I enjoy the US hockey and the men's downhill. The rest is well........ dare I say dull.

 

Matt Lower (sp?) of Good Morning explained it best after he went down at the Lake Placid for the sake of tv. He was told "don't move" and you will go smoothly to the bottom. To steer they make slight or greater moves of their lower legs and upper shoulder on the opposite side. Not all courses are the same. The one in Italy is more difficult than the US was...... on this one they not only carry very high speed but they have to steer more (ie, the way it used to be in the older games) and it's difficult by all accounts.

 

Short track Speed Skating, especially the 4man relay, that was crazy mad!!

 

Frankly I don't get excited about all the snow boarding - 1/2 pipe or tube and the four people racing on snow boards down a course. And then there's all the fags on ice ( I know, me bad). No wonder no one is watching.

 

Alpine skiing (downhill, Super-G, GS, and S), freestyle (moguls & aerials), and both long and short track speed skating.

Curling is a mystery to me with regard to it's popularity and extensive coverage.

Figure skating lost me years ago... I preferred watching when Dick Button and his peers were wearing military mess-dress like outfits (black tuxedo pants and short-wasted white or black jackets) instead of "sequined costumes" and performed more a more masculine routine. Same thing for the women of Peggy Flemming's era and prior where it was more about grace and precision than gymnastic mega-jumps.

The Bobsled events, luge (two man luge is just weird), and the skeleton events are probably far more exciting to watch in person than on TV and most certainly something I would have wanted to do if I lived near a training facility like Lake Placid's. But, as for a TV event, it doesn't do it for me. If they had telemetry coming off the sleds that provided you with real-time speed, Gs, and the athlete's HR data, now that would be interesting since you'd gain a lot more appreciation for what was actually going on vs. simply the split times and trap speeds: that and overlaps of different sliders similar to how they match up rally cars on WRC coverage so that you can see where each slider excels on the course, e.g., fast out of the gate house vs. gliding like a guided missile through the banks and fast sections.

 

Although I've given up on the usual telecasts of winter sports, I always find the Winter Olympics captivating. This year, I'm struck by a couple of things.

Curling, I've discovered, is really quite interesting, mostly because of the strategy. I expect I'd find it even more interesting if I fully understood the scoring, which seems non-intuitive. (And, as I understand it, "curling" comes from the spin they can put on those stones to get them to curve around other stones toward the target -- whether it be the bulls-eye or a competitor's stone.)

Whatever network covers the games, it's always the same: hype the US athletes and, to a large extent, ignore the foreign superstars. This year, skier Bode Miller has received a lot of attention (apart from his commercial spots), and, through 3 of his 5 events, he's pretty much flopped. Now, of course, his flopping has become the story, so the hype will continue. And there's the sensitive US figure skater who was late for his show time, oh dear oh dear. And the female snowboarder who gave away her gold medal (in that snowboard-cross thing) in favor of showboating (at least she still has her endorsements).

I'm sure the NBC is smacking itself upside the head for some of its decisions about this hype, but it still continues. Starting next week, be prepared for all the stuff about the female figure skaters (and pass the time meanwhile with ice dancing, ta-ta) and how much pressure is on Emily Hughes.

But what I really, really would like to see is that short-track skating on a figure-8 course. HPH

 

I am only interested in keeping medal counts but I find myself not really paying a whole lot of attention to any event. It is too artificial nowadays unlike the way it used to be with ABC's McKay.

 

While I appreciate all the hard work these young athletes do to get there, I have to confess I have not watched it at all.

 

I used to love the figure skating, the womens figure skating in particular. To me it represented the ultimate in form, style and grace. Katarina Witt was enchanting, Peggy Fleming and Dorothy Hamill were both adorably cute as were the host of other female champions. The sport was theatre on ice. Lately, in the last three or four Olympics it has changed. The sport has become entirely too athletic with the emphasis on power and strength, jumps and spins, instead of the form, style and grace that I liked watching. I have turned my attention to the ice dancing. It seems to me the couples are having much more fun than the figure skaters, and its much more fun to watch. I still watch the figure skating, but I much prefer the ice dancing. There is a certain style and grace in the ice dancing that has left the figure skating.

I have to admit that I really like the snowboarding events. They are awfully exciting. The skiing seems to be a bit like formula 1 racing while the snowboarding (and freestyle skiing) is like sportscar driving. I do like the skiing, but I really like the snowboarding. I used to ski a lot, but I think if I were younger today I'd snowboard.

The thing that I don't like most about the network presentation of the Olympics is that they've (the network) become the show. Aside from the fact that the commentators talk too much (they should shut up and let us watch the event), they have tried to take too much of the spotlight. I'm not really interested in watching Al Rokker and the other cohost go down the luge run, nor am I interested seeing one of the commantators being taught ice dancing. I wish they'd let the Olympians be the show and remember that they are just the network.

I also don't like the fact that they only present the sport that they think that the American audience wants to see. I for one would like to see some of the other, less popular sports including sports that America isn't expected to medal in.

Still, I like watching every four years. I think I like the winter games better than the summer games.

 

Did you see their coverage of the men's 4x10km cross-country relay? It has nothing to do with the US - it's all about the huge rivalry between Intaly and Norway that goes back to the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway. They even had a great 30 minute production about that '94 race.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=42...%3Anbc_olympics

Biathalon, nordic combined, ski jumping... They're all getting coverage from what I can tell. About the only stuff they seem to be excluding is non-US curling games, but they still show the entire 3 hours of the US games.