# Winter Olympics 2018



## Hcour (Dec 24, 2007)

O happy day! Winter Olympics start this wknd. My favs are pretty much any skiing, snowboarding, and whatever you call the sport where they ski and shoot. Curling I still don't get.

Let the games begin!


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

Just a note here. For those that have DirecTV and 4k, if you have the needed equipment, the Opening Ceremonies will be broadcast in 4k starting at 2PM EST tomorrow (Friday).


----------



## kettledrum (Nov 17, 2003)

Anyone know of a good place to get a grid schedule suitable for printing for TV coverage? I've seen listings but not in a grid format.


----------



## bryhamm (Jun 30, 2004)

kettledrum said:


> Anyone know of a good place to get a grid schedule suitable for printing for TV coverage? I've seen listings but not in a grid format.


I tried finding one, but didn't have any luck.


----------



## Regina (Mar 30, 2003)

I am sooooooooooooooo excited! My DVRs are about to get filled up! I DVR everything then watch at my leisure-might take me a few weeks/months but I love it all!


----------



## lambertman (Dec 21, 2002)

kettledrum said:


> Anyone know of a good place to get a grid schedule suitable for printing for TV coverage? I've seen listings but not in a grid format.


This has always been one of my favorites, but it's been made a bit more confusing due to NBC going live in all time zones:

2018 Winter Olympics Schedule on NBC - Sports Media Watch


----------



## bryhamm (Jun 30, 2004)

kettledrum said:


> Anyone know of a good place to get a grid schedule suitable for printing for TV coverage? I've seen listings but not in a grid format.


CBS sports has a listing now:

Watch the Winter Olympics: Full TV schedule, channels, time, dates, live stream


----------



## mcb08 (Mar 10, 2006)

Hcour said:


> O happy day! Winter Olympics start this wknd. My favs are pretty much any skiing, snowboarding, and whatever you call the sport where they ski and shoot. Curling I still don't get.
> 
> Let the games begin!


Biathalon. Curling rocks!!

(See what I did there? )


----------



## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

I enjoyed watching part of last night's mixed double's curling. (Thursday morning in Korea - but still happening before the opening ceremony)


----------



## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

Jonathan_S said:


> I enjoyed watching part of last night's mixed double's curling.


So did I.
It took me awhile to figure out what "OAR" meant. (Olympic Athlete from Russia)


----------



## mrizzo80 (Apr 17, 2012)

If you don't like spoilers, it's probably best to review your phone notification settings. All kinds of information apps (ESPN-type apps, CNN-type apps, your local newspaper app, Apple News, etc) are susceptible to sending out Olympic result spoilers via push notifications.


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Hcour said:


> O happy day! Winter Olympics start this wknd.


actually, they already started.. though some of it was 'preliminary' (skiing), I think some of it was real competitions? (curling, etc..)

seems like I have SD versions of all of the channels it's airing on, so I made one OP for the prime time version on NBC, and another one for the other olympics coverage, all channels, never HD.. since my Roamio was 98% full (after cleaning stuff off!).


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Figure skating team competition on right now.


----------



## Hcour (Dec 24, 2007)

Regina said:


> I am sooooooooooooooo excited! My DVRs are about to get filled up! I DVR everything then watch at my leisure-might take me a few weeks/months but I love it all!


Me, too. I'll probably be watching Olympics through the spring. Great to have something whenever you're in the mood.


----------



## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

Opening ceremonies have been streaming live since 6:00.

Nice aerial effect with a drone swarm above the snowboarders...

Without commentary a printed program would be nice, though.


----------



## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

A fun Olympics quiz from 538

What's Your Winter Olympics Sport?

Yes, I got curling.


----------



## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

Ha! Same here - curling.


----------



## realityboy (Jun 13, 2003)

Also, curling.


----------



## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

One more and we have a team.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

these days, you can play with jsut two people!


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Sigh, regular NBC Broadcasting is not off to a stellar start with the Olympics: at least in my area, the 5:00pm-8:30pm showing yesterday (the first Olympics coverage) was figure skating and some ski slaloming, which was great, but then the 8:30pm-12am showing simply was an exact repeat of that--and then the overnight showing (at around 2:30am) a condensed repeat. I understand that the overnight showing will be a shortened repeat, but with so much other content out there (how about the curling?), was there a need for the late afternoon/early evening and the evening showings to be a repeat? 

Sorry, NBC, once I figured this out, you lost me to "Gray's Anatomy" and "BBT"/"Young Sheldon." Do better and I'll watch you and your commercials.


----------



## andyw715 (Jul 31, 2007)

Hockey!


----------



## realityboy (Jun 13, 2003)

Mikeguy said:


> Sigh, regular NBC Broadcasting is not off to a stellar start with the Olympics: at least in my area, the 5:00pm-8:30pm showing yesterday (the first Olympics coverage) was figure skating and some ski slaloming, which was great, but then the 8:30pm-12am showing simply was an exact repeat of that--and then the overnight showing (at around 2:30am) a condensed repeat. I understand that the overnight showing will be a shortened repeat, but with so much other content out there (how about the curling?), was there a need for the late afternoon/early evening and the evening showings to be a repeat?
> 
> Sorry, NBC, once I figured this out, you lost me to "Gray's Anatomy" and "BBT"/"Young Sheldon." Do better and I'll watch you and your commercials.


I think this may have been a side effect of "live" in all time zones. West coast should get the prime show starting at 5pm, but then they don't have anything extra made specifically for their prime.


----------



## tivotvaddict (Aug 11, 2005)

waynomo said:


> A fun Olympics quiz from 538
> 
> What's Your Winter Olympics Sport?
> 
> Yes, I got curling.


Short track speed skating for me. I've never put on a pair of ice skates in my life, so should be interesting!


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Sure.. I think the scheduling of events PRIOR to the opening ceremony results in not a ton of events going on.

The time zone difference is an issue if you want to watch stuff occuring during the daytime in Korea. That puts it on in the wee hours of the night in the USA. But if you have NBCSN, you watch it there.


----------



## goblue97 (May 12, 2005)

realityboy said:


> I think this may have been a side effect of "live" in all time zones. West coast should get the prime show starting at 5pm, but then they don't have anything extra made specifically for their prime.


I don't quite understand the "Live in all time zones." I don't see the opening ceremonies on any NBC channel (via DirecTV) until tonight.


----------



## realityboy (Jun 13, 2003)

goblue97 said:


> I don't quite understand the "Live in all time zones." I don't see the opening ceremonies on any NBC channel (via DirecTV) until tonight.


NBC "Live". NBC's coverage will air on the west coast at the same time as the east coast. Neither is live live, but it's different than the past games where the east coast would get their coverage at 8pm ET and the west would have to wait 3 more hours.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

realityboy said:


> I think this may have been a side effect of "live" in all time zones. West coast should get the prime show starting at 5pm, but then they don't have anything extra made specifically for their prime.


Ah, got it--just like with many of the awards shows.

I don't recall this having been an issue the last Olympics. Hopefully, this will settle down. For heaven's sake, throw some original broadcasting (from NBCSN) on in Western prime time, then--it's not as if the Western states are not a significant market.


----------



## realityboy (Jun 13, 2003)

Mikeguy said:


> Ah, got it--just like with many of the awards shows.
> 
> I don't recall this having been an issue the last Olympics. Hopefully, this will settle down. For heaven's sake, throw some original broadcasting (from NBCSN) on in Western prime time, then--it's not as if the Western states are not a significant market.


It's the first time NBC has done the live in all time zones for the Olympics. Hopefully, they do have a better schedule so they're not repeating things 3 times. It looks like the east coast will have a midnight-2am block next week. So that should be live in the west from 9-11p. Not sure what you'll get at 8.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

realityboy said:


> It's the first time NBC has done the live in all time zones for the Olympics. Hopefully, they do have a better schedule so they're not repeating things 3 times. It looks like the east coast will have a midnight-2am block next week. So that should be live in the west from 9-11p. Not sure what you'll get at 8.


Thanks--here's hoping.  If it's a choice of Live with repeats or Non-live but without repeats/with 2x as much content, I'd take the latter any day.


----------



## gschrock (Dec 28, 2001)

For the summer olympics I found that it was a lot easier to just watch things via the nbc app. Among other things, I could find events that were actually live at the time, and watch them without the constant jumping back and forth the nbc primetime shows do. Sometimes it did mean dealing with limited commentary (which wasn't always a bad thing), but in general, I could find just about anything I wanted to by specific even and either watch it live or in replay. It was infinitely better than trying to watch the tv coverage. Plus of course there were tons of events that got little or no real coverage on tv that I found interesting to watch.

That said, so far it doesn't look like the nbc app is as well organized for that when I look at it, although it's possible it would be better organized if I installed the latest update for it.


----------



## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

The NBC _Sports_ app has a section with whatever is streaming live over a section of what's coming up & when.


----------



## goblue97 (May 12, 2005)

realityboy said:


> NBC "Live". NBC's coverage will air on the west coast at the same time as the east coast. Neither is live live, but it's different than the past games where the east coast would get their coverage at 8pm ET and the west would have to wait 3 more hours.


Thanks....I get it now. Seems rather misleading though, at least to me.


----------



## ayedee (Mar 26, 2004)

I only care to watch speed skating and ski jumping


----------



## goblue97 (May 12, 2005)

pdhenry said:


> The NBC _Sports_ app has a section with whatever is streaming live over a section of what's coming up & when.


Is anyone able to live stream anything through the NBC Sports app right now? It's listing a few different curling matches as "Live Now" but all I get is "Coverage to begin shortly." It's been that way for over half an hour now. I've tried it with both an Apple TV and Fire Stick. Just curious if I'm alone or if they are experiencing technical difficulties.


----------



## Howie (May 3, 2004)

I answered the questions as best I could, but several didn't really apply to me. I'm supposedly a freestyle skier by my answers. No way I could do that crap. I like black runs that have been groomed. You can go just as fast as you want to, or just as slow as you need to.


----------



## mrizzo80 (Apr 17, 2012)

The lights make it look like the stadium is virtually empty, so it looks kind of odd. 

The nighttime aerial shot of the stadium and surrounding areas looked terrific, though. The stadium looks to be in the mountains, as opposed to down in a nearby big city.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Perhaps it's my imagination, but this Olympics feels smaller than the last, in Rio. But I guess the Summer Games always are bigger than the Winter?

Watching the Opening Ceremony right now, I'm finding the entrance of the athletes incredibly touching--of course the U.S., but also those countries with just a handful of athletes, or only 1 or 2. Perhaps with all the upset going on right now, people coming together, and to excel.


----------



## TonyD79 (Jan 4, 2002)

Winter Olympics are much smaller. That’s how they could fit in Lake Placid. The summer games are about five times as big in terms of number of athletes.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Mikeguy said:


> Perhaps it's my imagination, but this Olympics feels smaller than the last, in Rio. But I guess the Summer Games always are bigger than the Winter?
> 
> Watching the Opening Ceremony right now, I'm finding the entrance of the athletes incredibly touching--of course the U.S., but also those countries with just a handful of athletes, or only 1 or 2. Perhaps with all the upset going on right now, people coming together, and to excel.


Nigerian bobsled!!!!!!


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

jsmeeker said:


> Nigerian bobsled!!!!!!


Being done by Texan women!


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Mikeguy said:


> Being done by Texan women!


Which makes it better

(even if I think they are from Houston)


----------



## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

Mikeguy said:


> Being done by Texan women!


Well, with names like Seun Adigun, Ngozi Onwumere and Akuoma Omeoga I think they might have a fair claim to being Nigerian...


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

pdhenry said:


> Well, with names like Seun Adigun, Ngozi Onwumere and Akuoma Omeoga I think they might have a fair claim to being Nigerian...


Presumably of Nigerian background, but currently living in Tx. A report this eve talked about how it came about and their building their first sled--basically, looking like a go-cart.

I like the Nigerian-Tx. overlap--it's like a joint country venture (even though the U.S. doesn't get any official "credit"), once again showing a great attribute of this country despite some current, sad attitudes.


----------



## zordude (Sep 23, 2003)

Mikeguy said:


> Presumably of Nigerian background, but currently living in Tx.


Currently living in Texas after being born and raised there


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

zordude said:


> Currently living in Texas after being born and raised there


An even sweeter confluence of the 2 countries!

P.S. Do they have Texas birth certificates proving that they really were born there rather than in Kenya oops Nigeria?


----------



## getbak (Oct 8, 2004)

Mikeguy said:


> Perhaps it's my imagination, but this Olympics feels smaller than the last, in Rio. But I guess the Summer Games always are bigger than the Winter?


The Summer is always much bigger than the Winter.

Rio had 11,237 athletes from 207 nations. Pyeongchang has 2,920 athletes from 92 nations. Only 13 of those nations have more than 100 athletes competing, and only 2, Canada and the USA have more than 200. Canada and the USA combined account for 16% of all the athletes in the Games.

Also, the parade of nations looked even smaller this year because the weather was expected to be quite cold and many of the sports had early starts today, as a result, many of the athletes skipped the ceremonies to get rest/stay warm before they start their competitions. Much fewer athletes skip the Summer Opening Ceremonies.

Many of the countries that participate in the Winter Games don't really have a winter. In many cases, the athletes are representing countries where they were born, or where one of their parents is from, even though they grew up in a European or North American country where they actually learned the sport. Some athletes don't even have that much of a history with the country they represent. The Korean hockey team has a few former NHL players from Canada and the US who moved to Korea specifically to get Korean citizenship to play in these games.

I know of a few former NHL players who moved to Kazakhstan in order to play for their national team. With the NHL not participating in these Olympics, those players likely would have been good enough to make Team Canada, but instead, they're not playing at all because the Kazakhstan team didn't qualify.


----------



## Hcour (Dec 24, 2007)

Watching speed skating now. Forgot about this one. For a sport that goes round-and-round in small circles it sure can get exciting.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Watching the games right now, and I just find the Olympics so inspiring. Watching the luge--these dudes got to over 80mph, just crazy! Snowboarding, the mind-bending air acrobatics. The ski-jumping, flying like a bird (and still landing). And the pairs ice dancing, the speed and that close synchronicity, and the lifts all while skating and turning.

I can't admire these people enough.


----------



## Zephyr (Sep 16, 2005)

Can NBC salivate over Lindsey Vonn ay more on air? I think some producer has a thing for her. If I really didn't think it's part of the production themes, I'd be worried. I see hundreds of attrative women competing. NBC should try to learn more about a few!


----------



## mrizzo80 (Apr 17, 2012)

Zephyr said:


> Can NBC salivate over Lindsey Vonn ay more on air? I think some producer has a thing for her. If I really didn't think it's part of the production themes, I'd be worried. I see hundreds of attrative women competing. NBC should try to learn more about a few!


Don't worry, Mikaela Shiffrin will take her place as who they sell in future Olympics. They will probably start the transition during PyeongChang.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Zephyr said:


> *Can NBC salivate over Lindsey Vonn ay more on air? *I think some producer has a thing for her. If I really didn't think it's part of the production themes, I'd be worried. I see hundreds of attrative women competing. NBC should try to learn more about a few!


More than me? 

They talk about others too. I think Mikaela Shiffrin gets as much attention, maybe even more so.


----------



## Hcour (Dec 24, 2007)

Wowsa. Just watched the Men's Short Track 1500 speed skating final. 9 guys on that little track. It was a thriller.


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

For listings, there's also NBC's own site. Grid format but not necessarily good for printing: Olympic TV Listings
There's also a streaming schedule.



Mikeguy said:


> Sigh, regular NBC Broadcasting is not off to a stellar start with the Olympics: at least in my area, the 5:00pm-8:30pm showing yesterday (the first Olympics coverage) was figure skating and some ski slaloming, which was great, but then the 8:30pm-12am showing simply was an exact repeat of that--and then the overnight showing (at around 2:30am) a condensed repeat. I understand that the overnight showing will be a shortened repeat, but with so much other content out there (how about the curling?), was there a need for the late afternoon/early evening and the evening showings to be a repeat?


Sorry you missed all the curling, which started Thursday. If you're trying to watch a particular sport, I highly recommend using NBC's site and getting a schedule specific to your sport so you can make sure those recordings are in your To-Do list. Curling

Be on the lookout for the really annoying "Primetime Plus" segments which are only shown once, so if you screw up and don't pad the ending, you're screwed.

Regular primetime, no problem, on the West Coast, we get it three (or more) times.


----------



## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

murgatroyd said:


> For listings, there's also NBC's own site. Grid format but not necessarily good for printing: Olympic TV Listings
> There's also a streaming schedule.
> 
> Sorry you missed all the curling, which started Thursday. If you're trying to watch a particular sport, I highly recommend using NBC's site and getting a schedule specific to your sport so you can make sure those recordings are in your To-Do list. Curling
> ...


The streaming apps are really good for filtering down to what you want to see. You can add any number of sports to a filter which then shows you the event dates and times in your local time. After the event is complete you can replay anything, including the broadcast programs (normal and enhanced with additional trivia beside and below a reduced video window).


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

pdhenry said:


> The streaming apps are really good for filtering down to what you want to see. You can add any number of sports to a filter which then shows you the event dates and times in your local time. After the event is complete you can replay anything, including the broadcast programs (normal and enhanced with additional trivia beside and below a reduced video window).


Yes, I have the NBC Sports apps (both regular and Gold) on my smartphone, and need to figure out how to turn off the push alerts to avoid the spoilers.

I missed the OAR pair's long program in the figure skating team event, which is no great loss. If I had missed a pair that I had wanted to see, I would have been really POed. I'll try to see them on the stream sometime.

Watching curling behind live now. More skating later during primetime.


----------



## Jon J (Aug 23, 2000)

The Opening Ceremonies in 4K UHD were astounding.


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

During the team figure skating, the commentators were saying one of the male pairs skaters had started out with roller skating, and didn't learn to ice skate until he was 21. There are a lot of subtle differences between ice skates and roller skates, so making the transition isn't trivial. 

It's interesting to see how winter and summer sports can share strategies, though the skills may be different. Curling and pool, skiathlon and road racing in cycling, etc.


----------



## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

Apparently there's crossover between taekwondo and cross-country skiing. Who knew?


----------



## Hcour (Dec 24, 2007)

Favorite announcer word of the 2018 Olympics: "HUGE!"

Give it a rest, fellas.


----------



## spartanstew (Feb 24, 2002)

Sunday afternoon in the winter when many folks are home watching TV and they show cross country and bi-athalon all day on NBC. Boring.


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

spartanstew said:


> Sunday afternoon in the winter when many folks are home watching TV and they show cross country and bi-athalon all day on NBC. Boring.


Somebody didn't want the broadcast audience to get girl cooties from the women's hockey game?

So sorry you were bored. Maybe if women's sports got a better break, you would have seen hockey instead.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

murgatroyd said:


> Somebody didn't want the broadcast audience to get girl cooties from the women's hockey game?
> 
> So sorry you were bored. Maybe if women's sports got a better break, you would have seen hockey instead.


They broadcast the women's hockey between USA and Finland game live on NSBNC, so if you were up and watching at the right time in the middle of the night, you could have seen it. Then they aired a replay of it this afternoon. It is pretty horrible they gave them that sort of treatment for sure.

The pit stop in the cross country skiing was interesting. I guess that brings int the NASCAR fans


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

No matter what, we're all going to get screwed. It's not a trivial task to take the event schedule and map it out to the available bandwidth in the first place, and even after that's done, stuff happens like the weather delays for the Alpine Skiing, so the schedule gets messed up anyhow.

