The 2004
Olympics are done and I barely watched anything. The USA received the
most medals, not surprising since they're the dominant nation now that
the former Soviet Union sends separate teams for each country. Russia
came in second, showing that they're still strong and if you add the
other CIS states they would have blown the USA out of the water.
China did very well coming in third. Early on they were first due to
sports were Chinese athletes were strong. Once the track and field
events started China started dropping. Still, they are very strong and
will continue to improve. Australia came a surprising fourth, just
ahead of Germany. Japan, France, Italy, South Korea and the United
Kingdom round out the top ten.
Other notables are Cuba at 11th. I wonder how long they've been
competing since I think they were banned for the longest time. Hmm,
well since at least 1992 so I guess I'm totally wrong there. Canada
came in 19th. Brazil was the best South American country coming in at
21st. Mexico came in at 46th. Peru didn't get any medals (occasionally
we get one). Only 71 countries received medals.
As I mentioned, I didn't wat the Olympics. A little bit at Chevy's one
night and some when I went home for the weekend. I'm not really into
individual sports which the Summer Games are full of. Of the team
sports, Olympic soccer is so overshadowed by the World Cup; in
basketball the USA had a fairly bad team; and all the other sports are
rather marginal. The problem is that in two weeks you only get a few
games which means that you have to keep the field of teams way small.
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I don't think
American Football will ever be an Olympic sport. You might get 4 games
in if you start a bit before the opening ceremonies like some sports
do. But even then that's like 4 off days between games which is really
bad if you do it for more than a game.
Of course, add snow and skis or skates and it's all much more
interesting. I think the Winter Olympics are more interesting since I
don't live in an area where it snows. It always seems more magical to
me. The Summer Games just look unbearably hot and uncomfortable in
comparison.
In general television coverage was subpar if you didn't have cable. NBC
offloaded a lot of coverage to its cable stations: MSNBC, USA, and a
couple of others. The flagship station only had a few hours of coverage
a day, mostly tape delayed (which is understandable when the events are
half a world away). It's one of those things where if you want to see
something specific it sucks because coverage jumps around so much.
Cable coverage is probably also not great since there are so many
sports. Winter Olympics coverage was not too bad. Less sports means
more coverage. I still remember quite a bit of skipping, but even
Curling you got to watch about half the match. I think there was an
Olympic pass where you can watch whatever you want in full. There may
have also been Internet feeds, though I also remember something about
the USA being cut out of most of those feeds due to licensing
restrictions.
Like everything else, the Olympics are just getting way too commercial.
I don't really have much respect left for the IOC but I guess it
doesn't matter to them.
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