Let the Games Almost Begin

As readers of these pages know, I inhale the Olympics, vegetating in front of the TV all day (almost literally) from early morning to late night, watching the Family of NBC Olympic Networks, using the remote control switching channels like Heifetz uses a Stradivarious.  And the Winter Games are upon us.  Once again, I plan to write my Bob Sledding columns each day – probably each day.  And it’s that “probably” that is the point here.

I’m looking forward to the Winter Olympics.  I don’t have it in me not to.  The anticipation is there, though the unbridled enthusiasm is not. 

Part of the reason is because pretty much no crowds will be allowed at most of the competitions, and the few outdoors that have them will be limited.  That’s actually smart, and I applaud the decision.  But it nonetheless detracts from the excitement of watching.  The events are what’s important, of course – they’re the point.  But it’s sort of like watching a movie comedy at home by yourself and watching it in a movie theater with an audience roaring with laughter around you.  It’s the same movie, and the movie is the point – but it’s more fun hearing the laughs.  Also, the point of the Olympics is to bring the world together.  And while that will hold true for the athletes, it won’t be true for the public.  So, that will be missing.

But a lot of it is China.  Not because of the coronavirus – however it came about, this wasn’t a planned sneak attack by the Chinese on the rest of the world.  But of course the reality that the pandemic began there will always be a nagging buzzing sound in the ear.  And so it’s more a case of the normal featurettes on China that we’re sure to see, and the vistas at outdoor events will be a reminder of world sadness.

(It's worth noting, too, that media isn't being allowed in to China for COVID restrictions, and all coverage, from what I've read, will be done at home in the studio.  That may make a difference, too, though from the pre-Olympic events I've watched -- more on that below -- the reporting has been very good.)

And much of my reaction is to the horrific human rights abuses in the country which have grown more pronounced.  It became visceral a few months back when Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai made an accusation of assault against a former Chinese official – and she disappeared.  For the longest time it was feared she’d been killed, but fortunately she finally resurface…insisting now that, oh, no, she never accused anyone of anything.  Despite, of course, the accusatory tweets being there for all to see.  When “Thank goodness they didn’t kill her” is the high point of your defense, there are serious problems.  When someone disappears for months and returns insistent that they never said what the world knows was said, it’s hard to feel unbridled enthusiasm for that country acting as “host.”  I just have a different concept of a “host.”

There’s more, like cyber attacks and political abuses.  And while I know no leading industrial country is even close to being without deep flaws – God knows the U.S. isn’t, most especially under Trump and how Republicans have become fascist, wanting to overturn democracy – China has nonetheless taken it to new levels.

Just today, NBC News reported on an interview they did with FBI Director Christopher Wray who said said the massive scale of Chinese activities to steal American technology was overwhelming when he became FBI director in 2017.  "This one blew me away," he said. "And I’m not the kind of guy that uses words like 'blown away' easily."  He said there are 2,000 active FBI counterintelligence cases on Chinese espionage attempts — and that the the FBI averages opening a new case every 12 hours.

And CNN has started to air a series of short featurettes on China prior to the Olympics.  This is the first one, about four minutes long, that they posted yesterday. 

​​​So, all of that together – not anything separate – just sucks some of the pure please out of the overall Games.  I don’t plan to watch the Opening Ceremony as China pays tribute to itself with many, many thousands of performers trained relentlessly to near-perfection.  (The Opening Ceremonies for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing were spectacular – but the automaton quality put it on the edge of incredibly creepy.)  I haven’t decided yet about the Closing Ceremonies.  And I don’t expect to watch as many of the competitions as I usually do.  I absolutely will watch, and will watch a lot.  And will write about it all.  But I have my limits.

With all this in mind, knowing I’d be cutting back – at least a bit -- as I said above, I decided to get more of my fill of the Olympic season by watching a lot more of the national and international competitions leading up to the Olympics than I usually do.  The U.S. trials in a lot of sports, for instance.  And also European and World events.  Figure skating, alpine skiing, the luge and more.  It’s been very entertaining and a joy to see.

And from that, I have some limited comments about figure skating.

Several years back, as a result of my watching as much of the Olympics as possible, even on off-channels, I came upon the secondary coverage of figure skating where they showed all the competition, not just the main favorites.  And it was there I first saw the network’s backup tryout team of reporters and wrote here about how tremendous they were.  This was when Scott Hamilton and Sandra Bezic were the main analysts and – well, I forget who was the NBC anchor.  And much as I like Hamilton, and he was really good discussing the sport outside of the competition, that whole team drove me up a wall with its emptiness during the skating.  But this start-up unknown team of Tara Lipinski, Johnny Weir and NBC host Terry Gannon were a joy.  And they were so good that eventually they took over as the #1 figure skating team.

And over the years, for my taste, they’ve plummeted.  Gannon stayed solid, but Lipinksi and Weir took their popularity to hear and treated it all like they were the show.  Flamboyance and “aren’t we so funny!” (they weren’t – they had always been great fun and occasionally funny, but not ever Really Funny all the time) became their hallmark.  In fairness, I’m sure this is what NBC wanted, seeing how popular they were, and so they just gave the network what they wanted.  But it was becoming annoying, and they’d even stopped doing the one thing I especially liked about them at the first – commenting about a skating performance when it was happening.  That was what Hamilton and Bezic didn’t do, they’d shut up during a skate and only say things like, “Wow!” and “Oh, my how pretty.”  But Lipisnki and Weir actually analyzed a skate while it was going on so that you could follow the competition just like any athletic event.  And little by little they got away from that, down to next to nothing.

And now – they appear to be back!

I saw hours and hours of the announcing team, and they were as good as they were at the first.  Really smart, insightful, fun, authoritative and entertaining.  I have a feeling that it had gotten SO much and SO out of hand that either complaints were going in or the NBC executives began to feel it, or both – and it seems like NBC sat down with the team to go over the upcoming Olympic coverage, and it got said that, “Guys, let’s go back to what got us here.  You’re good, you don’t need to put on a show, the Olympics are the show.  Just do what you do well as fun skating experts.  Don’t be vaudevillians and burlesque comics, because you’re not.”

And they were consistently excellent.  And once again were back to analyzing skaters while they were skating.  O huzzah!

Two skaters names leap out.  For the Americans, Mariah Bell was wonderful.  She had a tremendous short program, though her long free-skate faltered a bit, but it was good enough that she held on to her big lead.  And for the rest of the world, a young Russian skater Kamila Valieva seems to be the favorite.  At the European championships after the short program, she wasn’t only in first place ahead of the reigning Russian champion…in a sport where a few points making the difference between medaling or not, she was 20 points ahead of second place!  She was the first ever to pass 90 points, the next best was like at 71.

And I also want to watch for the two American speedskaters I wrote about here three weeks ago (with video) -- world champion Erin Jackson and her hometown friend Brittany Bowe, also on the U.S.  team.  Their graciousness and sportsmanship was endearing.  Jackson’s when she had the slightest slip and got bumped from the team because of a weird rule, yet put all the blame on herself.  And Bowe’s when she took herself off that 500-meter race so that Bowe could take her spot, and she’d race in the 1500-meter race she’d already qualified for.

So, that’s an early look and some thoughts about the Winter Olympics about to start.

Bob Sledding is on its way.  However detailed and low-key it ends up being.  We’ll find out.