Read no further if you're looking for indictments of China, Bush, Putin, air pollution or the excessive hype of Michael Phelps. This diary is going to be about what's good and wonderful about the Olympics, and an honest and proportional critique of what's wrong with it.
I happen to love the Olympics. I have always loved them, since the first Olympics I watched in 1972. First it was the Winter Olympics in Sapporo, followed that year by the infamously and tragically marred Summer Olympics in Munich.
What happened in Munich was a grotesque abomination of all that humanity exalts, and possibly would in itself justify dismissal of any ideals the Olympics ever hoped to promote. But I have seen too many wonderful things in the Olympics to write them off as hopelessly compromised. They are not an unqualified good, but surely good enough for a world that has precious few places where countries can come together in an affirmative spirit.
Having said all this, please come along for some reflections from an unabashed Olympics idealist and quadrennial all-event sports junkie.
First of all, allow me to tell you that there is only one way to watch the Olympics, and that is on DVR, i.e., Tivo. There are too many freaking commercials. Now I'm not a commercial-basher. Olympics cost a fortune to mount, and the only way to pay for it is to sell American television the rights to broadcast it for a massive amount, and then allow them to run commercials to pay for it. So it's part of the deal. Tape it on DVR and fast forward through them. Once you have a DVR, the Olympics become a most felicitous television experience.
I will say one thing about the commercials. I despise the caveman insurance ads. Not only do they make me less disposed towards their product, if I was actually insured by that company, I would transfer my coverage to another provider for no other reason than those moronic commercials.
My biggest problem with the coverage is not the commercials, but what comes between them, specifically during evening prime time. The worst coverage of these games have come during the prime time broadcasts, which is sad, because that's when most people are watching.
ABC showed the world how to broadcast the Olympics in the '70s, under the leadership of the legendary producer, Roone Arledge. They knew that they were not broadcasting sports; they were broadcasting stories. So they brought us the "Up Close and Personal" segments, short film stories about the athletes represented in the games, to tell us compelling stories, usually either of a highly-favored athlete's rise to greatness or a less-favored athlete's story of overcoming adversity.
This approach put human faces on these athletes that otherwise only had uniform colors to distinguish them. It gave us story lines to follow and gave people emotional investment into the results of the competition. ABC knew they had to get viewership beyond the hardcore sports junkie to make their broadcasts successful; they had to get to people who don't really follow sports, but who can still be captured by a compelling story line. In the summer months of reruns, through the Olympics, ABC brought us a series of brand new adventure shows with characters you could relate to and root for.
Unfortunately, with this personal storyline approach came a lot of maudlin soap operas, and the "Up Close and Personal" segments often became manipulative sob stories. Some stories were compelling, but hell, everyone has a sick relative or has had to work with a limp. Not every story of adversity is heart-rending.
The UC&P aspect to the Olympics has been streamlined considerably. It seems to me that the individual athlete segments are shorter and less mawkish, but NBC will still fill an entire segment with ancillary fluff, sometimes a couple, before they get to an actual competition.
There are more problems than these with the evening coverage. It's clear that the prime time coverage was put together by programmers than sports people. Their story lines are set in stone. It's Michael Phelps, gymnastics, May & Walsh, the glamor track athletes and, for some reason, diving.
Tom Hammond's track and field calls consistently center on the pre-determined focused athletes. Example: American Lolo Jones was heavily favored in the 100 Meter Hurdles, and that, combined with her gorgeous modelish looks, made her a most arresting focus for that race. But in the final she tripped over the ninth hurdle and stumbled to a 7th place finish. Consequently Dawn Harper's valiant victory in that race was only narrated as a Lolo Jones disaster. That is possibly understandable, from an American broadcast POV, if the winner of the race came from Kazakhstan, but DAWN HARPER IS AN AMERICAN!! It was a tremendous victory for her, but NBC only portrayed it as a Lolo Jones defeat. Dawn Harper got horribly short-changed by NBC's coverage.
Last night is an excellent example of how limited the prime time coverage was. If you only watched the evening broadcast, you would think that the Olympics was a total bust for the American team -- dropped batons in the sprint relays, and somehow an American sweep in the 400 Meter Dash came off as a disappointing silver to prima donna Jeremy Wariner, rather than the tremendous team triumph that it was.
But that morning, one of the great stories of these Olympics happened. The American Women's Soccer team -- not an obscure team sport, certainly a team that has enjoyed tremendous promotion from the networks in the past -- won the gold medal after a gripping 1-0 match over arguably a far more talented Brazilian team.
The frustrating thing is, the American Women's Soccer team is a hugely compelling story. Most of us are familiar with the rich tradition of the teams of Mia Hamm and company. But the stars that made those teams great are long retired, and the current incarnation of the team has not established itself as dominating on the world stage as the old team once did. What's more, their star forward, Abby Wambach, broke her leg in her last game before the Olympics started. A smart gambler would have required very long odds for a bet on the American Women to win this tournament without Abby Wambach.
However, Team America played a tenacious defense against an amazing Brazilian team, who threw everything they had at the Americans, including the greatest player in women's soccer, Marta, who sometimes beat two and three defenders in advancing towards the goal. But every time the other nine players on the field were there to defend, and they managed to stave off the brilliant Brazilian offense to shut them out, scoring a goal by Carli Lloyd in the fifth minute of a 30-minute overtime to secure the gold medal. It was an absolutely brilliant performance, a tremendous team accomplishment representing the absolutely best Olympian ideals. But not one word was uttered about this game in prime time, NBC instead preferring to tell the story of underachieving prima donnas at the track meet.
(Parenthetical thought #1 - Brazil is soon going to run out of first names for their athletes. There may be some athletes or personalities whose achievements are so great that they may be known by a single name. Certainly Pele earned his uni-moniker greatness, just like Americans such as Cher or Tonto. But now every mutt Brazilian athlete refuses to answer to more than one name. Not only does it cheapen the eminence implied by a single-name distinction, but frankly, it's a little unseemly to this American that the first thing an aspiring athlete would do is shed his or her family identity. I look forward to the day that a great Brazilian athlete retains his family name and acknowledges that his parents had something to do with his greatness.)
(Parenthetical thought #2 - Is there a longer ten minutes in the entire universe than the last ten minutes of a soccer game in which your team has a one goal lead?)
Happily, the coverage on the other cable stations has been much more like traditional sports coverage, far more wall-to-wall sports than cuddly bios, and in ample supply. USA provided coverage from 1 a.m. to 11 a.m. MSNBC provides 12 hours of coverage a day, from 4 a.m. to 4 p.m., and CNBC provided several hours of coverage every day, mostly of boxing, but also all the U.S. games of baseball and softball, among several other sports.
Obviously, we cannot stay up around the clock and watch all this coverage. This is where the DVR comes in. But even so, one really has to take a full two-week vacation to enjoy all of this coverage, even fast-forwarding through the commercials and less compelling events.
At the risk of sounding like Grumpy Old Man, I will also state that NBC's commentators are very bland and indistinctive. Some of them are pretty good, but I don't think any of them could crack ABC's classic lineup - Jim McKay, Keith Jackson, Bill Flemming, Howard Cosell, Frank Gifford, Bob Beattie, Chris Schenkel, Curt Gowdy, Al Michaels, and on and on and on. On top of which, the one announcer who COULD crack that ABC lineup, Bob Costas, perhaps the best play-by-play announcer in all of sports broadcasting, is utterly wasted as a studio host.
Still, one has to admire the tenacity of a network determined to cover a 50 kilometer walking race from start to finish. This can only be attempted by a determined broadcast organization. But they did it, as well as several other distance events that one might think was best covered in an abridged format. If NBC feels it is only right to cover the field events like discus and pole vaults with seven-minute narrations by Dwight Stones of the key moments of the competition -- and believe me, that is the way to cover field events on TV, there is simply too much down time to cover them live -- then one might think a four hour race of waddlers that had one leader all the way through might have been satisfactorily covered the way they used to -- broadcasting the start, a few updates of the race on the course, and the triumphant run back into the stadium of the winner.
And in the meantime, while we get to watch walkers waddle for four hours, there are some other sports that really are unusually compelling that don't get much coverage. The archery and shooting competitions can be extremely exciting. Never mind the fact that putting an arrow into a target the size of a quarter from a football field away is ridiculously difficult. But these finals had real drama and some interesting story lines. They are well worth some higher profile TV time.
