08-18-2008, 10:42 PM
Badminton is definitely one of those sports thats amazingly cool to watch if you're lucky enough to find some television coverage of it. I saw some highlights of the women's gold medal match (I think), and you're right, they hit the ever-living daylights out of the shuttlecock - and yet you *still* get some amazing rallies.
New Zealand finally got on the medal table over the weekend, thanks to our rowers, cyclists and shotputter Valerie Vili. The Women's Double Sculls was the closest finish you could imagine in a rowing race (officially same margin of victory as Phelps' last-gasp 100m Butterfly win for comparison purposes). Vili was completely dominant in the shotput, but until the last throw I was scared one of the Belarussians would pull out one massive throw to steal the gold medal.
More random thoughts: How can anyone possibly follow what goes on in the Cycling points race? Is there some sort of requirement that interviewers choose the most inane questions possible to ask athletes after events? Will commentators realise they don't *have* to be saying something all the time? One of the cycling commentators I listened to here in NZ seemed intent on burying the viewers under a non-stop barrage of trivia and information. There's more than enough time to educate non-specialists on the finer parts of the sport, without going overboard.
(As an aside, I saw some brief Synchronized Swimming coverage with, I think, Canadian commentators, who were able to quite calmly and clearly explain why the NZ competitors' routine was good, but not as good as the top performers in the sport).
Chris
New Zealand finally got on the medal table over the weekend, thanks to our rowers, cyclists and shotputter Valerie Vili. The Women's Double Sculls was the closest finish you could imagine in a rowing race (officially same margin of victory as Phelps' last-gasp 100m Butterfly win for comparison purposes). Vili was completely dominant in the shotput, but until the last throw I was scared one of the Belarussians would pull out one massive throw to steal the gold medal.
More random thoughts: How can anyone possibly follow what goes on in the Cycling points race? Is there some sort of requirement that interviewers choose the most inane questions possible to ask athletes after events? Will commentators realise they don't *have* to be saying something all the time? One of the cycling commentators I listened to here in NZ seemed intent on burying the viewers under a non-stop barrage of trivia and information. There's more than enough time to educate non-specialists on the finer parts of the sport, without going overboard.
(As an aside, I saw some brief Synchronized Swimming coverage with, I think, Canadian commentators, who were able to quite calmly and clearly explain why the NZ competitors' routine was good, but not as good as the top performers in the sport).
Chris