Disappointing Olympics Media Coverage

I was a bit unhappy with the media's Olympic coverage. In past Olympics, I've always wished for more coverage of the lesser athletes. In the qualification for one of the track events, everything was on Tyson Gay, while we learned nothing of Walter Dix, even though he was American too! Well, Walter Dix ended up qualifying for the final, and Tyson Gay didn't qualify--how annoying not to learn anything about Walter!

Not to mention all the competitors from other countries . . . So, we hear about the other nations' athletes if they are big competition for us, and of course that makes for an excited media, with all the China anxiety we have right now.

What really started upsetting me was the tone the media was taking with this ruckus over underage Chinese girl gymnasts. It's difficult to place my finger on it exactly, but it was getting to me for sure. People were making such a big deal about computer graphics assisted fireworks for American television audiences, and how the singing girl was replaced by the prettier one in the opening ceremonies. Well, duh! It was a show and it was meant to impress. Don't you usually try to iron your shirt or do your makeup nicely when you go on a date and want to impress someone? It's the same thing!

Luckily, I randomly caught some Anderson Cooper 360 coverage of the topic, and they interviewed a former gymnast, Amanda Brown. Amanda basically said that if the American girls were drastically better than the Chinese girls and weren't so closely matched in talent, then the underage ruckus would be a non-issue. This sounded spot-on to me! The only record I can find confirming Amanda's sentiments is on a blog dedicated to covering all of the Anderson Cooper 360 shows. Here is the entry
the day Amanda was interviewed. Here's an excerpt from that blog entry:

Of note is former Olympic gymnast Amanda Borden bringing up the fact that probably no one would be talking about this if the US won. It does sort of make it seem like sour grapes, doesn't it? Because the Americans had a fair number of falls and step outs. Then again, I heard of this controversy before last night, so there's that.

I also learned that the age requirement for Olympic competition has not always been the same. It has increased from previously. When Dominique Moceanu competed in the 1996 Atlanta games, she was not 16, because she was born in 1981. The wikipedia article on Age falsification in gymnastics has a history of the age requirements and their changes over the years.

Googling for Dominique, I found quite an extensive page of her thoughts, and some surprising criticism of Marta and Bela Karolyi. When we see Marta as hen mother to the American team in Beijing, and ever enthusiastic Bela sitting next to Bob Costas, we don't imagine they could possibly have darker sides to them. Here is what Dominique has to say on Dominique Moceanu's website. Dominique explains some of her former colleagues disagree with her claims, but here is one thing Dominique says she experienced personally:

In another case, Bela put me on the scale in front of the entire team at the 1995 World Championships. He berated me and belittled me in front of everyone. That kind of treatment is unnecessary. I was 70 pounds!

Moceanu is unhappy with Marta and Bela's selection process for the Olympic teams, believing the process is not transparent enough, and that certain worthy gymnasts were left out:

I think the men's selection is very similar now to the women's. David Sender -- the 2008 National Champion -- was overlooked; Sean Golden -- with amazing performances -- was overlooked; Raj Bhavsar is devastated right now because he was kept off the team again. How do you justify keeping Raj off the team when you say you've crunched the numbers? Can you show us how you crunched the numbers? What kind of hidden system is being used? What has to be so secretive here?

Dominique believes the Karolyi's are worshipped a bit too much, and that many other coaches have pitched in quite a bit to the success of US gymnastics:

I think that we forget that this is the individual coaches like Valeri Liukin and Liang Chow, Peter Zhao and Mihai Brestyan… that they're the principle reason for the success of team USA, not the Karolyi system.

Also, it is important to note that Bela is on the record as believing the age requirement should be abolished, since anyone talented enough to qualify for an Olympic team should be allowed to go. His interview expressing his belief that the Chinese girls were underage, and that there should be no age requirement, was covered by outfits like The Washington Post and Yahoo Sports.

Ok, so mainly I was happy to see Amanda Borden on tv in that interview. She was spot on, and helped me think through figuring out what bothered me about the underage coverage. It also got me on google learning a bit more about Dominique Moceanu, and brought back memories of watching the Atlanta games, which were the last games I really watched before Beijing, as I didn't watch any of the Sydney or Athens games.

I found one other perspective on this Olympics stuff that vibed with me, and here is the video of Jon Stewart's Daily Show on the comedy central website: