Pen-Elayne on the Web

Random Olympic Observations

Beach volleyball is dumb, okay? Not just 'cause you already have a perfectly good Olympic sport in "indoor volleyball" but because the women have to wear bikinis to play (and thus leave themselves open to injuries which might be prevented by wearing more clothing) while the men play in baggy tops and loose shorts. If we want to ogle bodies in addition to skill and performance, that's what the swimming and gymnastics competitions are for. (Although I wish the cameras wouldn't slow-pan up the girls' bodies during the latter, it's sort of soft-porn creepy. And again, something I didn't see done with the male athletes.)

I had no idea that NBC owned USA and Bravo. But hey, at least with stuff being shown on five channels that I actually receive (6 including Telemundo) I can watch sports other than basketball - and occasionally competitions that don't even involve Americans!

Speaking of which, judging by the superficial and banal TV coverage, Americans are sore winners and sore losers. When "we" win, it's in-your-face destiny; when we lose, there's something amiss with the rules or there's some excuse why we didn't come in first. And honestly, even if we're second and third we still medal, I'd really prefer to hear a whole lot more of "it's amazing just to make the Olympic team, and there's no shame in not bringing home the gold" and a lot less of "oh no, now he can't break Mark Spitz's record of umpteen golds!" (Although some telecasters are getting better at saying things like "everyone here is so good, lots of different people can medal," they usually only do that when it's become clear an American isn't going to win the particular race they're calling.)

The most egregious example of American whining was the gymnastics yesterday; apparently a judge changed some rule right before the competition, "forcing" two American guys to alter high bar routines they'd been practicing for months because (I think) they wouldn't give them the degree of difficulty they wanted in order to "in your face" the competition. So they screwed up on their new routines, and of course how could that be their fault? But when one of the Chinese girls changed her uneven parallels routine on the spot and performed perfectly, "how could she do that?" It had to be impossible because "we" couldn't do it!

Hey, did you know the Aussies give their famous swimmers funny nicknames? Something we apparently never do in this country.

More as I think of it.

Update: Via Skippy, the Athens Daily blog follows the Olympics from the POV of folks in the city itself. Thanks to blogger Cameron for correcting my misperception in our comments section about the ticket prices.