Winter Olympics brings out our sporting ignorance
Columnist By Adrian Musolino, 2 Mar 2010 Adrian Musolino is a Roar Expert
- Tagged:
- 2010 Winter Olympics, Belinda Noonan, Channel 9, Eddie McGuire, Lydia Lassila, Olympics, Torah Bright, Vancouver olympics
Australia's only biathlon competitor Alexei Almoukov heads from the shooting range. AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Andrew Vaughan
As the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games are consigned to history, the Australian public’s brief fascination with winter sports comes to an end, relieving us of yet another free-to-air sports coverage disaster.
Just like Channel 7 managed during the Beijing Summer Olympics and recent Australian Opens, Channel 9’s Winter Olympic coverage became a major talking point that overshadowed the Games themselves.
Sadly, Belinda Noonan has been discussed as much as Torah Bright, Eddie McGuire talked about as much as Lydia Lassila.
It’s become a familiar tune for Aussie sports fans as free-to-air networks fail to adapt to the changing technologies, viewing habits and expectations from audiences who in turn have grown tired of the commercial networks’ apathy and excuses.
What’s remarkable about watching this trend unfold in recent times is how the commercial networks seem so oblivious to the errors of their ways.
The catalogue of errors began well before the Games when Channel 9 and Foxtel assembled their teams of commentators and presenters.
The cult of personality, or, to be more accurate, the cult of celebrity that infatuates the Australian media, particularly television, has increasingly wormed its way into sports coverage.
How else could we explain the presence of Mick Molloy, Eddie McGuire and Ruby Rose (famous for reasons I cannot fathom) as the faces of the Games!
When you get people like Molloy and McGuire commenting on something as foreign to them as figure skating, they resort to banality and, in their cases, having to resort to appalling homophobic comments.
The fact that such comments were made on air in this day and age is shameful.
In other cases, the commentators seemed amateurish.
James Brayshaw, for example, did more howling than actual commentating in the snowboarding and mogul events.
Too often the Aussie commentators showed a lack of knowledge in the sporting events they were commentating on, let alone the athletes competing.
As Ed Wyatt, best known as the former face of SBS’s Super Bowl coverage, blogged: “Whatever happened to actually learning the names of competitors and how to pronounce them properly? How many times do we have to hear about ‘the Slovak,’ ‘the Chinese,’ or ‘the Canadian’.”
The athletes do have names, which deserve to be broadcast.
Thankfully Channel 9 relied on local experts for the ice hockey rather than the likes of McGuire who, let’s remember, in an interview with ice hockey’s greatest Wayne Gretzky, asked what it felt like to put “the ball into the net?”
They should have done this for the majority of the events that they, frankly, knew nothing about.
We, as Aussies, like to think of ourselves as sporting doyens. But when events such as the Winter Olympics come along, where we are far from the pacesetters in events that are largely foreign to us, our Australian-centric view of the sporting world is exposed.
Rather than rise to the occasion, accept their deficiencies in these sports and attempt to learn and expand their knowledge of them, media organistaions are found lacking and fail to rise to the occasion.
The media, therefore, watch as outsiders, inevitably making incorrect judgments and resorting to assumptions and generalisations.
So we are increasingly told things like: the Australian Open tennis is suddenly boring, unbearable to watch and irrelevant because there isn’t a competitive Australian; Mark Webber must be crap because he hasn’t rattled off F1 titles; and Cadel Evans must be a choker ‘cause he can’t win the Tour de France.
If Australia is going to increase its funding to winter sports, as has been discussed, then we should start embracing and understanding the Winter Olympics so at the next Games we don’t have to put with such rubbish coverage.
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March 2nd 2010 @ 10:11am
sledgeross said | March 2nd 2010 @ 10:11am | Report comment
Geez, dont you think we are going a little over the top? Its the bloody winter olympics for gods sake people! Yes, the coverage was ordinary at times (especially Eddie etc) but I reckon the actuall commentators make a fair go of it. Obviously their skill sets are from completely different sports, and I thought they did ok given their supposed prior ignorance. At the end of teh day we are watching the action anyway, and its not as if we were fiar dinkum medal chances in most events, so who cares? I dont need commentary to notice the skill, dedication and balls needed to fly down the luge, or “bust an air” on the halfpipe, or marvel at a triple lutz. COmmentary is the same the world over. generic, cliche-ridden aural polution. Just because it comes from a Yank, or Canadian, or French accent isnt necessarily going to make it better.
March 2nd 2010 @ 10:15am
James said | March 2nd 2010 @ 10:15am | Report comment
Your last line sums up what’s wrong with the Australian media – it’s seemingly fear and hatred of international things. What would be so terrible about listening to a “Yank, or Canadian, or French accent”. I’d rather listen to that than an Aussie who doesn’t know what they’re talking about! Look at the ice hockey. That was so much more enjoyable cause we had expert commentators. I didn’t hear about anyone turning off ’cause they had accents.
March 2nd 2010 @ 10:24am
Andrew Thompson said | March 2nd 2010 @ 10:24am | Report comment
100% James! The ice hockey coverage on Fox was outstanding.
March 2nd 2010 @ 10:28am
James said | March 2nd 2010 @ 10:28am | Report comment
Absolutely. They knew their limitations and opted for local experts. They should have done that all the events. Would have been cheaper too, I guess.
March 2nd 2010 @ 10:46am
Sam said | March 2nd 2010 @ 10:46am | Report comment
“Just because it comes from a Yank, or Canadian, or French accent isnt necessarily going to make it better.” – certainly isn’t going to make it worse – probably cheaper too.
March 2nd 2010 @ 10:59am
AndyRoo said | March 2nd 2010 @ 10:59am | Report comment
I actually enjoyed Channel Nines coverage much more than Channel 7′s.
