LOOKING AT THE GAMES
When Georgian Olympic luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed on the opening day of the Vancouver Games, a tragic dark cloud settled in over Western Canada.
Already, there was a serious problem with a track that some said was too fast and too long, resulting in the shortening of both the men's and women's course and the erection of walled protection in the area that Kumaritashvili crashed and slammed into a metal support post. A week later, bobsledders were complaining about their course, citing many of the same problems.
After the Kumaritashvili accident, a series of problems seemed to be arising, from the mundane to critical.
Chief amongst them, of course, was the weather, which was unseasonably warm, causing delays in the skiing events and training runs. Athletes were forced to shed clothing, courses were unusually soft or even non-existent. Snow was trucked in or flown in via helicopters.
Rado ReplicaThere were riots in the streets of Vancouver, staged by disgruntled residents who were following in the footsteps of unbelievably demanding rioters that have plagued games all over the earth, except in Beijing, of course.
The Vancouver Olympic committee came under fire for erecting an ugly chain-link fence around the giant cauldron that symbolized the Games, keeping fans from enjoying the experience further. The flame was a source of irritation in the first place, given that it malfunctioned during the opening ceremonies, leaving Canadian speed skater Catriona Le May Doan standing with a lit torch that couldn't do its job. She ad libbed with grace, holding the useless torch high.
There was a security glitch in which a man who is now reportedly in a mental institution printed a pass on the Internet and approached within several feet of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.
The Games went on, of course, but not for some ticket-holders to the moguls events. They were told that they couldn't attend because the ground beneath what would have been their feet, which was being buoyed by hay bales, couldn't hold their weight due to the warming conditions.
Then there was NBC. In America, we depend on NBC to convey the Olympics to us, but the network, predictably, came under all kinds of fire.
NBC was broadcasting over several on-air venues. There was NBC itself, MSNBC, USA and Universal HD. It seemed like if we wanted to watch a hockey game, we couldn't find it on NBC. We had Replica Breitling Watches to look to one of the others, and who the heck knows where those are located on our cable systems?
Because of that, many of us probably missed out on one of the wonders of these Olympics, the curling events, which have been fascinatingly broadcast over CNBC. Seriously, if you haven't caught it, you're missing one hoot of an event.
Meanwhile, if you were hoping to watch the USA-Norway men's hockey showdown, you weren't going to find it on prime time on Channel 7. Nah, you had to check out one of the subsidiary stations. Turn back to Channel 7 and you find yourself watching men's figure skating champ Evan Lysacek spinning around the ice in his frilly black see-through outfit. Not exactly something most men want to be watching.
The most aggravating aspect of the coverage might be tape delays. The downhill and Super G events, broadcast at night, were necessarily shown on delay. Half the audience probably never realized it. Half did.
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