I just wish NBC wouldn't squash the video to tell us what's coming up next when we're in the middle of an event. I get it that during long events like the ski-athlon you have no obvious break in the action to do it, but with figure skating or other sports where you have competitors going one after the other, why do they wait until they're in the middle of someone's program/run to do this? Infuriating. 

You'd think that NBC would have a clue that there might be Canadians in the USA who live too far south of the border to get Canadian TV, who might like to watch the Canadian pair team without them being smushed into 3/4s of the screen (or worse).


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

murgatroyd said:


> Sorry you missed all the curling, which started Thursday. If you're trying to watch a particular sport, I highly recommend using NBC's site and getting a schedule specific to your sport so you can make sure those recordings are in your To-Do list. Curling


The problem being, NBC simply isn't showing these things on broadcast TV. Instead, people get 2 showings of the Primetime events (once during Primetime, and once in the wee hours of the night)--and then the _oh-so-lucky_ West Coasters get it a 3rd time as well, late afternoon. At least thus far--perhaps it will change at some point.

I can't follow NBC's thought process--for heaven's sake, throw NBCSN content onto Primetime for the West Coast--it costs nothing and viewer eyes will go up. Unless the idea is to punish people for following the Olympics on broadcast and trying to get them to separately pay for the content.

NBC likes to pretend that it cares about the West Coast and is not simply catering to the East Coast. Well, then, put up, rather than simply talking. California has, what, the fifth largest economy in the world? (I might be a bit off there--been awhile since I've looked at the stats.)


spartanstew said:


> Sunday afternoon in the winter when many folks are home watching TV and they show cross country and bi-athalon all day on NBC. Boring.


To be fair, in the Summer we get the (endless) running marathon and bicycling competitions.  Although I do get your drift.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Olympics human interest story today: 2 charming and driven American ice-hockey-playing sisters (one adopted--South Korean by birth), both competing in the Olympics, one for the U.S. ice hockey team and the other for South Korea's. Unlikely though, that they will battle each other, due to how the divisions are arranged.

I always am amazed at how many Americans compete for foreign countries. Part of me is way impressed, at the U.S. spirit of reaching out to the rest of the world while not diluting our own spiritual wealth and, in fact, enhancing it (a blip of recent developments otherwise regardless).


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

Mikeguy said:


> The problem being, NBC simply isn't showing these things on broadcast TV. Instead, people get 2 showings of the Primetime events (once during Primetime, and once in the wee hours of the night)--and then the _oh-so-lucky_ West Coasters get it a 3rd time as well, late afternoon. At least thus far--perhaps it will change at some point.
> 
> I can't follow NBC's thought process--for heaven's sake, throw NBCSN content onto Primetime for the West Coast--it costs nothing and viewer eyes will go up. Unless the idea is to punish people for following the Olympics on broadcast and trying to get them to separately pay for the content.
> 
> NBC likes to pretend that it cares about the West Coast and is not simply catering to the East Coast. Well, then, put up, rather than simply talking. California has, what, the fifth largest economy in the world? (I might be a bit off there--been awhile since I've looked at the stats.)


As far as I can tell, both the West and East Coasts are getting stiffed. They're running Primetime simultaneously at (for example) 8PM Eastern / 5 Pacific. Then the West Coast gets an encore during West Coast's primetime, except some days we also get Primetime Plus, but only once. Then during the overnight, the West Coast gets the second encore. And some days, as you said, a third encore. When does the East Coast get the Primetime Plus? Is it also running at the same time as the West Coast?

I've lost track of the recordings I've screwed up so far because our local NBC station runs the full half-hour news because the live recording ran over, so I've lost the ends of the same event twice.

Anyway -- does it really matter?

The people who are really getting hurt by this are the athletes themselves. Apparently the entire figure skating competition is being shoehorned into Korea's morning so it can go into the USA's primetime, and from what I'm hearing, the start times are earlier than what you would expect for a morning session for Worlds or other international competitions. Some skaters are rising to the challenge. But usually, what you'd expect is to see a lot of butt-ugly skating, because the skaters are off their usual schedules. The athletes whose events are being cancelled or shortened because of weather are also going to suffer.

As for TV, I was wondering how many cable viewers with lower-tier packages would suffer because they didn't get the Olympic channel, but it seems like the Olympic channel is only running news and highlights.


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

Mikeguy said:


> I always am amazed at how many Americans compete for foreign countries. Part of me is way impressed, at the U.S. spirit of reaching out to the rest of the world while not diluting our own spiritual wealth and, in fact, enhancing it (a blip of recent developments otherwise regardless).


It's a mixed blessing. For the ice skaters, usually people are competing in the other country because 1) the USA is deep in talent, and they can't make the USA team or 2) the USA isn't very high up in the standings in that event, so we usually have only slot for people to compete. In other words, competing for your parents' or grandparents' country is the difference between competing or not.

They're taking a space that might have been used by a skater born in that other country. But if the sport is fairly new in that country, that skating federation might not have had qualifying skaters of their own anyway, and the imported skater can make the sport more visible in that country. They're kind of a wayfinder, and can inspire the younger ones to keep going.

Sometimes the country-swapping produces absurd pairings. Like the Ukranian-born pairs skater Aliona Savchenko, the longtime German champion, whose new (since 2014) partner, French-born Bruno Massot just got German citizenship in time for the Olympics. Yes, people born in Ukraine and France, skating for Germany.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

murgatroyd said:


> It's a mixed blessing. For the ice skaters, usually people are competing in the other country because 1) the USA is deep in talent, and they can't make the USA team or 2) the USA isn't very high up in the standings in that event, so we usually have only slot for people to compete. In other words, competing for your parents' or grandparents' country is the difference between competing or not.
> 
> They're taking a space that might have been used by a skater born in that other country. But if the sport is fairly new in that country, that skating federation might not have had qualifying skaters of their own anyway, and the imported skater can make the sport more visible in that country. They're kind of a wayfinder, and can inspire the younger ones to keep going.
> 
> Sometimes the country-swapping produces absurd pairings. Like the Ukranian-born pairs skater Aliona Savchenko, the longtime German champion, whose new (since 2014) partner, French-born Bruno Massot just got German citizenship in time for the Olympics. Yes, people born in Ukraine and France, skating for Germany.


In the case of the American sister competing for South Korea, I believe that the report stated that South Korea is new to women's ice hockey and has brought in a few foreigners. And the woman (who didn't speak Korean and had had limited interest in Korea growing up--humorously, she said that her blonde, Caucasian sister had been more interested in Korean things) said that she saw it as a way to connect to the country of her birth.

And then there's the 3 Texas women of Nigerian heritage, competing for and bringing bobsledding to Nigeria. 

It's almost like the Olympics Peace Corps.


----------



## MikeekiM (Jun 25, 2002)

Jon J said:


> The Opening Ceremonies in 4K UHD were astounding.


Who's broadcasting the Olympics in 4K UHD? I am pulling the Olympics off an OTA antenna...


----------



## Hcour (Dec 24, 2007)

Isn't the midnight broadcast just a repeat of the primetime? If so, is there a way to set the wishlist search so it only records the afternoon and primetime broadcasts? I have it set to "First-run only" but it still scheduled those midnight showings. (I have a Series 3.) Thanks.


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

waynomo said:


> A fun Olympics quiz from 538
> 
> What's Your Winter Olympics Sport?
> 
> Yes, I got curling.


Short track speedskating....my response...really?


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

Jon J said:


> The Opening Ceremonies in 4K UHD were astounding.


And in Dolby Atmos if you have that as well (I do, sounded amazing)


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

MikeekiM said:


> Who's broadcasting the Olympics in 4K UHD? I am pulling the Olympics off an OTA antenna...


DirecTV is (I'm not sure who else). They are using NHK (Japanese broadcasting company) 4k feeds, with NBC announcers. One cavet, it's a repeat of the events from the day before, so there's no live 4k. Still I've tuned in, even though I've seen the events already just to check out the look and sound. Simply amazing. I wonder if NBC will broadcast a lot of the Summer games in 4K, especially since it is IN Japan.


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

murgatroyd said:


> As far as I can tell, both the West and East Coasts are getting stiffed. They're running Primetime simultaneously at (for example) 8PM Eastern / 5 Pacific. Then the West Coast gets an encore during West Coast's primetime, except some days we also get Primetime Plus, but only once. Then during the overnight, the West Coast gets the second encore. And some days, as you said, a third encore. When does the East Coast get the Primetime Plus? Is it also running at the same time as the West Coast?
> 
> I've lost track of the recordings I've screwed up so far because our local NBC station runs the full half-hour news because the live recording ran over, so I've lost the ends of the same event twice.
> 
> ...


One thing consistent about every NBC covered Olympics, people complain. I have, for years, tried to figure out how they could do a better job, considering all the time issues, logistics and putting on Primetime what the majority of folks want to see, and I think they do a really decent job. Someone is always going to be P.O.ed because THEIR favorite sport isn't being shown when THEY want to see it. But today, you can watch whatever you want streaming. I also like the fact they are showing in primetime both NBC and NBCSN, so that you have a choice. Don't want to watch ice dancing? Switch over to NBCSN and watch snowboarding.

Some random thoughts after the first weekend:

-NBC cut out 23 minutes of the Opening Ceremony. At least they copped to it this time, but also mentioned that it would be shown in its entirety online

-I rewatched the 4k coverage of the Opening Ceremony, which WAS complete. Different NBC announcing crew (Jimmy Roberts and Mary Carillo), but interestingly I noticed during the parade of nations their comments were almost identical to the NBC main coverage, almost word for word. I imagine they give them notes of things to say.

-My problem with the coverage over the weekend is that NBCSN would show the same things as NBC and vice versa. So if NBCSN showed biathlon live NBC would show the same thing on their coverage recorded and vice versa. It left me with vast stretches of nothing to watch (I do get that the "afternoon" coverage was in the middle of the night or early morning in Korea). I suppose it will be better once I only have a chance to see the night coverage after work.

-I could listen to Johnny Mosley all day long. His enthusiasm and interesting terminology is a fun listen.

-Tara and Johnny seem much more polished than in past Olympics and I'm actually enjoying listening to them. In the past they were so over the top, that it got in the way of the event.

-I'm not a fan of figure skating, so, am I the only one who roots for these "big" skating stars to fall on their butts? Yeah, I'm so mean. It is pretty awe inspiring to see them make those quads though.

-Yes, NBC is overhyping the two female skiers, but that doesn't bother me that much, as I expected it. They have done the same for pretty much every "star" American athlete, as did ABC before them. They want you to watch and I'm sure the ratings will be huge when they are on stage.

-All I can say, is you have to be crazy to hurl down a sheet of ice at 80MPH with virtually no protection. But what a fun sport luge is to watch.

-The Olympics look fantastic in 4K. I hope they expand it to live 4K coverage for Tokyo.


----------



## osu1991 (Mar 6, 2015)

MikeekiM said:


> Who's broadcasting the Olympics in 4K UHD? I am pulling the Olympics off an OTA antenna...


Directv, Dish and Comcast XfinityVOD all are showing the 24hr delayed 4K HDR feed from NBC. From what I've heard from Dish customers, the 4K feed is commercial free and has different announcers than the main feed.


----------



## Avnow8 (Feb 12, 2018)

If you find any kind of geo-restriction while watching the winter games or you need more watch information than consider reading this comprehensive article. I have found it very helpful.


----------



## That Don Guy (Mar 13, 2003)

murgatroyd said:


> As far as I can tell, both the West and East Coasts are getting stiffed. They're running Primetime simultaneously at (for example) 8PM Eastern / 5 Pacific. Then the West Coast gets an encore during West Coast's primetime, except some days we also get Primetime Plus, but only once. Then during the overnight, the West Coast gets the second encore. And some days, as you said, a third encore. When does the East Coast get the Primetime Plus? Is it also running at the same time as the West Coast?


Sort of. The first half hour is west coast only (I think the first few couples in the figure skating team program pairs free skate round aired only in the west on Saturday night), as that is when stations in the east show their local news; after that, everybody gets the same coverage simultaneously. "Primetime Plus" is just another way of saying "late night coverage." I don't think it is repeated on NBC anywhere in the country.


----------



## TAsunder (Aug 6, 2003)

Is the NBCSports app supposed to / going to have USA and CNBC footage too? So far I've seen only NBC and NBCSN on there. Not that I really want to have to go to this garbage heap of an app even more than I do...


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Steveknj said:


> All I can say, is you have to be crazy to hurl down a sheet of ice at 80MPH with virtually no protection. But what a fun sport luge is to watch.


It's like driving down the highway, speeding--but without the car.


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

osu1991 said:


> Directv, Dish and Comcast XfinityVOD all are showing the 24hr delayed 4K HDR feed from NBC. From what I've heard from Dish customers, the 4K feed is commercial free and has different announcers than the main feed.


Same with DirecTV (only they are just showing 4k from 2PM until about 9PM in a loop).


----------



## spartanstew (Feb 24, 2002)

Mikeguy said:


> Olympics human interest story today:


I don't watch any of the stories or the talking heads (ff is used often in the Olympics). To me, the athletes are just cogs in the USA machine. I watch them compete for my personal enjoyment and in 4 years I'll watch another set compete. I don't care to know anything about them.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

spartanstew said:


> I don't watch any of the stories or the talking heads (ff is used often in the Olympics). To me, the athletes are just cogs in the USA machine. I watch them compete for my personal enjoyment and in 4 years I'll watch another set compete. I don't care to know anything about them.


I enjoy the human beings.


----------



## cmontyburns (Nov 14, 2001)

I didn't see it live (or "live" depending on when NBC actually aired it), but I would like to see the entirety of Nagasu's skate containing the triple Axel. NBC has plenty of video of the triple itself, but I want the whole routine to be able to put it in context. I don't see that they have that. Does anyone know if I'm wrong?


----------



## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

Streaming from NBCOlympics.com or one of the apps? AFIAK all events are streamed live and then as replays. I just don't know how long they keep events up for replay.


----------



## cmontyburns (Nov 14, 2001)

Website. I assume the content is the same in both places, though I’ve not been able to track down the replay on the site.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

cmontyburns said:


> I didn't see it live (or "live" depending on when NBC actually aired it), but I would like to see the entirety of Nagasu's skate containing the triple Axel. NBC has plenty of video of the triple itself, but I want the whole routine to be able to put it in context. I don't see that they have that. Does anyone know if I'm wrong?


It aired live live.


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

so much olympics! The schedule info seems to have been mostly correct (except for delayed events of course) so far.

I realize they don't want to do anything to push viewers away, but as a more casual viewer (even though the Olympics is one of the very few sports-related things I like at all), I really wish they would make it WAY more obvious on screen when an event is the actual medal round or not.. I keep having to FF and stop when a graphic comes on.. Heck, some of it, like skiing, was even *practicing*.. some is earlier rounds..

In theory, with infinite disk space and an ability to avoid spoilers, I'd record all of it and go through it oldest-> newest.. But in reality, I'm recording all of it (at least on the ~3 SD channels I've seen show up so far).. and FFing through the vast majority of it.. have watched some bits, including some interviews. When they get to more medal rounds of some events I like (the snowboard 'racing', short track skating), I'll watch more in depth..


----------



## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

Anyone else faintly hearing brief DTMF tones when they're showing the top of the half pipe? It's about the time a boarder is getting ready to begin his/her run.

It sounds like what they used to use in analog TV broadcasts to signal a local commercial break. Obviously with all-digital it's not part of TV signaling (and the tones don't accompany an ad break anyway). I just wonder what they're used for.


----------



## osu1991 (Mar 6, 2015)

First time Ive tried to watch on nbc live. The commercial load is horrendous. I wish I would have recorded the women’s half pipe final and men’s qualifying tonight, but it’s ran over and they’ve moved to NBCSN for all but the west coast, so I would have missed it.


----------



## Hcour (Dec 24, 2007)

Steveknj said:


> -All I can say, is you have to be crazy to hurl down a sheet of ice at 80MPH with virtually no protection. But what a fun sport luge is to watch.


Snowboarder Mark McMorris was in a medically induced coma last March with multiple broken bones and injuries. A year later he's barreling down the slopes and flying through the air, winning silver at the Olympics. That takes some stones.

These athletes are a different breed than the rest of us.


----------



## madscientist (Nov 12, 2003)

Anyone who hates laughing continuously should definitely NOT check out Leslie Jones live-tweeting the Olympics.

Oh, or if you don't like swearing you should also definitely not go there either.


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

madscientist said:


> Anyone who hates laughing continuously should definitely NOT check out Leslie Jones live-tweeting the Olympics.
> 
> Oh, or if you don't like swearing you should also definitely not go there either.


I'm not really a fan of hers, but I've heard it's really funny. I don't do twitter, so I'll look for other sources that will retweet some of her stuff.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Twitter is the easiest way to see it.

Leslie Jones (@Lesdoggg) | Twitter


----------



## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

Didn't they send her again this year? Her feed appears to consist only of pointing her phone at her TV.


----------



## jilter (Oct 4, 2002)

Watching the Women's snowboarding, both half-pipe and slopestyle, has been a delight. What I was taken by was not only the execution of Chloe Kim's runs, but the apparent ease with which she did it. She makes it look like a walk in the park. Maybe for her, it is!


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

pdhenry said:


> Didn't they send her again this year? Her feed appears to consist only of pointing her phone at her TV.


I heard she was going to be there eventually.

But yes, that's what she does. She points her phone at the TV and watches and makes comments. It's funny.


----------



## lambertman (Dec 21, 2002)

pdhenry said:


> Anyone else faintly hearing brief DTMF tones when they're showing the top of the half pipe? It's about the time a boarder is getting ready to begin his/her run.


Yep, it sounds like it precedes two-way radio communications by Olympic staff, but that's just my best guess. Takes me back to hearing it on ESPN and ARTS back in the day.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

pdhenry said:


> Didn't they send her again this year? Her feed appears to consist only of pointing her phone at her TV.


She should be there in-person the full 2+ weeks, as a commentator on broadcast TV. The ratings would go up.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

osu1991 said:


> First time Ive tried to watch on nbc live. The commercial load is horrendous. I wish I would have recorded the women's half pipe final and men's qualifying tonight, but it's ran over and they've moved to NBCSN for all but the west coast, so I would have missed it.


I routinely start watching NBC broadcast coverage of the games after up to a half-hour has buffered . . . . Commercials can be as frequent as after 5 minutes of Olympics coverage. But it's great for watching 2 shows at once, lol.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Mikeguy said:


> She should be there in-person the full 2+ weeks, as a commentator on broadcast TV. The ratings would go up.


She would have to restrain herself too much for the "launguage issues"


----------



## Marco (Sep 19, 2000)

osu1991 said:


> First time Ive tried to watch on nbc live. The commercial load is horrendous. I wish I would have recorded the women's half pipe final and men's qualifying tonight, but it's ran over and they've moved to NBCSN for all but the west coast, so I would have missed it.


ALWAYS record the Olympics. ALWAYS watch on delay and FF thru massive commercials.


----------



## mrizzo80 (Apr 17, 2012)

I thought the commercial load on NBC on either Saturday or Sunday night was horrendous. I made that same comment in one of the Olympic threads around here. They came as often as every five minutes as someone else noted. 

Last night seemed much better - I was wondering where the commercials were!


