# 2008 Olympics (Opening Ceremony + Other Discussion)



## Mistwell (Aug 9, 2008)

Did folks watching the opening ceremony?

I thought it was awe inspiring.  Simply incredible.


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## RichCsigs (Aug 9, 2008)

I really hated the fact that the director (editor?) kept changing the shots every 2-3 seconds.  Some of the stuff was so obviously meant to be seen from the vantage point of someone in the audience and they should have stuck with those shots.

That said, I really loved the Tai-Chi masters and the guys with the light up suits.


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## Krug (Aug 9, 2008)

Thought it was fantastic. Agreed that there was some really bad editing choices, and the parade of nations just went on forever.


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## Steve Jung (Aug 9, 2008)

That was very cool. The tai chi practictioners being able to stay in those concentric circles while performing was neat. The torch lighting was amazing. My girlfriend and I had been wondering where the Olympic cauldron was. Then all of a sudden there it was. The last carrier "running" around the stadium was a daring choice.


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## Orius (Aug 9, 2008)

I thought it was pretty good, better than some of the artsy stuff that usually pops up during the various ceremonies.  I thought the scroll was impressive, as well as all the coordination shown by all the various performers, and not just the tai chi masters.  The torch lighting was great too.

I hope people watching in other countries had better coverage than the lousy coverage NBC provided in the States.  They always show the stuff poorly, and it takes me all of 5 minutes to tire of Costas' inane commentary over what's taking place.  They handled the parade of nations as poorly as they usually do. This time they had the bright idea of putting the names of countries about to enter the stadium in tiny orange letters on a bright red background; I could only make out about half of the names.  Dumbest editing gaffe: as the British team entered the stadium, NBC cut to a shot of Nicolas Sarkozy in the stands.  Yeah that's right, they covered the British team by panning the president of *FRANCE*.


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## Krug (Aug 9, 2008)

BBC's hilarious take: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/olympics/2008/08/the_nightmarish_weirdness_of_t.html


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## Tonguez (Aug 9, 2008)

Apparently TVNZ got first pic on camera positions and so literally got the best view in the world

and from what I saw the Beijing ceremony was awesome and imho the best opening ceremony ever. The scroll was awesome, the globe and its runners were awesome, the cauldron was awesome

admittedly I went to sleep for bits (it showed here at 12am) and turned off by the time Chad entered the arena...


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## StreamOfTheSky (Aug 9, 2008)

Krug said:


> BBC's hilarious take: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/olympics/2008/08/the_nightmarish_weirdness_of_t.html




I lost respect for his judgment values and stopped reading after he trashed Sarah Brightman.  Insulting her and her talent is on the same comedic level as _Jackass_.  Good nickname for the chap, actually.

And, while on the topic of being angry...is this the proper thread to discuss experiences with nbcolympics.com, or would that be best in a new thread?


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## Felon (Aug 9, 2008)

StreamOfTheSky said:


> I lost respect for his judgment values and stopped reading after he trashed Sarah Brightman.  Insulting her and her talent is on the same comedic level as _Jackass_.  Good nickname for the chap, actually.



Okay okay, we get it. You like Sarah Brightman. A lot.

Personally, I missed the garish spectable and sympathize with the author's attitude, which is complete befuddlement at how people keep acting like China is no longer a bad-guy country. I'll remind everyone: they never turned over a new leaf. They're still the evil guys James Bond should be engaging in cold war antics with. Don't cheer them on.


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## Plane Sailing (Aug 9, 2008)

moderator/

Quick reminder to not get side-tracked into politics here, thanks.


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Aug 10, 2008)

I must be culturally challenged.  Because although it was impressive, after a while I just got bored and wished they'd finally let the athletes in.  They constant level of one-upsmanship in opening ceremonies means Vancouver and London will be in tough spots -- what do you do after China just spent $300M on an opening ceremony?

I do enjoy the parade of nations, oddly.  I find it interesting to compare the disparity in nation size and number of athletes (African nation: 10M people, 2 athletes; Luxembourg, 486,000 people, 86 athletes), and to see what sport the athlete carrying the flag plays.  Having a land-locked country whose sailing competitor was carrying the flag was probably best of all.


