NBC's Olympic coverage shines, but not too brightly

I've spent a good portion of the past four days watching the Olympics. Of the 28 Olympic sports, I've seen coverage of 16. Actually, counting them up just then, I was surprised it was that many. I think that says a lot about NBC's coverage of the Games - far better than I expected, with a surprising breadth of events covered.

Still, Inquirer TV critic Jonathan Storm gets it exactly right in his take on NBC's presentation of the Olympics. The crux of his article, and my biggest complaint about NBC's coverage is this:

Time after time, as it always does in the relatively obscure sports of the Olympics, the esoteric raised its mystifying head during the weekend, and the overly knowledgeable commentators failed to let us in on the secrets.

Storm's chief examples are swimming and gymnastics - what exactly is wrong with a dolphin kick in the breaststroke? what were the elements of the American high bar routines that were effectively disallowed by gymnastics judge Sawao Kato?* And this is for the two prestige events of the first half of the Olympics.

You can imagine, then, the confusion viewers face when trying to understand the more obscure sports. Take fencing. Now, my knowledge of fencing is entirely drawn from a single scene of The Princess Bride (you know the one).** But I was pretty damn sure that whoever touches his/her opponent first wins the point. Fairly intuitive, right?

Perhaps, but that's not how it goes, at least not in saber. It turns out that the first touch wins the point only if you're on the attack or you have successfully defended an attack from your opponent. It's as confusing as it sounds, and awfully difficult to figure out who has the "right of way" at real speed, at least to the untrained now.

Now imagine watching the saber without even knowing that making the first touch does not guarantee winning the point. That's the situation I (and other non-fencing savvy viewers) faced when I stumbled on the men's saber competition over the weekend. The commentary crew started throwing around words like "parry" and "riposte," that, apparently, I've got an intuitive sense of what those mean, but I have no clue about their technical fencing meaning in fencing.

I did some internet research to figure out this stuff out. It turns out to be fairly straightforward, provided you lay it out correctly.

NBC's commentators failed to provide an even basic explanation of key facets of the saber event, without which it's impossible to watch the event with any understanding.

There's really no excuse for this. NBC knows what events are in the Olympics. It can't take much to come up with a brief, pre-packaged overview of each event. A bulleted list of the key rules. Some fancy graphics. Perhaps some footage to demonstrate exemplary or faulty performance. The technology is there. To leave viewers befuddled at jargon is a shame, especially considering that, for once, Americans actually have the opportunity to watch less well-known sports.

I'm probably being overcritical. As I said above, NBC's coverage has been a pleasant surprise. But the (Summer) Olympics only come around every four years. That means NBC has had four years to get it right. And so far, they haven't.



*I'm not sure how accurate this characterization is, largely because the commentary on the decision was rather opaque.

**Turns out that Bonetti, Thibault, Capo Ferro, and Agrippa were, in fact, fencing masters. I have no idea whether the swordplay in the film is at all representative of the styles Wesley (sorry, The Man in Black) and Inigo reference.