----------



## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

Marco said:


> ALWAYS record the Olympics. ALWAYS watch on delay and FF thru massive commercials.


If you watch the live event streams the ad breaks are short. They're very repetitive, though. The streams of the TV feeds will show a few ads and then display a banner saying "Commercial Break in Progress."


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Marco said:


> ALWAYS record the Olympics. ALWAYS watch on delay and FF thru massive commercials.


That's no good for the stuff that is truly live live.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

One major "issue" I see is a lot of repeats. I think it's been discussed some already in this thread or the other but if you are just at home all day with the TV on the Olympics, you see the same thing multiple times. Either on the same channel or different ones NBCSN showed the women's USA vs OAR game live this morning, then replayed it late this afternoon. Right now, main NBC is showing speed skating that already aired on NBCSN earlier today while NBCSN is actually airing LIVE live figure skating.


----------



## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

jsmeeker said:


> That's no good for the stuff that is truly live live.


I'm not sure if I follow. Watch on delay, skip ads...


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

pdhenry said:


> I'm not sure if I follow. Watch on delay, skip ads...


then I am not watching it live. I am watching history.


----------



## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

That's another reason I gravitate toward the live stream when I can, where incidentally the ad breaks made shorter (as I may have said). IMO most of everyone's complaints about inane NBC commentary, fake-live prime time programming, and the length of ad breaks is avoided by firing up the stream on your favorite connected device.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

pdhenry said:


> That's another reason I gravitate toward the live stream when I can, where incidentally the ad breaks made shorter (as I may have said). IMO most of everyone's complaints about inane NBC commentary, fake-live prime time programming, and the length of ad breaks is avoided by firing up the stream on your favorite connected device.


The live prime time I am watching now is really live


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

jsmeeker said:


> She would have to restrain herself too much for the "launguage issues"


Making it all the more entertaining.  (OK, limit her to the Prime Time/non-daytime feeds.)


mrizzo80 said:


> I thought the commercial load on NBC on either Saturday or Sunday night was horrendous. I made that same comment in one of the Olympic threads around here. They came as often as every five minutes as someone else noted.
> 
> Last night seemed much better - I was wondering where the commercials were!


This afternoon on broadcast, commercials were coming in at 5 or 6 minutes. I managed to watch the coverage plus another show at the same time.


----------



## osu1991 (Mar 6, 2015)

Im watching the live stream of the half pipe tonight on roku, no nbc this time


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

the weather isn't helping things either.


----------



## Hcour (Dec 24, 2007)

osu1991 said:


> Im watching the live stream of the half pipe tonight on roku, no nbc this time


How are you watching on Roku?


----------



## mrizzo80 (Apr 17, 2012)

Is Men’s Downhill qualifying the only ski event that has actually happened yet? Seems like every night skiing gets cancelled.


----------



## osu1991 (Mar 6, 2015)

Hcour said:


> How are you watching on Roku?


NBCSN app on Roku


----------



## reddice (Mar 6, 2004)

osu1991 said:


> First time Ive tried to watch on nbc live. The commercial load is horrendous. I wish I would have recorded the women's half pipe final and men's qualifying tonight, but it's ran over and they've moved to NBCSN for all but the west coast, so I would have missed it.


I agree. I turned off the local NBC feed when they broke for a stupid annoying Lyrica ad. Also the NBC announcers are so annoying like they are speaking from a funeral.

The NBC app has a different feed which has British and American announcers with no commercials during the events the announcers are great. Just when there is nothing going on practice ring they will break for local NBC Sports app only ads. The summer Olympics in Rio had the same feed.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

mrizzo80 said:


> Is Men's Downhill qualifying the only ski event that has actually happened yet? Seems like every night skiing gets cancelled.


I believe its been the only alpine skiing so far.


----------



## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

jsmeeker said:


> The live prime time I am watching now is really live


You can watch "really live" events in the live stream with shorter ad breaks and informed commentators.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

pdhenry said:


> You can watch "really live" events in the live stream with shorter ad breaks and informed commentators.


Not on my TV I can't.

Plus miss out on Johnny and Tara? no way!


----------



## cherry ghost (Sep 13, 2005)

mrizzo80 said:


> Is Men's Downhill qualifying the only ski event that has actually happened yet? Seems like every night skiing gets cancelled.


Wasn't that the Downhill portion of the Men's Combined?

I think the actual Downhill is tomorrow night.


----------



## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

jsmeeker said:


> Not on my TV I can't.
> 
> Plus miss out on Johnny and Tara? no way!


Not having a Roku is on you, my friend. 

But I do appreciate Johnny and Tara's contribution to the coverage. They're not included in the event live stream, just the two live streams of the network feed (normal and "enhanced").


----------



## reddice (Mar 6, 2004)

What is the no ads except inserted by the NBC app during no event feed? It is great just like the summer when I watched the swimming and running, no annoying sappy backstories or ads. Actually staying on one event and being able to see the final scores something that the annoying NBC channel tap delays to show more ads and other events.


----------



## reddice (Mar 6, 2004)

jsmeeker said:


> Not on my TV I can't.
> 
> Plus miss out on Johnny and Tara? no way!


Your joking right. They are like nails on a chalkboard. The "really live" stream blows them away. The commentaries actually talk about the sport not snappy remarks and they actually show the final scores.


----------



## cmontyburns (Nov 14, 2001)

Lipinski and Weir DO talk about the sport. To the extent they’ve been criticized for, you know, actually critiquing what they are watching. No question they enjoy their own image, but as commentators, they’re quite good.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

cmontyburns said:


> Lipinski and Weir DO talk about the sport. To the extent they've been criticized for, you know, actually critiquing what they are watching. No question they enjoy their own image, but as commentators, they're quite good.


They're no Scott Hamilton. One of the best, ever, and missed.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Thank you, broadcast NBC, for continuing to provide coverage for the West during Primetime while the East/Midwest/Mountain takes a half-hour break for the evening news. But how 'bout if you're going to do it, actually do it: did you think people weren't going to notice that you simply were re-playing already-run coverage from that very afternoon?!? Don't you consider that patronizing? For heaven's sake, just run some NBCSN coverage that you already have of non-broadcast coverage.

I just don't get it, obviously. It's shoddy, at best.


----------



## Hcour (Dec 24, 2007)

Mikeguy said:


> They're no Scott Hamilton. One of the best, ever, and missed.


Scott's not there anymore? Oh good, maybe I'll try watching figure skating again.


----------



## realityboy (Jun 13, 2003)

Hcour said:


> Scott's not there anymore? Oh good, maybe I'll try watching figure skating again.


He's there, but I think he just talks before the competition mostly, and I think he commentated on Ice Dancing. Tara & Johnny handle most of it though along with Terry Gannon.


----------



## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

The Japanese women are making short work of the Americans in the curling round robin.


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

Steveknj said:


> -Tara and Johnny seem much more polished than in past Olympics and I'm actually enjoying listening to them. In the past they were so over the top, that it got in the way of the event.
> 
> -I'm not a fan of figure skating, so, am I the only one who roots for these "big" skating stars to fall on their butts? Yeah, I'm so mean. It is pretty awe inspiring to see them make those quads though.


The physics involved in figure skating is pretty gnarly. Not as obviously impressive as luge, but the timing has to be spot-on, or else.

I happily root for the OARs to screw up. But if the whole evening is a splat-fest, it's boring.



cmontyburns said:


> I didn't see it live (or "live" depending on when NBC actually aired it), but I would like to see the entirety of Nagasu's skate containing the triple Axel. NBC has plenty of video of the triple itself, but I want the whole routine to be able to put it in context. I don't see that they have that. Does anyone know if I'm wrong?


I haven't checked the NBC Sports Apps yet to see if they have a replay of the women's free skate from the team competition. If I find a link, I'll come back and post it.



cmontyburns said:


> Lipinski and Weir DO talk about the sport. To the extent they've been criticized for, you know, actually critiquing what they are watching. No question they enjoy their own image, but as commentators, they're quite good.


I beg to differ. They're okay for singles. For pairs, they're awful.

I already know what Johnny and Tara are going to say. Tara will say that she's too chicken to be lifted or thrown, and Johnny will talk about how his coach made him skate pairs *as a novice*. Tara will complain that if one of the skaters misses on the side-by-side jumps, it's *so unfair* that the pair only gets credit for the lesser jump. They follow this same script for every event.

I wish they could get Kristi Yamaguchi, who at least has skated pairs and would have a clue.

Tanith (Belbin) White is fine for ice dancing.



Mikeguy said:


> They're no Scott Hamilton. One of the best, ever, and missed.


Scott Hamilton and Tanith are doing demos during Olympic Ice which are a lot of fun, showing us the fine details that Johnny and Tara could be talking about during the broadcast if they weren't so enamored of themselves.

Scott is much better in this kind of show-and-tell than he was in the booth. I can yell WHOA at the barely-landed jumps during the programs all by myself -- I don't need Scott's help. 

My rule for good commentary is pretty straightforward. Did the commentator tell me something about skating that I would have missed? Did I learn something that I can watch for myself next time? If so, that's good.

Did they talk about their own skating throughout the entire program, like a radio person who hates dead air? That's bad, especially when you listen to them all season long and they trot out the same comments over and over again.

The best hit a nice balance between telling the Olympics-only viewers what they need to know because they weren't watching all season long, and pointing out things that both new viewers and more casual fans might miss.


----------



## Hcour (Dec 24, 2007)

murgatroyd said:


> Scott is much better in this kind of show-and-tell than he was in the booth. I can yell WHOA at the barely-landed jumps during the programs all by myself -- I don't need Scott's help.


Even worse, as the jump (or whatever) is coming up he makes some kind of anticipatory groan or sound or comment like "Ohhhhhh, heeeere it coooooomes!" Crimeny, it's the single most irritating thing I've ever heard from an announcer in any sport. I cannot listen to the guy.


----------



## DeDondeEs (Feb 20, 2004)

Hcour said:


> Even worse, as the jump (or whatever) is coming up he makes some kind of anticipatory groan or sound or comment like "Ohhhhhh, heeeere it coooooomes!" Crimeny, it's the single most irritating thing I've ever heard from an announcer in any sport. I cannot listen to the guy.


Totally this. "Hererre commes the triple toe, triiiipplllee luutzzzz!"

I don't mind Johnny and Tara, it is easier to mentally tune them out and watch/hear the performance than someone screaming/groaning. Although that being said, I do respect Scott Hamilton for his obvious love of the sport.


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

murgatroyd said:


> Scott Hamilton and Tanith are doing demos during Olympic Ice which are a lot of fun, showing us the fine details that Johnny and Tara could be talking about during the broadcast if they weren't so enamored of themselves.
> 
> Scott is much better in this kind of show-and-tell than he was in the booth. I can yell WHOA at the barely-landed jumps during the programs all by myself -- I don't need Scott's help.
> 
> ...


None of these people were ever as good as Dick Button.


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

jsmeeker said:


> One major "issue" I see is a lot of repeats. I think it's been discussed some already in this thread or the other but if you are just at home all day with the TV on the Olympics, you see the same thing multiple times. Either on the same channel or different ones NBCSN showed the women's USA vs OAR game live this morning, then replayed it late this afternoon. Right now, main NBC is showing speed skating that already aired on NBCSN earlier today while NBCSN is actually airing LIVE live figure skating.


On the flip side, I was at work all day so i missed the speed skating and got to watch it for the first time on NBC. NBC also had some issues last night with content because the skiing was cancelled. That said, it can be annoying if you have access to the events all day and have to slog through them again at night (I know that happened for me over the weekend). But fear not. I took those opportunities to catch up on stuff on my DVR and checked back periodically to see if they were showing something else.


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

jsmeeker said:


> then I am not watching it live. I am watching history.


There is something about sports that makes me want to watch it live (not delayed live...live). Maybe it's just because that's what I've been doing since I was 5. But it just feels more "in the moment" when watching live. I do record games when I know I won't be home to watch though, but it never feels the same.


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

Mikeguy said:


> Making it all the more entertaining.  (OK, limit her to the Prime Time/non-daytime feeds.)
> 
> This afternoon on broadcast, commercials were coming in at 5 or 6 minutes. I managed to watch the coverage plus another show at the same time.


Yep, this is what I do. Or I switch to other Olympic coverage, or an NHL game i wanted to see...or something I recorded that I can watch in small increments. Nobody forces me to watch commercials. i do this with all live events...NFL games, baseball, or whatever. Seriously, when you have 200+ channels to watch and content on a DVR, why watch commercials, even for live events?


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

pdhenry said:


> Not having a Roku is on you, my friend.
> 
> But I do appreciate Johnny and Tara's contribution to the coverage. They're not included in the event live stream, just the two live streams of the network feed (normal and "enhanced").


Some differences in the stream feed that makes me still go to the NBC feed:

1) The "live" feed is usually some minutes behind the network live feed quite often, so it's not "quite" live.

2) The occasional stream hiccup (Granted this is much less of an issue than it used to be) but if it happens, then you fall further behind

3) Sound quality on NBCSN and most of the other network feeds (ESPN, ABC, FOX etc.) is not up to the networks. Usually no Dolby Digital. I actually get mad when regular TV doesn't have DD these days.

For as much time as I have during the week to watch the Olympics, I'm fine with NBC. As I mentioned, I have found ways to avoid commercials, and I've never found their coverage as bad as people make it out to be.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Hcour said:


> Scott's not there anymore? Oh good, maybe I'll try watching figure skating again.


He's still there. Just not doing primary coverage unless it's ice dancing. He also co-hosts an hourly segment each day with Tannith White


----------



## dwatt (Jan 11, 2007)

jsmeeker said:


> He's still there. Just not doing primary coverage unless it's ice dancing. He also co-hosts an hourly segment each day with Tannith White


Either she is very tall or he is very short. Or both. They were both in skates showing how to toss and catch while spinning and she towered over him.


----------



## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

Steveknj said:


> 1) The "live" feed is usually some minutes behind the network live feed quite often, so it's not "quite" live.


That's a common issue in any live stream. It makes it frustrating to watch a SpaceX launch in person, for example, if you're relying on the stream to know about where they are in the countdown. It's usually within 30-45 seconds in that case, though.

OTOH I've watched some live streams that are actually 5 or 10 seconds _ahead_ of the network TV feed.

But as Einstein tells us, simultaneity is relative. 

3) Sound quality on NBCSN and most of the other network feeds (ESPN, ABC, FOX etc.) is not up to the networks. Usually no Dolby Digital. I actually get mad when regular TV doesn't have DD these days.[/QUOTE]
Streaming feed audio is worse than that. Commentator audio levels not matched to arena ambient audio, ads at a different level (usually quieter than the program, thankfully). I really don't mind the audio shortcomings as long as it appears to come from the TV.

In both cases, I'm more than happy that I can see the event (more or less) live and unedited.


----------



## TAsunder (Aug 6, 2003)

Every day that goes by I become more and more cynical about the Olympic Athlete from Russia designation. It seems like barely a punishment. People who cheated aren't there, but they wouldn't be anyway would they? And they are allowed to form a team and compete in basically any team event they want. So the only real effect seems to be that they have a different flag and different designation that still has the country name in it. What am I missing?

Meanwhile all of the other countries are walking around with jackets that have their country name in English instead of their own language. So, basically, no one is using the correct name for their country except english-speaking countries.


----------



## reddice (Mar 6, 2004)

Steveknj said:


> 1) The "live" feed is usually some minutes behind the network live feed quite often, so it's not "quite" live.


So it is about 20 seconds behind. Who cares as I actually saw two more ice skaters perform while NBC was showing a annoying Lyrica ad for some bad drug I can't even buy and about six more stupid ads. They did not even show the final score of the performance before the Lyrica ad.


----------



## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

TAsunder said:


> Every day that goes by I become more and more cynical about the Olympic Athlete from Russia designation. It seems like barely a punishment. People who cheated aren't there, but they wouldn't be anyway would they? And they are allowed to form a team and compete in basically any team event they want. So the only real effect seems to be that they have a different flag and different designation that still has the country name in it. What am I missing?


Their medals aren't part of Russia's count; so any official lists showing Russian winter Olympic medals won't show or include anything from 2018. (Oh, and IIRC they don't get the Russian national anthem played at their medal ceremony. But I haven't actually watched any medal ceremonies so I can't confirm that)

The idea was apparently to punish the country, and not any individual (or team) athletes who test clean.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Jonathan_S said:


> Their medals aren't part of Russia's count; so any official lists showing Russian winter Olympic medals won't show or include anything from 2018. (Oh, and IIRC they don't get the Russian national anthem played at their medal ceremony. But I haven't actually watched any medal ceremonies so I can't confirm that)
> 
> The idea was apparently to punish the country, and not any individual (or team) athletes who test clean.


Correct: the Olympics anthem is played if an OAR athlete wins the gold.

I thought that the general solution was/is a fairly fair compromise, especially for innocent athletes.


----------



## TAsunder (Aug 6, 2003)

Athletes who weren't caught cheating aren't necessarily innocent athletes. They only caught some because of scratches in the sample cups. Not playing the anthem or including it in some arbitrary "history books" is ridiculous. Russia can still claim the medals and they still get the prestige of them. They also still sponsored the athletes and trained them for years. Anyone who was banned was caught and wouldn't have been allowed in anyway. The "punishment" seems weak to me. At a minimum they shouldn't be allowed to compete in team events.


----------



## reddice (Mar 6, 2004)

I don't understand how Russia is still able to be in the Olympics? What a stupid rule calling them OAR when it is still Russia playing.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Mikeguy said:


> Correct: the Olympics anthem is played if an OAR athlete wins the gold.
> 
> I thought that the general solution was/is a fairly fair compromise, especially for innocent athletes.


Yup.. And the Olympic flag is used. They also can't wear "Team Russia" gear or display the Russian flag on their own. They won't be "so and so representing Russsia" when their name is announced. Rather "so and so, Olympic athlete from Russia"


----------



## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

reddice said:


> I don't understand how Russia is still able to be in the Olympics? What a stupid rule calling them OAR when it is still Russia playing.


Russia as a "team" isn't at the Olympics. Just a collection of unaffiliated athletes from Russia.

I've read some discussions arguing that the USOC ought to be similarly disqualified given their recent sweeping under the rug of known sexual molestation of young athletes. So is an OAUSA delegation in our future?


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

reddice said:


> So it is about 20 seconds behind. Who cares as I actually saw two more ice skaters perform while NBC was showing a annoying Lyrica ad for some bad drug I can't even buy and about six more stupid ads. They did not even show the final score of the performance before the Lyrica ad.


Well, 20 seconds can become 30 and 30 can become a minute and you get the picture. And again, nobody is forcing you to watch the commercials. That's what NBCSN is for, or some other program (and to be efficient, I can watch something saved up on my DVR while NBC is in commercials and kill two birds with one stone, as they say). On NBCSN, you are kinda stuck watching the 3-4 commercials they DO show when they show them. Plus for all the other reasons I stated, I'll stick with the live NBC broadcasts for now. My assumption here is that NBC is actually going to show the skaters that matter anyway, so missing two inconsequential skaters is not a big deal to me.


----------



## TAsunder (Aug 6, 2003)

pdhenry said:


> Russia as a "team" isn't at the Olympics. Just a collection of unaffiliated athletes from Russia.


And yet they compete in team events together and appear on official medal counts as one team.



> I've read some discussions arguing that the USOC ought to be similarly disqualified given their recent sweeping under the rug of known sexual molestation of young athletes. So is an OAUSA delegation in our future?