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## drothgery (Aug 10, 2008)

Am I the only one who's been scouring sports web sites trying find someplace that makes standings reasonably easy to find? Yahoo sports seems to do a lot better than ESPN or CNN/SI or NBCOlympics.com on that point.

And while a lot of sites have handy explainers on how the various sports are played, explaining the tournament formats seems to have been left out. I mean, they're mostly either pure tournaments or some variant on a pool play/knockout round system, but no one's saying what's what.

Also annoying -- even on the rare times NBC will show something live in the Eastern time zone, they seem to think it's okay to run it three hours later in California with the live icon on the screen.


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## Arnwyn (Aug 11, 2008)

Not watching this year due to reasons that can't be discussed here.


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## Brown Jenkin (Aug 11, 2008)

Haven't watched much. I missed opening ceremonies because Friday is D&D night. Not watching much since and into the near future because of Gen Con prep work and then Gen Con. Hopefully I can catch some of the final stuff. Maybe next time it won't be scheduled durring Gen Con. Maybe we can get a petition going to the Olympics Committee to fix that in the future.


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## Krug (Aug 13, 2008)

Frankly I thought the '84 LA Olympics opening was pretty impressive as well:
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vg9Lh1WxlA[/ame]

As for the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, turns out that all too cute little girl with ponytails singing during the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony had her voice dubbed over:  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/sports/olympics/13beijing.html?hp


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## Padril (Aug 13, 2008)

Krug said:


> As for the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, turns out that all too cute little girl with ponytails singing during the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony had her voice dubbed over:  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/sports/olympics/13beijing.html?hp




Some of the fireworks were apparently prerecorded as well, the footprints marching across Beijing. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7556058.stm see the bottom of the article.


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## StreamOfTheSky (Aug 14, 2008)

The opening ceremony is pure spectacle, I don't really care much about the "authenticity" of it.


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## Tonguez (Aug 14, 2008)

StreamOfTheSky said:


> The opening ceremony is pure spectacle, I don't really care much about the "authenticity" of it.




I agree - the Olympics Opening cermony is a fully scripted and managed presentation and really in this age of digital media authenticity should'nt even be a consideration. 

China showed that it had the capacity to put on an amazing spectacle that show cased the best and prettiest of what China can rightly claim as its own 'heritage' and contribution to the World. Accept it as a Spectacle and move on

Despite any political differences China firmly underscored the point that it is a superpower and London and Vancouver shouldn't even be thinkling of competing with that


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## Orius (Aug 14, 2008)

I've heard about both of these.

The simulated fireworks doesn't really bother me.  That's because the fireworks were actually set off, they just used computer generated shots because trying to film them from a helicopter was deemed to be too dangerous.  That's reasonable.

The girls switch though does deserve criticism.


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## StreamOfTheSky (Aug 19, 2008)

Argh, i'll never stop getting annoyed at the total and utter focus on the U.S. team, to the ridiculous exclusion of all other countries on NBC.  I thought in the internet age, someone somewhere would be able to load up a danged video of events, but alas it's basically only  nbcolympics.com, and that means little chance of seeing other countries compete unless you're on at the exact right time and you hit the lucky ~2% chance nbc deigned to stream the event live.  I've been lucky with badminton and gotten to see some chinese, japanese, british, taipei, korean, and other teams, but other sports...not so much.  Now here it is I REALLY want to see the china vs. china beach volleyball match  (man would it be awesome if the upstart young team won and got to take their amazing serving skills into the final against may/walsh), and...nope.  Not worth airing online or prime time/live.  I've discovered that it will be on USA network in my area, sometime between the hours of of 2 a.m. and 9 a.m.  That's just great, seeing as how I have to go to work in the morning...  Is it so much to at least say when each event in the block's going to air if it's freaking taped anyway?

Seriously, can we just give the camcorders over to a bunch of teenagers to post on youtube next olympics?

