So You’re Watching the Winter Olympics
Since I was nine years old I’ve been somewhat obsessed with the Winter Olympics. It was 1980, the year the Games were in Lake Placid and thus well-televised. I grew up in Oklahoma, which featured neither mountains nor heavy snow, so all the sports were essentially unavailable to me except for the indoor ones, and as for those I never got to any Tulsa Oilers games (at that age I was barely aware Tulsa even had a hockey team - soccer yes, hockey no) and I didn’t particularly care for figure skating.
But in 1980, two sports in particular appealed to me: hockey and bobsled. Hockey should be obvious here, since that was the Miracle On Ice (and I remember how the euphoria of the victory over Russia was tempered by the fact there was still ANOTHER GAME to play, and what a nail-biter that was). Bobsled, though, appealed to my nine-year-old, Oklahoman heart as only something unattainable could.
We lived at the bottom of a hill, and when it snowed enough I’d tromp up to the neighbors’ house where the street curved, go around to their back yard, then continue up the hill to the point the smooth snow gave way to ground cover. From that point I’d sled down the hill into their yard. (And if you are now asking, “um, didn’t the neighbors mind?” then I’ll point out that my parents always made me ring the doorbell first and make sure it was OK, until the neighbors finally told me I didn’t have to ask anymore.) I used every opportunity to go sledding in my neighborhood, going until my jeans got too wet, or I crashed into a tree (who thought saucer sleds were a good idea?), or the snow compacted enough to expose the grass beneath it, or it got dark, whichever happened first. In that context bobsled was a revelation: one, the sleds just looked cool, all sleek curves and metal flake paint; two, they had a dedicated track; three, those were adults who still got to go sledding, and how cool was that; and four, they were insanely fast. Even at age nine I knew this was something that I’d never be able to do, because it was already pretty clear I was no natural athlete and I lived in a plains state. But still, I could watch.
In the years since 1980 I’ve tried to follow the Winter Games as much as practical. Some years that means I haven’t really seen anything, and some years I’ve seen quite a bit. My one ski trip actually took me to Chamonix (and oh, was I bad at it - I am indeed a natural hacker, not a natural athlete). I picked up a shirt for the Lillehammer games while traveling through Norway, although I didn’t get to any of the venues. While spending a summer near Lake Placid I went on a summer bobsled run - the sled has wheels and starts lower on the course, but it’s still insanely fast. Our sled suffered a bearing failure near the bottom, but they trucked us back to the top and sent us all the way down in another sled, too, so even the breakdown worked out well.
This all reached its apex in 2002, with the games again on U.S. soil, me working from home, and NBC using a multi-channel strategy to air live events during the day (just like it does now). So I set up my two TiVos with one goal:
I would watch ALL the Winter Olympics.
If an event was televised I would watch it. Every minute of it. I gave myself two guiding principles: no human interest fluff, and no figure skating. For multiple reasons I don’t really enjoy watching figure skating, and it also seems to be one sport where the coverage consists almost entirely of human interest fluff with a little bit of skating interspersed, so using it as my out gave me the opportunity to do other things, like maybe get some actual work in or cook dinner.
In the end I succeeded in my goal with a couple minor exceptions: I gave up on one hockey match because I had company arriving and it was a blowout anyway, and I didn’t watch the bronze medal hockey game at all. My guest and I were out while the game was being played and we saw the final score, and there didn’t seem much point in slogging through after the medals had been awarded. Other than that I at least had the TV on for every minute of every (non-figure-skating) event. It took both DVRs and a lot of fast forwarding, but it was actually perversely entertaining. The challenge itself became its own reward.
It also satisfied my Winter Olympics jones somewhat permanently. I barely paid attention to Torino, and while I’ve been watching what little I can get on NBC without cable, I’m just as happy to turn the TV off and do something else. The games will go on with me or without me, and NBC’s decision to delay almost everything has made watching less fun. I know from previous years that the networks prefer to air human interest stories over niche sports, and I remember one Olympics where ABC cut away from a hockey match to show an “Up Close and Personal” feature on an athlete from another sport, only to return with two goals having been scored in the interim. So the coverage is frustrating, and I can’t really isolate myself from results like I could in 2002. By the time NBC gets around to airing something it’s likely I already know who won. Last night the only thing NBC aired live was pairs figure skating, and you can guess how I felt about that.
I can offer some advice to anybody who reads this and thinks the challenge sounds fun, though:
- Work from home or be unemployed. Also, be single and have no social obligations. This will take all your time. I did manage to get work done, but I didn’t have anything else to do, and cross-country skiing events are long.
- Do not attempt this without at least one DVR, and the more DVRs/tuners you have, the better. I had two dual-tuner TiVos, so when hockey and curling were on cable and the broadcast net had something else, I could get everything and sort through it later.
- Avoid the internet. You’re going to be watching events after they happen, and often after they aired, so twitter and facebook are going to be your downfall.
- Watch everything on your own DVR delay. Live events trump taped events, but you can be flexible with this: you can watch a period of hockey, watch something else while the buffer fills, then watch another uninterrupted period. Also, starting behind live allows you to skip the dead time between competitors in one-at-a-time events like skiing or (heaven forfend) figure skating. Same goes for commercials.
- Fast-forward and 30-second-skip are your best friends during this challenge. Skip all the fluff (with multiple channels, they air some pieces multiple times), skip the recaps, skip most of the medal ceremonies (exceptions: interesting firsts for interesting countries, people who cry, people who actually sing along with their national anthems). Use the pause button for food and bathroom breaks.
- Give yourself at least one out. My rule allowed me to skip figure skating; you might want to avoid the biathlon or something else. I can’t endorse skipping curling though - curling makes for riveting TV and is even more fascinating in person.
- The late-night stuff is generally going to be recaps and hockey. If you’re not a late-night person, watch this over breakfast the next day and fast-forward through everything that wasn’t live, since you might have seen a lot of it already anyway.
You can apply these principles to the Summer Games as well, but during the summer you might prefer to be outside. I find that winter weather really lends itself to holing up and watching biathlon, curling, and hockey all day in a way that summer just doesn’t do for shot put, rhythmic gymnastics, and beach volleyball. Your mileage may vary.
