Rec’ing on…Torino’s First Week

So many comments about the 2006 Winter Olympic games so far:

The Medals – Ugh. I know we live in an information and bling-bling age, but hanging big-ass cds around athlete’s necks is just cruel. And what’s with just tying the ribbon on with the loop…it just looks like the organizers forgot to design a ribbon-attachment-thingy, and had to settle with the same method employed by elementary school students.

Scoring Figure Skating – OK…I’m down with them trying to revamp the scoring so that things are fairer. Unfortunately, it’s still not quite there yet. Example? The Canadian men’s skater, Jeffrey Buttle, tries a quad-lutz, even though he knows he can’t land it, because he’ll still get credit for completing revolutions even when he falls. Excuse me? You get points for falling? That’s dumb. There comes a point in a jump when you simply have to say it was a failure. Losing both edges and having any part of your body touch the ice should mean you’ve fallen and get a zero score for the element.

When they show the score, I think it would be great if we could see what the maximum possible technical score for a routine is. That way we civilians can judge how close to “perfect” a routine was, but also give us a clue as to its difficulty.

There needs to be some honest balance between the technical score and the presentation score. Yevgeny Plushenko routine is amazing. Unfortunately, it’s all jumps and no artistry (simply waving your arms shouldn’t get high points)–and yet he got amazingly high marks for presentation. Something’s obviously wrong here. Maybe it was a shaking-the-bugs-out aberration. It seems to me that a perfectly performed technical-heavy or artistic-heavy routine should each score lower than a perfectly performed balanced routine.

I think that some adjustments to the judging would help. First, the new system takes the scores from a randomly selected nine out of twelve judges, throws out the high and low scores, and then averages. How about we use this system for technical and presentation scores separately?

Also…now the skaters have to present their routines before they skate, and the technical specialist identifies the elements the skater performs. Why not do this on the fly? Allow the skaters to improvise instead of stick to a pre-programmed routine. Some of the most entertaining routines in the past came from improvisation. Yeah, it’s easier if the specialist knows what’s coming, but I don’t think it bad to allow skaters to have some freedom.

Snowboard-cross – Wow. How great is this? Bumping, jostling, falling for no reasons–that’s fun. The grab that cost Lindsey Jacobellis her gold medal was over-done, and is probably something anyone schooled in half-pipe would have attempted given her lead. I watched her runs closely, and she did do board-grabs a lot over jumps…more than any other boarders I saw. Still, not the sort of risk you’d want to take just one jump away from an Olympic gold. Kudos, though, to Lindsey for sitting with Costas and the rest of the press and taking her lumps–it speaks well of her character. We must always remember that good judgement is the child of experience, and experience is often the child of bad judgement.

I would like to see double-elimination, though (or at least some sort of repechage, as in rowing). This sport (and 500m short-track) has so many opportunities for unintended wipe-outs, for whatever reason, that I think it would be better if there was double elimination. True double-elimination, not the why it’s done in professional pool. Yes, you can’t be 100% sure which race will be the last one, but at least all of the athletes get a chance to survive the vagaries of the sport.

Skiing – For me, this has mostly been a yawn. Yes, Kildow’s perseverance has been inspirational, but it’s hard to get over the over-hyping of Bode Miller. Even if he wins any of his up-coming races, he’s been over-hyped–just like Alberto Tomba in Olympics past.

The sliders – Luge and skeleton…Finally, some crashes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those morbid people who looks forward to the crashes, but I do like that the course is difficult. The sliders actually have to be good at what they do to survive, much less place well. Too often the courses have been about starting in the right line and then gliding. Boring, and hardly Olympian. I like that its difficult.

Ice Hockey – I’m bummed that the U.S. women won’t get to play for the gold medal. I was looking forward to watching them face off against Canada once again. Still, they did lose to the #3-ranked team in the world; since the USA is the #2-ranked team in the world, as upsets go, it’s not exactly huge.

The fact of the matter is that domination of a sport by one or two countries over a long period of time isn’t good, and it’s almost a relief that the world is catching up. Russia/Soviet men winning gold-after-gold was dull. Russian pairs winning gold-after-gold…equally dull. It also threatens the existence of sports in the games–ask the USA softball team if they think U.S. domination had any impact on their sport being dropped.

Curling – I mentioned to someone recently that starting with the Nagano games, I’ve become a fan of curling. He responded, “So, you’re the one.”

Okay. Okay. I set myself up for that one. Still, something about this utterly bizarre game of ice-shuffleboard has managed to intrigue me. Not so much the 2006 USA women’s team. They do not exude focus. They do not exude competitive fire. Instead, they seem more like a group of sorority girls having fun, and if they don’t win…oh well. Sadly, that’s also how they play. They don’t take many chances. Some of their strategies, in an effort to play defensively, are truly bewildering. No wonder they are in last play. They seem like good people, but as curlers…I’m sorry, they just aren’t showing me anything.

Javelin – I know there isn’t any javelin competition in the Winter O. I just wanted to see if you were paying attention.

The NBC Networks – By stretching out their coverage over several networks, admitting up front that the prime-time stuff is taped, and by acknowledging that the results are probably going to be known, I think NBC has struck a good balance for the games. Those of us night owls get to see some middle-of-the-night live events–including the obscure ones. Prime-time has a logical structure that isn’t too annoying and isn’t padded with incessant up-close-and-personal segments. And even the side-stuff, like Olympic Ice balances information with entertainment (although I’ve read many comments of people who find various host personalities annoying).

I think, at least for the first week, NBC earns a solid B+, maybe an A-, for the quality of its broadcast. They have definitely matured from their first attempts after winning the rights from ABC.

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