First things first. I love the Olympics! I really do. As always, there were some incredible moments from the 2020 summer games. My top favorites were Molly Seidel winning bronze in the marathon, MyKayla Skinner winning silver in the vault (so glad she finally got a chance!), watching Caleb Dressel swim and Athing Mu run.
But there were just a few things I wasn’t too happy about. Let’s start with the obvious one…
What is the deal with women’s beach volleyball???
Okay. They were great! They won gold! But did we really have to see every single game???
Nothing against beach volleyball. But there were so many sports we didn’t see any of… like boxing, handball, table tennis… not that I necessarily wanted to see those, but I also didn’t want to see hours of beach volleyball every night. What in the world would make it so popular that it was on prime time coverage all the time?
One article I read claimed that it’s popular because it’s a fast-moving, action-packed game. Okay, fine- but then why didn’t we see any men’s beach volleyball? I didn’t even know there was such a thing as men’s beach volley ball until I looked it up. Guess what the men wear- CLOTHES! Shorts and a tank top, while the women wear bikinis.
The women are not required to wear bikinis, but they claim it’s the most comfortable outfit. I seriously, seriously doubt that. Every time they went diving to the ground, I thought how uncomfortable that sand must be against their sweaty skin. I would love to know how many people actually liked ogling the women while watching volleyball, and how many were bothered by this. It does seem like we see it every Olympics, so apparently not enough people are bothered enough to change it.
Another explanation, besides the fact that they didn’t make a spectacle of themselves in skimpy clothes, of why we didn’t see any of the men’s beach volleyball, is that the US men’s team didn’t medal. Which brings me to the next point…
The NBC coverage was too gold medal-centric.
I remember watching the Olympics as a kid with my mom and sister, and hearing all different countries’ national anthems at the medal ceremonies. If an American won a silver or bronze medal, we would see their medal ceremony, even if it involved an athlete from another country winning the gold medal.
We loved hearing the different anthems, and commenting on how some were pretty (Canada) and how some sounded strange (China.) I remember my mom explaining to us that Chinese music sounds different to our ears. Seeing athletes from all different countries getting their medals was a normal part of the Olympics for us.
I get that NBC can’t cover everything, but I wish we could have seen more medal ceremonies. Can we really not bear to see another country’s flag flying higher than our own for a brief moment? Or is it that we don’t think winning a silver or bronze medal is worth televising? It would have been nice to see some of our athletes receive their hard-won medals, even if they weren’t gold. Just think! If they had shown the US gymnastics team getting their silver medals, we would have seen the Russians win gold and hear the stirring notes of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto fill the air…
Wait. What?
If Russia was banned from the Olympics, why was Russia at the Olympics?
If you watched the Olympics, you’ll know that Russian athletes competed under the name “Russian Olympic Committee” instead of “Russia.” Russia was banned from competing because they were caught in a state-sponsored doping scandal. What did that involve, exactly? WELL…
For the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia (the host country) was determined to dominate. They implemented a mind-boggling scheme where they provided banned substances to dozens of athletes, and then drilled a hole in the wall of the testing facility, allowing them to pass tainted urine samples through the wall in exchange for clean samples. None of the Russian athletes were caught doping, and the Russians achieved their goal of winning the most medals.
When the story came out, Russia received a ban until December 2022- until that time, no athlete can represent Russia at the Olympics or World Championships. Seems pretty fair… but Russian athletes proven to be clean (supposedly) can compete for the “Russian Olympic Committee.” Instead of their national anthem, Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto was played at their gold medal ceremonies. So much for the “ban.”
I’m not sure what the solution is. On the one hand it’s not fair to punish all the Russian athletes. Some of the gymnasts were just kids in 2014, so clearly weren’t part of the doping scandal. On the other hand, is it fair to athletes like Ryan Murphy, who said he believed he was swimming in a race that’s “probably not clean” after winning silver to Russian athlete Evgeny Rylov’s gold in the 200 meter backstroke?
The “ROC” was just Russia, thinly veiled. Maybe certain athletes could have been allowed to compete as a “neutral” athlete? I know that many, many athletes participated in races that weren’t clean, and it’s not just the Russians. Plenty of US athletes have been busted for doping, and those are only the ones who have been caught. I like to consider everyone innocent until proven guilty, but it’s hard after what happened in Sochi.
