The Paris Olympics has been one of the best in recent memory and a wonderful set of sports to bring people together.
With the exception of the water quality for the triathlon swim in the Seine, Paris has used existing and temporary venues around the city to great effect. It feels like less of a boondoggle than many previous Olympics.
Some of the new sports added this year are solid additions. Sport climbing is interesting. Breaking exceeded my low expectations and is fun and entertaining. Gymnastics might be better if it had more one on one duels like breaking.
I’m not sure that I’d ever seen Rugby Sevens before, but it’s a great, watchable, fast, fun sport, with quick play, constant action, little downtime, and short games. Ilona Maher is deservedly one of the breakout stars of this year.
Of the sports that I follow more closely, both of the road cycling races were exciting. Kristen Faulkner’s win was not only unexunexpected, but tactically clever and thrilling. Remco needing a bike change (without being able to tell the team car about it over race radio) was a tense moment full of adrenaline. (Between two Olympic golds and a podium at the Tour, he’s had a pretty good month!)
NBC has finally recognized that viewers want to watch events live, as they happen. Good sporting events don’t need to be interrupted by human interest clips packages to be interesting. Understanding the personalities and the stories that brought some of the best athletes in the world to compete add to the drama. Streaming has enabled Peacock to do both. By making all of the feeds available live, they’re able to meet the simple demands of sports fans (watching the events as they happen). The primetime network coverage can include all of the packaging. Who would have predicted that by 2024, Snoop Dogg and Flavor Flav would become cuddly Olympics mascots?
For having a feed of things on and jumping around to highlights, Gold Zone was a great way to dip in and out of events. Somehow, Peacock got the balance largely correct for the Olympics (unlike the Tour de France).
One downer is the fact that the Olympics, like France, and the rest of the world has essentially just given up on doing anything to prevent the spread of Covid, which is a significant failure. Since Covid is likely to cause persistent long-term damage, the number of athletes who were allowed to and chose to compete while infected may have significant consequences for them. You can’t blame the athletes because there’s no public health leadership discouraging or preventing.