I think we can draw up a list of under-covered sports that make bad TV and sports that make surprisingly good TV...
Bad TV Olympic Sports: Rowing, Team Handball (what a bogus sport!), any sport with the word "Synchronized" or "Rhythmic" in it, Sailing, races that take more than an hour to complete.
Good TV Olympic Sports: Whitewater Canoe and Kayak, Water Polo, Wrestling, Judo and Taekwondo, most team sports.
Much Better TV Olympic Sports Than You Would Think: Archery, Shooting, Badminton, Table Tennis (yes, Table Tennis -- it's this year's Curling!)
(Parenthetical thought #3 - At what point in an athlete's career does he decide that he is a race walker? I mean, no kid grows up saying, "I want to be the fastest walker in the world!"
Clearly at some point, the track coach pulls the kid aside and says, "Son, I'm afraid you're not going to make the team as a sprinter...
or a miler...
or a distance runner...
or a discus thrower...
or a shot putter...
or a javelin tosser...
or a high jumper...
or a hammer thrower...
or a pole vaulter...
or a long jumper...
BUT!...
I saw you walking across the infield the other day, and you were pretty fast... and I think with a lot of hard work... and a will to never lift both feet off the ground at the same time... you could be looking at GOLD!!")
Now for some chat about the events themselves...
Michael Phelps pulled off an epic accomplishment at these Olympics. 8 gold medals in one meet... 14 total gold medals across two Olympic games... that is just stunning.
But it is very silly to try and state that he is the Greatest Olympian of All Time. If your measure of the Greatest Olympian of All Time (which ironically acronyms as "GOAT") is the most gold medals, you are essentially saying that the GOAT must be a swimmer, since that is the only sport in which a dominant figure could amass that many medals. That is patently absurd.
I am still inclined to lean towards Paavo Nurmi as the GOAT. He won nine track and field gold medals over an amazing range of distances across three Olympiads, from the 1500 Meter to the 10,000 Meter races. It is unheard of for a runner to have that kind of superiority over such a wide range of distances. For Phelps to assert that kind of domination, for example, he would have to win middle distances as well as the sprints.
That being said, Phelps is worth every bit of hype and every second of attention he received. Eight freaking gold medals... give me a break.
But what we really watch the Olympics for is not the hype of the day. We watch them for The Moment - the point at which something truly amazing and unexpected happens. In each Olympics, you get a smattering of Moments. The First Great Moment of these Olympics was Jason Lezak's astounding chase of Alain Bernard in the 4x100 Meter Freestyle Relay. He entered the pool a body length behind Bernard -- who was the WORLD RECORD HOLDER AT THAT DISTANCE THAT MORNING! When you are not the fastest swimmer in the world, you are not supposed to beat the fastest swimmer in the world, especially after he's given a full body length head start. What we saw was a man dig deep into himself and pull out a herculean effort, do something he was not supposed to be able to do, and grab his Moment. It was Olympian.
Another amazing Moment to me had to do with Dara Torres. Her story was well-told -- coming back at the age of 41 to compete amazingly well in the swimming sprint events. But I hope no one missed a little event that happened before one of her semifinals.
These new swimsuits they wear are tremendously effective in improving times, but apparently they are somewhat fragile, and one of the swimmer's suits tore before right before they were due out on the platform for the heat.
Dara Torres was swimming in that heat. The event was a 50 Meter Freestyle, which is a ferocious dash from one end of the pool to the other. Just one lap, with absolutely no margin for error. With swimmers trying to prime themselves for a perfect swim, focus and concentration are at a premium.
But Dara was the dorm mom. She was looking after her friend, and she got the other swimmers to slow down so the other swimmer could change swimsuits. She even got off of her block and went to the judge to ask that the start be delayed for the swimmer. Soon the swimmer came out and took her place in the race.
This is simply astounding. What a wonderful gesture, for Dara Torres to go out of her way to allow her competitor her chance to get in the race. Any other swimmer may have thought, fine, one less competitor to beat. But Dara did what she could to allow the swimmer a chance to get in the game. This is the kind of Moment that I love, when the ideals of the Olympics are seen in their truest sense.
Incidentally, Dara won the heat.
