Well then maybe we should go back to traditional eventing!
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“Your honour, I assure you I am not a cat”
from a lawyer struggling with the video technology. Poor man, will never live that down. It still makes me laugh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGOofzZOyl8 not sure if the link works.
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my fav 
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Personally, I think the change to short format was predominantly good.
I had an overwhelmingly negative experience with the sport in long format days. In some ways the horsemanship was better, but in other ways, it was more of a challenge of grueling endurance and stubborn perseverance than anything.
Switching to short format has resulted in a lot more finesse and much better riding. It’s not all sunshine and roses (nor was it all bad before), but I like what it has become.
But I also think you can’t just keep changing the sport on the whims of the IOC. Especially when they don’t even “want” the sport to stick around. It would be different if this was more of a joint conversational about how we can elevate eventing overall, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
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And not just the whims of the IOC but specifically the whims of the “Olympic Broadcasting Service” (per the article). I mean, anyone who is already a fan of the sport who is signing on in the middle of the night to watch a live stream of the sport that is going to run 4+ hours is a different audience than the audience that is going to watch the coverage that’s condensed and bastardized for public consumption. Is one of these audiences more important than the other?
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This.
Great post, and I agree completely.
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epic!!
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The many advantages of showjumping: artificial surfaces, timetable predictability, simple rules, indoors or outside, really easy to televise. That is why top riders now hop on to international flights almost as frequently as the airline crews.
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Oh please. This is the man that finished the last with steeplechase cross country and said at least we never have to do that again! He has his own agenda, and that is fine, but it is not to preserve eventing as it has been.
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Cross country was always my favorite Olympic watch. Not this year. The announcers seemed to be asleep or something. Long periods of time would go by while we watched someone on some horse galloping along the flat ground somewhere on the course. So boring, I finally quit watching.
Plus another male voice stepped in briefly, just for a few moments before John and Lucina came back on, which was puzzling. No idea who it was. The voice did not introduce itself or explain. Seemed professional and competent for the sport, though.
I thought John and Lucinda had great commentary. The long gap in commentary after the first few riders went was never explained that I know of.
Another strangeness was that they never mentioned the gap when their voices were back on. Something like “we’re back! sorry for the technical interruption” or something. In fact they seemed to pick up mid-stream as if there had been no outage.
My guess is that John and Lucinda did not know their commentary wasn’t making it to the livestream, which may have been a behind-the-scenes technical problem? And were just commenting away, thinking all was normal? I don’t know, though, pure speculation.
For myself, I missed them and would have preferred having them, but it didn’t ruin it for me. I had the order of go in front of me and had an idea who each rider was and was able to observe those they were riding, how the horse was going, etc. Just missing the more in-depth that the commentators add. And Lucinda’s extensive knowledge of the background of the riders and horses really adds a lot to the broadcast.
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On Facebook he said that he had torn a muscle on the way to the ring and had to go to the hospital – but I think that was Dressage Day 1
I was watching the olympic surfing finals last night, and discovered the striking resemblance between the gold medalist Caroline Marks and Caroline Pamukcu.
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Whoa! That’s like true doppelgänger level look alikes!!
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oh my gosh that’s wild!
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3 on 3 Basketball was designed to specifically keep the NBA players out of the competition
I think I don’t mind this, it’s not like the NBA players are lacking venues, tournaments etc. to showcase themselves/their sport.
Well, there is a lot of chatter about flag football in the next Olympics, and the rabid fans are already salivating about that. But as Mad dog said this morning, Do you really think Joe Burrow or Josh Allen will be playing? No chance. The Olympics are during training camp. So big leaguers will not be there. And even if it were not a conflicted date, due to the possible injuries, no one is going to let their expensive players go.
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I actually noticed the same - and I wasn’t really watching the surfing - just caught a few glances!
