So… Are you watching the Olympics? NBC says you are. The telecasts of the Beijing Olympics are averaging close to 30 million a day. It has trailed off a bit since swimming came to an end. And by swimming, I of course mean Michael Phelps, whose dominance in the water cube earned him a record 8 gold medals. Oddly enough, the pinnacle of the Neilson numbers was achieved at the very beginning of the games… before the first dive, serve, pitch, leap, or jump-shot. It was the opening ceremonies, which averaged over 34 million viewers. Second to that is the night on which Michael Phelps took part in the 4x100 medley relay to win his 8th gold medal. This was NBC’s best Saturday night, ratings-wise, since 1990. An average of 31 million watched that night, with the number jumping to 70 million during the race. The show in 1990 which the Olympics beat out was a very special episode of “Empty Nest”… So, Saturday turned out to be a double whammy for Michael, as he was overheard saying that ‘medals were nice and all, but he couldn’t live with being involved in something with fewer viewers than anything starring Kristie McNichol’… I’m paraphrasing of course.
And… like any event where the world strives to get along for a couple of weeks, there is no shortage of controversy, conjecture, and conspiracy. Again, starting with the opening ceremonies. Turns out that several of the groups of children in the parade, representing different regions of China, were not from those regions at all, but just kind of thrown together and given a banner. Part of the perfectly synchronized pyrotechnic display was CGI, and sound enhanced… Not unlike the crowd sound at a Pats game I imagine. And the cute little girl who sang ‘Ode to the motherland’ was actually lip-synching to the voice of a girl, kept behind the curtain because the Chinese thought she… well… had a face for radio. OK – no big deal. No medals involved in walking in the parade. (but with ‘trampoline’ being an Olympic event, we’re not far off). Any sport in which the medal winners are left to the discretion of judges, have seen some problems. There have been issues in boxing, fencing, synchronized diving, (which seems to have sprouted up overnight like a zit on prom night), and of course… gymnastics. In one event, Nastia Liuken of the US, scored identically, down to the hundredth of a point, with her Chinese opponent, Kexin He. Yet was awarded the silver medal due to a bizarre tiebreaking method the judges used to ‘name’ a winner. Is there some sort of bias, or conspiracy here because our hosts are dominating in gold medals, and half of them came from ‘judged’ events?
Funny thing about Americans… We don’t like to lose. It’s amazing how the attitudes in articles, and blogs, and on radio and TV have turned since week one, when Phelps sucked up gold medals like Pac-Man after a power pellet. Now the attention turns to bias, and cheating on the part of the Chinese who have claimed 45 golds to our 26. Look, I personally think that judged events are kind of silly. Sure, they all take incredible training, and skill… although, in equestrian, the horses kind of do all the work. (relax Lauren, it’s just a joke!) But judges are human. They can have a bad day. She may not like your outfit, or your country… Maybe he got a speeding ticket on the way over. The girl at Dunkin Donuts put cream instead of skim milk in her coffee, or maybe there’s a painful itch he can’t scratch because the damn camera’s on him. There will always be controversy in judged events. Then there’s the cheating argument. I love how people are spouting off about how the Chinese divers, and gymnasts do not look 16… They’re CHEATING! This is your argument, you bozos? Yes… let’s launch a full investigation into this so we can expose to the world that not only are they kicking our collective ass, but they’re using their 7th graders to do it! Brilliant…
By the way, we are leading overall in medals 82 to 79. So can we just shut up, put the conspiracy theories to rest, and just enjoy the rest of the games in the intended spirit of Olympic tradition? Root for your country’s athletes, or another country if you happen to like that particular diver, or hurdler, or badminton player… speaking of which, has badminton changed that much? I remember games in my backyard as a kid, and the players on each side of the net played with a Budweiser in their off hand, and a Marlboro in their mouth… They have it easy now. But I digress… All of these exceptional athletes have worked incredibly hard to get there. Shouldn’t we just cheer them on, celebrate when they win, and feel a little bad for them when they come up short? Someone has to win, and someone has to lose… That’s life! Jim McKay had a great tag line at the end of his introduction to ‘The wide world of sports’, that I think perfectly describes what the Olympics are all about from the athlete’s perspective. “The thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat.”
Go USA!
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