A Writer's take on the Winter Olympics

Hello everyone!

It's been almost a month since the Winter Games ended.  I can't believe how time flies when you're still catching up on 72 hours of non stop curling coverage on your DVR, but maybe that's just me.

It's no secret that I'm a huge Olympics fan, especially when it comes to winter stuff.  Maybe it's because I don't like being outside in the winter and this is a great reason to stay inside for 17 days.  Maybe it's because I can swim and run (sort of) but I will never, ever be able to ski or skate or...what ever it is those snowboarder do, and I love watching it.

Or maybe it's because every single event in the Winter Olympics involves an element of death.  With the possible exception of curling (my favorite of all the sports) go ahead and name one winter sport where DEATH is not a possible outcome.

You can't.

So after hunkering down for some hardcore TV watching I've come up with a few points I'd like to make about the coverage of the 2018 games in Pyeonchang, South Korea.

Counting down from 5.

5)  Pyeonchang is hard to spell, but worth it.

I'll be honest, outside of a paper I did in high school about the Korean War (Mostly because I wanted an excuse to watch "MASH" I know relatively little about South Korea.  These Olympics were an eyeopener for me.  Their culture is beautiful, historical, and very advanced.  The US could learn a thing or two about niceness, too, from what I hear.

Bigger point in how great Pyeonchang was as a host:  While generally the Opening Ceremonies for the Olympics are awesome, the Closing Ceremonies typically are dull and over long.  Not so in Pyeonchang! The South Koreans took this last opportunity, after showing the world a thriving, joyful country, to remind us one more time that they are pretty great.  The Closing was every bit as much fun as the Opening.  Made me wish we could have the Olympics there every four years.

4)  How NBC dropped the ball

NBC has several television networks it controls and in past years Olympic coverage has been endless and massive.  This time around the coverage was...underwhelming. Maybe it's because there are fewer events in Winter than in Summer Games.  I don't know. But opening up my DVR and finding that NBCSN and NBC simply duplicated each others' daytime coverage was annoying.  

Also, let's talk announcers and color analysts.  NBC dropped the ball BIG time by hiring Olympic skier Bode Miller to do the color for the Alpine events.  Of all the events in the Winter Olympics, downhill skiing is the fastest, the most dangerous, and therefore the most awesome to watch.  Not this time around. Bode Miller, with his endless monotone droning about technical stuff and pointless anecdotes that went nowhere managed to suck all the excitement right out of the events to the point where I skipped it.  You know what I watched?  Cross country skiing!  That's right...I watched hours of coverage of people basically walking on skiis.  Why?  Because Chad Salmela LOST HIS MIND while calling every single event. Sure, Jessie Diggins of the US got a gold in cross country skiing, something that's NEVER happened. And it was a thrilling finish.  But Salmela managed to call up that same level of enthusiasm for every event he called.  (And there were a lot of them.) Oh, and he managed to NOT offend married people.  (Thank you, again, Bode.)

While we're talking about announcers, why did NBC try to hide Scott Hamilton and Taneth Belbin White on the sidelines (And on that ridiculous fake ice rink outside the broadcast center)?  I get it, Tara and Johnny are the cool kids and the Olympics probably wanted to skew a little younger and a lot whackier (that HAIR!) to draw in a younger crowd for figure skating.  I get it.  But they still let Andrea Joyce run around with her goofy interviews while two American treasures of the sport had to pretend to demonstrate skating moves on what looked like a cardboard floor.  You're telling me there wasn't room for everyone in figure skating?

3)  How NBC picked up the ball and scored.

First of all, a network dedicated every day to curling coverage. WIN.  My DVR is still full of these lovely encapsulated matches and I will be able to watch them over the coming months and fully absorb the sport.

Second: Mike Tirico.  So much better than Bob "I got a gross eye infection in Sochi" Costas.  Tirico is the Olympics wrangler for this era.  Jim McKay was the gold standard, but Mike is following closely with his eternal cheerfulness and his clear diction.  The man is gold.