I would prefer our country be banned and no athletes allowed to compete next summer games. What happened there was orders of magnitude more egregious than simply doping, even if it wasn't related to every sport as Russia's seemingly was. Only with something so forceful do I have any hope that there might be a systemic change. Pragmatically, I suppose it would have to be over before LA.


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

TAsunder said:


> Athletes who weren't caught cheating aren't necessarily innocent athletes. They only caught some because of scratches in the sample cups. Not playing the anthem or including it in some arbitrary "history books" is ridiculous. Russia can still claim the medals and they still get the prestige of them. They also still sponsored the athletes and trained them for years. Anyone who was banned was caught and wouldn't have been allowed in anyway. The "punishment" seems weak to me. At a minimum they shouldn't be allowed to compete in team events.


So you are saying that athletes that don't test positive should be guilty by association? I know this isn't America, but I still believe in due process. (BTW I have the same issue with baseball players "suspected" of taking PEDs being suspended or kept out of the HoF).

My issue with this though is, why even differentiate where they are from? By saying Olympic Athletes from Russia, it's saying that these are still Russians. Why not call them "Unaffiliated Olympic Athletes"? This way they can compete still but just can't be seen as Russian. In fact they can combine all of these types of athletes from different countries into one group and have them compete together. So in theory the "OAR" hockey team should include players from any country that does not have an official Olympic team. My gut tells me that this was a compromise with the Russians since they probably are major players in the IOC financially.


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

pdhenry said:


> Russia as a "team" isn't at the Olympics. Just a collection of unaffiliated athletes from Russia.
> 
> I've read some discussions arguing that the USOC ought to be similarly disqualified given their recent sweeping under the rug of known sexual molestation of young athletes. So is an OAUSA delegation in our future?


I would say, if this was state sponsored sexual harassment I'd agree. I might somewhat agree if the USOC was aware of the allegations and did nothing. But I think the fact that this was state sponsored and wide spread among many sports makes this a different case.


----------



## TAsunder (Aug 6, 2003)

Steveknj said:


> So you are saying that athletes that don't test positive should be guilty by association? I know this isn't America, but I still believe in due process. (BTW I have the same issue with baseball players "suspected" of taking PEDs being suspended or kept out of the HoF).


I'm saying that what they did is at best a half-measure and is totally farcical. Either just kick the ones that were caught out and leave everything else the same (aka do nothing) or actually meaningfully punish the team. Just using different colors and an anthem while allowing them to compete as a team together in team events and keeping a medal count that is only symbolically different is weak and doesn't seem like meaningful punishment.

If you don't like the idea of punishing athletes for things their country did, you must really have hated all the times countries were barred from the olympics for non-athletic reasons.


----------



## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

I'm feeling as though the US team will never get the punishment levied on the Russian team, since our funding & TV rights payments are likely an order of magnitude higher.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

TAsunder said:


> I'm saying that what they did is at best a half-measure and is totally farcical. Either just kick the ones that were caught out and leave everything else the same (aka do nothing) or actually meaningfully punish the team. Just using different colors and an anthem while allowing them to compete as a team together in team events and keeping a medal count that is only symbolically different is weak and doesn't seem like meaningful punishment.


From what I've read, Russia seems to be taking it as real (unjust) punishment.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

pdhenry said:


> I'm feeling as though the US team will never get the punishment levied on the Russian team, since our funding & TV rights payments are likely an order of magnitude higher.


And with this happening in the U.S., what do we think has been happening in the rest of the world?


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

TAsunder said:


> And yet they compete in team events together and appear on official medal counts as one team.
> 
> I would prefer our country be banned and no athletes allowed to compete next summer games. What happened there was orders of magnitude more egregious than simply doping, even if it wasn't related to every sport as Russia's seemingly was. Only with something so forceful do I have any hope that there might be a systemic change. Pragmatically, I suppose it would have to be over before LA.


And so, the athletes, including the victims, get punished?


----------



## TAsunder (Aug 6, 2003)

Steveknj said:


> I would say, if this was state sponsored sexual harassment I'd agree. I might somewhat agree if the USOC was aware of the allegations and did nothing. But I think the fact that this was state sponsored and wide spread among many sports makes this a different case.


USOC was made aware in 2015 and did nothing other than tell the USA Gymnastic person who reported it to do what he needed to do.


----------



## TAsunder (Aug 6, 2003)

Mikeguy said:


> And so, the athletes, including the victims, get punished?


As opposed to what? Eliminating USOC and USA Gymnastics and allowing another organization to be propped up in their place would be virtually meaningless because the problem is systemic, not just a couple of people here and there. Making them OAUS would be meaningless too because the same people that covered everything up would still be involved behind the scenes. Another country can feel free to sponsor them and train them. I'd be fine with that. No one should be competing for the US even under a ridiculous OAUS designation.


----------



## TAsunder (Aug 6, 2003)

Mikeguy said:


> From what I've read, Russia seems to be taking it as real (unjust) punishment.


I'm sure they are great at playing the victim. Meanwhile every other country is looking at it and thinking maybe they should get into doping because this isn't all that bad since the name of the country is still there for everyone to see.


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

Steveknj said:


> None of these people were ever as good as Dick Button.


Dick Button had his own issues, but when he was talking tech, he was superb at commentary on singles skating. One year someone at ABC had the genius idea of putting Kurt Browning (yes, from Canada) in the booth with Dick for the men's singles competition. It was Kurt's first time at US Nationals (no surprise there) so he was surprised by the "let's crank it up to 11!" atmosphere at Nationals. And since Dick had an 'audience' for his tech talk, Dick went off on all sorts of skating geekery about what the guys were doing wrong with their jumps, with levels of detail he didn't always do when he was paired with Peggy Fleming or with just Terry Gannon (or whoever the other sportscaster might be). It was great.



jsmeeker said:


> He's still there. Just not doing primary coverage unless it's ice dancing. He also co-hosts an hourly segment each day with Tannith White





dwatt said:


> Either she is very tall or he is very short. Or both. They were both in skates showing how to toss and catch while spinning and she towered over him.


Google says Scott Hamilton is 5' 3" and Tanith is 5' 6", which sounds about right. By contrast, Dick Button is (according to Google) 5' 10" and Johnny Weir is 5' 9" (they must have counted in his hair, too). Tara Lipinski is 5' 1".



Jonathan_S said:


> The idea was apparently to punish the country, and not any individual (or team) athletes who test clean.


Good luck with that. Apparently there have been backstage tradeoffs about which athletes were allowed to go in exchange for others staying behind.



Mikeguy said:


> Correct: the Olympics anthem is played if an OAR athlete wins the gold.
> 
> I thought that the general solution was/is a fairly fair compromise, especially for innocent athletes.


This is Russia we're talking about. Innocent athletes? LOL

This isn't punishment at all. Russian skaters are still there, getting overmarked for presentation, and taking space on the podium which other athletes have earned. Nothing has changed.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

TAsunder said:


> I'm sure they are great at playing the victim. Meanwhile every other country is looking at it and thinking maybe they should get into doping because this isn't all that bad since the name of the country is still there for everyone to see.


But now, for me, anything involving Russia and that name is automatically suspect and tainted. Does any country really want that? Or Putin, who lives on appearance?


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

TAsunder said:


> As opposed to what? Eliminating USOC and USA Gymnastics and allowing another organization to be propped up in their place would be virtually meaningless because the problem is systemic, not just a couple of people here and there. Making them OAUS would be meaningless too because the same people that covered everything up would still be involved behind the scenes. Another country can feel free to sponsor them and train them. I'd be fine with that. No one should be competing for the US even under a ridiculous OAUS designation.


And so, again, the athletes get punished, and the sexual assault victims a second time?

Perhaps the athletes themselves should take their organization over.


----------



## TAsunder (Aug 6, 2003)

Mikeguy said:


> And so, again, the athletes get punished, and the sexual assault victims a second time?
> 
> Perhaps the athletes themselves should take their organization over.


I don't want to derail any further, but if we can gut USOC and many or most or all NGBs and replace them with something that isn't likely to be corrupted so easily, then I'd be fine with that. I doubt they could get it in place by 2020. Anything that allows the current structure to remain unscathed isn't good enough. It's clear to me that it's a systemic problem that extends beyond gymnastics.


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

murgatroyd said:


> Dick Button had his own issues, but when he was talking tech, he was superb at commentary on singles skating. One year someone at ABC had the genius idea of putting Kurt Browning (yes, from Canada) in the booth with Dick for the men's singles competition. It was Kurt's first time at US Nationals (no surprise there) so he was surprised by the "let's crank it up to 11!" atmosphere at Nationals. And since Dick had an 'audience' for his tech talk, Dick went off on all sorts of skating geekery about what the guys were doing wrong with their jumps, with levels of detail he didn't always do when he was paired with Peggy Fleming or with just Terry Gannon (or whoever the other sportscaster might be). It was great.


I think it was usually Chris Schenkel who did the figure skating for ABC when they had the Worlds and Nationals on WWOS and the Olympics. Dick also skated as a time when the short program was actually doing ordinals (I think that's what they called them) which were just technical moves not set to music (sort of like patterns on the ice). So Dick was exceedingly technical because half the programs he used to do as a skater were technical in nature. What I always liked about Dick is he was an elegant guy and you could tell he was into the beauty and elegance of the sport.


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

Steveknj said:


> I think it was usually Chris Schenkel who did the figure skating for ABC when they had the Worlds and Nationals on WWOS and the Olympics. Dick also skated as a time when the short program was actually doing ordinals (I think that's what they called them) which were just technical moves not set to music (sort of like patterns on the ice). So Dick was exceedingly technical because half the programs he used to do as a skater were technical in nature. What I always liked about Dick is he was an elegant guy and you could tell he was into the beauty and elegance of the sport.


You're talking about compulsory school figures. See Compulsory figures - Wikipedia

They were eliminated from international competition in July 1990.

One of the reasons Scott Hamilton has his gold medal from Sarajevo is that he had built up such a commanding lead after the compulsories (figures) and short program that it didn't matter when he messed up in his long program. He had so much cushion, the others couldn't overtake him.

Brian Orser vs. Brian Boitano in figures with commentary by Button: 




When they show Boitano, you get a good look at the tracing and how he has to skate over the top of his previous tracing. (The judges are in the way for Orser's figure, so you can't see it as well.) And you can see how fiendishly small the figures are. It was expensive for people to skate figures, because they had to get completely clean ice to practice on ("patch ice").

Dick Button in his day was in a whole other category. He was a beast of a skater. He went to Europeans and *won* Europeans, and then the ISU made up a rule so that no one else could come over and do that ever again.

Dick landed the first double axel in competition and the first triple ever, a triple loop. He also competed in pairs as a junior.

He invented the camel spin and was the first skater to perform a flying camel spin (i.e. where you jump into the spin).

One of my favorite skating photos is of Dick doing a split jump with stunning extension. You can see it in this NPR story: Dick Button: A Cutting Edge Behind The Olympic Mic

It shows what Dick's skating would have been like in practice, where he wasn't hampered by that ridiculous jacket that he's wearing in the videos.

The videos which are out there don't capture the full effect of his skating because we aren't seeing him in context; we can't compare him to his contemporaries.

Dick Button - Wikipedia

P.S. ordinals are part of the scoring system, as in the team event, where they take the raw numbers and convert them into rankings.

In the old system, the ordinals were placements with 1 being best and the lowest score won, like golf.

In the team event, they did placements in the other direction, assigning 10 points to 1st place and then adding the points together from each segment.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

On yeserday's Olympic Ice, Scott Hamilton was asked who was the best ever. He said it was Button. Because he was so good plus he basically invented all the moves that everyone does today.


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

jsmeeker said:


> On yeserday's Olympic Ice, Scott Hamilton was asked who was the best ever. He said it was Button. Because he was so good plus he basically invented all the moves that everyone does today.


Well, obviously not, otherwise the jumps wouldn't be named for Axel, Lutz, Salchow, and Rittberger (who invented the loop jump -- in some countries they call it after him). But I know what Scott meant.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

murgatroyd said:


> Well, obviously not, otherwise the jumps wouldn't be named for Axel, Lutz, Salchow, and Rittberger (who invented the loop jump -- in some countries they call it after him). But I know what Scott meant.


I sorta paraphrased that too. (Scott's comments). Was probably more like invented or "perfected" or made popular . Something like that.


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

jsmeeker said:


> I sorta paraphrased that too. (Scott's comments). Was probably more like invented or "perfected" or made popular . Something like that.


It's really hard to convey in a small sound bite just how dominant Dick was in his day.

I caught a bit of one of the news/talk segments on the Olympic channel this morning (probably Winter Olympics Daily) where Jimmy Roberts was talking with a bunch of other sportscasters who don't necessarily follow figure skating all the time. I didn't catch their names because my recording was messed up. One of the guys was saying that anyone who doesn't respect figure skating obviously hadn't gone to the practices and seen the pairs practice. First he reminded everybody about how much air the women get in the lifts and the twist. Then he talked about the women who fall (like after the throw jump) and how they just get up and keep skating again. And how the audience thinks oh, she's okay. No, he said, she's not okay! It HURTS.

At least somebody has a clue that there's concrete underneath the ice sheet.


----------



## mrizzo80 (Apr 17, 2012)

Is hosting the Olympics still considered a premiere assignment? I feel like when I was younger it was, but it doesn't feel like it still is these days. 

Didn't Bob Costas used to interview athletes in studio? Is Mike Tirico doing that?


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

I was just amazed by the artistry of the Olympics athletes last evening, between the ski jumping and half-pipe boarding (those folks are suicidally crazy), cross-country skiing (the pure power of the winner, in steaming by the then-leader in an uphill climb), and pairs ice skating. During the latter, I kept on stopping the action and re-playing the maneuvers in slow-mo (thank you, TiVo!), to try to understand the near-impossible physics, with a male partner skating to his female partner and then raising her, while still skating and turning, over his head _using a single arm_, all in a fluid movement no more apparently complex than my eating with a spoon; and the obvious pure muscle core strength of the woman as she is being lifted, spun and held aloft. And they make it look like it's a natural piece of cake.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

The figure skating pair from the DPRK are good. Handling what must be incredible pressure well considering they must have zero experience with real international media.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

jsmeeker said:


> The figure skating pair from the DPRK are good. Handling what must be incredible pressure well considering they must have zero experience with real international media.


I thought they were impressive as well, esp. given their very political international debut. I guess the fear of being sent to a concentration camp if you fail in a lift or throw is a good motivator.


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

Mikeguy said:


> I was just amazed by the artistry of the Olympics athletes last evening, between the ski jumping and half-pipe boarding (those folks are suicidally crazy), cross-country skiing (the pure power of the winner, in steaming by the then-leader in an uphill climb), and pairs ice skating. During the latter, I kept on stopping the action and re-playing the maneuvers in slow-mo (thank you, TiVo!), to try to understand the near-impossible physics, with a male partner skating to his female partner and then raising her, while still skating and turning, over his head _using a single arm_, all in a fluid movement no more apparently complex than my eating with a spoon; and the obvious pure muscle core strength of the woman as she is being lifted, spun and held aloft. And they make it look like it's a natural piece of cake.


If you feel like digging into the physics sometime, you might like Kenneth Laws' book Physics and the Art of Dance. Physics and the Art of Dance

Apparently in an earlier book. Laws discussed figure skating more, but this edition sticks more to ballet. Still, al lot of the same principles will apply. I wish someone would do a book like that which was all skating.

If you can, try to catch the segments that Scott Hamilton and Tanith White are doing during Olympic Ice. They broke down the entry to the twist earlier this week.

One-armed lifts are crazy. If you want to see some of the moves in more detail, you can look around for videos of skaters from the junior ranks -- they won't be skating as fast as the seniors, so it might be easier to see what they are doing.

I still remember the Olympics Festivals from the early 90s, which was a showcase for up-and-coming skaters. Here's Jered Guzman and his partner Natalie Vlandis, who went on to win the 1996 US Junior championship. Yu can see Jered press Natalie up into the lift and then drop the arm so he's holding her up with just the one hand. He's 12.






But my favorite junior skate of all time was from Johnnie & Tiffany Stiegler, a brother & sister pair who tore up the joint in 1994 with their Swan Lake program. You can get some good looks at the star lift, and watch how Tiff holds the landing edge after the throw jump. Start at 1:48 to skip all the intro stuff.


----------



## danderson400 (Mar 6, 2015)

Steveknj said:


> I think it was usually Chris Schenkel who did the figure skating for ABC when they had the Worlds and Nationals on WWOS and the Olympics. Dick also skated as a time when the short program was actually doing ordinals (I think that's what they called them) which were just technical moves not set to music (sort of like patterns on the ice). So Dick was exceedingly technical because half the programs he used to do as a skater were technical in nature. What I always liked about Dick is he was an elegant guy and you could tell he was into the beauty and elegance of the sport.


When i watched figure skating back when i was a kid, it was usually Jim McKay with Button and Fleming- then he retired, and they used Al Michaels and then Julie Moran before they settled with Terry Gannon


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

murgatroyd said:


> If you feel like digging into the physics sometime, you might like Kenneth Laws' book Physics and the Art of Dance. Physics and the Art of Dance
> 
> Apparently in an earlier book. Laws discussed figure skating more, but this edition sticks more to ballet. Still, al lot of the same principles will apply. I wish someone would do a book like that which was all skating.
> 
> ...


Many thanks--will be looking into it all! Watching the Pairs Freestyle right now.


----------



## cmontyburns (Nov 14, 2001)

murgatroyd always rocks her Olympic posts.


----------



## cmontyburns (Nov 14, 2001)

Wow, that German pair... that was really pretty.


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

So awesome to see Zhang Hao is still skating. I saw him in 2003 at Worlds (where he and his former partner Zhang Dan placed 6th).



cmontyburns said:


> Wow, that German pair... that was really pretty.


Aliona and Bruno just kicked some serious butt there. Now *that* is what it's all about.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

cmontyburns said:


> Wow, that German pair... that was really pretty.


The guy--lifting her up at the end and making it look like she weighs as much as a piece of paper, amazing. I don't want to come across him in a dark alley.  Having said that, I found the Germans' short dance so dang entertaining--and with his one-armed lift of her, jeez. 

The NBC commentators on tonight's pairs freestyle: all in pink/with pink accents--how special . . . .


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

Holy crap, Sui and Han. How the hell does he lift her when he's in a spread-eagle?


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

Canadians land the first throw quad Salchow at the Olympics.
The OARs can't land the throw triple Salchow.

So satisfying.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

I would love to watch a master class being taught by them; or to watch them in training. Grace and finesse and beauty and force in action. It would be enough to see them do this on a dance floor. But they're doing all of this on blades on ice, booking speed. 

The men and the strength is amazing. And I still don't believe that the women can do what they actually are doing, landing jumps after having been thrown, spinning all the while.


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

The core strength needed by both partners is amazing. And Aliona and Bruno were just flying down the ice. 

And that was a free program worthy of an Olympic Gold Medal. They went out and threw down the gauntlet.


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

Meanwhile, I watched the USA-Canada women's hockey game. Great action even though it wound up a low scoring game. Body checking is not allowed but it's interesting to see how close to that they get. It's been an interesting men's tournament so far with both the USA and heavily favored UAR losing to Slovenia and Slovakia. 