It wasn’t perfect and we missed gold medal events in short track too see replays of Bob sleds 3rd run but it was watchable….. so that makes it 1000 times better than 7′s.
Molloy was a huge mistake.
March 2nd 2010 @ 11:05am
Rellum said | March 2nd 2010 @ 11:05am | Report comment
When was the last decent coverage of an Olympic games? Rarely any live coverage, endless “postcards from (Insert country)” and commentators totally out of their depth, that is the Olympic coverage I have come to expect.
I don’t know if people are aware that TV programming is mostly aimed at the woman of the household. She is the one who makes the final purchasing decisions. Just think about that when you watch any sporting coverage.
On the pronunciation issue, having had to sit through 30 odd years of Australian “expert” sports jorno’s trying to pronounce football names from around the world, it is nice to see others acknowledging this problem. I still remember Tim Webster attempting to pronounce “Ruud Gullit “ and coming up with “Rudd Gullett”. Last nights world football news was hilarious.
March 2nd 2010 @ 11:12am
Nick said | March 2nd 2010 @ 11:12am | Report comment
Channel 9 have lost the plot. Eddie is a bafoon with little appeal or knowledge of anything non AFL. Cringe material. Mick Molloy god bless him should stick to what he does best whatever that might be, becasue comedy and sport don’t mix well at all.
March 2nd 2010 @ 2:37pm
sledgeross said | March 2nd 2010 @ 2:37pm | Report comment
I dont think its fear or hatred James. Its merely a junket! If I was James Brayshaw or Tim Bailey and someone said “we want you to cover the winter olympics in Vancouver” as if you wouldnt go. I dont blame the commentators, because as I said, I thought they did ok considering. management needs to oisten to the punters though and lift their game.
Im mean cmon, Ruby bloody Rose!
March 2nd 2010 @ 5:16pm
AIHL_IceHockey said | March 2nd 2010 @ 5:16pm | Report comment
I think the networks did the best they could with what they had. The didn’t have much.
I got my money’s worth out of the $50 Foxtel subscription, I would have paid that just to see the ice hockey final live and in full, which I did. I switched over a couple of times to see Channel 9 covering naken people at the Sydney Opera House. Figures.
I did enjoy that for the Foxtel commentators, they did make an effort to learn as much as they could about the sport and to get into the whole culture of the games.
Having done (poorly) commentary before, I know it’s damn hard, even when you know the sport and players really well.
I would give Foxtel 9/10 for the coverage, the 4 concurrent channels 24×7 was brilliant, and when I did watch Nine Network, well I’d give it a 5/10.
They were way too conservative on what people would accept as far as intrusion into regular programming, and way too patronising of people’s knowledge and interest in the sports, dumbing down the commentary.
March 2nd 2010 @ 5:26pm
Mick said | March 2nd 2010 @ 5:26pm | Report comment
I think it stems from the melbourne is the sporting capital of melbourneI attittude that is why macguire & brayshaw were there with some other
ch-7 were the same at aussie open, 7, 9 & 10 should just take the overseas broadcast because they can not do any worse than they are doing now.
I know of sbs not using the oevrseas braodcast all the time because some of the commentators are …. 1 sided & / or verging on racial sterotypes
March 2nd 2010 @ 7:09pm
Hansie said | March 2nd 2010 @ 7:09pm | Report comment
I thought Camplin was the worst of the commentators. Her barracking for the Australians was disgraceful. She positively revelled in the Chinese competitor, Xu Mengtao, crashing out (“she ate snow, that’s what she did”).
March 3rd 2010 @ 10:56am
James said | March 3rd 2010 @ 10:56am | Report comment
Her and Eddie together were awful for Lassila’s event. What about Eddie talking about the Chinese athlete whose nickname was peaches and Eddie says she would be creaming herself right about now! Thanks Eddie!
March 2nd 2010 @ 9:08pm
Skating said | March 2nd 2010 @ 9:08pm | Report comment
What I don’t understand is how apparently it was offensive by the Russian figure skating couple to dance as “Aboriginals” yet again the woman commentator of Channel 9 put on a Russian accent to say something like “but he didn’t do a quad” mocking the Russian figure skater Evgeni Plushenko. Obviously it’s OK for Aussies to laugh at other nations but if someone does it to them…what a disaster
March 7th 2010 @ 8:29pm
bever fever said | March 7th 2010 @ 8:29pm | Report comment
Of course we are ignorant of the winter olympics, we only have a tiny part of this country that gets the oppurtunity to be involved in winter olynmpic sports, where are we meant to get seasoned winter olympics commentators from ?, who follow the sports in the northern hemisphere and have the ins and outs knowledge.
The guys did as best they can, who pray tell should they get, please throw up some aussie commentators who know these sports well ?.
As usual Musolino is just stirring the pot, BTW Adrian did you name any commentators that fitted your bill or just whinge about ones you did not like.
As usual the lemmings follow.
March 8th 2010 @ 7:30pm
James said | March 8th 2010 @ 7:30pm | Report comment
Still don’t get why people insist on Aussie commentators! What is so bad in having Americans, Canadians, etc, who actually know about the sports!
March 8th 2010 @ 7:51pm
MV Dave said | March 8th 2010 @ 7:51pm | Report comment
Just off the WOs but along the same lines albeit a different sport…Interesting view from an American ‘Sokkah’ writer at the NY Times complaining that English commentators eg Martin Tyler etc have been hired to commentate the World Cup games broadcast to the American audience via ESPN etc. Complains that US commentators should have been hired to do the job; http://goal.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/world-cup-with-an-accent-on-tv-in-united-states/
Also interesting to read some of the posts back to the blogger most of whom agree that the English commentators should be used because they have more experience and knowledge.