So I had to interrupt briefly my Olympics boycott to watch Phelps get his 8th gold, in what is perhaps my favorite event, the 400 medley (I did race it a couple of times in my years as a Masters swimmer in the US, I think I have somewhere a ribbon for a fifth place finish in some local event, I did the breaststroke).
I was initially upset because I had to watch it on Tves, the Chavez failed upstart and the only open signal allowed the dollars of CADIVI to pay for the retransmission. I was hoping that Meridiano would transmit it but they were on some stupid car racing show, so I had to hope that Tves would play the race. They did. I mean, even they could not pass on that. But when the medal ceremony arrived they switched quickly to some other dumb activity. Fortunately by then Meridiano (our local ESPN like network, mostly on cable) had connected so I could watch the ceremony. Tves would not be caught dead playing the US anthem and show US boys get emotional. Unbelievable, the possible greatest moment of these Olympics and Tves could just not go all the way with it!!!
But you know what was even more offensive? The extraordinarily poor quality of the Tves anchors! The amount of mistakes they made during the few minutes I watched was just astounding. I mean, sometimes I even wondered whether they were watching the same signal I was, or even if they knew how to swim. Their knowledge in geography and world sports was dismal. You should have heard them at the 1500 m award ceremony when the Tunisian athlete won the gold. And for bad luck the Tunisian uniform was like the Canadian third place: red all over. As far as Tves is concerned Canada won gold and bronze, until eventually one noted that the three flags were different. Forget about commenting the transcendence that a Tunisian won a medal on an event that usually belongs to the US and Australia..... If Tves has the exclusive, well, it makes my resuming of the boycott much easier.
[UPDATE] The perfect corny tribute to Phelps on Yahoo. Corny but it works. And it is a little bit voyeuristic too, but so are all sports requiring skimpy tight suits of diverse lengths.
And I forgot to add how thrilled I was by the race last night and how much in awe of Phelps I am. But so are we all, are we not?
-The end-
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