Interestingly, the gymnastics meet was surprisingly short of Moments, even with the Americans going 1-2 in the Women's All-Around. I remember The Moment of 1972 - Olga Korbut making all of America love a Soviet. She did a routine on the uneven parallel bars that made the ABC color commentator, Gordon Maddux jump out of his shoes and shout, "OH, MY... WOW!!" The gymnastics meets since then have all been laboring to create similar moments, but they've fallen short.
This year's meet had drama and fairly compelling characters, but didn't really have the panache that the gymnastics meet used to have. Possibly the monotonous perfection of the Chinese gymnasts have reduced the tension, but in the old days, the Soviets and the Romanians used to dominate the American teams, and we still couldn't get enough of them. Shawn Johnson has a very winning sweetness, but once again, she was overhyped, and when Nastia Liukin passed her for the All-Around Gold, NBC was caught offguard, finding themselves having to give her the star billing that didn't really fit with their narrative.
But there is one story that I think is far overlooked in these Olympics for the American team, and I touched on it briefly earlier, and that is the accomplishment of American Women's Team events. The American Women's teams have played or will play in the Gold Medal events in the sports of Basketball, Volleyball, Beach Volleyball, Softball, Soccer, Water Polo and Eight-Women Rowing, and swept the medals in Individual Saber Fencing.
I believe this represents a triumph not only for those athletes, but also for Title IX. This is a law that, among other things, requires high schools and colleges to devote equivalent resources to men and women's sports. This law has created tremendous opportunities for female athletes in this country, and we are seeing the fruition of such opportunities with these tremendous results.
It is unthinkable, for example, that a soccer-mad country like Brazil can only now be fielding a women's soccer team that is competitive with the Americans. That should have come long ago. I think we have Title IX to thank for these women's accomplishments. Not only have they promoted true equality on the fields, but they have lit a fire under the other countries to pay attention and devote resources to their women's programs.
More random parenthetical thoughts:
Fencing - What's with the shouting after each touch? I don't believe for a moment that it helps the athlete. Possibly it influences the judges, but they have instant replay and can make rational decisions on points without influence from the competitors. Ultimately, it must deplete energy from the fencers performance.
Baseball/Softball - They're being eliminated from the Games for London, possibly to be brought back in 2016. Chicago is a finalist to be awarded the games that year. How awesome would it be to see Olympic Baseball at Wrigley Field??
There are several reasons floated for the IOC dumping these sports. One is the American dominance of softball, an argument that may no longer be valid after Japan's stunning upset in the gold medal game yesterday. As for baseball, the decision to drop this is bizarre, as there is plenty of international interest to justify it.
Apparently the IOC wants to see major league athletes in the games. So do I. Pitting a team of minor leaguers against the Cubans is reminiscent of the '70s when amateur rules were set in stone, and we had to have college kids go up against the Soviet bloc's Best and Brightest.
However, having major leaguers in the Olympics is not so easy, since the Olympics runs during the major league season. The NBA runs in the winter, so it's no problem for LeBron to show up for a summer tournament.
However, the NHL has worked out a deal where they take two weeks off during the season on Olympic years so players can participate in the Olympics. Why can't this be done for baseball? Well, first of all, hockey is played indoors, and the long baseball season already stretches from late March to early November -- adding a week on either end makes the weather pretty chancy and compromises the World Series heavily. But Bud Selig, the Commissioner of Baseball, has shown an interesting acceptance of innovative ideas. I love interleague play and the idea that the league that wins the All-Star Game gets home field advantage in the World Series. I bet some minds can come together with a way to allow major leaguers to play in the Olympics. By the way... if they do, bet heavily on the Dominicans.
Beach Volleyball - Boy, those girls play in really really tiny bikinis. You can't help but notice.
But obviously, they have to. You can't have a lot of extra clothing when you're playing this sport. You need to keep the excess clothing off... um... well, suppose it accidentally brushes the net. You lose a point! They have to wear those itty bitty bikinis. And you have to be flexible -- you can't have clothing in your way when you're stretching out to dig out a spike. And it's so hot out there on the beach...
Then go look at the guys. They wear baggy tank tops and baggy shorts.
