Subject: The Olympics we're missing...

Date: Mon Feb 26 07:59:00 2018
User: The_Inquisitor
Message:
Considering all the excessive coverage Lindsey Vonn got, they didn't ask her the one question everybody wanted to know. Did she really cure Tiger Woods of his obsession with sex?

Date: Tue Feb 27 15:49:06 2018
User: hotnurse
Message:
We have been in a remote media area of Florida since the end of January. No tv, limited internet (and slow at that) and cell phone reception is only good by the dumpsters. I have missed watching the Olympics. Have not missed real news, fake news and especially politically news. Although one burning question: is DJT still our President? If not, who is? There must have been a solar flare last night since I am able to type more than a few words without getting booted off line.

Date: Tue Feb 27 16:44:45 2018
User: TNmountainman
Message:
Welcome back (for now). I've actually been worried about you. Glad you're ok, but now I'm jealous of your location (for now). djt is still Prez, but only because mrbuck declined the public appeal to take over. Negotiations continue........

Date: Thu Mar 1 16:47:09 2018
User: hotnurse
Message:
TN, will be back among the living early April...if motor home makes the 1000 mi. trip back north. Have been having a great time here. Weather beautiful on north rim of Okeechobee. Most exciting event was watching a 5 ft. (at least) green iguana sunning on the dock near where I was fishing. No gators though.

Date: Thu Mar 1 18:03:07 2018
User: CubicSprock
Message:
umm...they still wasted, i mean spent, a ton of time covering figure skating even though the american's didn't win medals.

Date: Thu Mar 1 18:52:08 2018
User: TNmountainman
Message:
Well, yes, because Americans have traditionally done well in that, and there's a generation or two 'hooked' on that. They sort of *can't* leave that out. And the U.S. did get a bronze in team, and that brother/sister duo got a bronze, so there was some success. But look at what they spent the most time on: half-pipe, snowboarding, curling, maybe to some extent slalom and downhill (but less so than usual), women's hockey. American victories. Very little Nordic coverage, although I must say they had some truly great XC-skiing coverage at times (having a fantastic, knowledgeable commentator helped there). Pleasant surprise, but nowhere the amount of coverage appropriate for what a big part of the Olympics that is. And what about ski jumping? That used to be one of *the* big coverage events (and of course where "the agony of defeat" originated). I bet I saw less than 10 minutes of it. I'm sure I missed some, but it's almost like that fell off a jump, so to speak. No Americans competitive. Biathlon? Never heard of it (well once or twice briefly). Usually they would have WAY more men's hockey than they did, but I'd bet they had more women's than men (purely an anecdotal guess). They did show a fair amount of speed skating, but I think far less than previously, especially compared to the Apollo Ono era - when that was among the most-televised events. And I saw WAY more women's downhill skiing events than men's. Since when did *that* happen? Oh; since Lindsey Vonn became a 'thing'. (Not knocking her - just the media fascination.) Who won the event Vonn finished third in? What country, even? Where was this curling coverage in the last 50 years? Most Olympiad's it's lucky if it gets an hour of coverage total. And this was before it was known that the U.S. would eventually win the men's version. So......kudos for that - although I think they overdid it. (But watch for a HUGE increase in curling clubs, etc. around this continent - or at least above the 44th parallel or so.) And I think they did 'ok' on the sliding events - but again there were Americans competitive. And I'm (mostly) with Buzz and you(?) on the figure skating. I can still appreciate it's artistry, but the scoring debacles of the '90s just sort of ruined it. Yes, it's more quantized (good), but has the 'feel' aspect gone out of it too much? Back to the nationalistic 'issue'............ Americans won 9 gold medals, and I bet many, or most Americans could name half of them, at least. Norway and Germany won 14 each, and Canada won 11. How many Americans could name more than 3 or 4 (IF THAT) of them? Switzerland won 15 total medals; Austria 14. How many of those could the average American name, or even guess at? How much pub did those countries get with NBC's coverage. Some, sure, but compared to the Americans, a truly trivial amount. To me, that's just flat-out wrong. The media is to blame, but as sports fans and world citizens, we should demand better.

Date: Thu Mar 1 18:56:28 2018
User: TNmountainman
Message:
And hottie..........don't worry about this animation that shows Russia's nukes headed towards Lake Okeechobee. They're purely defensive. (So I'm not sure why they appear to be heading towards you; maybe artistic license?)

Link: hotnurse could get even hotter??

Date: Thu Mar 1 20:50:03 2018
User: free@last
Message:
Not sure what you were watching (maybe just NBC primetime?) but there was tons of xc and biathlon coverage on NBCSN (I still have the weekend 4x6 biathlon relay on my DVR as it was the craziest thing I've ever seen). Also plenty of curling including mixed and women's where we won nothing. Tons of hockey on a mix of NBCSN, USA and CNBC. Plenty of luge and skeleton, again mostly NBCSN. I watched both Nordic combined events almost from start to finish. Nearly all this coverage was during the day. At night NBCSN did figure skating and NBC shower human interest stories. I skipped almost all of that as we had plenty on the DVR from the day.

