The thing is, I'm a huge fan of the Olympics. I grew up loving watching figure skating, but by my early teens I just wanted to watch any sport that was on. And the Winter Olympics are particularly special, probably for all of us Canadians, because its in these games that we've got a good chance! So I tried not to think about the fact that I'd be missing out on the whole host country experience, which wasn't too hard here, but after a flatwarming on Friday night I came home and watched the first 15 minutes of the Opening Ceremonies (on at 2:15 am) I ended up in tears. So we had some friends over (2 Canadians, 2 Americans) the following night to watch the entire ceremony. It was great. We all critiqued the outfits, got bored with the excessive interpretive ballet, and felt pride in seeing some of our great athletes, musicians, actors etc. strut their stuff. I tried to take mental photos of my favourite outfits to chat with my mum about after, like we always do.
Now that I've been sucked back in (as I am every 2 years), it's time to figure out what BBC's Olympic coverage consists of. I was worried that we wouldn't get much coverage of the Canadians, which makes sense. I bet each country's media concentrates on their own athletes and their best events. And while this has certainly been evident in some areas, such as the initial hockey games being shortened to include only the goals (but still quite a lot of coverage, thanks to our girls getting 28 goals in their first two games!), we've lucked out. Because Canada is the host country, BBC is constantly mentioning our athletes, our stats, telling us who the Canadian hopefuls are, and even showing us the medal ceremony and anthem singing when we got our first home gold.
I'm really impressed with BBC's coverage. We've been recording the 5.5 hour edited coverage that they show every night after midnight, and in HD it's pretty darn nice to watch. They also show one or two events every evening, like snowboard cross or skiing. But the amazing thing they do (and which I am only beginning to figure out) is their red button coverage. Anytime you have the BBC on, you can press the red button on your clicker and be taken to an interactive menu that shows news headlines and tv shows via BBC iPlayer. However, now that their Olympic coverage has begun, there's a new option: live sport coverage. You suddenly see a bunch of squares, each which a different video feed from the different venues, and then choose which sport you want to watch. The coverage is initially live, but some get repeated throughout the day or night. So this gives us the opportunity to watch more sports that might not have made the cut of BBC's edited coverage. It's really cool. It's also how we'll be watching the Canadian men's first hockey game and how my friend and I will be watching the men's free program in figure skating.
One last note on the BBC's coverage: it's a tad amusing. We get slightly more informal commentary (eg. we were told that the next athlete had 'butterflies in his tummy', and the German gold medalist had an awesome hat), a bit more opinion (eg. the figure skating commentator was really pulling for the one Chinese pair), and some odd statements that make us think twice (eg. we were informed that the snowboarder from Alaska would be competing for the United States). We all had a good chuckle at the coverage of the Opening Ceremonies, which rarely even showed Stephen Harper, and I'm not sure they even mentioned who he was, instead giving us all the details about the Governor General, which kind of makes sense as she's the Queen's representative.
My favourite so far has probably been the pronunciations, which I will attempt to recreate phonetically. We learned that one athlete was from 'Winny-peg,' as in Winnie the Pooh, and that we're all Canooks (as in Chinook). Eek. But it happens, and it's great fun listening to some of the commentators. I should mention that they also have a token Canadian commentator, Karen Lee Gardener (sp?), who says rather obvious things, like that Canadians want to win. So that's how we've experienced the Games so far -- we watch 4 to 5 hours a day, are generally a day behind, and are pulling for our Canadian athletes all the way. There's been lots of yelling at the tv and high-fiving, just as I'm sure there's been across the country back home. We've been loving the snowboard cross and can't wait for the big hockey games. We may be fighting an 8 hour time difference and some British bias towards certain sports, but it's still our games and we're following it just as closely as we'd be back home (or possibly more so!). And there's hockey parties with friends to come!
So to conclude, as one commentator just said, 'The Canadians are going mental!'
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