It was also a shame for those of us on the East Coast to not be able to watch the second run of the women's Giant Slalom unless we were night owls. Guess there was no way around that. I hope that NBC or NBCSN reshow at least some of that during tonight's coverage (or, if I get the time during work today, I'll stream it.)

Didn't watch any of the figure skating. Just not really interested in the pairs. As there were better options (for me at least) I watched that. Thank you NBC for allowing NBCSN to broadcast at the same time as NBC.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

I stayed up to watch

Worth it


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Adam Rippon, showing again today his admirability:

When asked today if being at the Olympics is the highlight of his life, he responded that each day should be a highlight.


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

Mikeguy said:


> Adam Rippon, showing again today his admirability:
> 
> When asked today if being at the Olympics is the highlight of his life, he responded that each day should be a highlight.


So cliche'


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Steveknj said:


> So cliche'


And he did it with such class.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

NBCSN is showing Shiffrin's second GS run right now.


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

Watching figure skating practice on my tablet while listening to Olympic Ice on the TV. 

Practice is always fun to watch. Most skaters are wearing simple practice outfits, so you don't have all the distractions from the costumes. You can concentrate on the skating. And outside of the context of the programs, you can appreciate the quality of skaters' good moves. 

If you're at the venue, you notice all sorts of things that you might miss while watching on TV.


----------



## mrizzo80 (Apr 17, 2012)

murgatroyd said:


> Practice is always fun to watch.


Tanith White is fun to watch.


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

mrizzo80 said:


> Tanith White is fun to watch.


Wheaton's Law is still in effect.


----------



## mrizzo80 (Apr 17, 2012)

murgatroyd said:


> Wheaton's Law is still in effect.


Seriously?


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

mrizzo80 said:


> Seriously?


Okay, then, the ignore list it is! Bye, Felicia! Have fun watching the Olympics.


----------



## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

I have no idea what that exchange was about...


----------



## tivotvaddict (Aug 11, 2005)

cmontyburns said:


> Wow, that German pair... that was really pretty.


I was so completely distracted by her floppy fish hands that it was hard to appreciate the artistry. If she would have just extended the line of her arm through her fingertips it would have been so much more enjoyable for me. A nit, I know.....


----------



## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

hefe said:


> I have no idea what that exchange was about...


Men are dirt, I think.


----------



## cmontyburns (Nov 14, 2001)

hefe said:


> I have no idea what that exchange was about...


wheatonslaw.com explains it pretty well.


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

Factoid for people who actually care about how the current athletes are skating instead of just commenting on how decorative certain retired skaters are.

Quad Lutz jumps landed for the first time at the Olympics in the men's short program. Bragging rights for the first one go to the Bay Area's Vincent Zhou.

Vincent Zhou Just Made History By Landing a Quadruple Lutz

Vincent is the reigning World Junior champ. Pretty good to make the Olympic team and land a quad Lutz in your first year skating in Seniors.


----------



## Cainebj (Nov 11, 2006)

I'd rather watch Adam Rippon skating with no quads than most of his higher scoring quad competitors who have half his artistic excellence.


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

Cainebj said:


> I'd rather watch Adam Rippon skating with no quads than most of his higher scoring quad competitors who have half his artistic excellence.


I have to admit, he was the only skater I watched skate last night (as the other Olympic events were in Tirico mode and the hockey game i was flipping to was over), and he is one of the more entertaining skater from an artistic standpoint. But I think the judges (well the ones who actually score honestly) look for both artistic and the difficulty.

I'm really enjoying the "other" events (you know, the ones that aren't figure skating). That ski-cross or whatever it's called is amazing to watch. I know they compare it to NASCAR, but it actually reminds me of a horse race, where you have to know when to make your move and you see skiers who like to lead and others who like to come from behind. It's really fun to watch. It was also fun to watch the Korean crowd go wild when the Korean skeleton (odd name huh?) slider won the gold. Felt great for the Koreans.

Again, those of us who have to work the next day couldn't see 2nd part of the women's slalom. One of my sons got mad that they couldn't show the second run because NBC had to throw in stuff they showed that afternoon, forgetting that the skiing was live and they just COULDN'T show it. He was blaming NBC for something they had no control over. Too funny.

I'm sure tonight will be all about figure skating.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Cainebj said:


> I'd rather watch Adam Rippon skating with no quads than most of his higher scoring quad competitors who have half his artistic excellence.


I was going to post basically the same thing. Though I do have to say the performance Yuzuru Hanyu was pretty awesome and it's obvious why that is the type of skate that wins gold medals.

Adam certainly is having fun out there and make the most of his Olympic experience.


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

cmontyburns said:


> wheatonslaw.com explains it pretty well.


So saying Tanith White is fun to watch is being a dick? 



Steveknj said:


> *Again, those of us who have to work the next day couldn't see 2nd part of the women's slalom.* One of my sons got mad that they couldn't show the second run because NBC had to throw in stuff they showed that afternoon, forgetting that the skiing was live and they just COULDN'T show it. He was blaming NBC for something they had no control over. Too funny.


I'm not even sure how much later they showed the second run. I saw the first run sometime after 11 pm MST, and then they interviewed Mikaela Shiffrin and she said she was going to go take a nap before the second run, so that made it seem like the second run was still a couple hours away.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

The second run was late.. It was shown live. IIRC, it was close to 11:00 PM central time

She was one of the very first skiiers in the first run. I think like the 4th one down the hill. Her run was good enough to make her one of the very last to go in the second run. So yeah, there was a long gap of time.


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

DevdogAZ said:


> So saying Tanith White is fun to watch is being a dick?
> 
> I'm not even sure how much later they showed the second run. I saw the first run sometime after 11 pm MST, and then they interviewed Mikaela Shiffrin and she said she was going to go take a nap before the second run, so that made it seem like the second run was still a couple hours away.


On the East Coast, they showed her first run, I believe, between 8 and 9PM....then showed the Men's Super G. So I believe it was probably close to midnight on the East Coast before they showed the 2nd run. I was asleep by 11:30 PM when they resumed Olympic Coverage. I just chalk it up to "Dems da Breaks" as Korea is 14 hours later.


----------



## Cainebj (Nov 11, 2006)

jsmeeker said:


> I do have to say the performance Yuzuru Hanyu was pretty awesome and it's obvious why that is the type of skate that wins gold medals.


I agree with you on that and happy to see someone live up to their hype, but even with all his impressive quad jumps, Hanyu leaves me wanting. His performance lacks something for me.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Cainebj said:


> I agree with you on that and happy to see someone live up to their hype, but even with all his impressive quad jumps, Hanyu leaves me wanting. His performance lacks something for me.


^ +1. It's why I appreciated Javier Fernandez' more (but I'm from the peanut gallery).


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

I hope Nathan Chen has a really good long program tonight. Just want to see the kid have the skate is he capable of. I am also looking forward to Adam Rippon's program. I think he will totally bring it. Dunno if there is any chance he might slip in a quad. I understand he CAN do them, but doesn't usually. But would be cool to see him do it and nail it.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Yeah... Nathan did pretty well.


----------



## kcarl75 (Oct 23, 2002)

The number of commercials is unbearable.


----------



## cmontyburns (Nov 14, 2001)

jsmeeker said:


> Yeah... Nathan did pretty well.


Kind of astonishing that despite Chen's disastrous short program score, his long program achievement was so overwhelming that the combination would have won him gold in Sochi, going away.


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

Nathan won the free skate. 

I watched the competition on the live stream, so I don't know what Tara and Johnny were up to tonight. The commentator on the livestream was talking about some of the things that don't show up on TV, like how well the programs were laid out on the ice (which is one of the elements of the Program Components). When the top competitors were making good use of the entire rink, she let us know. The livestream is also using the flow-motion where they overlay freeze-frames of the skaters on the rink to show how they moved for the jumps or jump combinations. 

Tonight I caught the digital-only version of Olympic Ice with Ben Agosto, Charlie White, and Kristi Yamaguchi. Charlie demoed a Choctaw from the Rumba step sequence with Kristi as his partner, as well as anybody can in street shoes. He also showed Virtue and Moir side-by-side with one of the OAR couples, pointing out stuff to watch for. If you know what to look for, it's much easier to see it when the images are side-by-side. 

It's tempting to just watch the skating on the app from now on.


----------



## cherry ghost (Sep 13, 2005)

Russian mixed doubles curling Olympic bronze medallist fails drugs test


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

cherry ghost said:


> Russian mixed doubles curling Olympic bronze medallist fails drugs test


You gotta be juiced to be a able to polish the hell out the ice with a Swiffer


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

cherry ghost said:


> Russian mixed doubles curling Olympic bronze medallist fails drugs test


Meldonium again?

Meldonium - Wikipedia


> Earlier the same year (March 7), Russian ice dancer Ekaterina Bobrova announced that she had also tested positive for meldonium at the 2016 European Figure Skating Championships. Bobrova said she was shocked about the test result, because she had been made aware of meldonium's addition to the banned list, and had been careful to avoid products containing banned substances.


Note: Bobrova and her partner are at the games and will compete when the ice dancing competition starts. I wonder what backroom deal was made in order to allow her to compete.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Putin will make sure she skates


----------



## cherry ghost (Sep 13, 2005)

Her positive was probably thrown out like most of the others who tested positive in early ‘16. It couldn’t be proven that they took it after the ban went into effect.


----------



## vman41 (Jun 18, 2002)

murgatroyd said:


> Factoid for people who actually care about how the current athletes are skating instead of just commenting on how decorative certain retired skaters are.
> 
> Quad Lutz jumps landed for the first time at the Olympics in the men's short program. Bragging rights for the first one go to the Bay Area's Vincent Zhou.


Since I can't even figure out the difference between a Lutz, toe loop, or axial, don't bother getting me to count how many times round they go.


----------



## spartanstew (Feb 24, 2002)

kcarl75 said:


> The number of commercials is unbearable.


I've been recording all the coverages every day and then in the evening I watch what I can (ff'ing commercials). I don't know what's live and what's recorded, but it doesn't really matter either way.

I've mainly watched the skiing/snowboarding events, curling, and speed skating. I watch the luge/skeleton/sled events, but usually only the American entrants. I fast forward all the cross-country, biathalon, hockey, and figure skating. I was quite a bit behind on Friday, but I've caught up over the weekend.


----------



## cmontyburns (Nov 14, 2001)

I loved Lindsey Vonn’s gamesmanship at the end of her downhill training run, intentionally slowing herself down to obfuscate her time. What a [email protected]


----------



## Agatha Mystery (Feb 12, 2002)

It cracks me up that Leslie Jones and I are on the same page with Despacito. 

And you’d figure with the number of guns in this country that we would do better at the biathlon events, but no.


----------



## cmontyburns (Nov 14, 2001)

I get a crush on Tessa Virtue every time I see her skate. She and Moir are so good. Real pleasure to watch that skate.


----------



## getbak (Oct 8, 2004)

Wardrobe malfunction for the French ice dancer. She skated the last 30 seconds or so with her nipple exposed. That would have to throw your performance off.


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

cmontyburns said:


> I get a crush on Tessa Virtue every time I see her skate. She and Moir are so good. Real pleasure to watch that skate.


Tessa is fabulous. And this season's short program is so much fun. Love how Scott moves like Jagger.

Watching Olympic Ice Post show with Ben Agosto and Kristi Yamaguchi and Charlie White, plus Terry Gannon and Tanith, on the livestream. Pity the broadcast audience can't get the benefit of the post-event breakdown, but no, it's more important to show K-pop with Tara and Johnny instead. 

Oh, and another  to NBC for the "Power Move of the Day" on Olympic Ice Post showing Tessa and Scott's Twizzle sequence -- from the waist up. Talk about clue-free.

Really looking forward to tomorrow's free dance, especially Tessa and Scott, Hubbell and Donahue, and the Shibutanis.



kcarl75 said:


> The number of commercials is unbearable.


Not just the number of commercials, but the placement is unbearable, too. During the short dance, they were showing commercials in between the programs and the scores getting announced, which happens sometimes, but then they were putting the highlight replays *after* the scores were announced, instead of showing the next couple skating into position. Plus there are all the annoying blipverts where you think they're cutting to break but it's like a 5-second Toyota ad and then back to the action. Or the split-screen ads where you can't see the warm-ups because the ad takes up 3/4 of the screen.

If they had done without the annoying features and interviews with Tara and Johnny tonight, they would have had the room to put the commercials in like they usually do without destroying the flow of the event. The live stream was more like the usual broadcast and gave more of a feeling of actually being in the area (plus we got to see the ice resurfacing which is always a nice break).


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Damn the ice dancers: they make it seem so fluid and natural until you actually think about what they are doing (the close-up synchronicity and footwork without jabbing each other with a blade; the lifting and turning, skating all the while; the speeding throughout the rink while completing twisting line steps), and then they become superhumans. It just is not possible. It's like playing a piano concerto with one's entire body, while a complementary piano and concerto is opposite.

Absolutely amazing.
​


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

On the digital Olympic Ice, Ben Agosto and Charlie White were talking about the compulsory dances (which are only competed now in novice and junior). You can see a fragment of the Rumba in this season's short dance. That's one of the dances I've seen close up. When you are watching in person, seeing all the couples do exactly the same steps really makes the differences between them stand out.

Yes, it was mind-numbing to hear the same four pieces of music over and over again, but it was worth it. It trains your eye in a big hurry.

See if you can recognize the segment that's included in this season's dance.






P.S. and I thought the music the ISU used in 2001 was bad. Oy.


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

Mikeguy said:


> Damn the ice dancers: they make it seem so fluid and natural until you actually think about what they are doing (the close-up synchronicity and footwork without jabbing each other with a blade


On the digital Olympic Ice Post-show, Ben Agosto and Kristi Yamaguchi did a side-by-side comparison of their skates (Ben's ice dance boot/blade and Kristi's freestyle boot/blade). I knew about the differences in the rocker and toe picks, but I had forgotten about how different the heel of the blades are. The dance blades are much shorter, which makes it less likely you'll step on your partner's blade (which Ben doesn't recommend -- it causes a very hard fall).

It's a pity that we aren't seeing that kind of info on the main broadcast.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

murgatroyd said:


> It's a pity that we aren't seeing that kind of info on the main broadcast.


Yeah, but then there wouldn't be time to watch Tara and Johnny modeling their Hunger Games steampunk dressware, or for the same Prime Time coverage to be repeated verbatim 2 or 3 times every day.


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

Back in the VCR days, I didn't mind a verbatim repeat so much because I only had one or two VCRs. I depended on that to grab more than one channel of programming. And it's handy if you have a signal glitch -- you get a chance at getting the recording again. But three times is a little nuts.


----------



## gschrock (Dec 28, 2001)

Agatha Mystery said:


> And you'd figure with the number of guns in this country that we would do better at the biathlon events, but no.


I figure it has to be the cross country skiing part of it that kills us. While there are people that cross country ski, it's just not all that big in the US. I know I always found downhill skiing far more interesting to do than cross country.

Even then, there's enough people in this country the fact that we've never medaled in any biathalon event to me is just something along the lines of pathetic. I know I read some stuff that said this year there was a chance that it could happen, but nobody from the US even looked remotely competitive.

Personally, I find the biathalon oddly fascinating. Can't stand watching the figure skating, but I've watched all the biathalon events via the app so far. The finish for the mens mass start was just incredible.



Spoiler



I mean, the length of a shoe between first and second. After 15km!


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

The speedskaters just hit 37mph. _This is without a car. _Jeez.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

gschrock said:


> I figure it has to be the cross country skiing part of it that kills us. While there are people that cross country ski, it's just not all that big in the US. I know I always found downhill skiing far more interesting to do than cross country.
> 
> Even then, there's enough people in this country the fact that we've never medaled in any biathalon event to me is just something along the lines of pathetic. I know I read some stuff that said this year there was a chance that it could happen, but nobody from the US even looked remotely competitive.
> 
> ...


I think that part of it is, it really seems that it can be a long, arduous and lonely sport--traits not generally sought after in the U.S. It ain't the half-pipe having crowds cheering for you, all within a minute or 2.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

murgatroyd said:


> Back in the VCR days, I didn't mind a verbatim repeat so much because I only had one or two VCRs. I depended on that to grab more than one channel of programming. And it's handy if you have a signal glitch -- you get a chance at getting the recording again. But three times is a little nuts.


I'm fine with a repeat overnight--but the 3 repeats robs NBC broadcast time that otherwise could be used for what's shown on NBCSN et al. ;(


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

Mikeguy said:


> The speedskaters just hit 37mph. _This is without a car. _Jeez.


Impressive.

Ditto for the skeleton athletes who descend at 80 mph.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

murgatroyd said:


> Impressive.
> 
> Ditto for the skeleton athletes who descend at 80 mph.


head first

they be cray cray


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

jsmeeker said:


> head first
> 
> they be cray cray


Who first had the idea that the luge, with feet first, wasn't good enough, and that the athletes needed to go _head_ first?

But even the bobsled can be dangerous/more dangerous: yesterday or the day before, a bobsled turned over on the 2 athletes just after they crossed the finish line.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

3-person speed-skating today--fascinating, requiring skills like the ice dancers.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

murgatroyd said:


> On the digital Olympic Ice, Ben Agosto and Charlie White were talking about the compulsory dances (which are only competed now in novice and junior). You can see a fragment of the Rumba in this season's short dance. That's one of the dances I've seen close up. When you are watching in person, seeing all the couples do exactly the same steps really makes the differences between them stand out.
> 
> Yes, it was mind-numbing to hear the same four pieces of music over and over again, but it was worth it. It trains your eye in a big hurry.
> 
> .


I remember that time when everyone did the same dance. I'm certain we discussed it here at TCF. When was the last time they did in in the Olympics?


----------



## Howie (May 3, 2004)

Reminds me of when my niece was in her grade school class talent show, every other kid would come out and sing Tomorrow from Annie. The sun will come out tomorrow...ugh.


----------



## cmontyburns (Nov 14, 2001)

Sounds like a hard-knock life, Howie.


----------



## That Don Guy (Mar 13, 2003)

jsmeeker said:


> I remember that time when everyone did the same dance. I'm certain we discussed it here at TCF. When was the last time they did in in the Olympics?


2010. It was removed for pretty much the same reasons the compulsory figures were removed from singles skating between 1984 and 1988: it was too boring (ABC even ran a joke piece about it one year about how easy it was to get tickets to figure skating), and it wasn't fair to the countries that had to share ice rinks with other sports, so practice time was at a premium. Keep in mind that the couples had to learn four dances each year, and didn't know which one (two, before 2006) would be used until just before the event took place.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

That Don Guy said:


> 2010. It was removed for pretty much the same reasons the compulsory figures were removed from singles skating between 1984 and 1988: it was too boring (ABC even ran a joke piece about it one year about how easy it was to get tickets to figure skating), and it wasn't fair to the countries that had to share ice rinks with other sports, so practice time was at a premium. Keep in mind that the couples had to learn four dances each year, and didn't know which one (two, before 2006) would be used until just before the event took place.


Thanks. I recall it being somewhat recent. just two Olympics ago


----------



## Agatha Mystery (Feb 12, 2002)

Man, as interesting as curling is, I don’t think it is every day all day interesting


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Agatha Mystery said:


> Man, as interesting as curling is, I don't think it is every day all day interesting


Obviously, you don't own a Swiffer. )


----------



## cmontyburns (Nov 14, 2001)

This probably more rightly belongs in the HH thread, but as there has been more discussion of skating in this one:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/opinion/tara-lipinski-risks-figure-skating.html

Interesting perspective from Tara Lipinski in the NYT.