/angry rant


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## StreamOfTheSky (Aug 19, 2008)

Argh, i'll never stop getting annoyed at the total and utter focus on the U.S. team, to the ridiculous exclusion of all other countries on NBC.  I thought in the internet age, someone somewhere would be able to load up a danged video of events, but alas it's basically only  nbcolympics.com, and that means little chance of seeing other countries compete unless you're on at the exact right time and you hit the lucky ~2% chance nbc deigned to stream the event live.  I've been lucky with badminton and gotten to see some chinese, japanese, british, taipei, korean, and other teams, but other sports...not so much.  Now here it is I REALLY want to see the china vs. china beach volleyball match  (man would it be awesome if the upstart young team won and got to take their amazing serving skills into the final against may/walsh), and...nope.  Not worth airing online or prime time/live.  I've discovered that it will be on USA network in my area, sometime between the hours of of 2 a.m. and 9 a.m.  That's just great, seeing as how I have to go to work in the morning...  Is it so much to at least say when each event in the block's going to air if it's freaking taped anyway?

Seriously, can we just give the camcorders over to a bunch of teenagers to post on youtube next olympics?

/angry rant


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## drothgery (Aug 19, 2008)

StreamOfTheSky said:


> Argh, i'll never stop getting annoyed at the total and utter focus on the U.S. team, to the ridiculous exclusion of all other countries on NBC.




There are a lot of things worth getting upset at NBC about in their coverage. This isn't one of them. There's way too much going on in events where Americans have real shots at medals for them to spend much time in events where team USA won't do much, or on second-tier matches when the Americans are heavy favorites -- no one in the US cares about the Angola-Germany basketball game.

Much more annoying things about NBC's coverage
- The 'psuedo-live' coverage here on the west coast. Either start the evening session at 5pm Pacific (and the morning at 7am), or cut and edit things (and show swimming and gymnastics first, then go to basketball highlights -- you know that's what people really want to watch)
- Bizarre choices on secondary events to cover. What's exciting about the first 3/4ths of a marathon or the cycling road race? Or synchronized diving, period?
- No evening session on most of the secondary channels (which at least show some things live here)



StreamOfTheSky said:


> Seriously, can we just give the camcorders over to a bunch of teenagers to post on youtube next olympics?




In Vancouver 2010 or London 2012? Sure. Sochi, Russia 2014? Maybe not. Chicago 2016 (assuming the IOC's not brain-dead)? Certainly.


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## Orius (Aug 19, 2008)

Yeah, there's so much to cover at the Olympics that NBC is largly going to cover the American team, because you know it's an American network watched by mostly Americans (I pity the poor Canadians close to the border who might be picking up the signal) interested in the American team.  That brings up a point, does Canada have a network covering the games on their own or are they stuck with NBC's crap?

Doesn't help that they like to pack in tons of coverage on biased "sports" like gymnastics and stuff that I won't bother to watch.  Some of the more obscure sports might be enteraining, but they (maybe the networks as a whole) don't cover them much at all.

But I agree that the way NBC handles the airing sucks, and it always has.  They don't just screw up the Opening Ceremonies.


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## D.Shaffer (Aug 19, 2008)

An American network, catering mostly to watchers in the US, choses to focus on the US teams and the sports Americans tend to find interesting?  Color me surprised.  Somehow, I doubt this is going to be a problem for most of their viewers.


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## drothgery (Aug 19, 2008)

D.Shaffer said:


> An American network, catering mostly to watchers in the US, choses to focus on the US teams and the sports Americans tend to find interesting?  Color me surprised.  Somehow, I doubt this is going to be a problem for most of their viewers.




It'd be different if this was, say, a major tennis tournament (where CBS, NBC, ESPN, and USA have taken a lot of well-deserved flak for focusing on Americans too much, and have dialed that back a lot lately) where you're only covering one sport and many of the top competitors in that sport are not Americans. 

Or if despite being a large, rich country with a diverse population, the US was only competitive in a small number of events. But that's not the case; NBC could fill its prime-top slots entirely with footage of Americans competing in events they will medal in, and not fit it all in.

I'm sure Chinese television showed a lot of badmitton and table tennis and even weightlifting. And that countries which had fewer home-grown stars to show just focused on the few locals and then went to things they think have general interset.


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## Darth Shoju (Aug 19, 2008)

Orius said:


> That brings up a point, does Canada have a network covering the games on their own or are they stuck with NBC's crap?




We have the CBC. Their coverage is alright.


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## Mistwell (Aug 19, 2008)

drothgery said:


> no one in the US cares about the Angola-Germany basketball game.




