<p>Do any of the rest of you find the NBC coverage of this event awful? I’ve tried to watch it but rather than presenting a sporting event they televise a documentary style after-the-fact show filled with personal sob stories and slo-mo flashbacks. There’s basically no coverage of the actual competition with people racing side by side for any more than about 3 seconds at a time.</p>
<p>In contrast, the coverage of the Tour De france on the NBC Sports channel is much better since it shows an actual competition. In the past when I’ve seen it on regular NBC (or whatever regular channel) they did the same treatment of it as they do to the Ironman which makes it un-watchable for me.</p>
<p>They tend to do the same up close and personal sob story USA-focused presentation for the Olympics as well. I hope it’s better this year since there are so many cable channels now.</p>
<p>A lot of the interest in watching the TDF is in the strategy and tactics of the race between the teams and the big stars, as it spreads over the 21 stages of the race.</p>
<p>In a one-day event you don’t get any of this, it is every person for themselves. I think it is harder for this kind of coverage to be interesting.</p>
<p>Plus, Ironman is, what, 9 hours long or something like that? It’s hard to to provide compelling coverage for that amount of time. Even for the TDF, they don’t start the serious coverage until the last hour or so.</p>
<p>In the Olympics, the “up close and personal” junk seems to be in the events that women like to watch, apparently they are more interested in the sob stories than the competition. ;)</p>
<p>No, there is plenty of the “up close and personal” fluff in male-centric Olympic coverage too. It’s just that there is even more of it for the female-minded broadcasts.</p>
<p>It seems that some years ago they actually showed the athletes racing in the Ironman. They didn’t show the whole thing of course, but they actually showed them … racing, which is good because it’s a … race.</p>
<p>In the last few years it’s just a soap opera, a series if vignettes showing the personal triumph over tragedy/obstacles together with slow motion clips for dramatic effect. They don’t really even show much in the way of highlights as one would expect to be done in a condensed timeframe. </p>
<p>I suppose someone at the network decided people aren’t interested in the actual sport but rather, only the drama. I don’t think it’s true. It certainly isn’t for me.</p>
<p>I noticed on my cable system there’s an on-demand Olympic channel. I hope it’ll show some actual sports rather than an overly-produced soap opera.</p>
Apparently the mostly male sports producers think they are. But when I want to watch a sporting event, I want to watch a sporting event. Give me the sob stories in a different “profile” show - then I can watch or not as I choose!</p>
<p>It’s one of the reasons that I gave up on watching the Olympics years ago.</p>
<p>Olympics coverage has been hopeless. endless swimming, baskeptball, beach volleyball.</p>
<p>I would love to see badminton, fencing, wrestling, boxing…and probably other sports that I am not familiar with. I’m hoping the xfinity package lets us see the less often highlighted events in the entirety. I don’t mind commentary as the event unfolds. An expert can give some insight into the action. Can’t stand the character pieces and the constant USA USA USA jingoism.</p>