There is absolutely no good reason why the women have to wear practically nothing to play beach volleyball. They wear the bikinis because it sells the sport. Bless their hearts.
And speaking of women's uniforms and at the risk of sounding even more sexist -- Serena Williams must have the largest breasts of any Olympic athlete, and she plays in a sport that is quite unforgiving to large-breasted athletes. So she wears a sports bra that must be the ultimate technology in mammary-immobilization. I believe that the material of which that bra is made should be sent to armor our tanks in Iraq.
Team Handball - Basically, you have a bouncy rubber ball, about eight inches in diameter, that is easily carried in one hand. You can take three steps before you either pass, shoot or dribble it. It's played in a gym-sized court. No one except the goalie is allowed within six meters of the goal. You have to throw the ball into the goal.
I have never seen a sport look more like it was made up by the participants right before they started the game. I just can't buy into it.
Field Hockey - Why is the stick curly? Why not a flat stick, like in ice hockey, so you can get some good wood on the ball? Perhaps I need more exposure, but this game is frustratingly slow and tedious. The games seem to depend on hoping for penalty shots.
Modern Pentathlon - This is the first year I've ever seen coverage of this very strange sport. It gets little coverage because it's so archaic, combined with the fact that Americans are not very competitive in it.
The sport combines five disciplines, and a more unlikely combination of disciplines into one sport is scarcely plausible. There is fencing, shooting, swimming, equestrian and running. It was invented by Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the Modern Olympics, as a kind of modern parallel to the pentathlon of the Ancient Games.
The ancient Greek pentathlon was associated with militaristic training, and included running, wrestling, long jump, discus and javelin. de Coubertin modernized it by conceiving of an event that would be appropriate for a modern soldier. This was in 1912, and military skills were a little different then. We don't see much swordplay or horseback riding in warfare these days.
Because the event seems so out of date and the level of competition is fairly indifferent, there is a push to eliminate the event from the Games. A recent vote has kept it in place at least until 2012. I watched it today, and it was interesting in an odd way. I'm on the fence too. Let's see what 2012 brings -- maybe some kind of Rock Star Pentathlete will have his Moment that will capture the imagination of the world.
Rhythmic Gymnastics - or as I call it, Little Girls Dancing with a Ribbon. This sport, plus Trampoline, seem to me a badly-conceived attempt to extend the Gymnastics brand that exploded in the '70s and '80s. It doesn't work. Let's let it go.
Synchronized Swimming - I remember when this event premiered in the Olympics. ABC's color commentator was Esther Williams. Sheesh. If this is an Olympic sport, so is Dancing with the Stars. (BTW, I enjoy Dancing with the Stars. But it ain't Olympics.)
Indeed, there is an argument that any sport that relies on subjective judging is vulnerable to dubious results. But Figure Skating and Gymnastics aren't going anywhere. Still, there is no point in adding sports that are even flakier.
And while we're getting rid of Rhythmic Gymnastics and Synchronized Anything, let's get rid of the subjectively scored sport of Boxing. I watched Roy Jones get completely robbed in Seoul in 1988. They supposedly implemented a system that gets rid of the corruption. It hasn't. Boxing continues to be its own worst enemy.
Wrestling - I love this sport. I wish we could see more of it, so that people can see that what those silly clowns do in the WWF isn't really wrestling.
That being said, if you're a mama, you don't want to see your baby become a wrestler. To see the reason why, look at the sidelines of any wrestling match and look at the coaches. All of them -- every one of them -- have ears that look like boiled cauliflower. That's what years of slamming your head into other guys heads does to you, and if your coach doesn't have ears that look like tiny bags of mashed potatoes, he obviously didn't play hard enough when he was a wrestler himself, and you probably should find another coach.
China - They've invested some of their newfound wealth into their State Sports programs, and it shows in their results. It's impressive. Still, they have one-fifth of all humanity, and presumably one-fifth of all the talent. They can be expected, all things being equal, to get one-fifth of all the medals. They're still underachievers in my book.
But the Opening Ceremonies were spectacular.
UPDATE: Wow, I made Diary Rescue! This is my first!!
I'm so glad. I spent hours on this diary, and I posted it right before the Biden news broke, so I got scrolled off by 50 Breaking News posts almost immediately. Thanks for another chance!