You chose a poor example actually.  The German team has two U.S. players, including my favorite U.S. team (LA Clippers) center, Chris Kaman.  I very much wanted to watch that game, and had to read reports from others on the play by play.


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## drothgery (Aug 19, 2008)

Mistwell said:


> You chose a poor example actually.  The German team has two U.S. players, including my favorite U.S. team (LA Clippers) center, Chris Kaman.  I very much wanted to watch that game, and had to read reports from others on the play by play.




Bah.

It was a lopsided game between the two worst teams in the group that played out exactly as expected (well, I'd take Germany over China in a best of 7, but that's not what happened when they played). Maybe Croatia-Iran was less compelling to American viewers, but not by much.


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## Klaus (Aug 20, 2008)

D.Shaffer said:


> An American network, catering mostly to watchers in the US, choses to focus on the US teams and the sports Americans tend to find interesting?  Color me surprised.  Somehow, I doubt this is going to be a problem for most of their viewers.



I find it odd that the US stations are listing the medal board ranked by total medals won, instead of the usual gold medals won, just so the US be ahead of China.

The Organization of the games *lost* one of the 10 poles of the Brazilian competitor (Fabiana Murer), who was at the time ranking 3rd in the event. Since the poles are adjusted to specific heights, she tried to make do with another pole but missed all three jumps.

On other news, the crew in the Beijing Airport drove a cart over the equipment bag of the Brazilian fencing competitor, breaking all of her gear. She was reimbursed and had to buy equipment on the rush.


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## drothgery (Aug 20, 2008)

Klaus said:


> I find it odd that the US stations are listing the medal board ranked by total medals won, instead of the usual gold medals won, just so the US be ahead of China.




As long as I can remember, they've always listed the medal count by total medals won (or why Germany's been ahead of the US at the Winter Games lately, and the Soviet Union/Unified Team was in the past). The 'gold medals won' count is Chinese spin.


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## Brown Jenkin (Aug 20, 2008)

drothgery said:


> As long as I can remember, they've always listed the medal count by total medals won (or why Germany's been ahead of the US at the Winter Games lately, and the Soviet Union/Unified Team was in the past). The 'gold medals won' count is Chinese spin.




Word


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## Orius (Aug 20, 2008)

Klaus said:


> I find it odd that the US stations are listing the medal board ranked by total medals won, instead of the usual gold medals won, just so the US be ahead of China.






drothgery said:


> As long as I can remember, they've always listed the medal count by total medals won (or why Germany's been ahead of the US at the Winter Games lately, and the Soviet Union/Unified Team was in the past). The 'gold medals won' count is Chinese spin.




Yeah, it's always been total medal count everywhere I've ever seen it, newspapers, probably TV, even the net these days.  And it's not always a matter of spin either, since there are times we're not at the top of the total medal count like the Olympics before the Soviet Union broke up or various Winter Games.

Though I'd rather rub Phelps in China's face than our medal count.


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## D.Shaffer (Aug 20, 2008)

I always found the medal count a bit silly and counter productive myself.
The Olympics are supposed to promote friendly competition.  How is waving the fact your country received more medals then another country anything but 'Ha ha! We're better then you!' type boasting?  As is, from the way many countries (Including my own, the US is certainly guilty of it) sponsor, train, and equip athletes for the sole goal of winning medals, it's almost as if the Olympics have become a proxy battlefield at times.


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## Klaus (Aug 20, 2008)

drothgery said:


> As long as I can remember, they've always listed the medal count by total medals won (or why Germany's been ahead of the US at the Winter Games lately, and the Soviet Union/Unified Team was in the past). The 'gold medals won' count is Chinese spin.



Not a spin, since down here we've seen it by "gold/silver/bronze" as early as Moscow '80 (the first Olympics I can remember).


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## drothgery (Aug 21, 2008)

D.Shaffer said:


> As is, from the way many countries (Including my own, the US is certainly guilty of it) sponsor, train, and equip athletes for the sole goal of winning medals, it's almost as if the Olympics have become a proxy battlefield at times.




