Originally published at: Oops! Media boat botches the Men's Triathlon, forcing a do-over at the Olympics | Boing Boing
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The media had issues with covering “low-interest” events such as the standing high jump, and fencing… so those are out. I wonder if this time they covered what surely must have been a shit-storm of cussing from the swimmers.
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I feel bad for the racers but YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE THE OLYMPICS DURING A PANDEMIC!
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Seems to me that the media boat didn’t botch it, the official who blew the horn when the media boat was clearly in the way botched it.
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Yep. The starter should have made sure that water was clear for the start, or had event coordinators communicate when it was clear.
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Not sure about that. The events at these games have narrow start windows and the media boat should have been clear before go time. If the official started the race early, then sure. But if it went off on time, then that boat should have been clear of the start.
It’s like when a photographer wanders onto the track while a race is on. The starter has their back to the photographer and the doofus needs to clear the track or get run over. I’ve seen it happen. Luckily, not in my event.
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How very Tour de France!
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Thankfully the media boat wasnt holding a sign!
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How could this international beacon of competence and sound management have fallen so far?
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It’s impressive how hard the boats have to work to catch the swimmers
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Nice job, media boat.
I’d enDVR’d this event and was horrified by that false start.
I’ve seen plenty of fencing in the guide, after running a general search for “equestrian.” I did not specify a category (sports, kid stuff, movies, etc). My search results showed all the olympic programming on all the channels, not just the horsey stuff. directv has an olympic channel that’s free, and I imagine all scatterlight & cable providers also have that. Other places to look are all the NBC channels - the sportsing ones and CNBC, and their youtube; and the USA network. Our roku tv is offering other olympic goodies, too.
NBCS will have the women’s team epée finals at 4:30pm eastern on Tuesday. I saw a mad Hungarian take down an Italian (who’d twice beaten others after being down 6 pts!) and win gold in the men’s sabre finals. That was nuts! All that stomping and rushing made it even more exciting. The women’s epée finals mostly involved the Romanian and Chinese ladies dancing about, pretending to poke at their opponent. I saw both fencers receive cards for passivity twice!
Oh, and b/c obvious reasons, here’s this lurvely erld skurl murm:
{It’s mindblowing that he was traveling rapidly enough to get what looks like a face resulting from 2Gs of force.}
ETA: added more details
But it wasn’t, where was the starter looking if they missed that?
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Were I King, I’d bitch out that boat’s entire contents, esp her captain/pilot, and the starter. I’d begin with, “Where the hell were you looking when the start time came?!” directed equally at both.
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Can’t they breed some sea lions to be better at herding swimmers?
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Presumably, he was looking at the swimmers to see if all of them were ready.
I don’t know who thinks that fencing is low-interest, but they’re wrong.
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If they looked down the line of swimmers it is difficult to understand how they missed a large boat only a few metres in front of them.
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Media in al its forms tends to have a god complex about where they can go and what they can do and if others get in the way, well tough and safety perimeters and exlusion zones are for the little people, just like private property is when you find 500 reporters camped on your lawn and driveway for a story half a block away who claim unbridled rights to be there.
I am surprised however that there wasn’t a safety office who’s only job was to make sure the starting area was clear and then alert the starter either way.
The starter has enough to do keeping an eye on the athletes and the start line,
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Did anyone notice if there were any vaccination PSAs aired during the telecast?
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