Monday, August 11, 2008

Hip deep in archers, fencers, and rowers
Yeah, Husband and I are total Olympic gluttons. We'll watch all 97 hours of coverage a day. (Oh the wonders of TiVo!) We especially like those sports you never see or hear of outside of the Olympics. We couldn't care less about basketball (Kobe who?), beach volleyball (why do the men get to wear shorts and tank tops but the women have to compete in two-piece bathing suits?), or soccer. Nope, we love the obscure sports. Give us more archery, fencing, or shooting.

Sure we'll watch the A-list sports (except for the above mentioned, we fast-forward through those). But we like swimming and track. But the "little" sports are just more interesting. Unfortunately, they get very little coverage. A network will show all 2-hours of a basketball game, but give you 10 minutes worth of shooting (basically the round that decides the winner), if they show them at all. It's annoying, but there it is. If it weren't for the US women's Epee team taking all three medals, I doubt we'd have seen any of that -- and all they showed was the gold medal round.

I know it's hard to compete with Michael Phelps, but it's sad that Olympians who work just as hard at their sport as he does get no love from the networks. Still, I'm loving having something to watch at 3 am other than informercials. Being able to turn on the TV and see Eventing Dressage (that involved horsies, for those who have no clue what I'm talking about) or women's skulls (which has nothing to do with anatomy) just makes me so happy.

And I love rooting for the underdog. The US will take home a passel of medals...I'm a sucker for the one swimmer from Tunisia or the first equestrian team from Israel. I'll cheer for them every time.

In other news, wish me luck....for the second week in a row I'll be doing kitten duty alone. It's freakishly hard on my back -- you wouldn't think taking care of kittens would be so physical, but it is. So no doubt tonight will find me in a Vicodin heap on my back and forcing poor Husband to take care of dinner. But it's worth it. I love taking care of the little guys until they're old enough to go to loving homes. Horray for kittens!

1 comment:

Fo said...

What drives me nuts is that when NBC does deign to show one of the "lesser" sports, they often edit it down to include only the three medal-winning teams. This robs the viewer of any suspense or chance to root for an underdog. And they usually won't even go that far unless one of those three teams is the United States.

AND YET, they still find time to show us a preliminary beach volleyball match in its entirety. Go figure...