Eh. About the only direct bit of that we do these days is with the armed forces marksmanship teams and the shooting events and biathlon. Now, indirectly there's a lot if you count scholarship college athletes at state schools, but a lot of other countries' athletes got athletic scholarships to US state schools, too (especially in swimming, track, and basketball). But the US national training centers for most sports are almost entirely funded by private sponsors.


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## Krug (Aug 21, 2008)

The disqualifications for the 200m men's final were ridiculous. When you're running that fast at an angle, a few missteps would probably be inevitable. When they weren't blocking anyone does it matter that much? Congrats to Bolt anyway for an incredible run.


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## drothgery (Aug 21, 2008)

Okay, I was a little bit late for work this morning because I was watching the women's soccer final (unfortunately the only goal was scored during the first half of extra time, while I was in the shower, but I'd had the DVR recording...), flipping from the basketball semis to the soccer gold medal game just after halftime in the soccer. Until the last five minutes or so of regulation, it looked like the Brazilians were completely dominating the game, and I was shocked they hadn't scored yet (also, pro wrestlers have nothing on top-level soccer players when it comes to acting abilities), and when what looked like end-of-game desperation failed to yield a goal, I figured the game was over and started getting ready for work. Turned the game back on over breakfast, and it's 1-0 USA, and it looks like that wasn't a fluke, though the Brazilians had a lot of chances to tie it near the end of extra time. Still, great match.


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## Villano (Aug 21, 2008)

Can anyone explain to me what happened during Women's Softball?  

The semi-finals were US vs Japan and Australia vs Canada.  Usually, during team events at the Olympics, the winners (US and Australia) would then face each other for the gold and the losers (Japan and Canada) would fight for the bronze.  Instead, Australia then played Japan for the bronze...sort of.  The winner didn't get the bronze, the loser (Australia) did.  Japan then played the US _again_ for the gold.

What the hell?


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## drothgery (Aug 22, 2008)

Villano said:


> Can anyone explain to me what happened during Women's Softball?
> 
> The semi-finals were US vs Japan and Australia vs Canada.  Usually, during team events at the Olympics, the winners (US and Australia) would then face each other for the gold and the losers (Japan and Canada) would fight for the bronze.  Instead, Australia then played Japan for the bronze...sort of.  The winner didn't get the bronze, the loser (Australia) did.  Japan then played the US _again_ for the gold.
> 
> What the hell?




Softball (and I think baseball) use a weird almost-double-elimination playoff in the Olympics. I'm not exactly sure how it works, but it does work out that 2 plays 3 with the loser getting bronze, then the winner plays 1 for gold. I imagine it's some sort of compromise to deal with single-elimination tournaments being completely inappropriate for baseball and softball, but there not being enough time to do best of 3 or best of 5 series, let alone best of 7.


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## Switchblade (Aug 22, 2008)

drothgery said:


> The 'gold medals won' count is Chinese spin.





Chinese spin? Not really, that’s the correct format.

From wikipedia:
“The IOC medal tally chart is based on the number of gold medals for country. Where states are equal, the number of silver medals (and then bronze medals) are counted to determine rankings.”<O</O
<O
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Games#Medals_per_country


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## Arnwyn (Aug 22, 2008)

Orius said:


> That brings up a point, does Canada have a network covering the games on their own or are they stuck with NBC's crap?



We have the - far superior in every conceivable way - CBC to cover the games in Canada (along with TSN - Canada's version of ESPN - that covers lesser-known events).

We can, though, watch NBC as well. Because we can directly compare, rest assured that the NBC coverage _really_ is quite dreadful.


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## drothgery (Aug 23, 2008)

Arnwyn said:


> We can, though, watch NBC as well. Because we can directly compare, rest assured that the NBC coverage _really_ is quite dreadful.




I've watched almost nothing on NBC's main channel (except for half-watching stuff while I was actually refreshing my web browser). Most of what I've actually watched has been on the 'Olympic basketball channel' or the 'Olympic soccer channel' that showed up on my cable last week or CNBC or USA -- where they're actually showing some things live. 

And if a senior exec with NBC's sports programming department isn't a huge diving fan, is there some other logical explanation for some of their programming decisions? I mean, the event doesn't feature Americans likely to do well. The Chinese medal favorites (who always actually won) were largely teenage waifs, not athletic women in bikinis. There's not a lot of interest in the sport here. So why was it dominating the first hour of coverage almost every night?