----------



## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

Mikeguy said:


> Obviously, you don't own a Swiffer. )


I miss the corn brooms!


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

I was able to answer one question the other day reading the Wikipedia for curling.. (It saying 'end' instead of what seemed like 'round' was weird as I was FFing through recordings..)

But I have a question about short track speed skating. (Hopefully I didn't ask this LAST Olympics). What do they actually have to go 'around'? That is, what is the track?

It would seem to be the 'oval' of the little plastic markers on the turn, and the short straightaway on each side.. BUT the markers are VERY often kicked out of the way, AND I very often see skaters at least slide one leg way into the 'middle' on the straightaway..

Basically, why are they never 'out of bounds'?


----------



## cmontyburns (Nov 14, 2001)

After some heartbreak in the Chock & Bates free dance, a real winner of a skate by the Shibutanis. Nice!

ETA: A medal winner of a skate, in fact.


----------



## cmontyburns (Nov 14, 2001)

VIRTUE AND MOIR!

That is how you do that. What a performance and overall finish to this competition with them, the French, and the Shibs. How awesome that Virtue and Moir had to lay down the routine of their careers to beat the French, who had just done the same, and they did. The Olympics, man.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Shib Sibs!

USA medals!!!


----------



## Zephyr (Sep 16, 2005)

I was hoping for more downhill training runs on primetime....


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

jsmeeker said:


> Shib Sibs!
> 
> USA medals!!!


I don't remember their names, but the other USA couple who finished just out of the medals. Wow, that dance was HOT. I never thought you could dance hot during the Olympics. Shame the guy fell or they might have challenged the Sibs. Watching the Canadian couple, to me, they looked about as perfect as you could doing that. It reminded me of Torvel and Dean (or however you spell it). I just remember that they were in a league of their own during their year.

As for the Olympics as a whole, I'll preface this by saying that I have always been a HUGE Olympics junkie and have VHS tapes going back as far as 1984 Summer. This, for me, has to be the most boring Olympics I've ever watched, but I think it's that way mostly because there is SO much repeated stuff. I'll watch coverage early morning before work of some event, then they'll show it again later in the afternoon, and then again in Primetime on NBC. I imagine it's because there is just not enough content and a large swath of their coverage during the day is while it's the middle of the night in Korea. So I've found myself losing interest. And outside of actual LIVE stuff, I can't remember if I've actually seen an event or not. I've also found myself starting to wonder why I'm watching something that if it was an odd Saturday afternoon and it was on, I wouldn't watch in a million years. And maybe, there's just so much else on TV these days I have to decide if I want to spend an hour watching something like early round curling or a show I've been wanting to watch, or an NHL game I'd normally be interested in. So I find myself drifting in and out of the coverage more than I ever used to.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

The time zone makes things a bit challenging if you ware watching during the daytime in the USA, sssuming you want to watch LIVE events on TV. In prime time, however, there is plenty of stuff live. Multiple things going on at once. Skiing, skating ,etc. But then they also show "old" stuff too for people that didn't watch it earlier in the day. Or in the middle of the night the previous day. 

So.. if you just watch a lot.. Or record a lot, you are seeing the same things multiple times, especially if you are wathing and recoding from both NBCSN and normal NBC.


----------



## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

I've noted that event "live" times tend to be morning (I assume for US prime time viewing) and evening, which is recorded and aired delayed in the US. There don't seem to be many events beginning between 3:00 PM and 8:00 PM local time.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

pdhenry said:


> I've noted that event "live" times tend to be morning (I assume for US prime time viewing) and evening, which is recorded and aired delayed in the US. There don't seem to be many events beginning between 3:00 PM and 8:00 PM local time.


I know they play some hockey games at night time in Korea. I've seen the tail ends of a few LIVE live on like NBCSN when I get up in the morning.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

jsmeeker said:


> The figure skating pair from the DPRK are good. Handling what must be incredible pressure well considering they must have zero experience with real international media.





Mikeguy said:


> I thought they were impressive as well, esp. given their very political international debut. I guess the fear of being sent to a concentration camp if you fail in a lift or throw is a good motivator.


I didn't realize how very real my comment was:

North Korea's failed Olympians hope to avoid dangerous consequences


----------



## Flop (Dec 2, 2005)

If I turn on the Olympics and they're showing or discussing figure skating of any kind, I just turn it off. Not interested in the slightest.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Flop said:


> If I turn on the Olympics and they're showing or discussing figure skating of any kind, I just turn it off. Not interested in the slightest.


Don't watch tonight!


----------



## SoBelle0 (Jun 25, 2002)

I don't get NBCSN, and thus have missed tons of things! The duplication of all things on NBC, when they could show me some of the content from NBCSN, has been perturbing. That's really my only complaint. 

As per usual, I'm up most of the night catching up on things, and thanks to TiVo can FF through the duplications that I notice. Sure would love to get some of that NBCSN content, though. 

What is this Stream that y'all mentioned on an app? I should have checked in here earlier!


----------



## gschrock (Dec 28, 2001)

mattack said:


> But I have a question about short track speed skating. (Hopefully I didn't ask this LAST Olympics). What do they actually have to go 'around'? That is, what is the track?
> 
> It would seem to be the 'oval' of the little plastic markers on the turn, and the short straightaway on each side.. BUT the markers are VERY often kicked out of the way, AND I very often see skaters at least slide one leg way into the 'middle' on the straightaway..
> 
> Basically, why are they never 'out of bounds'?


For the ends, indeed, it's around the plastic markers. I don't know if there's a divot in the ice where they put them so they can know where they are when they get knocked out, or if they just kinda know (you can basically see where they put water to repair the ice for the the two ends between heats, so everyone knows where the skates should be). I know cutting inside the plastic markers can indeed dq a skater. For the straights, I'm not sure there really is an out of bounds (although I could be completely wrong). The reality is, the straight is short enough, if you cut too far to the inside, you're not making the corner anyways.


----------



## gschrock (Dec 28, 2001)

So far I haven't watched any of the tv coverage from the tv provider. Everything I've watched has been via the app. It's been far less stressful than trying to worry about what nbc wants to show. And I don't have to get worked up over having to put up with yet another human interest story about some athlete that I don't really care enough about to want to know their background.


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

cmontyburns said:


> This probably more rightly belongs in the HH thread, but as there has been more discussion of skating in this one:
> 
> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/opinion/tara-lipinski-risks-figure-skating.html
> 
> Interesting perspective from Tara Lipinski in the NYT.


I'm out of free articles this month so NYTimes won't show me the article. Too bad, so sad. If Tara badmouths Michelle Kwan, she's an idiot. Let's see her go to multiple Olympics and put up with relentless media pressure. OH, WAIT, she didn't. (To be fair, she wrecked her hips with her precious 3Loop-3Loop combo, and had to get surgery. What a great message to send to future skaters -- go cripple yourself.)

I am SO over the "anniversary of Tara's medal" -- how about letting the *current* skaters have some screen time?



mattack said:


> But I have a question about short track speed skating. (Hopefully I didn't ask this LAST Olympics). What do they actually have to go 'around'? That is, what is the track?
> 
> It would seem to be the 'oval' of the little plastic markers on the turn, and the short straightaway on each side.. BUT the markers are VERY often kicked out of the way, AND I very often see skaters at least slide one leg way into the 'middle' on the straightaway..
> 
> Basically, why are they never 'out of bounds'?


Good question. The ice is the same area that the figure skaters have to share.



jsmeeker said:


> Shib Sibs!
> 
> USA medals!!!





Steveknj said:


> I don't remember their names, but the other USA couple who finished just out of the medals. Wow, that dance was HOT. I never thought you could dance hot during the Olympics. Shame the guy fell or they might have challenged the Sibs. Watching the Canadian couple, to me, they looked about as perfect as you could doing that. It reminded me of Torvel and Dean (or however you spell it). I just remember that they were in a league of their own during their year.


Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean. I highly recommend watching the OSP and OD (the shorter dances) from their Olympic years. Yeah, Bolero, yada yada but the Paso Doble OSP is a thing of beauty. Several couples have programs choreographed by Christopher Dean this year. Check the skater bios if you want to know what music was used or the choreography.

Figure Skating Biographies

What you won't find in the media guide is who designed the costumes. Which is a pity this year.

Hubbell and Donahue are the US Champs this year. Biography

The choreographer for their smokin' hot free dance, which they skated 'lights out' at US Nationals, is Marie-France Dubreuil. I watched that and said "what the <bleep> happened to Hubbell and Donahue, I don't remember them ever skating like *that* before!" and then heard who their coaches are. Basically Patrice Lauzon kicked Zach in the ass and made him quit being lazy. It's a pity what happened. The curse of US Nationals strikes again -- so many times people have had the skate of their lives at US Nationals and then can't peak again in time for the Olympics.

If you haven't seen Dubreuil and Lauzon's free dance to "At Last", you should. From 2007 Worlds:






Is there any better musical style for ice dancing than blues & jazz? I don't think so.


----------



## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

Agatha Mystery said:


> Man, as interesting as curling is, I don't think it is every day all day interesting


Heck I curl and I was skipping games or fast forwarding through parts of them. It's just too much curling to watch it all.


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

SoBelle0 said:


> I don't get NBCSN, and thus have missed tons of things! The duplication of all things on NBC, when they could show me some of the content from NBCSN, has been perturbing. That's really my only complaint.
> 
> As per usual, I'm up most of the night catching up on things, and thanks to TiVo can FF through the duplications that I notice. Sure would love to get some of that NBCSN content, though.
> 
> What is this Stream that y'all mentioned on an app? I should have checked in here earlier!


NBC Sports Mobile Apps

Schedule is on the app, or on the figure skating portal at NBC Olympics.
Figure Skating Video

All the figure skating streams: How to watch literally all the figure skating during the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang

Be sure to watch the Olympic Ice Post-show, which is tons better than the pre-show (sorry Scott and Tanith, but Ben Agosto, Kristi Yamaguchi, and Charlie White are kicking your butts).


----------



## SoBelle0 (Jun 25, 2002)

Excellent!! *Thank you!*


----------



## realityboy (Jun 13, 2003)

murgatroyd said:


> I'm out of free articles this month so NYTimes won't show me the article. Too bad, so sad. If Tara badmouths Michelle Kwan, she's an idiot. Let's see her go to multiple Olympics and put up with relentless media pressure. OH, WAIT, she didn't. (To be fair, she wrecked her hips with her precious 3Loop-3Loop combo, and had to get surgery. What a great message to send to future skaters -- go cripple yourself.)
> 
> I am SO over the "anniversary of Tara's medal" -- how about letting the *current* skaters have some screen time?
> 
> ...


She wasn't criticizing Michelle Kwan at all. The article was about the scoring at the juvenile through novice levels rewarding clean skates over trying difficult jumps putting the US women at a disadvantage once they reach the top levels.

Kwan was only mentioned in the context that the only way to compete with someone as perfect as her was to up her technical difficulties.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

The leslie jones stuff is funny. Been follwing since the start of theese games. She finally saw that there are some sisters doing the bobsled. I would not want to punch them


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

realityboy said:


> She wasn't criticizing Michelle Kwan at all. The article was about the scoring at the juvenile through novice levels rewarding clean skates over trying difficult jumps putting the US women at a disadvantage once they reach the top levels.
> 
> Kwan was only mentioned in the context that the only way to compete with someone as perfect as her was to up her technical difficulties.


Skaters who skate clean should be rewarded *somewhere*. There should be some incentive for people to learn good technique. If not, then we have an ugly sport where people fall and under-rotate their jumps all the time. Where's the fun in watching that?

On the other hand, you have the situation with the Russian skaters. The goal of skating is to do really hard stuff and make it look effortless. There's an old joke where someone said the gift of the Russians is to make the easy look difficult. (In other words, they get overmarked for the tech content they have.) There needs to be a balance, and right now, it seems everything is weighed in singles and pairs in favor of the jumpers. I don't think the answer is sacrificing fundamentals in favor of rushing jump training.

Let's not forget that Tara crippled herself and had to get surgery after she retired. I don't think encouraging lots of rotations in the early days is the way to go.


----------



## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

realityboy said:


> She wasn't criticizing Michelle Kwan at all. The article was about the scoring at the juvenile through novice levels rewarding clean skates over trying difficult jumps putting the US women at a disadvantage once they reach the top levels.
> 
> Kwan was only mentioned in the context that the only way to compete with someone as perfect as her was to up her technical difficulties.


Yeah, not a hint of bad-mouthing at all, just an analysis of strategy for scoring.


----------



## mrizzo80 (Apr 17, 2012)

I've been impressed by the audio (snowboarders tightening their equipment at the top of the hill, the clank of speed skaters running on the ice at the start of a race, downhill skiers carving turns, etc).

On the contrary, I wasn't impressed much with Big Air. The event structure looks impressive, but the event itself wasn't that interesting.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

realityboy said:


> She wasn't criticizing Michelle Kwan at all. The article was about the scoring at the juvenile through novice levels rewarding clean skates over trying difficult jumps putting the US women at a disadvantage once they reach the top levels.
> 
> Kwan was only mentioned in the context that the only way to compete with someone as perfect as her was to up her technical difficulties.





murgatroyd said:


> Skaters who skate clean should be rewarded *somewhere*. There should be some incentive for people to learn good technique. If not, then we have an ugly sport where people fall and under-rotate their jumps all the time. Where's the fun in watching that?
> 
> On the other hand, you have the situation with the Russian skaters. The goal of skating is to do really hard stuff and make it look effortless. There's an old joke where someone said the gift of the Russians is to make the easy look difficult. (In other words, they get overmarked for the tech content they have.) There needs to be a balance, and right now, it seems everything is weighed in singles and pairs in favor of the jumpers. I don't think the answer is sacrificing fundamentals in favor of rushing jump training.
> 
> Let's not forget that Tara crippled herself and had to get surgery after she retired. I don't think encouraging lots of rotations in the early days is the way to go.


Apparently, there is a Nancy Peggy Fleming competition that is coming where the Adam Rippons of the world are recognized: artistry will be the key, and with, e.g., doubles and triples graded similarly, focusing on the beauty of the execution.


----------



## spartanstew (Feb 24, 2002)

Flop said:


> If I turn on the Olympics and they're showing or discussing figure skating of any kind, I just turn it off. Not interested in the slightest.


I've been watching 4-6 hours of Olympics per day. Zero figure skating.


----------



## nyny523 (Oct 31, 2003)

Mikeguy said:


> Apparently, there is a Nancy Fleming competition that is coming where the Adam Rippons of the world are recognized: artistry will be the key, and with, e.g., doubles and triples graded similarly, focusing on the beauty of the execution.


Peggy. Not Nancy


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

I guess they started the ladies program much earlier tonight? Just now showing the first skater LIVE and it's American national championship.


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

mrizzo80 said:


> I've been impressed by the audio (snowboarders tightening their equipment at the top of the hill, the clank of speed skaters running on the ice at the start of a race, downhill skiers carving turns, etc).
> 
> On the contrary, I wasn't impressed much with Big Air. The event structure looks impressive, but the event itself wasn't that interesting.


I agree about Big Air. The athletes were getting more air and doing better tricks during the Slopestyle event.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Lindesy Vonn running the downhill coming up soon!!!


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

nyny523 said:


> Peggy. Not Nancy


Thanks, and of course *Peggy *Fleming!  She--Peggy--was very adamant about wanting to get back to a focus on the art of the sport.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Surely someone can make a quad look arty and graceful.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Just watched the women's short track speed skating--talk about controlled pandemonium! It's like family shopping on Black Friday.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

jsmeeker said:


> Surely someone can make a quad look arty and graceful.


I agree and think they can. But from an interview I watched, I think that Peggy Fleming (not her sister, Nancy  ) feels that the current emphasis and grading is such that the technical expertise (and capability) of jumps is rewarded more than the artistry. For example, from commentary during the Olympics, I understand that one can get more points from trying and failing at a quad than from doing a triple flawlessly.


----------



## mrizzo80 (Apr 17, 2012)

Dan Hicks is partnered with Rowdy Gaines in the Summer Olympics for swimming and Bode Miller in the Winter Olympics for alpine skiing. Those two color commentators are complete opposites of one another in style.

Bode Miller has taken some heat for sounding monotone (and the marriage comment last week), but I think he does a pretty good job at analysis.


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

gschrock said:


> I know cutting inside the plastic markers can indeed dq a skater. For the straights, I'm not sure there really is an out of bounds (although I could be completely wrong). The reality is, the straight is short enough, if you cut too far to the inside, you're not making the corner anyways.


But it seems like pretty much by definition, if you've hit a marker, you're going "inside" that marker's area.. (I know technically you could bump it a little, that's not what actually happens when you see them skate)

but yeah, they DEFINITELY go way inside the straightaway with one sweep of their leg (pushing -- not just in the air).


----------



## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

murgatroyd said:


> NBC Sports Mobile Apps
> 
> Schedule is on the app, or on the figure skating portal at NBC Olympics.
> Figure Skating Video
> ...


@SoBelle0 : You need to be a TV subscriber of some sort (not OTA, not "locals only" limited basic) on cable or satellite to log in and view for more than a half hour or so per day. You might try incognito browsing to avoid getting a cookie set, that way you'd time out every half hour but could reconnect, I think.

If you can get past the login requirement, streaming via an app on a smartphone/tablet app or a smartTV device is the way to go, I think.


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

murgatroyd said:


> Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean. I highly recommend watching the OSP and OD (the shorter dances) from their Olympic years. Yeah, Bolero, yada yada but the Paso Doble OSP is a thing of beauty. Several couples have programs choreographed by Christopher Dean this year. Check the skater bios if you want to know what music was used or the choreography.
> 
> Figure Skating Biographies
> 
> ...


Thanks for the info. I'm clearly not the fan of figure skating that you are (I could probably bring up the same kind of salient points around baseball though  ). so I'm not all that interested in that sort of detail. As a complete layman there are certain things you can tell by just watching. Those Canadians were just head and shoulders above everyone in their grace and precision. What those two Americans had were more primal.


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

spartanstew said:


> I've been watching 4-6 hours of Olympics per day. Zero figure skating.


I've watched some, but if there's a different competition that I'm more interested in, I'll switch. Last night, during the ladies short program, I switched to the USA-CZECH hockey game which I am far more interested in. From the talk about figure skating it felt like it was going to be the two OAR skaters and then everyone else. Just not that interested in watching the cheaters win any more medals. (considering that we've already seen another OAR athlete test positive for a banned substance, I don't get a warm and fuzzy that the athletes competing are clean, just that they haven't been caught).


----------



## cherry ghost (Sep 13, 2005)

The cross country skiing race the US women won gold in was a great race. Watch the replay.


----------



## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

mattack said:


> But it seems like pretty much by definition, if you've hit a marker, you're going "inside" that marker's area.. (I know technically you could bump it a little, that's not what actually happens when you see them skate)
> 
> but yeah, they DEFINITELY go way inside the straightaway with one sweep of their leg (pushing -- not just in the air).


I got the impression that it usually seemed to be a hand that hit the marker cone, and it's just their skate that needs to stay outside them - they can lean over the cones and they almost always have a hand extended inside the corner for balance.

