, I knew that I found soccer only mildly interesting (sometimes), and that the U.S. team is never very good. Somehow, I had forgotten that when I decided to watch our guys lose to Nigeria. At least I fell asleep before it was over.
VOLLEYBALL: Is it weird that I prefer regular gym-floor volleyball to beach volleyball? Yeah, okay, women in tiny pants… but they’re six-foot sticks, which isn’t exactly my preferred body type. Nothing against the quite impressive May/Walsh duo, but I’d rather get behind a large team of nameless Americans. It’s just more fun to watch them celebrate.
SOFTBALL: First of all, the bases are too close together, and the mound — er, flat pitcher’s circle — is too close to the plate. I understand that our team is dominant, but it shouldn’t be so dominant that two consecutive no-hitters isn’t a huge fucking deal. When Bob Gibson threw a 1.12 ERA in 1968, they lowered the mound five inches in 1969. Why hasn’t softball adapted?
BOXING: At any given time over these two weeks, there is an eighty percent chance that Universal HD is airing some random boxing match. They must have aired every bout in every weight class so far. I kind of like boxing, so I’ve watched a few. I like that the scoring is exclusively about the number of punches landed, but the execution of that scoring confuses me. It seems that only straight jabs to the face are ever awarded points. Hard glancing blows and body punches have no value in this system. It seems like less of a boxing tournament and more of a head-punching competition, if that makes sense.
SYNCHRONIZED DIVING: Every dive I’ve seen has made me say, “Yeah, that’s pretty good.” Then NBC busts out the slow-mo and high-def freeze frames, and I see, well, the commentator is right — the guy on the left did hit the water a fraction of a second before his partner. He must be the shame of his country right now.
I think that covers all the sports I’ve seen. I’m kind of upset that I haven’t seen any judo or Greco-Roman wrestling. Come on, NBC, step it up!
-Darrell
August 15th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Your eyes must be about to fall out of their sockets – I’m watching six hours a day(!) and haven’t seen some of these sports.
You’re right about fencing. Terrible spectator sport. However, fencers – as opposed to normal people – can actually see who should get the point most of the time (basically, the person who sticks his/her arm out first).
No swimming commentary?
Meanwhile, Canada is beating its collective breast because it has yet to win a medal of any sort, while greater powers such as Togo, Kyrgyzstan, and Armenia have broken through. It makes the Canadian coverage pretty painful to watch.
August 16th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
I agree about the beach volleyball sucking. Plus, NBC only tracks the Americans (at least for the men), which makes it exponentially more boring. What’s interesting about watching the same two people jump around for a couple hours every day?
Also, I like that they draw the world record line into the races so you can watch people race against them. This has made swimming the second most interesting sport for me (behind the synchronized diving, which is awesome). Archery was good too.
August 17th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
I wish I’d have been able to see more of the shooting and archery events. Those are pretty cool. I’ve enjoyed all the swimming and gymnastics and all, but I really like all those sports you never hear much about. Well, not all of them–equestrian dressage does suck. Except when the horse is skipping. That’s just nonsensical enough to pique my interest.
I think so far I’ve enjoyed weightlifting and some of the track and field events (steeplechase, shot put, and the 100-meter dash) the most. I also watched a really fantastic game of team handball this morning, and I’ve seen a hell of a lot of boxing in the last few days as well. I’ve kind of gotten into the boxing, although I wish they’d score all the legitimate blows to the face rather than just select ones without having any actual selection criteria.
September 20th, 2008 at 2:57 am
Holy fuck, they showed enough shot put for someone to enjoy it?
Holy fuck.