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## Orius (Aug 23, 2008)

Arnwyn said:


> We have the - far superior in every conceivable way - CBC to cover the games in Canada (along with TSN - Canada's version of ESPN - that covers lesser-known events).
> 
> We can, though, watch NBC as well. Because we can directly compare, rest assured that the NBC coverage _really_ is quite dreadful.




Well, you probably saw me pan their coverage of the Opening Ceremonies above.  It sucks that _any other_ network didn't have enough money to outbid NBC for something like 20 years of exclusive Olympic coverage.



drothgery said:


> And if a senior exec with NBC's sports programming department isn't a huge diving fan, is there some other logical explanation for some of their programming decisions? I mean, the event doesn't feature Americans likely to do well. The Chinese medal favorites (who always actually won) were largely teenage waifs, not athletic women in bikinis. There's not a lot of interest in the sport here. So why was it dominating the first hour of coverage almost every night?




Cause it's a decision by an NBC executive.  It's been a long time since Brandon Tartikoff has run the network; instead these days its run by the suits from that classic SNL sketch about Star Trek, and it really shows.


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Aug 23, 2008)

Switchblade said:


> Chinese spin? Not really, that’s the correct format.
> 
> From wikipedia:
> “The IOC medal tally chart is based on the number of gold medals for country. Where states are equal, the number of silver medals (and then bronze medals) are counted to determine rankings.”<O</O
> ...




Wikipedia is spin, too.  The IOC doesn't officially rank countries, though you are correct that the medal table is organized by golds first.  From www.olympic.org (the official IOC website):



			
				IOC said:
			
		

> *The International Olympic Committee (IOC) does not recognise global ranking per country; the medal tables are displayed for information only.*
> 
> Furthermore, the results that we publish are official and are taken from the "Official Report" - a document published for each Olympic Games by the Organising Committee. However, for the first Olympic Games (until Antwerp in 1920), it is difficult to give the exact number of medals awarded to some countries, due to the fact that teams were composed of athletes from different countries.
> 
> The medal tables by country are based on the number of medals won, with gold medals taking priority over silver and bronze. A team victory counts as one medal.




What I find interesting is that if the Soviet Union were still in existence, it would beat the USA in total medals, though still fall behind both the US and China in golds (26/25/57 = 108 as of 10PM 23 AUG Beijing time).


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## drothgery (Aug 23, 2008)

Olgar Shiverstone said:


> What I find interesting is that if the Soviet Union were still in existence, it would beat the USA in total medals, though still fall behind both the US and China in golds (26/25/57 = 108 as of 10PM 23 AUG Beijing time).




Probably, but that's kind of hard to figure. I mean, at first glance you'd think you could just add up the ex-Soviet states. But then you have to subtract out any case where two ex-Soviet states won medals in a team sport (because you can only have one) or otherwise more Russians, Ukranians, and others combined won than the Soviet Union could have entered. And then you've got to reshuffle where a Soviet team might well have done better than the Russians (or other best ex-Soviet team) than they did (Women's gymnastics might well have beat the Romanians for bronze with just Ukranians and Russians; Argentina probably will beat Lithuania for bronze in men's basketball, but add the best of Russia's team and they might be playing the US for the title instead of Spain -- they'd still lose, but they'd medal).


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## Villano (Aug 25, 2008)

Well, the Olympics are over and the final medal count is up:  http://results.beijing2008.cn/WRM/ENG/INF/GL/95A/GL0000000.shtml

However, if the Chinese Women (*cough*Toddler*cough*) Gymnastics team is disqualified for being underage, it would result in:

China loses 2 gold and 4 bronze.
The US gains 2 gold and 1 bronze, but loses 2 silver.
Russia gains 3 bronze.
Romainia gains a silver, but loses a bronze.
Great Britain gains a silver.
Ukraine gains a bronze.


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## Brown Jenkin (Aug 25, 2008)

The Closing Cerremony was good. I was wondering what London would do. Good choice in Jimmy Paige, but I was expecting something more elaborate.


