Olympics, blah, blah, blah

I have never been particularly athletic, though I am generally fit, and in better physical shape now in my 50's (God, that hurts my eyes to see that number applied to me) than I was in my 30's. I have also never been interested in sports; high school gym class was rather nightmarish for me, though I was OK at tennis, wrestling, and very basic gymnastics. So I don't get excited about the Olympics. But still, every four years, I get caught up in Summer Olympics fever. Of course, I am drawn to displays of the mostly undraped male form (diving, gymnastics), and once I sit down in front of the TV to distract myself with these events, I usually get wrapped up in the competition and wind up sticking around longer than I intended.

Same thing this year, and I've wound up with the same complaint about TV coverage I've had most years: tunnelvision. Because the diving and gymnastic events were usually taped and edited for showing later, we ended up not seeing very many of the competitors. We always see the Americans, and I fully understand that. In men's diving, the Americans were never near medal contention, but we still saw every one of their dives, and I don't begrudge them that attention (especially since David Boudia and Thomas Finchum were cute as bug's ears and, er, quite fit--of course, every person who jumped into the water in the Water Cube was freakin' fit). But NBC wound up focusing only on the athletes who would wind up in the medal zone and rarely showed anyone else. For quite a while, a German diver and a Cuban diver were in the top 3, but we never once saw them dive because they wound up without medals, and they didn't have tearjerking inspirational stories to tell, like Russian Dimitry Sautin, above, practically a decrepit old man at 34.

Lucky for us, Canadian eye-candy man Alexandre Despatie and sweet, gay Matthew Mitcham (at right) were frequently on camera. But still, it would have been fun to see more of the competitors, especially since NBC had umpteen hours to fill on their various cable outlets. Most frustrating was the NBC/Universal HD channel, which ran coverage most of the day, and after the first few days, it always seemed to consist of softball, soccer, and boxing. All day and night long. I have to say that the Olympics looked wonderful on our HD TV, but I sure wish we'd have gotten to see more of the competitors in the events we wanted to see.

And, while I'm complaining, it's a shame that NBC never bothered to let us know that the Australian Mitcham, a surprise gold medal winner, had a male partner in the stands. We saw lots of moms and dads and sisters and girlfriends, but don't dare let it slip that the openly gay Mitcham had a pround male partner in the stands sitting next to his mother.