We've been watching the Olympics on and off the last week. Susan used to be interested in figure skating, but the new scoring system, which works by fixing the results and hiding from you who did the fixing, has left her cold and unwilling to follow a sport she used to follow rabidly. I've been peeking in, but the hockey has been underwhelming and the performances underwhelming as well. While having CBC has allowed us to get live results and better coverage than NBC and their usual sportless version of the games, it's still been a pretty boring set of games.
But then, along came snowboardcross. Wow. It's interesting. It's competitive. And it's crash-filled. Susan and I tonight sat glued to the couch watching the women's races, which is something we haven't done for any Olympic event this year.
Why can't the Olympics offer more bizzare sports like this? Bringing back skeleton has helped, and curling is interesting in its focus on brains as well as athletic effort, but still, look at figure skating -- it's now the soulless heart of the games.
NBC's ratings are in the toilet this week, crushed twice by American Idol. If they would just go back to what ABC did when I was a kid and show us all the odd and bizzare competitions we used to only see every four years and on Wide World Of Sports on random Saturdays right after log rolling and cliff diving, maybe they could lure people away from the weekly trainwreck that is the opening rounds of AI.
I mean, I'd rather see a snowboarder faceplant than another William Hung wannabe commiting crimes against the Tina Turner songbook.
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Comments
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I didn't care too much for the 2004 Olympics and I've not cared for this year's games either. I've not watched much of the games. Curling's perhaps the most interesting event of the games for me, and admittedly it's because it's an event I could participate in, that is if I lived in Minnesota...
Posted by: James | February 18, 2006 11:38 PM
