Winter Olympics 2018

[Kermit power]

JonChalk said:

Settling down with a coffee to watch Biathlon Men's relay (on Eurosport, of course. Good ol' Eurosport) - hoping for a cracker like the women's yesterday.

Oh God, don't get me started on bloody Eurosport!!!

I knew I wasn't going to get a chance to watch some of the events I wanted to see, such as the women's Ski-cross, but Eurosport really helpfully includes the specifics of the sport being covered in the programme guide on Virgin, not just "Coverage of the Winter Olympics", so off I went to bed knowing that I'd have the Ski-cross to recorded to watch.

And did I have the Ski-cross recorded to watch? Did I fk!!! Ice hockey? Yep. Some Ski Jumping? Got that too. Also some Biathlon, some figure skating, and a couple of other bits and pieces, but Ski-cross? Nope. Not a sniff of it on either of the programmes claiming to be all about it!!!

I'll take Balding and co over Eurosport any day. At least you can usually find the sport you want just by rewinding iPlayer!

[JonChalk]

Kermit power said:

Oh God, don't get me started on bloody Eurosport!!!

I knew I wasn't going to get a chance to watch some of the events I wanted to see, such as the women's Ski-cross, but Eurosport really helpfully includes the specifics of the sport being covered in the programme guide on Virgin, not just "Coverage of the Winter Olympics", so off I went to bed knowing that I'd have the Ski-cross to recorded to watch.

And did I have the Ski-cross recorded to watch? Did I fk!!! Ice hockey? Yep. Some Ski Jumping? Got that too. Also some Biathlon, some figure skating, and a couple of other bits and pieces, but Ski-cross? Nope. Not a sniff of it on either of the programmes claiming to be all about it!!!

I'll take Balding and co over Eurosport any day. At least you can usually find the sport you want just by rewinding iPlayer!

I'm surprised - every event I've tried to record via my BT box has recorded properly even if the times have wandered a bit - perhaps that's a Virgin thing, rather than Eurosport?

Although, I do share your pain at other times. On a number of occasions Eurosport's approach to scheduling "flexibility" can be very frustrating. Quite often resulting in "Why are you shouting at the TV" questions from my OH.

[Ructions]

Look like it's game over for the ladies in the Curling.

Bloody Scots

[Kermit power]

Ructions said:

Look like it's game over for the ladies in the Curling.

Bloody Scots

Now now. There's still a chance they could win the Bronze and become British again, isn't there?

[Lynchie999]

Ructions said:

Look like it's game over for the ladies in the Curling.

Bloody Scots

Ironically there was a Swede with Scot blood who beat them...

[Mr Pointy]

Unbelieiveable pressure on that Korean lady skip to beat Japan. She must have realised how important it was to the whole country.

[ecsrobin]

[fttm]

^^^^ Trouble being that none of our National Hockey League players were released from their clubs to play , so the Olympic team were basically amateurs .
Roll on the Big Air Snowboarding tonight , local lad Mark McMorris back from a horrendous accident and in with a strong chance of a podium .

[Kermit power]

Gaz. said:

Ski cross was on Eurosport last night, I watched the entire thing.

It may well have been, but not in the Eurosport slot which said "Ski Cross" on the programme guide!

[Blakewater]

JagLover said:

Kermit power said:

Lynchie999 said:

I guess this comment belongs here but...

WHY do we always have to have Balding and a full female pundit line up every day ? - i'm all for equality and all, but it seems a bit... odd ??

I think you're reading in something that isn't there, to be honest. The main studio pundits I've seen have been:

Amy Williams on the sliding events (the only other British Gold Medallist you could've got to do that has been a little bit busy for the last week, and is also female).

Rhona Martin on the curling. Yes, you could've chosen male curling medallists if you'd wanted to, but not a Gold medallist.

Jenny Jones on snowboarding. First Brit to win an Olympic medal on snow, never mind just in snowboarding. Can't help being female.

Christopher Dean on skating events. Male. They could've presumably gone for Jane Torvil if they'd wanted a clean sweep!