Date: Fri Mar 2 01:31:05 2018
User: TNmountainman
Message:
I watched probably equal amounts of NBC (straight), and NBCSN, and a lesser amount on CNBC. I did not know some stuff was on USA. They certainly didn't promote that on the other channels! And yes, I know I maybe could have searched harder, but I was near saturation a lot of the time as it was. But it would have been nice to have had options at some points. You telling me that the Nordic stuff was during the day explains a lot of it, I think. (But why did they not elect to show some during "prime time", since they time-shifted almost all of it anyway?) Most daytimes I had only limited time, if any, to view. I don't "do" DVR, so I know I missed a fair amount of things. But I probably watched 50 hours or more, which I think is an extremely robust sampling. And yes, as I said above, plenty of curling - too much maybe. And despite that.....I don't think I saw a single minute of mixed; didn't even know about it 'til well towards the end of the games - and I know I watched several hours of curling. Obviously, with different viewing patterns, your experience will differ from mine. But I still strongly stand behind my comments about the overly-nationalistic media coverage - and not just from NBC. Print/internet media seemed just as narrowly focused.

Date: Fri Mar 2 21:36:52 2018
User: Dr.Bombay
Message:
You can easily track down British news feeds in the USA to get alternate views. I only watched regular NBC and this was my favorite Olympics in ages - both because I thought the NBC coverage was not as sh*tty as it has been recently and because the events were so compelling. Lindsey Vonn - definitely cannot be overrated. She's the best female skier of all time. World Cup skiing is big in EU and Lindsey has been dominating for over a decade. She has 81 world cups wins - more than any woman in history. And, most of these are in the downhill which is the skiing equivalent to freestyle swimming. But, since most Americans are only plugged into Olympic medals, all the buzz about Lindsey can seem overblown because of her lack of Olympic medals. Note that on the men's side, only Swedish skier Ingemar Stenmark with 88 world cups wins has more but these were mostly in slalom and GS (swimming equivalent to breast-stroke, butterfly). Ice Skating: on the women's side, there's never been a better competition as long as you can get over the fact that the two leaders are in the OAR camp. Evgenia had already been branded the best female skater ever coming into the competition. She's only 18, she'd gone over two years without ever losing. She never chokes. Athletic and gorgeous. She has the highest score ever (see link) - besting the previous title-holder, Korean Yuna Kim, by almost 13 points. Olympic coronation was a foregone conclusion. Then it all starts to get shaky. She loses the EU skating championship just a few months ago to someone else. Her name is Alina and not only is she also from Russia, she's also Evgenia's training partner. They share the same coach, of course and even worse, she's only 15. And even more athletic, and she has a body a prima ballerina would die for. Shakespeare couldn't script it any better (unless it was Harding and Kerrigan). Alina skates in the team competition and the secret is out. The individual Women's competition starts several days later and, in the short program, Alina breaks the previous record short-program score and moves into first. Evgenia also skates beautifully (and athletically) but has to settle for second. In the long program, Alina is just a teeny, tiny bit off compared to her skate in the team competition. She's so athletic she puts all of her jumps in the second half of her routine to take advantage of a scoring rule that gives skaters a 10% bonus on degree of difficulty for any jump in the second half of a program. She misses a triple-triple combo - normally devastating - but makes up for it but converting what was supposed to be a single triple jump 30 seconds later into triple-triple combo. Holy cr*p batman. Nerves of steel. Alina's total score puts her just two points behind the World Record score of Evgenia from 2017. If she had skated as well as she had in the team competition, the world record would have fallen. Evgenia is last to skate. She doesn't watch Alina's routine or know the score (so we are told). She nails it. Just a fantastic performance. The score is posted and she comes up just short. To the naked eye, Alina wins the short program and Evgenia wins the long program. Since the long program is worth more, you'd think Evgenia should have the gold. The difference comes down to Alina putting all of her jumps in the back half and getting the 10% bonus for every jump. If Alina and Evgenia were American, ratings would have been through the roof. Defection anyone? Final Event - half pipe on both board and skis. On the board side for men, Shaun White nails it, winning his 3rd gold. The scoring for half-pipe - where only the single best run matters - makes for compelling theatre. Unlike most events, where one mistake kills you, you can screw up one (or two) runs in half pipe and still recover. This rewards high-risk routines which makes for great watching. It doesn't matter for Shaun, he nails almost every run and wins both qualifying and the final. For women's snowboard, a young American, Chloe Kim, looks like the next Shaun White. She wins the Women's gold with a run that looks better than Shaun's first gold medal run from just twelve years ago. The bar in half pipe is definitely climbing every Olympic cycle. Finally, men's half pipe on skis. Defending gold medalist David Wise has his left binding pop out on his first run and he crashes. On his second run, his right binding pops and he crashes again! He's in last place with one score in the single digits and another in the teens (something in the 90's should get a medal). His teammate Alex Ferreira leads with a 96.40. He's got one last chance to make it real. His coach throws out the torque wrench and screws down both bindings until he can turn the screw no more. David starts high up the pitch for maximum altitude and launches. He nails everything and scores 97.2o to take his second gold. Fantastic

Link: best women's skating all time

Date: Sat Mar 3 13:24:35 2018
User: JackK2018
Message:
Oh, were there Olympics? With all the real sports going on, I didn't even notice.