Olympic TV Coverage

Originally posted by furtive Originally posted by transient Was crap and got better. Enjoyed the medal races but W/L course was a bit of a disappointment, boats always look better if there's a good reach in the mix IMO. The 2012 coverage was better and it had triangle sausage (the ones I saw), OK the tri saus may be a bit tricky for the non sailing public to follow but it's a much better spectacle.Rio coverage 4/10London (weymouth) 7/10 Edit: Although the commentators did their best to drop the jargon there was still too much of it. It doesn't help to promote the sport. Not wanting the truth to get in the way of a good moan, but there were no triangle sausage courses in the 2012 Games. Lots of the qualifying series were on trapezoids with one fleet doing outer loop and one inner loop, all medal races were w/l with a short reach to the finish if the wind direction needed this to get the line close to the nothe.

I have the memory of an old fart over 4 yrs. Still, you get my drift. Trapezoid triangle whatever. Windward leeward duller to watch......my moan still stands 😉

Edited by transient - 20 Aug 16 at 10:00am

It's not a spectator sport but more worryingly, attempts to make it so make the actual sailing worse.

Originally posted by Rupert Maybe the Olympics should be downwind slaloms in 49ers, windsurfers and kiteboard, match racing with a final and 3rd place play off. Have a 2nd chance idea like the bikes do, too. Not the sport we actually do, but then, apart from in rush hour, how many cyclists follow a moped around?

Originally posted by Rupert Maybe the Olympics should be downwind slaloms in 49ers, windsurfers and kiteboard, match racing with a final and 3rd place play off. Have a 2nd chance idea like the bikes do, too. Not the sport we actually do, but then, apart from in rush hour, how many cyclists follow a moped around?

Sorry Rupert there is one big difference. What you are putting forward for sailing has no history in our sport, but racing cyclists have been following mopeds/motorbikes both on the track and on the road for about 100 years.

Hard to ever see sailing as a spectator sport and for whatever reason the BBC certainly don't see to want to buy in to the sailors as stars; so little coverage on main channel- I think they were showing badminton doubles match of a few hours earlier when 470 women were racing and certainly the post race celebrations should have been captured live.

It was poor so little footage of offshore sailing.  I also think move to faster boats, totally remote from our normal sailing hasn't help as more about driving fast than tactical duels and gets boring as does AC for me.

The medal race is hit and miss - the 49X and 470 women races were good although as others say hard to know what was going on apart from at marks as graphics were so inaccurate. On downside a number of classes were won before medal race so Hannah sailing a safe race and coming mid-fleet doesn't make for good TV but her just sailing up to the beach afterwards was great and brought back memories of one's youth.

I thought commentary was OK but as they were looking at same footage as us they might as well have been in UK. Maybe should have used more screens and certainly it was very annoying when they would say with some uncertainty we were doing so and so in another class when we already knew that by looking at official mark rounding data - surely the commentators should have had multiple windows open with all race data coming in - I did.

As for future we have to accept sailing isn't a major spectator sport but I don't like push to everything has to be faster and also alienates poorer countries which is why having the two Lasers was a good move. I would still prefer to have male/female match racing over short courses with proper graphics - this type of racing would better represent what is attractive elsewhere, the individual combat within a confined area.




Edited by attenborough - 21 Aug 16 at 10:04am