If you have not been watching the Olympics, you’ll have had the satisfaction of a good night’s rest. Those of us who watch, although grateful, are dead tired — the Olympic rings are becoming dark circles beneath our eyes. On DD Sports, we can watch Olympic action from 11 am to beyond 3 am the next morning. However, consider this: events you don’t want to watch — canoeing, shot put, hammer throw, fencing, every single badminton match, each 100m heat — are held when we are wide awake and everything you want to watch — swimming, gymnastics, Leander and Mahesh — begins after you ought to be asleep. Yes, the men’s hockey is at a decent hour, but India’s performance, so far, is hardly the stuff of dreams.The Olympic schedule suits Europe and nations whose medal hopes and TV audiences are equally dismal — Lichenstein, Monaco, Cyprus.The major events occur when leading contenders are either at work (the Americans) or in bed (the Japanese, Australians, Chinese, South-East Asians).The live telecasts have been good — the swimming gets our gold medal for its underwater shots. It’s quite amazing how people who look absolutely different turn into a sea of indistinguishable arms and legs underwater. Could you tell Michael Phelps from Ian Crocker? And does Ian Thorpe wear a black seal suit as an identity card?The commentary sounds as though it’s coming from South Africa or Australasia and has been remarkably fair. When India’s unfortunate Kumar lost to Thomas in the boxing ring 16-37 on points, the commentator was appalled: ‘‘I will take my hat off to Akhil Kumar — no way 37-16 is fair, absolutely no way.’’Spare the commentators a medal: the same men (absurdly, no women) have to describe 6-7 events simultaneously: on Friday, in two hours, they shifted from men’s badminton to women’s hockey to 20-km men’s walk to women’s track events, men’s triple jump, back to badminton, back to walk, women’s hockey, the triple jump, swimming, women’s 100 m. No wonder they began to sound mechanical: ‘‘Tatyana Gordeyeva 2:43:21.’’Mind you, it’s an achievement for them to pronounce first names Torsten, Aliann, Egle, Liodm, Libor and surnames such as Borbuskya, Al Ashrakaf, Mkabe, Virigiliju, Antiyukh — in one straight line and sound fluent. Best line we’ve heard so far? ‘‘Marianne Slowing fastest timing in the 50m freestyle heat’’.The telecast of the Olympics is like a tour through the Games which someone put on fast forward — and forgot about. We’re air-dashing from one venue and event to another in a frenzied effort not to miss anything important and get our paisa vasool. Or justify the enormous sums broadcasters have paid for the TV rights to the Games. Put another way, we picnic on every dish, feast on none. Personally, I would have been happy to stay with gymnastics for longer than it took Svetlana Khorkina to stick out her tongue.Fortunately, we were allowed to watch shooting star Rathore in his final and winning round without constant interruption. That was worth its weight in silver. The rest of Doordarshan’s contribution was not. When DD knew that viewers would be rooting for medal hopefuls who disappointed — Paes-Bhupathi — you’d expect them to have made arrangements to telecast their matches live with on-the-spot expert commentary even if it meant taking Vijay Amrithraj on loan from ESPN. Instead, the tennis commentary sounded like it was from the Delhi studio, and the matches we saw were broadcast after news channels had reported the results.The anchors in Delhi have a communication problem. Mr Raman speaks in English to Mr Vaidya who replies in Hindi. Nice for them but suppose you do not speak one of the two languages — the reason we have a Hindi and English anchor — how do you understand the conversation? Also, if Ajit Pal Singh can be called in to discuss hockey, why not P T Usha, Prakash Padukone, for athletics, badminton, etc? Because what anchor Divya knows about the Olympics we don’t want to hear.
