Bobbing for Medals: the Early Edition 2024
It's the most wonderful time of the year.
Yes, the Olympics are around the corner, as you know, and the Opening Ceremonies start on Friday. With the competition to begin the next day.
Except...well -- at least that’s what I thought. It’s not true. The Olympics have already started!
Really.
Last night, while lying in bed, getting ready to go to sleep, I was flipping around the channels when all of a sudden I looked at the on-screen guide and saw – the Olympics! On the USA Network. Women’s soccer, Mali vs. Israel.
And not only that, but right after, they had women’s handball, with Slovenia playing Denmark. And it didn’t stop there either – and wasn’t just these small, under-the-wire contests, but at 3 AM, the had the USA women’s soccer team playing Zambia. And went on all night.
And continued all day. The Olympics are on right now as I type this – and will continue through the rest of the day. And all day tomorrow and beyond. In fact, if you weren’t up at three in the morning to watch the USA women play soccer, it’s being repeated tonight at 6 PM Los Angeles time.
For that matter, tomorrow morning early – at 5 AM Los Angeles time, so maybe at 8 AM on the East Coast – the USA men’s soccer team will be on the USA Network playing home country France.
The reason for this is that several sports have qualifying “pool” rounds to determine who gets to play in the final bracket. And if they waited to begin competition until after the Opening Ceremonies, they wouldn't finish the medal round in time. So, there’s actually a lot going on.
And happily and joyously fun, too, they even had a featurette by my favorite Mary Carillo. In the past couple of Olympics they haven’t used her as much as they should, but if they already have one of her pieces on the very first day, maybe, possibly, hopefully they’ll have more. She does these wonderfully, offbeat, funny but smart and interesting Olympic stories about the culture of the home country.
Her story last night was on the French love of escargot, and spent a lot of time on a snail farm, talking with a snail farmer. It was great. He used to be in tech, but decided he wanted a slower life. And yes, there were a lot of “slow” jokes. She and the snail farmer even had a race between two snails – to see whose would cover 6 inches first. (The snail farmer’s won.) She also interviewed a woman at a high end Paris restaurant that specialized in escargot.
So, please, let there be more Mary Carillo!!! (And at the very least, please let NBC at least post online the few featurettes she does.)
I should add that the Olympics have already had two make news stories of notable controversy. One was that an assistant coach of Canada's women soccer team and an "unaccredited analyst with Canada Soccer" were caught using a drone to (inexplicably) reason spy on New Zealand. Pointlessly, given how highly ranked Canada is and how low-ranked New Zealand is. The assistant coach withdrew for one game, and the "analyst" was sent home and banned for eight months.
The weirder story was that a chef for Team Russia, who has been living in France for 14 years, was detained by French police for working with Russia for ways to disrupt the Games. Go figure. Yes, the chef. Police say that terrorism isn't involved, though the intent was cause mischief (my word) throughout the competition. What that exactly means, I don't know.
By the way, for those keeping score, Mali and Israel ended up their women’s soccer game 1-1, so each team left with one point for the standings.
And the Danish women were ahead of Slovakia in handball 9-8 in the first half before I said, “Okay, that’s enough for tonight…” and turned off the set at 12:25 AM and went to sleep. I love the Olympics. But I do have my limits.
More to come. Each day for the next couple of weeks.
As I say, We watch the Olympics most of the day so that you don’t have to.
Let the Games begin! Early.
(By the way, though many people -- perhaps most -- think that the Olympic Theme was written by John Williams, and it's regularly identified that way on YouTube, he didn't. The Olympic Theme is "Bugler's Dream" by Leo Arnaud. What John Williams wrote is "Olympic Fanfare," which comes in here below around the 1:00 mark. And together they make a wonderful piece of music.
Comments