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First of all, WTF is up with NBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympics?  The *way* they cover the games is bad enough, trying to make every event a soap opera with ‘up close and personal segments’ that attempt to depict every athlete as having overcome some great personal tragedy to make it to the games.  There’s always some of those, but most Olympic athletes–particularly at the Winter Games–come from relatively affluent backgrounds and enjoy an enviable lifestyle.  Plus it becomes a ‘boy who cried wolf’ situation–harping about every minor inconvenience athletes have to overcome ad nausium undermines the impact of *real* underdog overcomes adversity stories when they come along.

My gripe this time about the NBC Olympic coverage is why are they tape delaying *everything*?  The general idea behind me doing a writeup and analysis of the Men’s Downhill was that I figured it would be an entertaining sport to watch live and that on a President’s Day holiday without any sports going on elsewhere that you’d be able to watch it live.  Problem is that NBC didn’t *show* the event live.

The TV network M.O. for covering the Olympics goes like this–broadcast events that no one cares about live and save the big events for prime time where they can draw the best ratings.  Historically, this wasn’t a bad idea–Olympic games were often held on the other side of the world in dark and mysterious places like Europe and Australia on screwed up time zones that made it unlikely that anyone would want to watch in the middle of the night.  Most other TV networks would play along with the scam and not report any results until after the event aired on tape delay.

Problem is that doesn’t work any more.  For one thing there’s this little technological innovation you may have heard about called the Internet.  There’s no way in hell that you can keep the outcome of an event from getting out.  Assuming that other big media sites play along there are countless international sites and smaller niche outlets that could care less what the big TV networks want.  Even best case scenario it only works for big events–like crucial hockey games or the figure skating finale which is something that a lot of chicks like to watch.  People may watch random skiing events if there’s nothing else on, but its not going to drive big ratings.

Compounding the stupidity of NBC’s management of the games is the fact that they’ve got a gazillion cable networks that they’ve dedicated to Olympic coverage.  The solution to any reasonably intelligent humanoid is simple–air as many events live as possible on the subordinate cable networks and then broadcast the ‘big’ events in prime time.  Yesterday, for example, they could have shown the skiing downhill live on CNBC–a perfect fit since the US financial markets were closed for President’s Day–and if they deemed it worthy could rebroadcast it on the main network in prime time.  Basically, NBC honcho Dick Ebersol is a big moron who struck gold way back in the day with the original ‘Saturday Night Live’ and has been coasting ever since.  Let’s not forget that he signed off on partnering with Vince McMahon for the XFL.

Anyway, here’s today’s Winter Olympic picks on the Women’s Snowboard Cross.  Maybe it’ll be on TV, maybe it won’t

WINTER OLYMPICS–WOMEN’S SNOWBOARD CROSS

This is one of those events where it really comes down to the US vs. Canada.  American Lindsey Jacobellis won the silver medal in 2006 and is the reigning X Games Champ, but with American Seth Wescott winning the Men’s Snowboard Cross gold yesterday we’ll look for a couple of good value prices on the top Canadians.  Maelle Ricker is the current World Cup leader, with Dominique Maltias ranked third.  Break up your wager properly and you’ll have a nice profit should either Canadian rider win.  Lines below are from Sports Interaction but, as always, shop ’em around:

PLAY MALLE RICKER +240 TO WIN WOMEN’S SNOWBOARD CROSS
PLAY DOMINIQUE MALTIAS +1000 TO WIN WOMEN’S SNOWBOARD CROSS