Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Armchair Experts

While watching the Olympics coverage, a thought crossed my mind. It really seems we all quickly become minor experts on each of the sports. We watch a few competitors make their way down the course or go through their routine while listening to the commentators critique their performance. Before we know it we're watching thinking or saying stuff like: "She really looked stiff going down the moguls. Look at her head bouncing around. She doesn't have that fluidity the judges are looking for." Or. "Their bobsled rode up really high on that turn, their gonna loose .002 seconds on that. Oh wait, they tagged the wall. It's over."

But figure skating is one that still eludes me. I grew up watching every Olympic skating event because my sister was/is a skater. But I still don't know the difference between an axel, a lutz, or a sow-cow. Much less be able to see if they skipped the triple for a double. So I was really lucky that even though she lives 800 miles away, she was here in Montreal to give us our own personnal commentation for at least a couple events. A bit of history on the competitors along with her own play-by-play. Maybe we can meet up in Vancouver in a few years.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I agree with everyone becoming "experts" on the various sports. But, I suppose it's a bit natural to compare one to another and use the experience of one to critique the other. So we're not really experts but just good at drawing comparisons.

With skating, yes, it's really, really hard to tell the difference between jumps if you haven't done it yourself or you don't watch it enough. Some of the differences are so small. For example, a toe loop takes off from a left foot inside edge and a flip jump takes off from a left foot outside edge. Unless you really know what it's supposed to look like, you couldn't tell the difference. Hint: the axel is the easiest because it's the only one with a forward take-off.