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## Wycen (Aug 25, 2008)

Klaus said:


> I find it odd that the US stations are listing the medal board ranked by total medals won, instead of the usual gold medals won, just so the US be ahead of China.
> 
> The Organization of the games *lost* one of the 10 poles of the Brazilian competitor (Fabiana Murer), who was at the time ranking 3rd in the event. Since the poles are adjusted to specific heights, she tried to make do with another pole but missed all three jumps.
> 
> On other news, the crew in the Beijing Airport drove a cart over the equipment bag of the Brazilian fencing competitor, breaking all of her gear. She was reimbursed and had to buy equipment on the rush.




These are the kinda stories I think make it interesting to watch.


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## Redrobes (Aug 31, 2008)

Thought Id give a british angle on things. I always get excited by the olympics and think that the politics should not get in the way of the sport. The opening ceremony was magneficent but it really was chest beating on an epic scale though why not. Apart from the goose stepping flag bearers I thought it was excellent and agree with the firework + CGI and with our collective opinion on dubbing the girl - very poor. Not as poor as the rampant xenophobic TV commentating on it tho.

I reckon Phelps was outstanding and the man of the games. Bolt too maybe though not by half as much.

Our medal count was amazing given our country's pathetic attention to sport generally. About the rankings, we have always had gold, silver bronze listed by golds first but we get the total count too. I think its quite cool that the US won using their method of counting and that China won using theirs. All happy bunnies and nobody has to get nailed to anything.

BBC covered evry event as though it was a UK thing. Last UK person goes out, no more coverage. Its a global phenomenon and it sucks. I would like to see the best people regardless of country. At least show most of the finals.

The end ceremony was fabulous except for about 8 minutes. Big red London bus - yeah ok. Jimmy Paige and some nobody singer - slightly dodgy. Young girl trampling over bunch of hoodies - not good at all. Beckham... what again ! We were terrible at olympic footie and havent even qualified for euro finals. Mayor of London, shirt out hands in pockets slouching down next to emaculately dressed IOC and Chinese president - just embarrasing.

2012... I just hope to watching it from another country. Give me strength, its going to be bad. Just look at the Lisa Simpson logo.


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## Redrobes (Aug 31, 2008)

Its double posted again...


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## Orius (Aug 31, 2008)

Redrobes said:


> 2012... I just hope to watching it from another country.




Don't watch it from the States, NBC has Olympic coverage till at least 2016.


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## drothgery (Aug 31, 2008)

Orius said:


> Don't watch it from the States, NBC has Olympic coverage till at least 2016.




Rumor has it that ABC/ESPN are making a very serious push for the next set of Olympic rights. Which will at least have different problems (but they're easily the most professional US sports broadcasting outfit out there; CBS is a distant second, then Fox, and then NBC -- which isn't surprising, since all they do is the Olympics, ND football, and Sunday Night Football).


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## StreamOfTheSky (Aug 31, 2008)

Redrobes said:


> The end ceremony was fabulous except for about 8 minutes. Big red London bus - yeah ok. Jimmy Paige and some nobody singer - slightly dodgy. Young girl trampling over bunch of hoodies - not good at all. Beckham... what again ! We were terrible at olympic footie and havent even qualified for euro finals. Mayor of London, shirt out hands in pockets slouching down next to emaculately dressed IOC and Chinese president - just embarrasing.




Yeah, I was wondering what the hell all of the stuff going on for London was.  It made no sense, and wasn't particularly entertaining.  I think one of the commentators on NBC said it "told the history of London" or something to that effect.  To which I had to wonder what performance he was watching.

At first when I heard London was getting the 2012 game,s i was angry since it beat out cities/countries that had never had the olympics before.  Years later, now that I've seen how awesome China did (and the ridiculous amount they spent), I feel almost pity for London, having to follow that act next.  (I don't consider the winter games to be "olympics" -- no offense -- so Vancouver doesn't count in my mind)


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## Brown Jenkin (Sep 1, 2008)

StreamOfTheSky said:


> (I don't consider the winter games to be "olympics" -- no offense -- so Vancouver doesn't count in my mind)





I coun't the Winter games as Olympics, but it is a whole different ballgame. Its alot smaller and has a more limited base of possible host sites. As a result the opening/closing ceremonies are likewise more limited.


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