Did you watch the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympics in Paris last Friday? I thought bringing the athletes on barges down the Seine was very clever, in spite of the rain. (Remember the song, “I love Paris….when it drizzles…”) The NBC announcer said that whereas normally they’d be providing information about each country as its team entered a stadium, this time they’d just let us watch. Really, it would have been more interesting to hear some information than to put up with the frequent commercial breaks and interviews with American athletes, plus the peculiar riverside entertainment, so I didn’t watch very long.
The ads would have us believe that the only way to see the Summer Olympics is on NBC and its streaming platform, Peacock. However, if you have cable, you can watch more of the competitions than the USA-centered events shown on NBC. Clicking on a banner ad from Comcast or clicking the button that shows last-watched channels, I can pull up a set of icons for USA, E, two Paris Olympic channels (these are 1351 and 1352 on my channel line-up), and sometimes CNBC. (You can also watch in Spanish on Telemundo and Univision.)
TV Guide has a schedule of what events take place on which dates, but of course, this does not tell you exactly what will be on TV when. On Saturday morning, there was skateboarding on NBC, cycling on USA, basketball on CNBC, gymnastics on E, judo on Olympics channel 1351, and volleyball on 1352—Egypt vs. Poland.
Not being much of a sports fan, during the summer Olympics I like to watch the more unusual ones (I mean sports that we don’t see often on TV). Handball was a sport I had never seen, so I watched part of the Germany-Sweden match. Handball is the inverse of “football” (soccer), which is logical, right? Same sort of running around, but all hands, no feet. Really not very compelling, though.
A Hockey match between Australia and Argentina was held outside on what I presume is astro-turf….anyhow, it was bright blue, which looked odd. The announcer’s voice was so soft I could not hear her, so I left. However, on Monday, the announcer for a women’s hockey match between Argentina and South Africa had a nice clear voice, full of enthusiasm.
My new “discovery” is Rugby. Rugby,
which I’d never seen before, looks rather as though American football players
decided one day to ditch the helmets and silly costumes, and just play in
shorts and t-shirts. The game consists
of someone running with the ball, someone tackling that person, and everyone
else piling on top. I particularly enjoyed
watching the women’s rugby matches—maybe because it’s so unusual to girls being
so rough-and-tumble. On Tuesday, New
Zealand won gold, leaving Canada with silver.
But the shortness of the game confused me. a friend on Facebook explained that it's a special version called "sevens" and is short and fast.
Then there is Fencing. If you want to see spectacular fencing, rent an old Errol Flynn or Douglas Fairbanks movie. Olympic fencing, at least what I have seen, is totally opposite: no leaping about, just the two fencers (faces invisible behind full masks) bouncing on their toes and waving flimsy swords around until one touches the other. The referees review the touches on video. Egypt and Hungary tied and went into overtime; finally the Egyptian fellow won, and leapt about joyously, even falling down and kicking the air. Note: This building dates from 1907, and I am sure fencing matches were different then—no electronic sensors, no video review!
Table tennis is, oddly enough, quite fun to watch. It’s fast and you can keep your eye on the ball! Two women, representing Brazil and Nigeria, faced off in a final. The announcer seemed to be providing useful information, but again, the voice was so soft I could only catch a few words. I have no idea what Game Point and Match Point are, but at least I could see where the ball landed. The Brazilian player, attractive and lithe, almost always served by tossing the ball high into the air and then hitting it after it landed. The Nigerian player was big and had such a large bosom that I thought it would interfere with movement, but obviously it doesn’t. The Brazilian, who won this match, is named Bruna Takahashi, which is confusing, as she doesn’t look any more Japanese than I do. I fioud that others are also perplexed: a thread on Reddit has a photo of her family and many people commented that she does not resemble her parents. Anyhow, Bruna Takahashi is 24, and has 146,000 followers on Instagram. Alas, I read that she lost the following day’s match.
The E (“entertainment”) channel was an appropriate venue for Beach Volleyball, where one watches women in bikinis and braids repeatedly face-plant in the sand. The weather on Monday was appropriately bright and warm. In fact, the announcer couldn’t stop remarking on the 87 degree temperature, and lamenting that the players must be “baking.” Well, maybe so, considering that the young women represented Latvia and Switzerland. [Hey, when you think “beach,” you automatically think “Latvia!” and “Switzerland!”, right?] As on rainy days, I think the spectators must suffer more than the athletes. After all, they have to sit there for hours at a time. The beach volleyball court has the souvenir photo advantage over all the others: it’s practically underneath the Eiffel Tower. By the way, men’s beach volleyball exists, but it’s less photogenic, the fellows being so relatively covered up.
There are sports events that are less interesting than they ought to be. One is Archery. Again, if you want to see good work with bows and arrows, check out an old Robin Hood flick, or really, any old western featuring cowboys-vs-Indians. Today’s competitive archery with the ridiculously outfitted bows is just too silly to watch.
According to the schedule, today, July 30th, is the last day of Surfing. This competition has been taking place in the waters of French Tahiti, but I don’t know how much coverage there has been, if any. NBC had sent SNL’s Colin Jost to report, but last week he sort of shrugged and said you really can’t see much from shore.
Believe it or not, there is actually Trampoline at the games, but only on Friday the 2nd.
As for some of my favorites, Artistic Swimming will take place August 5th – 10th, and Rhythmic Gymnastics on Aug. 8th – 10th. If you like watching people (almost) fall off mountainsides, Sport Climbing will also be later, Aug. 6th – 10th. And the much-publicized debut of Breaking will take place only on Aug. 8th & 9th.
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