Third: Hockey coverage.  The NHL did not send players to the Olympics this time around, and that's fine for me. I think highly paid professionals don't NEED a gold medal.  But having many of the NHL cover guys from NBCSN do the coverage was a good idea. No stammering over names or struggling with the rules. And who can forget Jeremy Roenick's reaction at the end of the women's gold medal game?  Awesome.)

2) Yes, they are our representatives...but they are also kids...so...

Honestly I think we expect a lot of Olympians, and that's fine, but we have to remember that in many cases these are very young people. And I do mean very young.  Chloe Kim and Red Gerard, both gold medalists, are both 17.  You know what I was doing at 17?  I wasn't representing the USA on the biggest world stage in sport, that's for certain.  So yes, Chloe Kim tweeted a bunch of random things about food while she was competing and yes, Red Gerard let some colorful language fly when he realized he'd won the gold medal.  But on the medal stand, they stood up, they focused, they looked respectful and no one can fault any gold medalist for not singing along in that moment. I mean, it's a nice thought that all of our gold medal winners sing our national anthem, but unless you're Whitney Houston, you probably can't sing it well (I'm looking at you, Fergie) and maybe you should just focus on looking respectful rather than showing the world your singing face when you try to hit that note "land of the FREE."

Watching the youth of the world, especially the US, I noticed something I haven't noted in the Olympics before: and openess between competitors.  The world of sport is much smaller these days with world cup events in every sport happening all year round.  It used to be that the Olympics were pretty much the only time you saw some of these sports being done, but that's not the case now.  Now the competitors know each other well.  There's no mystery to the Russians...well, maybe there's a little mystery yet, I mean, most of them did get banned, and hey, I saw "Icharus."

My point here is, these are first and foremost real people. The buttoned up, expressionless East Germans and Soviets of my childhood no longer exist.  And as long as they don't create some international incident (Ahem, Ryan Lochte) let's not sweat the other stuff.  Let NBC figure out how to beep someone on live TV when they win the gold medal.  I like my Olympians to be real.

1)  Flag, race, color, language does not matter.

I found myself fully engaged in events where the US wasn't even a blip on the screen.  The Olympics have always given us a window into the lives of people in other nations, and that was true this time around.  I was fully invested in the story of the Jamaican bobsled team that lost their sled to their coach.  I was fully invested in the Nigerian bobsled team, the first African country to have a bobsled team.  (12 Athletes from 8 African countries participated this time around.)  And who didn't love the story of Tito Tuafatofua, the shirtless Tongan from the 2016 Rio games who again showed up to the Opening Ceremonies, again shirtless, this time as a Winter Olympian.  He participated in Cross Country skiing, and he finished 114 out of 119. Not bad for a guy who didn't start skiing on snow until 12 weeks before the games.  

There were cross county matches won by men and women from other countries with names I don't remember and probably couldn't pronounce, but in the moment of the Olympics I was their biggest fan.

Did you know that in curling the word "HARD", whether screamed by a tiny Korean lady nicknamed Pancake or a healthy sized girl from Wisconsin, sounds EXACTLY the same?

As a writer, I got wrapped up in a dozen different stories from these Games.  I laughed, I cried, I cringed. I didn't love all the sports (Can we skip long track speed skating and just give all the medals to the Dutch?  And also, "Big Air" was a little underwhelming since it came AFTER all the other snowboarding stuff.)  But I loved so many of them  (snow-cross and ski-cross...quite possibly the most hilarious thing I've ever seen on television.) and now that they're over I feel a void.

Eventually the Winter Games will be a distant memory. They already are for some people. And in another year we'll ramp up for the Summer Games which will fill our senses in 2020.  But it's going to be another four years before I get to hear Chad Salmela scream out Jessie Diggins' name or...see this...

Although, maybe, if we're really good and eat our vegetables, he'll come back for the Summer Games.

One can only hope.

So well done, South Korea, I give you an A++.  NBC, you get a B.  You've got some work to do. Maybe just let the South Koreans have the Winter Games every time?