The Rockwood 2004 Olympic Watch--Tuesday, August 17, 2004

Tuesday, August 17, 2004

The fluff starts to creep up. Is this an aberration, or has NBC successfully lured me in, only to go in for the kill. Let's find out...

First of all, if you haven't checked out the Blogs and Links page, you should. Today's new addition is by Eriq, who has been so inspired by the Rockwood Olympic Watch that he's created one of his own! Thanks Eriq!
Once again, NBC dives right into swimming at the top of the show. And just to show that they DO show more than just the U.S. sports, they show both heats of the Men's 100-meter Freestyle semifinals, even though neither race features Americans.
That's not to say that NBC isn't influenced by the home team, however. Fencing, a sport that I've never seen on network television before, gets prime-time coverage because one American, Sada Jacobson, gets the bronze in the saber, and another, Mariel Zagunis, gets the first gold medal in fencing for the U.S. women ever. And Zagunis, I'll note here, actually looked happy on the medal stand. She didn't, however, sing. Why isn't anyone singing? Maybe I'm the only one who finds that odd.
On to beach volleyball, where we get another fluff piece on U.S. stars Misty May and Kerri Walsh. At only 45 seconds long it probably wouldn't have bothered me except for the fact that we saw almost all of this footage two days ago with Jimmy Roberts' story. Anything that reminds me of Jimmy Roberts automatically becomes fluff.
Speak of the devil. "Chevy Olympic Moments" with Jimmy Roberts today takes us across Greece to Olympia where, in a brilliant maneuver, the Olympic committee has decided to host the shot put competition in the original 3,000-year-old Olympic stadium. In a not-so-brilliant maneuver, NBC decided to put Jimmy Roberts on the scene.

This all gave Roberts the chance to take a rambling tour of the Greek countryside and talk about how brutal the ancient Olympic games were. He described them as a combination of Woodstock and Ultimate Fighting Championships. He also said that all of the athletes competed while naked. Please, please, please tell me that Roberts isn't going to act any of these out.

Although, if we could get Jimmy in a UFC contest and leave him in the Greek countryside somewhere, that might not be so bad.
Back to swimming, where Michael Phelps won his fourth medal of the Games, this one gold, for the 200-meter Butterfly. Incidentally, who are these people who are saying that Phelps is in too many events? The athletes in the Olympics are the best in the world. If you're good enough to medal in any event, than you should be in it. Why should Phelps step aside for someone less qualified just so the medals get spread around?
Awww...gymnasts works so hard! Only they know how hard they work! Of course, maybe we would have appreciated it more if instead of spending the past two minutes talking about their practices, we could have been watching the results of those practices. Or maybe that's just me. Fluff!
Michael Phelps gets another trip to the top of the medal stand, but he still won't sing! For the love of Athena, Michael, at least smile! Sigh...
Let's get to know the Romanian gymnasts! Okay, first they swept the individual medals in Sydney in 2000, only to have the gold stripped because of a bad drug test. Then, for some reason unclear to me everyone, including the coach, has to live in a small, dumpy compound. Oh, and then there were the two Romanian gymnasts who posed nude for some Japanese publication, and...

Oh my gosh! It's Romanian Girls Gone Wild! Fluff.
Amanda Beard? She used to be a girl. Now she's a woman. Any two-and-a-half minute bio that reminds me of a Britney song? Fluff.
NBC announcers proclaim that the women's 200-meter IM winner Yana Klochkova from the Ukraine is "born for this distance." Later, different announcers proclaim that a Romanian gymnast is "born for the balance beam." Are there some kind of strange eugenics experiments that are going on in former Soviet states?
Al Trautwig claims that American Mohini Bhardwaj probably really hates being put out on the balance beam at the last minute. I start mocking Al for several minutes, figuring that any gymnast would want to be on stage as much as possible. After all, that's their dream.

Moments later, an NBC camera basically catches Mohini saying that she hated being put on the spot like that. Humph. Imagine Al being right and me being wrong like that.
In the best segment of the night, Michael Phelps returns to boost NBC's ratings by swimming with a team in the 4x200-meter Freestyle relay. The favored Australian team (featuring the Thorpedo) had not lost this event in seven years. Once again, NBC's technical and announcing excellence proved to be in the right place at the right time as the U.S beat the Australians in this seven minute race by a mere 13 hundredths of a second.

And best of all, for me anyway, when the Americans got up on the medal stand, they actually smiled and sang! Someone enjoying the fact that they're the best in the world. Imagine that.
The night closed with Jimmy Roberts live from Olympia, where the shot put competition was set to begin just 90 minutes after Bob signed us off. Jimmy looks sort of pensive when he doesn't have a pre-packaged, sugary script to read off of. But I like the fact that he's made the effort to travel across Greece for this event. Think NBC could accidentally leave him there?

So, the most fluff so far, but even 20 minutes worth is better than the last Olympics, so maybe we're still okay. I guess we'll find out tomorrow, eh? See you then.

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