Broadcaster’s Olympic coverage is on a slippery slope.
The Hunger Games is credited with giving its readers an insight into what life would have been like had the Nazis won the Second World War.
On Sunday morning, the Olympic Games gave every other generation aglimpse of what life will be like if we ever concede defeat in the war on drugs.
Veteran skier Graham Bell described Extreme Snowboard Slopestyle as the “truculent teenager” of the Winter Games and BBC duly seemed to oblige that concept by putting three callow youths in the commentary box to call it.
As a newcomer to the sport, a kind of skateboarding on ice, two things quickly became apparent to me about slopestyle you need nerves of steel to take part, and also top of the range ear plugs if you’re going to sit and listen to the trio of Ed Leigh, Tim Warwood and Aimee Fuller for two hours.
Aimee herself had made it as far as the semi-final of the event and then raced upstairs to (literally) cheer on her teammate, Jenny Jones (her screaming got so loud that Ed had to turn her microphone off at one point). A three time X Games gold medallist, we were told that Jones had an outside chance of a podium finish in Sochi having battled back from a concussion that made it “impossible to use a computer” or check her Twitter account. I can’t believe that Jock Stein or Alex Ferguson would ever have considered rating the severity of an injury in this way.
But it wasn’t just that she might be coming into the Games under-prepared that worried Ed, he seemed to have concerns that she was now too frail to make it safely to the shops and back in the icy conditions, describing her as “Jurassic” because she was still competing at the grand old age of 33 (you didn’t have to live in Tunbridge Wells to be indignant about this comment!)
To be fair to the three young tyros they knew their stuff and their excitement for the safelanding of frontside 1080 was both impressive and infectious. The problem with them was that they hadn’t learned the golden rule of live television you should run the first thing that comes into your head past your brain first before you actually come out and say it.
“Do you think the Queen is watching this?” asked Aimee of her fellow commentators. “Good day to you ma’am.”
If Her Majesty had tuned in I think she would have been concerned for the health of Czech competitor Sarka Pancochova, whose Olympic dreams were shattered when a heavy fall split her helmet in two. “She looks like she’ll be alright for the party tonight,” Aimee reassured us as Sarka was helped to her feet.
“Guys, let me be the dad here, we’re live on the BBC,” said Tim, no doubt relaying the words being shouted in his ear by a distressed producer fearing for his job. But then Jones landed a backslide 720 that put her in first place and all hell broke loose.
“I can feel my pulse in my intestines,” commented Ed.
“That’s not your pulse Ed,” responded Tim, at which point I imagine the feed to Buckingham Palace was cut by someone in Salford.
The smiling and waving Jenny then had to wait at the bottom of the hill while ten other competitors tried to beat her score, with each subsequent failure heartily applauded by Aimee.
An American and a Finn did eclipse her, however, leaving Jones in third position, and on the brink of Britain’s first ever medal on snow, with one rider to go. When she “butt checked” trying a backside 720 Aimee banished any concept of sportsmanship, screeching “And she’s fell. Ha Ha,” at which point all three commentators started to cry.
“All professionalism is going straight out of the window,” said Ed.
It was the first thing he’d said all morning that made sense to me.
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