— I love the half-pipe girls. They FLY through the air. The commentators were getting on my nerves a bit – saying, “They are almost as good as the boys! They are almost in the class of the boys! Look at the height! It’s almost what the boys got!” Guys? SHUT UP. No, I’m serious. SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP. Let them have their accomplishment on their own without your pissant little gender commentary. One guy said, watching Kelly Clark literally fly thru the air: “I’d like to do an air like that!” Yeah, well, you can’t. She’s an Olympian. What – cause she’s a girl (ikky!!!) you think you should be able to do it? Or … “Oooh, look at what that GIRL did … now I want to do it!” How bout it’s an incredible jump all on its own and you cut the shit? How ’bout that?
— Hannah Teter – gold medalist. Again, the reporter comes up to her after she wins the gold: “How do you feel, Hannah?” Out comes the ski-bum accent, the truly American voice, “Oh my God, it’s just awesome … ” “I know your family is so supportive…” “They are totally stoked … and to have them here in the stands … they’ve got a banner with them and everyone from my town signed it … you know … Belmont!! … and … it’s all just totally cool.” You know Belmont is watching back home and high-fiving everyone in sight. She said his name on the Olympics! I just love the energy of the half-pipers. They crack me up. AWESOME athletes. And the girls are incredible. ALL ON THEIR OWN. THANK YOU VERY MUCH, JAGOFFS.
— The Chevrolet Olympic moments can be very annoying, and saccharine, and silly. Yes. But tonight – during the pairs competition (which is still going on) – they did an “Olympic moment” about Yao Bin, the coach for the Chinese team. They did a little retrospective on his journey – NONE of which I knew. He represented his country in … help me … 1984, I believe – it’s in that link – A while back. At a world championship, people literally laughed as the two of them skated. There were many falls, they were clumsy, they didn’t know what they were doing. Because of communism, and censorship – Chinese ice skating developed in a vacuum. There wasn’t the interchange with other cultures – there wasn’t the freedom of travel … so people in China who wanted to be figure skaters were on their own – probably getting bootlegged copies of ice skating magazines and bootlegged video tapes of world championships, etc. They made their own costumes, trying to imitate what they had seen in the West. Etc. They had no idea where the sport actually WAS in its development – which is what Bin discovered when he and his partner made such a horrible showing. So he, obviously, put his nose to the grindstone – and has completely revolutionized Chinese ice skating. In a matter of 15, 20 years – they have caught up with the rest of the world. (Actually, I don’t think that’s quite true. They do a lot of tricky moves and complicated jumps – but there’s just something about those Russians, man. They just look better on the ice … it’s grace, and … technique that is so much a part of them that it’s the air they breathe – the Chinese skaters don’t have that yet. They do a lot of flashy huge jumps, etc. – but they’re more like the young jumpy adolescents, overeager, and willing to try anything. The Russian skaters look like adults, confident of their power, their learning, and what they are going to do) But STILL: China is now a true competitor in this event. And it is mostly due to this one man. He is the coach of the three Chinese pairs competing tonight … You see this man smiling, and whispering instructions and encouragement, and you just love him. I love stories like this. Journeys of ambition, lessons hard won … He could have had his Olympic experience – horrible – and then skulked off into the shadows. He did not. He made it his MISSION to get Chinese skaters to a competitive level. And he has SO done that. I found that this “Chevrolet Olympic moment” was a great bit of background – gave me a necessary bit of context to understand what was going on here in the competition.
— Dear Dick Button: Please reconcile yourself to the new scoring system so that Peggy Fleming doesn’t have to keep correcting you. Mkay? Thanks.
ah dang. the first “spotlight” thing i miss, its a good one. Grrr
I know!! NOrmally they’re so sucky! But this one had a lot of good info in it.
I think somewhere along the line, Dick Button turned into Andy Rooney. My God, the guy is cranky: you’d think EVERYTHING was downhill for figure skating after he retired, what, 50+ years ago?
A small quibble. While I agree that the constant comparisons to men’s snowboarding feats is a little tedious (just as it is with men’s and women’s basketball — they’re just very different sports and equally enjoyable for different reasons), I think the NBC commentator is more than qualified to make the comparisons and speak as if he could execute many of the moves. He’s a snowboarding legend, Todd Richards. One of the sport’s true pioneers and a big reason why it’s an Olympic sport to begin with. Over-the-top as he may be, he is an authority.
I still say: Who cares if he could or could not do it? What does that have to do with anything? And he DIDN’T say that stuff when the boys were snowboarding – he just let them be great and awesome, without saying I WANT TO DO THAT TOO. No, that just came out during the girls event. Bah. If Peggy Fleming sat and said, “Oh my God, I wish I could do a quad sow-cow loop” or whatever, and that was her main commentary during events – it would be extremely obnoxious. It’s not about YOU, Mr. commentator, it’s about the competitors. This is my problem with Dick Button’s commentary as well.
Got it. If your complaint is that he’s too often injecting himself into the commentary, then I’m with you, and I think that’s true of the bulk of color commentators. If it’s that he’s being sexist, I’m not sure I agree with that. In fact, I thought his enthusiasm (especially over Clark’s second run) probably went some distance toward bringing men’s and women’s snowboarding toward parity in viewers’ minds. He certainly sounds like a big booster of the sport as a whole.
His enthusiasm was CERTAINLY real and totally infectious. I just felt that there was a tinge of: “omigod, omigod, the girls are almost as good as the boys” which I could have done without. And yeah – I think he said, about Kelly Clark’s run – something like it was “explosive” and “groundbreaking for the sport” – All of this was wonderful. I love snowboarding, and love the whole different feel to the sport in general. I love that the words “stoked” and “pumped” are regularly used – by athletes as well as commentators – I love the sense of exuberance, and fun to it all.
But hey, in my Olympic posts I’m not trying to be an unbiased reporter showing both sides – and I’m not trying to be “fair” to anyone (have you read my Kwan rants?) I don’t care about fair. I’m just rattling shit off onto my online nerdy journal.
More to come!!! I lurv me some Winter Olympics!
Roger all of that. Love the Kwan rants. In fact, they helped release me from the millisecond of remorse I felt when she withdrew after I’d been slamming her megalomaniacal drama queen-y ways for days. I swear NBC is the only entity in America that didn’t see through her ultra-obvious annoyingness.