(Plus, and I haven't checked the rules, the judges may care more about not clipping the utterance or exit cones of the corner than the midpoint; since a tighter midpoint is actually a slower path)


----------



## reddice (Mar 6, 2004)

gschrock said:


> So far I haven't watched any of the tv coverage from the tv provider. Everything I've watched has been via the app. It's been far less stressful than trying to worry about what nbc wants to show. And I don't have to get worked up over having to put up with yet another human interest story about some athlete that I don't really care enough about to want to know their background.


I agree. The fact that they miss entire events and every five minutes there are commercials on the main NBC channel is crazy. NBC must stand for "Nothing But Commercials". Also NBC acts like USA is the only country in the Olympics. Instead of showing other country's they rather waste airtime pre-taped a stupid human interest story. I don't even bother no more and just watch everything on the app.


----------



## SoBelle0 (Jun 25, 2002)

pdhenry said:


> @SoBelle0 : You need to be a TV subscriber of some sort (not OTA, not "locals only" limited basic) on cable or satellite to log in and view for more than a half hour or so per day. You might try incognito browsing to avoid getting a cookie set, that way you'd time out every half hour but could reconnect, I think.
> 
> If you can get past the login requirement, streaming via an app on a smartphone/tablet app or a smartTV device is the way to go, I think.


I found that out. Darn them.  
I do have a small cable package, not enough to get several of the replays I wanted. Some will play, at least. And, thankfully, someone is saving recordings for me on their TiVo. Next time I think I'll up my cable package temporarily. Although, I have gotten more accomplished not watching TV 18 hours a day. HA!


----------



## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

I watched the end of the USA hockey game. Man, they really blew the shootout. Can nobody lift the puck?


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Could we (the U.S.) please hire Norway to coach our teams and athletes in preparation for the 2022 Winter Olympics?


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Or bring back the people that coached them in 2010


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

Mikeguy said:


> Could we (the U.S.) please hire Norway to coach our teams and athletes in preparation for the 2022 Winter Olympics?


We need George Steinbrenner

Steinbrenner Helped Transform U.S. Olympic Teams

U.S. Olympic athletes owe a debt to George Steinbrenner


----------



## mrizzo80 (Apr 17, 2012)

> Remember when Chloe Kim won halfpipe gold four years ago? That was last week.




The Winter Olympics Are Way Too Long


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

mrizzo80 said:


> The Winter Olympics Are Way Too Long


Meh

It's shorter than the NCAA Basketball Tournament


----------



## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

SoBelle0 said:


> Although, I have gotten more accomplished not watching TV 18 hours a day. HA!


The worst part is if you want to watch live it seems like it's all at 11:00 PM and 6:30 AM. I haven't slept well in a couple of weeks!


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

USA vs. Canada for he gold medal tonight. Game starts at 9:45 PM Central (at least that is the TV coverage start time on NBCSN)


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

jsmeeker said:


> USA vs. Canada for he gold medal tonight. Game starts at 9:45 PM Central (at least that is the TV coverage start time on NBCSN)


According to the official Olympics website, the game is scheduled to start at 10:10 PM Central.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

And so, would I understand correctly that as a major Olympics sponsor, NBC gets to negotiate event times with the Olympics governing board? And that by virtue of the millions that it pays, NBC gets to set the schedule, at least in part, for the entire world?


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Mikeguy said:


> And so, would I understand correctly that as a major Olympics sponsor, NBC gets to negotiate event times with the Olympics governing board? And that by virtue of the millions that it pays, NBC gets to set the schedule, at least in part, for the entire world?


To some degree, yes. Though this works out nicely for Canada too 

The IOC gets a significant chunk of the total fees collected for the rights to broadcast the games from the USA.


----------



## mrizzo80 (Apr 17, 2012)

Mikeguy said:


> And so, would I understand correctly that as a major Olympics sponsor, NBC gets to negotiate event times with the Olympics governing board? And that by virtue of the millions that it pays, NBC gets to set the schedule, at least in part, for the entire world?


For Sochi 2014, NBC was responsible for 62% of total broadcast fees paid to the IOC. NBC paid $775M that year.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-of-all-olympic-games/?utm_term=.6632685d9cf3

NBC is paying $963M for Pyeongchang 2018. Not sure what that works out to in percentage terms of the total IOC broadcast fees.

NBC Olympic broadcasts - Wikipedia


----------



## mrizzo80 (Apr 17, 2012)

Looks like someone is entertaining themself on Wikipedia.

NBC Olympic broadcasts - Wikipedia



> NBC is projected to lose over 600 million in the latest games, *due in large part to showing nothing but boring skiing during primetime hours, it is recommended that NBC hire professional cheerleaders for the 2022 games in Buffalo, NY, to increase viewership and to gain profits. Critics have called the 2018 games a bungled mess with lackluster talent, whiles question as to whether snowboarding and similar x game sports are really worthy of Olympic gold, since most athletes make money through sponsorship advertising and that very little physical effort is required to ride a snowboard up and down a half pipe course.*


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

lol

Glad you captured it before it gets edited.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

As someone who is watching virtually all the broadcast coverage, would NBC _please _hire me for a study group?


----------



## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

Wow, the women's hockey final was electrifying!


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

SLAY ALL DAY!!

USA!


----------



## That Don Guy (Mar 13, 2003)

Mikeguy said:


> And so, would I understand correctly that as a major Olympics sponsor, NBC gets to negotiate event times with the Olympics governing board? And that by virtue of the millions that it pays, NBC gets to set the schedule, at least in part, for the entire world?


Yes, although it doesn't have the final say about everything - otherwise, the opening and closing ceremonies would have started at 10 AM local time so they could air live in the USA. However, the figure skating does start at 10 AM local time, and it is just because NBC wants it that way. However, Beijing is one hour behind Korea, so it remains to be seen if they will move it back to 9 AM in 2022.

Nothing new about this; in fact, supposedly, Korea reintroduced daylight saving time in 1988 just so it could start each day's track and field events at 11 AM instead of 10 AM in order to show then live in the USA (well, back then, just the eastern half of the country).

Another thing I remember from 1988: at the boxing venue, there was an area near the ring set aside for just the Korean broadcasters and NBC.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

I think the figure skating early in the day works out OK for the locals in Korea. They use the same venue for short track speed skating, which is very popular there. They do well in that sport. It takes a few hours to covert over to do the short track event, so i guess that puts those events into the evening time in Korea. Which I would think works out nice for them for TV coverage

EDIT: I am sure things will work out nicely in Beijing for the winter games. They made it so that premier  events in the Summer Games started at a time that happened to be convenient for US prime time coverage. Stuff like swimming. Early starts.


----------



## gschrock (Dec 28, 2001)

On the theory of whether some of these x-game type events really belong in the olympics or not (and I have to admit I've got somewhat mixed opinions on the matter myself). I was watching the Ski Cross event last night. They had 31 people in the 1/8 heats. 3 of those folks ended up stretchered off the hill. Now, I recognize that olympic events can be dangerous, and that people do get hurt and even killed at times. But this just seemed to me to be an awfully high ratio of people having potentially serious injuries. Where do we draw the line between what's a reasonable event and what's something where the risks are just too high for it to be included in the olympics?

(And I'll admit, I'm something of a hypocrite - I fully admit part of the reason I watch it is the potential for people wiping out. Although I'd far rather see people wiping out and being able to get up and finish skiing down the mountain versus seeing them carted off on a stretcher with a broken pelvis.)


----------



## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

I really enjoy watching curling every four years.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

pdhenry said:


> I really enjoy watching curling every four years.


Yup

it's long enough for me to forget almost everything about it and learn about it all over again and also goof on it too


----------



## Cabinwood (Mar 11, 2000)

I just finished watching the Gold Medal Hockey game. That was intense! I can't even imagine the pressure on the 20 year old goalie


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

gschrock said:


> On the theory of whether some of these x-game type events really belong in the olympics or not (and I have to admit I've got somewhat mixed opinions on the matter myself). I was watching the Ski Cross event last night.


I'm watching fewer events in full this time around.. mostly short track speed skating, ski & snowboard cross.. and a bit of other stuff. All three of those are the 'newer' events. I don't think I've ever watched a significant amount of actual X games.

I definitely think these newer events are far more entertaining.. mostly the ones with people against each other at the same time.


----------



## cmontyburns (Nov 14, 2001)

Rewinding to the start of the week and Virtue & Moir's ice dance gold...

After their win, of course they faced the usual battery of questions about whether they are a couple. (No.) I don't think it's a topic the media needed to have bothered with (especially since they get asked it probably at every major competition), but Twitter users had some understandable fun after the performance. I thought tweets like this were amusing and frankly pretty apt.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/965806440932835328

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/963498299360792576

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/965804836561276929


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

cmontyburns said:


> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/965804836561276929


Good one.


----------



## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

That looked fishy. The South Korean won in the semi final in a snowboard race, a photo finish, but the slomo looked like the other guy won...


----------



## Agatha Mystery (Feb 12, 2002)

With directv’s olympic experience channel (205) I have watched more Olympics than I usually watch. I’ve actually enjoyed it. I’ve never really liked the multi channel channel before for sporting events but it worked great for this.


----------



## Agatha Mystery (Feb 12, 2002)

I also saw a great tweet from Alex Shibutani about men’s curling calling it “miracurl on ice” 

Honestly, I found myself crying over curling when I watched the event and the interview afterward this morning. I’m a fan of team reject. That is some serious comeback play.


----------



## cmontyburns (Nov 14, 2001)

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/967267014732668928


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Agatha Mystery said:


> I also saw a great tweet from Alex Shibutani about men's curling calling it "miracurl on ice"
> 
> Honestly, I found myself crying over curling when I watched the event and the interview afterward this morning. I'm a fan of team reject. That is some serious comeback play.


Wasn't the reaction to curling--curling?!--just fascinating?


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

OK, I'll just say it again: NBC's TV broadcast (as vs. cable, etc.) coverage of the Olympics has been severely lacking and, often, a squandered opportunity. Multiple (2 or 3 times) repeats of the same limited coverage and then, yesterday, a 1/2 hour (or hour? I lost track of time, as my eyes glazed over) "segment" on the 1988 Calgary Olympics figure skating competition. The *1988 *Olympics? News flash: as interesting as that might be, first cover the ongoing *2018 *Olympics (and then run the 1988 retrospective on another Saturday afternoon).

Presumably, I don't understand NBC's broadcast programming--was its goal to serve as a teaser and to drive people to pay cable channels? The effect, with me, was a loss of revenue, as I turned to other programming when instead I would have been watching NBC Olympics live/time-delayed coverage including, yes, the commercials. As I've said before, if it's a matter of production costs, just run the minimally-moderated NBCSN coverage on broadcast as well, and leave the continual repeats for the 1 am-4 am slot.

NBC, feel free to PM me here and I'd be happy to discuss this further with you.


----------



## Zephyr (Sep 16, 2005)

I'm in the "worst coverage ever" camp. I usually gave up on prime time coverage an hour or two in while they played the let's stretch it to the last minute game. I do not watch all the other outlets, just prime time. And last night, I finally tried to catch up on the womens ice skating for the significant other. I found the show with the Russin women (winning) and found one with the early girls. Never found the US women even after they posted their air times. I have no clue where that program went. I think the final hour was not recorded or something.

Makes no dfference. Like so much other on network tv, I'm losing interest in their programming. I will recover from the NBC Olympics whiplash caused by all the fragmented event programming. I'm sure if there's anything worth watching, I will find it replayed elsewhere. A big fail NBC!


----------



## That Don Guy (Mar 13, 2003)

hefe said:


> That looked fishy. The South Korean won in the semi final in a snowboard race, a photo finish, but the slomo looked like the other guy won...


This has been mentioned in a number of places. When you take into account that:
(a) The "finish line" is where the "electric eyes" are located, and not the red line painted on the show;
(b) The rule is that the boarder with "any part of the body or equipment" that crosses the electric eye first is the winner, which is why you see both boarders reaching down with their hands - it's at about knee level; and,
(c) The camera angle is not in line with the true finish line
then you may be able to tell that the Korean crossed first.


----------



## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

That Don Guy said:


> This has been mentioned in a number of places. When you take into account that:
> (a) The "finish line" is where the "electric eyes" are located, and not the red line painted on the show;
> (b) The rule is that the boarder with "any part of the body or equipment" that crosses the electric eye first is the winner, which is why you see both boarders reaching down with their hands - it's at about knee level; and,
> (c) The camera angle is not in line with the true finish line
> then you may be able to tell that the Korean crossed first.


I thought about all that as I rewatched the replay several times, and it just looks wrong every time.


----------



## realityboy (Jun 13, 2003)

They do have a 1 hour recap scheduled for tonight before the closing.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Boy, and sorry in advance, NBC Broadcast just can't program its way out of a hole in the ground. Showed the last Olympics event today, women's x-country, for an hour, great--and then a long feature story/documentary on past-year Olympics athletes and events, just like yesterday's retrospective on the 1988 Calgary Olympics--all of which could be shown anytime (and not denying any of their worth at all--just the placement). Oh, and now a _short_ Olympics "wrap-up" of clips during the closing credits.

Instead, NBC could have done a wonderful, exciting 2-hour retrospective and highlights of _this _Olympics, which would have kept people glued to their sets and been a public service, including for those who missed events for whatever the reason.

Just a waste of programming opportunity (and of my time and own plans). And loss of eyes/views.

edit: In the closing of the afternoon show just now, they announced that there _will _be a retrospective show, 1 hour long, an hour from now. But they still lost the current expanded opportunity, including in addition (as well as the time spent yesterday on a similar earlier Olympics competition flashback).
​


----------



## mrizzo80 (Apr 17, 2012)

The lack of snow was a distraction. The event slopes were full of man-made snow, but the surrounding mountains often had no snow at all on them. And the mountains themselves weren't very impressive. 

I'm hoping somewhere in Europe gets the 2026 Olympics.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

mrizzo80 said:


> The lack of snow was a distraction. The event slopes were full of man-made snow, but the surrounding mountains often had no snow at all on them. And the mountains themselves weren't very impressive.
> 
> I'm hoping somewhere in Europe gets the 2026 Olympics.


Reminds me of when the movie "Airport" was being filmed in my hometown of Minneapolis/St. Paul in the Winter, and it turned out to be a warm/dry Winter such that they needed to make snow


----------



## cmontyburns (Nov 14, 2001)

Mikeguy said:


> Just a waste of programming opportunity (and of my time and own plans). And loss of eyes/views.
> 
> edit: In the closing of the afternoon show just now, they announced that there _will _be a retrospective show, 1 hour long, an hour from now. But they still lost the current expanded opportunity, including in addition (as well as the time spent yesterday on a similar earlier Olympics competition flashback).
> ​


Pretty sure they have the numbers to support when such a show gets the most eyes/views.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

I just wish NBC could have done what everyone wanted. Every event LIVE in Prime Time without any commercials.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

cmontyburns said:


> Pretty sure they have the numbers to support when such a show gets the most eyes/views.


Documentaries of decades-ago Olympics events over current Olympics coverage? Really? Maybe it's just me then (and I appreciate documentaries--but not at the expense of coverage of current events).


jsmeeker said:


> I just wish NBC could have done what everyone wanted. Every event LIVE in Prime Time without any commercials.


I don't even care if it's time-shifted--I'd just like coverage.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Well, there are no more events to cover today. Its's already over.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Worst lip syncing ever, NBC!!!!


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Skating Pandas!!!


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Lip sync not any better with the K-Pop Boy Band


----------



## laria (Sep 7, 2000)

The coverage was frustrating for me, the first week the prime time blocks on the TiVo kept getting cut off in the middle of stuff like skating. Like it would just end mid-coverage. I started padding it but not after I'd missed the end of a few days. I noticed this week that the prime time coverage blocks were extended by a lot and they were showing local news in the middle of it and then going back to the coverage... maybe a lot of people complained?

I also found the guide data frustrating, although I guess that's not NBC's fault really (maybe?). The descriptions didn't match up what was shown sometimes. I could not for the life of me find the coverage of the second half of the women's Super Combined ski race. We watched the downhill portion and then the one daytime coverage piece that mention there was slalom coverage in it but there was none to be found. I never saw any of the second half of the race, only the segment when they were talking to Shiffrin the studio later on. I felt like coverage of all the ski racing was kind of spotty... I saw the downhill and the slalom but I don't remember seeing much of the others. Maybe the schedule changes messed it up? Another time, the coverage said it was of the men's 50K cross country ski race, and the entire thing ended up being something completely different, speed skating or something.

The way I usually watch the coverage is to watch all of the main NBC coverage on FF (day and prime time), and then rely on guide data for the other channels if I want to watch or not.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

jsmeeker said:


> Skating Pandas!!!


You know you loved 'em.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Not nearly as much as Johnny Weir loved them


----------



## DeDondeEs (Feb 20, 2004)

That’s interesting that they are having the Winter Games in Beijing after having the Summer games there fairly recently. I guess it is good that they are able to re-purpose many of the summer facilities. I didn’t realize there were ski mountains near Beijing. 

It is sort of odd seeing the Winter Olympics held in these seaside towns/cities such as Vancouver, Sochi, and PeyongChang as opposed to some mountain town like Lake Placid. Although having visited Lake Placid several times, I don’t think it is possible to hold the Olympics in such a place anymore. In fact I scratch my head trying to figure out how they held the 1980 Olympics there, given the village’s small size.


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

laria said:


> The coverage was frustrating for me, the first week the prime time blocks on the TiVo kept getting cut off in the middle of stuff like skating. Like it would just end mid-coverage. I started padding it but not after I'd missed the end of a few days. I noticed this week that the prime time coverage blocks were extended by a lot and they were showing local news in the middle of it and then going back to the coverage... maybe a lot of people complained?


The problem was that NBC didn't have any control over when the live events were happening, and usually the live block would start at 8 pm ET and go until midnight or later. Here in AZ, it would start at 6 pm and go until 10 pm, then local news, then back to more Olympic coverage. So I'm not sure where they put the local news slot for you on the east coast, but if it was before midnight, then it would have definitely been cutting into coverage of live events.


DeDondeEs said:


> That's interesting that they are having the Winter Games in Beijing after having the Summer games there fairly recently. I guess it is good that they are able to re-purpose many of the summer facilities. I didn't realize there were ski mountains near Beijing.


Due to the costs involved, they're having issues finding cities willing to host. That's why we'll have two Winter Games back to back in the same area of the world, because Beijing volunteered and there wasn't really any other viable candidate. I don't think Beijing gets much snow nor is it near any ski mountains. But the ability to repurpose a lot of the 2008 facilities made it possible, and the alpine stuff will just have to be separate.

Edit: According to this, there is very little snow in or around Beijing, so that all the snow needed for the events will be man-made.


----------



## laria (Sep 7, 2000)

DevdogAZ said:


> The problem was that NBC didn't have any control over when the live events were happening, and usually the live block would start at 8 pm ET and go until midnight or later. Here in AZ, it would start at 6 pm and go until 10 pm, then local news, then back to more Olympic coverage. So I'm not sure where they put the local news slot for you on the east coast, but if it was before midnight, then it would have definitely been cutting into coverage of live events.


Right, I guess maybe my complaint is more with the guide data then again, but I don't know who was in charge of scheduling the guide data blocks.  At the start of it, the prime time coverage block just simply wasn't on long enough. It would end right at the time the local news was supposed to be on, and even padding it, I missed a bunch of the live coverage because I didn't have any idea that it was going to be resuming outside of the local news segment. There used to be a late night coverage block that my TiVo would pick up in previous games, before Rovi, that would have the continuation of things. By this week, I noticed the prime time block was being scheduled for 5.5 hours instead of shorter, and the local news was being shown in the middle of it. I don't care that they inserted local news into the coverage, I cared that there was no post-news block to record to get the stuff being cut off by the news.


