POV: You're a Broadcaster for Olympic Gymnastics
Why is Olympic commentary this year so awful?
There is no end to NBC soiling the Olympics. It is in the nature of each event to bring you in, but there is so much that is strange and stilted about the commentary, something so howlingly distasteful. There are the athletes and the stories and the basic thrill of watching mastery even in sports you barely know how to watch. The athletes involved are too good for a layperson to truly comprehend, but you don't have to really understand what someone is doing or why to appreciate them being good at it. But the commentary this year has not helped; it has ranged from throwing subtle shade to delightfully deranged theatrical panic attacks. What separates an adequate commentator from, well, I guess most of them is how much they sound like they have a permanent sinus infection.
It is jarring to hear the Olympic commentators break the flow of the anticipatory intensity of each competition to make snarky remarks about working weird hours and not being there since NBC was too cheap to send most of them to Paris. All the swimming announcers just straight-up screamed into the mic. During a men’s volleyball match, one of the players missed a pretty difficult ball, and the announcer sneered, “Just an unacceptable performance,” and I just thought, Damn, bro, chill… You almost break your back getting out of bed.
This makes for a natural transition to how unhinged the commentary is for women’s gymnastics. It’s all so passive-aggressively bitchy and any minor mistake is perceived to be a looming causality. Maybe I’ve gotten more attuned to this since I started watching the Simone Biles documentary on Netflix, which puts into focus the notable un-fun aspects of knowing about the pressure these athletes face and the unusual and volatile toll it takes on their mental health. I reacted to their remarks more or less as anyone would, which was a mix of bewilderment and astonishment, but there is something fitting about it. You don’t have to understand what someone is doing to appreciate them being bad at it.
Simone Biles lining up for the hardest vault of all-time. Let’s hope her mind isn’t focusing on when she had the worst mental breakdown in the history of the Olympics. She can’t afford to let her country down for a second time.
And with that spooky bazoon, the U.S. gains a dominant single-point lead.
Just a slight overextension on that handstand… This is literally more cringe than the ROFLcopter and Dancing Baby combined. Not awesomesauce, am I right?
And now there’s an extra step. Hopefully she has a backup job lined up where she can bag groceries, but if I were her, I’d also put a bag over my face after that trainwreck.
It’s incredible that she is still so nimble and springy at 23 years old. She is practically a mummy at this age.
Qiu Qiyuan is not taking enough risk in her bar routine to even sniff a top-three spot. What is she thinking? How could she even show up to the Olympics with this type of performance? She should walk straight into the Atlantic.
OH… Qiu Qiyuan is now getting a little too risky on the bars. If she’s not careful, she’ll wind up in the Paralympics.
YAY! Qiu Qiyuan sticks the landing! That’s a top-three finish! I’ve always believed in her.
That wobble at the end knocked her one-eight of an inch off the ideal landing. This will result in an absolutely disastrous three-tenths of a point reduction.
And a 14.8 score from the judges for Suni Lee after her uneven bars performance. This was a generous score because I counted 25 mistakes and 10 penalties, and I think I spotted a mole on her inner thigh that looks cancerous.
Now that’s gymnastics 101. Fly high, stick the landing, and if you make a mistake, there’s always Harakiri.
I think it’s fair to say this is a trend throughout sports but this year’s Olympics has brought it into the light for millions who might not follow sports.
Commenters come in a variety of unhelpful flavors, painfully obvious man, needs a voice coach & a brain coach, on the scene through nepotism and going to make this commentary about me even though it’s not, and last but not least painfully clueless & possibly an artificial belligerence.
I came up as a child listening to baseball and hockey on the radio with my grandfather in the 1970’s. I miss those commentators, emotionally invested in the athletes, steeped in the respective traditions of their sport, committed to authentically sharing the suspense of the games, and most importantly academically critical rather than just mean. I remember when commentators had empathy for athletes.
When commentators can’t model empathy and decency it harms the athletes. It harms all of us by making the world a bit smaller, meaner, and less gracious.
As always Sam love the post. I prefer watching the world’s dumpster fires and laughing along with you to crying alone and trying to put the fires out with my tears.
Full disclosure: I have watched no Olympics commentary, but I feel like I have a good handle on how to do this right. Someone should just like deadpan and try to give advice to all the high level gymnasts, like, "oh hey, he should try to land on that beam if at all possible" or "if she hadn't fallen down at the end, she would have scored higher."