Message to the Networks: Shut Up and Show the Sport: It's the Olympics!

There is a fine line between patriotic support for a nation's athletes and flat-out parochialism that focuses on those athletes to the exclusion of all else.

I’m not naive enough to believe that television broadcasters are going to ignore their viewer base to just show quality sport and ignore our athletes, but surely there must be a compromise. Not here in Australia, unfortunately.

There is so much excellent sport that goes unseen at the Games to make way for self-indulgent, parochial nonsense.

Tonight, as an example, in the wake of Dale Begg-Smith’s Silver medal, we lost about a quarter of the broadcast time to discussion of whether he should have got Gold.

First we had a panel discussion, headed by a host who questioned every decision and criticised everything about the Alexandre Bilodeau.

Even when dual Olympic medalist Alisa Camplin, broke the scores down on an almost frame by frame comparison of the two runs, the host remained unconvinced.

We then had the performance repeated with Dale Begg-Smith and the Australian Chef de Mission, Ian Chesterman, analyzing why Begg-Smith came second. To their eternal credit, neither bought into the argument despite the host badgering them relentlessly.

To add insult to injury, the same rubbish was tried with Bilodeau, the Gold Medal winner. It was all very good natured, of course, but the questions were embarrassing and smacked of sour grapes.

What was the host’s basis for this inquisition? Was he a former Winter Olympian? Was he an athlete of note? No. He is the president of an AFL football club, former journalist and host of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. He knows nothing of Winter sports.

Instead, he relied on the unnamed “experts on the hill” as his authority for questioning the result. It’s a tried and tested excuse of the foot-in-the-door school of journalism.

He doesn’t even have the courage to own the questions.

All of this energy wasted and in the meantime did we see any of the biathlon—no. Did we see any of the Nordic combined—no. Hockey—no. Short track—Ohno’s medal and one heat of the women’s 500m where an Aussie was eliminated.

We did get to see the luge, of course, given the high profile of the sport this week, but you have to wonder how much we would have seen had Nodar Kumaritashvili not had his terrible accident.

It’s only Day Four and already I’m sick of the coverage. Thank goodness for the interweb. I can watch whatever I like, whenever I like—if I can find it before the IOC takes it down, that is.