There’s just nothing better really. For the athletes, the Olympics drives them to surpass previous physical limits imposed on the human race by the gods - all for the glory of a medal. For people like myself, the Olympics simply drives you to watch more TV in a 2 week stretch than you’ve watched in the 4 years since the last Olympics - that’s what’s up. In all honesty I haven’t felt like doing SHIT since the Olympics started, and I don’t see that trend discontinuing, at least until the good track and field events are over. However during my viewing of this XXIX Olympiad I’ve been getting increasingly pissed at TV One’s coverage, or more specifically the events they choose to cover.

I hadn’t intended to watch the womens cycling road race cause I thought it would suck, but after 15 minutes viewing I found I was quite engrossed by it. This Russian chick had made a break and was a minute ahead of the Peleton with like half an hour to go, the race was reaching an exciting climax. Then TVNZ, true to their name come through with a deft show of nationalism and cross over to the kick off of NZ vs Brazil…. in Soccer. WTF ? Are you serious ? I wanna watch individuals surpass human limits and win medals, I want the excitement of competition, I don’t want to see our fifth tier soccer nation getting their ass kicked by the best in the world in fucking pool play. That’s a foregone conclusion, that ain’t exciting. I know there’s people that DO want to see the game (families of the players etc), but fuck, we don’t need to see this shit from minute ONE ! Let’s catch them up in the second half TVNZ ! don’t leave me hanging when there’s actual victories to be seen.

This brought me to a realisation, for the most part I don’t really like seeing any sports which are “games” at the Olympics. Soccer, Hockey, even things I like watching like Tennis and Basketball. I wouldn’t really bat an eyelid if these were all canned. The wack ones take up hours of coverage time, and the good ones we see all year anyway (Grand Slams, NBA, Premier League etc). When an Olympic medal ain’t really the pinnacle of achievement for your sport, which it isn’t for a lot of these.. it just makes it wack. Back to “games” though, I’d make the exception for Indoor Volleyball, cause it’s bad ass and I never see it normally. Anyway here’s my viewing wishlist for the rest of the Olympics, someone word up TVNZ

No more Equestrian - I know NZ is in this, I don’t care. It’s boring as fuck.
No more Board Sailing - Same as above.
Rowing - Coverage has been all good, it’s good to watch, and NZ has been goin hard. Win/win
Swimming - They’re covering this all good, keep it up. How was the Mens 4×100 relay ? Ho-ly
More Weight Lifting - They’ve showed fuck all, this is some real Olympic shit.
More Boxing - Only seen 1 fight.
More Wrestling - Gladitorial activities is what the Olympics is all about.
No more Beach Volleyball - Fuck this, too much court and too few players = boring spectacle.
No more Shooting - Guns aint sport, I’ll let Archery ride.
More Gymnastics - Seen hardly any gymnastics, which is a shame cause people doing flips is all good.
Diving - Diving’s all good.
Cycling - Will be mean once the indoor shit starts, Pursuit is ill.
Heaps of Track and Field - Bar maybe the 15000 meters which i only wanna see the end of, any Track and Field is all good.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 1:38 pm and is filed under Me against the world, Sport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.