One Good Thing/Gold Medal Coverage

Amy's very eclectic Olympics recap

Every other year, I become an impossible and irrepressible sports nut — glued to televised coverage of sports I’ve never heard of and fantasizing about how I might manage if suddenly called-upon to represent my country in an international competition.

If there is ever an armchair Olympiad, I would score straight 10s in:

Amazed Face

Yelling

Cringing

Crying

Until this year, I consumed the Olympics in discrete curated segments — all focused on superpower nations fielding superheroes vying for gold medals.

USA! USA!

But because of my (relatively brief) career working in television production — and my lifetime of consuming and loving television — I tend to view sports in terms of coverage, camera work, and commentators. During the Super Bowl, I will completely miss the action on the field because I am distracted by the spectacular drone shots and those high-speed tracking shots down close to the action on the field, which somehow keep up with the play.

What can I say? I love good coverage.

NBC, which has been broadcasting this years’ Olympics in France, has taken sports coverage to an entirely new level — or should I say multi-level — and the effect is to bring the viewer much closer, much more intimately involved, and — perhaps ironically — use of this technology and multi-screen streaming access seems to somehow capture the magic of what we might call “the Olympic spirit.”

I have been watching the Olympics streaming on Peacock, which has been offering TEN HOURS of non-stop coverage each day, followed by highlights in the evenings.

Often, various contests are viewed in a grid of three or four panels.

The various commentators somehow manage to provide an overview of what’s going on at the time, zeroing in on a race about to start, a medal ceremony going on, or a particularly exciting penalty kick. You can then choose to view this exclusively, or continue to scan other events. For exciting and high profile contests, they will switch to full-screen (while individual sports are streamed separately).

And this multi-screen view is how I discovered a latent interest in the women’s hammer throw, skateboarding, synchronized diving, and …. surfing!

Oh, the surfing!

I have never been surfing. I have never watched surfing. I’ve spent more time contemplating the carburetor in my car than I’ve spent thinking about surfing.

But then the Olympics took me all the way to Tahiti and to a legendary wave called Teahupo’o, which beats against a shallow coral reef. The Olympic surfers looked tiny and vulnerable against its massive swells.

And then the surfers paddled out toward the wave — this wave so legendary that it has its own name. And they rode Teahupo’o until it either defeated them or they survived it. The scoring system was indecipherable. But I didn’t care.

Because of this: DO YOURSELF A FAVOR, and watch the short video below (JUST DOUBLE CLICK TO WATCH ON NBC’s Olympic YouTube channel).

The French choice to host the surfing competition in Tahiti was genius. The fact that Tahitian native Kauli Vaast took the gold medal is SO RAD.

OK — that’s surfing. And over the past two weeks, there have been countless other golden moments.

Because of the way the coverage has been designed, viewers could pick and choose their own golden moments, whether or not an American medal was in the offing.

For instance, listen to the Swedish announcers LOSE THEIR MINDS when the Swedish- American pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis (raised in Lafayette, Louisiana but competing for Sweden) SAILS to victory. (SIMPLY DOUBLE CLICK BELOW TO WATCH).

The American commentator’s perfect recap: “It’s Mondo’s world, and we’re just living in it.”

So true!

Without multiple screens, I would have missed the various women’s Olympic beach volleyball teams’ medal-worthy ability to somehow play this extremely demanding sport while wearing the world’s tiniest bikinis — without getting a wedgie.

HOW….?

During the Olympics, I skipped over team sports I could watch at other times and in other places. See you later, basketball, soccer, rugby, softball, field hockey, etc.. I also skipped over sports I have no interest in — or simply don’t like (hello, Golf!).

I also declined to watch sports that are dumb.

Handball? Handball as it is played in the Olympics looks like a game we made up in day camp, that summer I was a bored fifth grader. Pickleball cannot be far behind.

But Oh — ARTISTIC SWIMMING! (click and watch the lower right screen)

I had to shelve my associations with “synchronized swimming,” as immortalized in SNL’s classic 1984 sketch with Martin Short and Harry Shearer:

CLICK HERE TO VIEW this classic sketch.

CLICK HERE for NBC's compilation of the weirdest and most wonderful artistic swimming moments (two minutes of MAGIC)

Here’s a brief clip from Team USA performing to music from West Side Story from a couple of years back:

My favorite moments:

Embraces and handshakes between competitors after their contests. Win or lose — they often rise to the occasion and celebrate the moment.

Cutaways of families in the stands. Oh — those families reviving their countless minivan excursions to tournaments, their extreme sacrifices, and now so very excited and proud.

Come-from-behind Cinderella stories:

And WOW — OLYMPICS.COM has helpfully compiled dozens of these, as told by celebrities and fellow athletes.

CLICK HERE to watch.

In case you don’t want to register (it’s free), I’ll retell NBA great Dikembe Mutombo’s favorite moment.

It’s 1996 in Atlanta. Mutombo recalls attending the Olympics for the first time, and learning that the Congolese National Women’s basketball team has arrived for their very first Olympic contest, with no team uniforms, no sneakers … no nothing. The women would be competing in whatever athletic wear they happened to own.

Dikembe Mutombo (who is from the Democratic Republic of the Congo) said, “This cannot be!” He called Adidas (his own corporate NBA sponsor), and within days, the Congolese women’s team was outfitted with matching uniforms and sneakers. Mutombo and his family watched them from the stands. And while the team did not win — anything — he was very very proud.

With genuine and touching pride, he says: “I never competed in the Olympics, but I’ve contributed to the Olympics.”

BUT WAIT … THERE’S MORE:

To prolong your own Olympic journey and expand your knowledge of its rich history, you can listen to one of my favorite podcasts: SHORT HISTORY OF:

MODERN OLYMPICS.

This is a beautifully produced, fascinating and very entertaining account of the Olympics movement, including both its bright and darker history, and many many examples of “the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat.”

CLICK HERE to listen (one hour)

I’ll leave you with one small but mighty example of the Olympic spirit.

It’s 1988. Seoul. Canadian sailor Lawrence Lemieux is on his way to winning a silver medal, when he deliberately sails WAY off course in terrible conditions to rescue two capsized and injured competitors from Singapore.

After the heroic rescue, Lemieux returned to his own race.

He came in 22nd. I’d call that an achievement worthy of a Gold medal.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH HIS VICTORY (2 min)

Thank you for taking this very deep dive with me.

Next week — I write about CORN.

Love,

Amy

** As always, if you’ve made it all the way to the end of this week’s newsletter, please shoot me a “heart” or a comment. THIS makes me happy.