In conclusion…
This post could go on and on. I haven’t mentioned Simone Biles, how weird it was to have no spectators, or the fact that I had to search and search to find out how Jacob Riley and Abdi did in the marathon… it was a strange Olympics with mediocre prime time coverage. But I’m pretty sure we can say that every four years. It was still fun to watch, and now we have the Winter Olympics coming up in six short months! In the meantime, I’m enjoying a much, much earlier bedtime.
Do you agree or disagree with anything I mentioned?
Is there something that bothered you about the Olympics that I didn’t talk about?
14 Responses
I agree totally.
For some reason I didn’t enjoy watching as much this year. And it was hard to figure out when to watch what.
And too much other stuff being discussed (ie Biles’ mental breakdown) besides the athletes themselves and their training.
And yes, how much less did the women have to wear?
And the news still focused on COVID and for us The Cuomo scandal. Not much was mentioned about the Olympics.
I think viewership was way down for these Olympics. Maybe the time difference and all the spoilers had something to do with it? Or maybe people don’t care about the Olympics as much as they used to.
At least there were other networks to view some coverage (USA network was one, I believe…but I only checked it once), but I totally agree that the coverage was pretty biased. I like the good old days, when you’d see every gymnast (for example) do their events…not just the top few, who you already knew were the medalists (due to the delayed broadcast). But, still what we did see was exciting…like the track events, YOWZA!
Yes, and I don’t know if you noticed but we didn’t even see all of our own gymnasts’ routines- they skipped Grace’s floor routine, which made me mad. We unfortunately recently got rid of a ton of our cable channels in order to save money (grr) which meant I didn’t have access to the other networks. Next time I’ll do things differently!
Admittedly, I was not that into watching the olympics this time around. Funny, my 80+ year old dad could not seem to get enough of the women’s beach volleyball
AHA! I knew it! Ha ha… my husband was very into it as well.
Oh yes, so true about the volleyball outfits! There was a Northern European team – I forget which nation – where the women wanted to wear T-Shirts and shorts. They weren’t allowed, they had to wear the bikinis. Unbelievable!
Did you see the French marathon runner who pushed over all cups? I wonder what all that was about…
No I didn’t see that! Our coverage of the marathons was so brief.
Interesting about the volleyball uniforms- crazy that they had to wear bikinis. I still say that can’t be comfortable!!!
I totally agree.
I think that too many sports didn’t allow the complete tv coverage of the most popular ones. For instance I didn’t succeed in watching one boxing match,
I’m thinking that for the next Olympics, I need to find a different way to watch. Prime time coverage is never going to satisfy everyone.
I actually do enjoy watching Women’s Beach Volleyball — I don’t know why! There were some of the US Men’s games, too, but quite frankly I wasn’t as interested in that. Weird, huh?
I did comment to my husband that they used to show a lot more of ALL the gymnasts routines. OTOH, my time was very limited that first week, so I missed a lot anyway. As it was, even the next week when I was home, I fast forward a LOT. Seriously, how do you sit and watch 4 hours+ tv a day?
I don’t have cable so watching other channels wasn’t an option for me.
I still enjoyed it. I don’t know what can be done to make it better.
That is funny you enjoy the women’s (but now men’s) beach volleyball! Maybe people like it more than I thought, and it’s just me. We also got rid of a lot of our cable channels (which I now regret) so I was pretty much stuck with NBC. There were definitely other ways to watch.
You should check out Leslie Jones’ commentary on the various events. She is hilarious! But she really made a big deal about the men’s beach volleyball outfits compared to the women’s. It was great. I was frustrated with the NBC coverage and how they jumped around so much, did a split screen so they could get all the commercials in; and yeah all beach volleyball all the time.
I watched very little of the Olympics this year as compared to other years. I am not a fan of volleyball so I’m happy I didn’t waste too much time with the TV on. IF I were young and played beach volleyball, I’m pretty sure I’d prefer wearing a bikini over more constricting clothes. With that being said, I would never play beach volleyball because I hate getting sand on me! LOL