----------



## realityboy (Jun 13, 2003)

laria said:


> Right, I guess maybe my complaint is more with the guide data then again, but I don't know who was in charge of scheduling the guide data blocks.  At the start of it, the prime time coverage block just simply wasn't on long enough. It would end right at the time the local news was supposed to be on, and even padding it, I missed a bunch of the live coverage because I didn't have any idea that it was going to be resuming outside of the local news segment. There used to be a late night coverage block that my TiVo would pick up in previous games, before Rovi, that would have the continuation of things. By this week, I noticed the prime time block was being scheduled for 5.5 hours instead of shorter, and the local news was being shown in the middle of it. I don't care that they inserted local news into the coverage, I cared that there was no post-news block to record to get the stuff being cut off by the news.


Here it was prime block, followed by local news, followed by prime plus, and then the prime replay after that. There was also a 2 hour daytime block from 3-5 weekdays, 3-6 on weekends.


----------



## laria (Sep 7, 2000)

realityboy said:


> Here it was prime block, followed by local news, followed by prime plus, and then the prime replay after that. There was also a 2 hour daytime block from 3-5 weekdays, 3-6 on weekends.


I bet the guide data was too dumb and didn't have whatever "Prime Plus" was when I set up the One Passes. When I set them up there was only the daytime and the prime time "shows" called like "Olympics 2018" and "Olympics 2018 Prime Time" and I had to set up 2 separate passes for those. I hate this new guide data. I liked it better when we could just set up a single pass and it got every single thing 24 hours a day.


----------



## realityboy (Jun 13, 2003)

laria said:


> I bet the guide data was too dumb and didn't have whatever "Prime Plus" was when I set up the One Passes. When I set them up there was only the daytime and the prime time "shows" called like "Olympics 2018" and "Olympics 2018 Prime Time" and I had to set up 2 separate passes for those. I hate this new guide data. I liked it better when we could just set up a single pass and it got every single thing 24 hours a day.


I kept forgetting to watch Prime Time since it was separate. I'm not sure if I got all the Late Night Prime Plus stuff either. I gave up and just watched what I had.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

DevdogAZ said:


> Due to the costs involved, they're having issues finding cities willing to host. That's why we'll have two Winter Games back to back in the same area of the world, because Beijing volunteered and there wasn't really any other viable candidate. I don't think Beijing gets much snow nor is it near any ski mountains. But the ability to repurpose a lot of the 2008 facilities made it possible, and the alpine stuff will just have to be separate.


I'd like to see some Olympics competitions in less-developed countries/less "standard" regions, even if it requires subsidy. It would be a symbol of world solidarity, would be good for the host country and region, and would be interesting. E.g. Africa, much of Latin America.


----------



## Hcour (Dec 24, 2007)

The Olympics are over and I still have over 80 hrs on my Tivo to watch. So I'm a leeetle behind. Prolly be watching through spring!


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Spoiler



Norway won


----------



## That Don Guy (Mar 13, 2003)

Mikeguy said:


> I'd like to see some Olympics competitions in less-developed countries/less "standard" regions, even if it requires subsidy. It would be a symbol of world solidarity, would be good for the host country and region, and would be interesting. E.g. Africa, much of Latin America.


It's almost impossible to hold a Winter Olympics south of the Tropic of Cancer as (a) it just doesn't snow enough anywhere in the tropics, and (b) anything to the south has its winter in June through September, which is outside of everybody's training period. Even a Summer Olympics requires a compromise; the Sydney 2000 Olympics were in early October, which is the equivalent of early April in Europe.


----------



## Hcour (Dec 24, 2007)

There are always beautiful women at the Olympics but Jessie Diggins, crimeny. I may actually watch cross-country skiing just for her.

EDIT - Oh, she's in the "Cross-country Sprint". I've never seen this one before. It's actually pretty darn fast-paced and exciting.


----------



## laria (Sep 7, 2000)

She was in a lot of races, like 4-5 of them


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

That Don Guy said:


> It's almost impossible to hold a Winter Olympics south of the Tropic of Cancer as (a) it just doesn't snow enough anywhere in the tropics, and (b) anything to the south has its winter in June through September, which is outside of everybody's training period. Even a Summer Olympics requires a compromise; the Sydney 2000 Olympics were in early October, which is the equivalent of early April in Europe.


A Summer Olympics south of the Equator or thereabouts works fine as well.


----------



## cherry ghost (Sep 13, 2005)

Mikeguy said:


> A Summer Olympics south of the Equator or thereabouts works fine as well.


Rio just had them and the next three are taken.


----------



## LoadStar (Jul 24, 2001)

Mikeguy said:


> I'd like to see some Olympics competitions in less-developed countries/less "standard" regions, even if it requires subsidy. It would be a symbol of world solidarity, would be good for the host country and region, and would be interesting. E.g. Africa, much of Latin America.


The problem is that when you do that, you end up with Rio de Janeiro all over again... a city and country that wasn't remotely prepared to host the Olympics, barely managed to get them put on without complete catastrophe, and now after they're left with nothing to show for it but venues that became decimated just months after the games ended, and a crippling debt.

My opinion: Olympics should only be awarded to cities/countries where a majority of venues are pre-existing in some form or another. They don't have to use them unaltered - they can do moderate renovations, refurbishments, or expansions, much as what Beijing is going to do with their Winter Olympics plan. But a plan that involves a majority of venues be pre-existing ensures that a city is *already* at least halfway on their way to hosting the Olympics before the games are awarded to them.


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

I think that's going to be the new normal. Cities and countries are shying away from hosting because of the cost, and the IOC is supposedly implementing changes to the bidding process so it won't be nearly as expensive to bid or host.


----------



## GoPackGo (Dec 29, 2012)

Salt Lake City is working towards getting the 2030 games. They have the venues, the snow, and 100,000 volunteers ready to put on another great Olympics. Hope they get it.


----------



## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

LoadStar said:


> The problem is that when you do that, you end up with Rio de Janeiro all over again... a city and country that wasn't remotely prepared to host the Olympics, barely managed to get them put on without complete catastrophe, and now after they're left with nothing to show for it but venues that became decimated just months after the games ended, and a crippling debt.
> 
> My opinion: Olympics should only be awarded to cities/countries where a majority of venues are pre-existing in some form or another. They don't have to use them unaltered - they can do moderate renovations, refurbishments, or expansions, much as what Beijing is going to do with their Winter Olympics plan. But a plan that involves a majority of venues be pre-existing ensures that a city is *already* at least halfway on their way to hosting the Olympics before the games are awarded to them.


I like this but it risks locking new countries out of hosting the games, even when their economy is easily able to absorb the costs.

Imagine the gamble, financial and political, for a country/city that has never hosted (like China before 2008) to commit to and carry through building out enough venues for internal or non-Olympic international competition with the goal of qualifying the host the games and then never getting selected by the IOC!

OTOH keeping the pool of repeat host cities small helps amortize the costs of all those venues as with even 10 dedicated host cities they'd only see a Summer Games every 40 years - making it hard to utilize and maintain venues for some of the sports that aren't competed much outside the Olympics. So despite not wanting the lock countries/cities out, it can be better to keep the pool small...

Be interesting to see how this plays out over the next decades.


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

Jonathan_S said:


> I like this but it risks locking new countries out of hosting the games, even when their economy is easily able to absorb the costs.
> 
> *Imagine the gamble, financial and political, for a country/city that has never hosted (like China before 2008) to commit to and carry through building out enough venues for internal or non-Olympic international competition with the goal of qualifying the host the games and then never getting selected by the IOC!*


And those are usually the countries that are in much less of a position to be gambling with scarce resources.


----------



## MikeekiM (Jun 25, 2002)

Just watched some of the closing ceremonies...

I must say... the K-Pop star CL brought her A-game... Her performance and choreography, as well as her overall "presence" were spot on... I don't know who she is...but now I want to find out more... 

Update: I just listened to some of her stuff on GPM, specifically the song she performed at the closing ceremony, and I guess it's not really my "thing"... The performance was well done...but the music isn't something I would listen to outside of enjoying her performance...


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

cherry ghost said:


> Rio just had them and the next three are taken.


Umm, yep. A single Olympics.


LoadStar said:


> The problem is that when you do that, you end up with Rio de Janeiro all over again... a city and country that wasn't remotely prepared to host the Olympics, barely managed to get them put on without complete catastrophe, and now after they're left with nothing to show for it but venues that became decimated just months after the games ended, and a crippling debt.
> 
> My opinion: Olympics should only be awarded to cities/countries where a majority of venues are pre-existing in some form or another. They don't have to use them unaltered - they can do moderate renovations, refurbishments, or expansions, much as what Beijing is going to do with their Winter Olympics plan. But a plan that involves a majority of venues be pre-existing ensures that a city is *already* at least halfway on their way to hosting the Olympics before the games are awarded to them.


Oh, I absolutely agree--there are major issues with getting the Olympics done well and right and not as an economic travesty, a reason why very well-advanced and developed potential venues decide against doing them. But I wonder if there is some way to assist in the process/get it done, much as happens with gov'ts and less-developed areas. And, yes, having said that, I recognize that the latter often may not have been done successfully--but I wonder if it could be here. I would like the additional diversity.


----------



## cherry ghost (Sep 13, 2005)

Mikeguy said:


> Umm, yep. A single Olympics.


Australia doesn't count?


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

cherry ghost said:


> Australia doesn't count?


Always! Really, I was thinking of the "less-developed" countries/areas--a way to help introduce the rest of us to them, perhaps assist with development, etc.


----------



## That Don Guy (Mar 13, 2003)

jsmeeker said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Norway won





Spoiler



At least until one of the "Russian" hockey players tests positive for drugs (and they'll continue testing them for something like 10 years), and the IOC strips them of their gold medals and gives them to Germany, which would now have one more gold than Norway - and "most golds" is pretty much the standard for medal counts outside of the USA for some reason





GoPackGo said:


> Salt Lake City is working towards getting the 2030 games. They have the venues, the snow, and 100,000 volunteers ready to put on another great Olympics. Hope they get it.


Salt Lake City 2030 has one rather large obstacle in its path - Los Angeles 2028. The main reason Salt Lake City didn't get it in 1998 was because of Atlanta 1996, and the IOC doesn't want the same country to host consecutive Olympics. Then again, I expect 2026 to go to a European city, as otherwise that would be three Winter Olympics in a row not in Europe, in which case, the options for 2030 are (a) two Europes in a row, which is not unheard of (1964-68 and 1992-94), (b) find another city in Asia to host (Sapporo?), or (c) USA...or Canada, although that would mean having it in Canada twice since the most recent USA appearance.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Ecuador 2030!


----------



## LoadStar (Jul 24, 2001)

Jonathan_S said:


> I like this but it risks locking new countries out of hosting the games, even when their economy is easily able to absorb the costs.


They could work their way up to hosting the Olympics. Build venues for other events, then when they have a sufficient number of venues already in place, then they can bid for the Olympics.


----------



## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

LoadStar said:


> They could work their way up to hosting the Olympics. Build venues for other events, then when they have a sufficient number of venues already in place, then they can bid for the Olympics.


Yes, I mentioned that. 
But doing that without even any kind of conditional approval from the IOC it increases the political and economic stakes (as I also said) because now you're putting in development, not just a plan for development, before the IOC will even consider letting you into the application process. If you then get summarily rejected the politicians pushing for it (especially in places like China) might get tossed out of office, or at least take a major hit that impacts their ability to get other goal accomplished. 
That would tend to discourage countries from attempting it even if, like China, they can easily handle the economic expenses.


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

The only way it would make sense is if the "new" country were to build a venue that would be used in lower levels of competition. So they might build an ice arena for their local hockey team, or to be used in an international figure skating event, but not specifically for the Olympics. Then, when they've accumulated most of the larger venues through this process, they can submit a bid to the IOC, certifying that they won't need to spend too much money on infrastructure because it's mostly already in place.


----------



## LoadStar (Jul 24, 2001)

DevdogAZ said:


> The only way it would make sense is if the "new" country were to build a venue that would be used in lower levels of competition. So they might build an ice arena for their local hockey team, or to be used in an international figure skating event, but not specifically for the Olympics. Then, when they've accumulated most of the larger venues through this process, they can submit a bid to the IOC, certifying that they won't need to spend too much money on infrastructure because it's mostly already in place.


That's exactly what I was suggesting. Thank you.

Doing this not only reduces the outlay specifically for the purposes of hosting an Olympics, but also proves that the country can potentially attract other events to that venue.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Some have suggested something that is basically the opposite.

Hold them in the same place every time. A permanent home. One for Summer. One for Winter. Dunno where you would do it. Athens for the Summer? Dunno if THAT is the right place. They just had them fairly recently and would have to rebuild it all AGAIN. Greece has enough troubles.


----------



## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

LoadStar said:


> That's exactly what I was suggesting. Thank you.
> 
> Doing this not only reduces the outlay specifically for the purposes of hosting an Olympics, but also proves that the country can potentially attract other events to that venue.


Or at least can maintain and internally utilize the venues. Some of the sports in summer game especially require more fields in a close area that other international competitions would. For example the round robin rounds of Olympic soccer are (I believe) much smaller than the equivalent for World Cup. But the Olympic ones are all played in one metroplex in under 2 weeks - while the early rounds leading to of the World Cup (as I understand it) are spread across countries and over much more time. So hosting the World Cup finals doesn't seem to require as any one place to have as many soccer fields hosting Olympic soccer. (Ditto for Olympic softball, field hockey, baseball, etc, etc) There seem to be lots of sports that require many games played at the same time during early rounds simply to give all the competitors a chance within the very compressed timeframe of the Olympics.

So to bid on the Olympics you need more of those venues than you'd ever need for international competitions in that sport. The extra fields for round robin don't need to be anywhere near as nice as the stadium used for the finals - but you still want to show that you have them without excessive athlete travel and that you can maintain or repurpose them between Olympics without undue financial hardship.


----------



## getbak (Oct 8, 2004)

Soccer is the one sport in the Olympics where they do spread the locations around. For example, in 1996, there were games played in Orlando, Miami, Washington DC, Birmingham, and Athens GA.

For the upcoming games in Los Angeles, the soccer tournament will likely be held in other parts of California, like San Francisco, San Jose, and San Diego.


The facilities requirements is going to be a big issue for the Olympics going forward. With the growth of the Winter Olympics, especially the addition of Women's Hockey, Short Track, and Curling, a city now needs twice as many arenas as they did when Lake Placid hosted. PyeongChang built two new 10,000+ capacity arenas in order to host these games, plus two smaller arenas.

I live in Calgary. We hosted the Winter Games 30 years ago, and are now contemplating bidding for the 2026 Games. The Winter Olympics have more than doubled over the last 30 years (in terms of both the number of sports and the number of athletes). Luckily, most of our original venues are still in good shape and won't need significant work to re-use them. One reason why 2026 is a good date for us is that our main arena is nearing the end of its lifespan and a new arena should be open by 2026. If we get the 2026 Games, we can keep the two arenas operational until then. Otherwise, a city this size can't really support two 20,000 seat arenas, and Calgary is much larger than most cities that host the Winter Games.

Switzerland is also working on a bid for 2026, and their plan would see the various events held in multiple cities around Western Switzerland. The hockey and figure skating venues would be more than an hour apart by train, and the "host city" would be another hour from there.


----------



## cherry ghost (Sep 13, 2005)

jsmeeker said:


> Some have suggested something that is basically the opposite.
> 
> Hold them in the same place every time. A permanent home. One for Summer. One for Winter. Dunno where you would do it. Athens for the Summer? Dunno if THAT is the right place. They just had them fairly recently and would have to rebuild it all AGAIN. Greece has enough troubles.


I don't know if they'll go that far, but we may see a city host back to back


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

getbak said:


> Soccer is the one sport in the Olympics where they do spread the locations around. For example, in 1996, there were games played in Orlando, Miami, Washington DC, Birmingham, and Athens GA.
> 
> For the upcoming games in Los Angeles, the soccer tournament will likely be held in other parts of California, like San Francisco, San Jose, and San Diego.


In Rio in 2016, the soccer tournament was played all over the country as well, but that was largely because Brazil had just hosted the World Cup in 2014 and had built several brand new stadiums specifically for that. 
In the Brazilian Rain Forest, 'a White Elephant, a Big One'


> FIFA, the world soccer federation, required that World Cup host nations build at least eight stadiums. Brazil, in a fit of prideful excess, insisted on building 10, at a cost of nearly $2 billion.
> 
> Those stadiums have become aspiring archaeological digs. Brasília spent $550 million to build its stadium; it doubles as a municipal bus depot. The stadium in Cuiabá cost $230 million, and homeless men sleep in the locker rooms. Managers at Recife's grand Arena Pernambuco are at such wits' end that they rented it out for a 15-year-old boy's birthday.





> All of which brings us to a new hallucination: the Arena da Amazônia in Manaus, a city whose name comes from a local tribe and means Mother of the Gods. When Brazil embarked on an orgy of arena construction for the World Cup in 2014, Manaus city leaders decided to build the grandest arena of all. Years in the making, at a cost of $220 million, it was crafted to resemble a giant white basket of a type common in the region, atop a four-story concrete plaza. The arena seats 44,351 people.
> 
> Save for the rarest of occasions, such as when Olympic women's soccer teams played here recently, this arena sits empty. Manaus is surrounded by a rain forest the size of France, Spain, Sweden, Greece and Italy combined, and it is reachable only by airplane or boat. Most in this hard-working city of two million have more on their mind than sports. The debt for this ziggurat has piled high and requires siphoning off of money intended for schools and hospitals. One-quarter of Manauarans are extremely poor; many lack running water.


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

DeDondeEs said:


> It is sort of odd seeing the Winter Olympics held in these seaside towns/cities such as Vancouver, Sochi, and PeyongChang as opposed to some mountain town like Lake Placid. Although having visited Lake Placid several times, I don't think it is possible to hold the Olympics in such a place anymore. In fact I scratch my head trying to figure out how they held the 1980 Olympics there, given the village's small size.


Vancouver (and possibly other seaside towns in the Pacific Northwest) have the advantage of having the mountain towns relatively close by. The coast and the mountains are squished closer together than they may be in other localities.



laria said:


> I bet the guide data was too dumb and didn't have whatever "Prime Plus" was when I set up the One Passes. When I set them up there was only the daytime and the prime time "shows" called like "Olympics 2018" and "Olympics 2018 Prime Time" and I had to set up 2 separate passes for those. I hate this new guide data. I liked it better when we could just set up a single pass and it got every single thing 24 hours a day.


I had an auto-recording Wishlist "Olympics" which scooped up all the Olympics 2018 / Primetime / Primetime Plus segments plus all the available channels.

Every day I transferred the figure skating segments and watched then deleted others. I still have a mountain of unwatched coverage (no pun intended). But I can attest that by the end, the Guide Data was horrendous. I have figure skating recordings and curling recordings and other things all lurking under different sports as far as the Guide Data is concerned. Even the hockey games aren't under their own GD consistently because the timeslots were a joke. The only thing you can guarantee had the right GD was Curling on MSNBC.


----------

