Olympics Abroad

Now that the smoke from the fireworks has cleared, Oprah's filmed her ‘Welcome Home Olympians’ episode and Michael Phelps has donated that bonus, it's time to reflect on the good, the bad and the ugly of viewing the Games from another country.

It was an Olympics Opening Ceremony for the record books! The 2008 drummers and 3000 Confucian disciples were awe-inspring. Multiple times during the ceremonies I had to pinch myself, I couldn’t quite believe that what I was witnessing was real life. The footstep fireworks and the over-the-top performances felt more like a sci-fi flick than something that could occur in my lifetime. Because Nick is on the Olympics Team at Arup (unfortunately, not the team that actually goes and competes, although he does have a gold medal for working on the project for over 1000 hours), they watched the Opening Ceremonies at work, a nice way to spend the afternoon. There were plenty of jokes and general hysteria when President Bush was shown in the stands.

He saw the ceremonies for the second time later that evening, when we headed over to a friends for dinner. Gareth, who is a proud Welshman who has lived in Australia, his flatmate Tami, Naomi (both of whom are lovely English women), and Marwa, our friend from Syria, had dinner and watched the entire Opening Ceremonies on tape. It was great fun to see the reactions of people from all these countries to the ceremonies. At the end of the big show, the Brits all said, ‘Well, that’s it – we’re screwed. We’ll never be able to compete in 4 years!’ Someone said, ‘We won’t even bother to try!’

The Parade of Nations was a particular highlight. We got out a book of maps and an atlas and tried to find each country as they were announced (two comments on that – one, I know that sounds nerdy, but there was plenty of wine so it was quite entertaining! And two – all of that would have been irrelevant had my amazing brother been present, as his geo-political knowledge is frighteningly extensive).  Marwa would poke fun at most countries as they entered the Bird’s Nest, saying outrageously inappropriate things in a thick accent, like, ‘Look at those French! Look at the silly way they walk!’; ‘Oh, the Germans! I bet they are all drunk!’and ‘Look at the Egyptians, they are all on steroids, and they still won’t be any good!’ She was immensely proud when Syria’s tiny contingent of athletes entered, scrunched in between the giant Russian and American teams. When the American team came out, Gareth said, 'You guys are so uplifting! It's like, don't worry, the Americans are here, everything's going to be ok!'

After our charming evening, I thought, ‘wow, these games are going to be amazing! What an incredible cultural experience, we’re really appreciating the global nature of the games for the first time!’ But what I hadn’t grasped was that watching the games in another country is, in some ways, the equivalent of not watching the games at all. Instead of hearing Bob Costas comforting voice each night walking me through hours of coverage (sidenote – does anyone else think Bob Costas has the best job ever?), seeing the pull at our heartstrings back stories of atheletes, missing out on the statistics and stories and longer coverage that you can afford to do with a greater budget and larger viewing audience. All the BBC could offer me was an hour of highlights each evening at 7 pm, highlights that were British in nature. That meant I saw very little of Nastia Liukin’s gold-medal-winning routine but saw the one British contender for the uneven bars’ routine about 5 times; no volleyball, beach or indoor, no women’s basketball, soccer or softball, very few American moments at all – but I DID see hours of sailing and, worst of all, cycling at the velodrome. After the first few nights, I wanted to pull my hair out. After the first week, I had completely given up.

A couple of stories will, I hope, highlight just how truly different (and inferior) the coverage was. On the first Sunday, I saw that basketball was on, and that the US team was playing China. ‘Awesome!’ I thought, ‘This will be so cool to see America’s greatest players against the best that Team China has to offer, just seeing this group of guys playing together will be a treat.’ I truly felt like my father’s child as I cracked open a beer and sat Indian-style on the floor in front of the tv, ready for a great game. After 5 minutes, they cut forward to the end of the first half. Then, 5 minutes later, they cut forward to the last 5 minutes of the game! And that was that for my Olympic basketball viewing. What came on immediately after, you may wonder? Archery.

The next night, I watched the Olympics highlights, knowing that Michael Phelps had swam that day and that surely, at the very least, they would cover that. And they did – they showed the race in full. Then they cut back to the studio, and said, ‘That makes 2 medals now for Phelps – time to add another medal!’ They then panned over, where there stood a CARDBOARD Phelps! They then put a gold medal around his neck! How sad is that? They knew they’d never get to talk to him, never get to interview him, so they honoured him with a cardboard cut-out. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Somehow the BBC got Michael Johnson to do their track commentary, which was the one shining moment of the games. He is articulate and bright and brings the sport of track to life. When he was first in the studio, the first thing they asked him was, ‘Have you seen our own Michael Phelps over there?’ He replied, ‘Um, yeah, that’s kind of weird.’