KEY POINTS:
Despite really getting into my work, really laying into it, despite (almost) lasting the withering pace and leaving nothing on the couch, I still have no idea of the correct pronunciation of Mahe Drysdale's first name.
You'd think the TVNZ Olympic commentators, so accomplished at really laying into
the sporting cliches, might, by now, have been given a bit of paper with Mahe spelled phonetically so that there was some consistency.
Never mind. You couldn't accuse them of being inconsistent in other areas. Such as lasting the withering pace and leaving nothing in the cliche dictionary.
I'm not sure it's entirely the fault of the Olympic commentary team that sports reporting is almost entirely made up of cliches. The athletes do it too. So at least they're speaking the same language. This is not my language so, having sat through almost all of New Zealand's Golden Day at the Olympics, I think I deserve a medal (oh, all right, I did nod off for a bit, so possibly a bronze ... But I tell you, I left nothing in that wine bottle).
I don't know why everyone seems to be complaining about TVNZ's Olympic coverage. I'm all for old geezers on the telly. God knows, I aged at least 25 years during that oddly mesmerising cycling event where the blokes go round and round then have little sprints. I think it's called the men's points race but I was a bit busy writing down "145 laps to go," "75 laps to go" and so on. How exactly could anyone think of anything to say about any of this? By filling in the long minutes with increasingly technical detail about bikes and physiology and other riveting details that can have only been of interest to bike nuts.
Never mind. Toni Street said to Mahe (or Mahay, or Mayhe): "Well, Mahe Drysdale, it's just good to see you standing. You certainly toughed it out."
Peter Williams told us, after the race, that they had known before the race how crook Drysdale was. Nice of them to have told us. There were a few shots of Drysdale looking extremely crook after the race. "I just hope for his sake that he's okay," said Toni. As opposed to "for someone else's sake", perhaps? We saw Toni telling us about what we couldn't see: Drysdale being crook. "I don't think I need to tell you what Mahe Drysdale was doing at that time," said Peter Williams. How oddly coy.
If they had decided not to show us because they thought showing a vomiting medallist was not a nice thing to do, why didn't someone just say so? And why didn't somebody tell Peter Montgomery that saying "Beijing Belly" ad nauseam during the race was enough to make anyone feel crook? It's more likely they couldn't get the shots. "It's a shame the director decided not to recognise lane 6," said somebody through obviously gritted teeth during the men's double sculls.
Never mind. The Golden Girls, the Golden Twins, did us proud. "Stand up New Zealand!" shouted Pete Montgomery, after having called it for Germany. Never mind and full credit: so did we. The twins won it by "a gnat's whisker." Or, as Peter Williams told us much, much later while holding index finger and thumb together: "As Maxwell Smart used to say: Won by that much."
We had to wait a bit to get to the cycling. There had been delays. Never mind. At least we had the Golden Girls to replay. Williams filled us in on the delays in the coverage during which, "New Zealanders are competing exceedingly well - aah, we hope - as far as the cycling's concerned." As Maxwell Smart might have said, he got away with that little giveaway by that much. Or by a gnat's whisker.
But what would the Olympics be without a ringside seat at that other national sport: Hoping the commentators cock it up.
