Torino 2006 – Less than two weeks to go!
I love watching ALL the events – Downhill skiing, X-Country skiing, bobsledding, luge, hockey, speed skating, even curling. Truthfully, I could probably do without most of the figure skating. Apparently I’m the only one – because if the past several Olympics are any indicator, we won’t see hardly any of that. We’ll get a tightly packaged bundle from 8-11 PM that has about 1 hour of competition, 1 hour of athlete biographies and human interest stories, and 1 hour of advertisements.
Want to see curling? Unless the US makes the Gold Medal round – no way in hell. Want to see bobsledding? Unless Michael Jordan decides to make a debut as a pusher, you’ve got as much chance as seeing Michael Moore fitting into Michelle Kwan’s fluffy pink tutu. Likewise the Biathalon – apparently that’s more boring than NASCAR – so they won’t show it either. Actually – the Biathalon is better than NASCAR – it’s going in a circle repeatedly AND shooting. (side note: they should add shooting to NASCAR).
Assuming your event is actually covered – like the Men’s Giant Slalom – you’ll see the top two US athletes, plus whoever won the gold and silver (if it wasn’t the US athletes). I like watching Bode Miller quite a bit – but dammit, I actually do want to see who he beat!
This point was driven home four years ago during the Salt Lake City Olympics. I went skiing in Whistler (that’s Canada, FYI) during the Olympics. I saw coverage from 9 AM until Midnight – with literally every event being shown start to finish. I became the hugest curling fan – because all the nutty Canucks went CRAZY over it – unbeknownst to me. When I got back home – *poof* – back to the 8-11PM “Friends” treatment. Why can’t we get good coverage like the Canadians do?
Only two weeks to wait until my 8-11 timeslot gets eaten up – and I’ll love every minute of it. Well, except the ads, the bios, and the figure skating.