Chemmy Alcott. She's in the studio doing the punditry stuff, whilst Graham Bell is, I believe, doing race commentary. If Bell is better at the latter, and they can't both do both, why worry about it? I suspect the only other British skier most people could even name is Martin Bell, and whatever he's doing now, it doesn't seem to be anything to do with the media.

Rather than criticising the number of women on the BBC coverage, can you name any men you think should be providing coverage who aren't?

No problem with having female pundits in the studio, but I have been recording all the BBC shows and it is like a less rowdy version of loose women. Occasionally you get a token male, the rest of the time a four women posse.

Sports coverage is something the BBC usually does very well, but with this, and the hours upon hours of Curling coverage with more exciting stuff "on the red button"......on a programme being broadcast at 2 in the morning, they do seem to have lost their touch.

It was better in Sochi when they could actually all be their and do live interviews with the athletes in the evening but the time difference is much greater now. It is a little disconnected when the main part of the broadcast is from a studio in Salford and that reflective table makes everyone look like they have a weirdly long body.

Male sport dominates the television most of the time but at the Winter Olympics it's our female athletes who are generally doing better. I've nothing against them being given the greater share of air time as a result.

[Rider007]

Surely the BBC are taking the piss ?, turn on in the morning it's curling, turn on at lunch time it's curling, turn on in the evening , it's replay of curling for the day !! . Coverage wasn't as boring as this at Sochi ??

[Nobby Diesel]

Billy Morgan = Bronze!
Great work.

[fttm]

Nobby Diesel said:

Billy Morgan = Bronze!
Great work.

Yes indeed , awesome runs .

[130R]

fttm said:

Nobby Diesel said:

Billy Morgan = Bronze!
Great work.

Yes indeed , awesome runs .

[JonChalk]

Got up to watch Muzzy in the 50k, and he's having another mare, sadly.

[Kermit power]

fttm said:

^^^^ Trouble being that none of our National Hockey League players were released from their clubs to play , so the Olympic team were basically amateurs .
Roll on the Big Air Snowboarding tonight , local lad Mark McMorris back from a horrendous accident and in with a strong chance of a podium .

Hopefully that will remain the case in future Olympics too. It rather ruins the whole Olypmic spectacle for me when one or two nations are so much stronger than all the others simply because the sport is big enough back home to have a huge professional market...

[FourWheelDrift]

Someone won't be returning home - https://i.imgur.com/WhrbeDw.gifv

[ben5575]

Rider007 said:

Surely the BBC are taking the piss ?, turn on in the morning it's curling, turn on at lunch time it's curling, turn on in the evening , it's replay of curling for the day !! . Coverage wasn't as boring as this at Sochi ??

Agreed. Non stop curling.

Amusing article on the BBC/Balding coverage (caution Guardian content for those of a sensitive disposition)

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2018/feb/23...

[i] At times during the BBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympics it has been tempting to wonder if this rule also applies to extreme, nauseating doses of public niceness; if it is possible, given sufficient exposure, to die of niceness.

Sitting up late watching Lizzy Nice having a nice chat with two-times nice-medal winner Andrew Nice, while Clare Balding smiles and says something nice about catching up with Team GB’s Someone Else-Nice before the downhill ice nice, you fear there might be a genuine danger of overload here, of a localised toxic shock whereby everyone in the room freezes, slumps back in their seat and starts to melt, faces peeling away, tongues lolling, eyes dangling out. Like in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but because of niceness instead of Nazism.

Even the name Clare Balding contains the word nice. Balding is a presenter the BBC seems determined to project in vast Soviet-style repetitions across every platform like a blow-dried Stalin, an icon of televisual blandness, albeit blandness with a cajoling edge, niceness that recognises only other niceness. [/i]

[Ructions]

Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.

I've enjoyed the curling immensely, you can't really expect the BBC to show other sports when members of team GB are in the hunt for a medal. You always have the option of the red button or Eurosport.

[Mothersruin]

Not the Olympics but this popped up on my YT feed.

You had one.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdC6f0QplSs