My biggest gripe about the last couple days of Olympic coverage (guess I wasn't done with it after all) has been the commentary of former U.S. gymnast Tim Daggett. The scoring in gymnastics is inscrutable enough without having to listen to his switching between hypercriticism and gushing praise during the events, but tonight was especially bad. American Paul Hamm, a medal favorite, ate it on the his vault during the men's all-around competition, scoring a 9.1 something or other, and dropped to 12th place. Daggett was quick to declare him "finished," even though Hamm wasn't mathematically eliminated.
Then the Chinese gymnast, who took the lead after Hamm's spill, scored an 8.9 on the high bar, while the rest of the field made a series of errors that allowed Hamm to work his way back into the hunt. After a solid parallel bars routine, Hamm was 4th and needed a 9.66 on the high bar to win the bronze. He scored a 9.837 to come from behind and win the gold, a first for American men in the all-around. Daggett, of course, does a hasty and stammering 180 to give Hamm his props.
One of the only reasons to watch the Olympics (aside from Amanda Beard) is for these kind of moments: the "Miracle on Ice," Mary Lou Retton's perfect 10 on the vault, or Mark Spitz's seven gold medals. Daggett was a great gymnast in his own time (nailing a 10.0 of his own to secure the men's gold in 1984), but he must still be bitter about Mitch Gaylord getting the lead in American Anthem. Thankfully, the gymnastics competition is almost over, meaning Boxey's little friend* can go back to doing whatever it is he does in the offseason.
* Apologies for the lame Battlestar Galactica reference
We were paying way too much attention to the drama to even notice the yammering by Tim Daggett (Tim Muffit?).
Even though we got spoiled by the news on Yahoo! regarding Hamm's win, it was still nail-biting to watch.
And how about that German women's beach volleyball team? I won't say any more. :)
I saw a headline on a newspaper in the subway about Hamm winning before getting to watch the TiVo'd footage at home. I, too, found the footage totally nail-biting-worthy, in spite of knowing the outcome, mostly from a, "Okay, how in the HELL is he going to pull this off?" standpoint. Even without Daggett's comments, I found myself looking at the scores not knowing how he'd make it work, and knowing that to make it work I was about to see some AMAZING gymnastics on his part.
But, the best part about having the outcome spoiled was that, when Daggett said his bit about, "It is now totally impossible for him to get a gold," I got to say to the TV, "Oh, IS IT now? You sure about that?" Heh.
I have found the commentary of the Olympics in general pretty useless, with the exception of the swimming commentary. That's been pretty good, and remarkably not American-centric.
The womens bronze sabre commentary was idiotic at best, and otherwise useless. Of course, I don't get to see the gold womens sabre, nor hardly any epee or foil, because NBC either chose not to show them, or wouldn't allow Tribune to publilsh the times properly, so the TiVo wouldn't record the 6-hour chunk.
Poor me.
Tim Daggett is just one of narrow minded who doesn't know what he's saying, not so smart person. He shouldn't be a commentator at all. NBC should fire him right away. I'm not watching program he appears. Daggett has to read Mike Celizic's MSNBC article 'Hamm should give up the gold - American has the opportunity to show he's true champion' hundreds of times and keep it as his bible.
Well, I think Tim Dagett was correct about Paul not taking the gold after his disastrous fall at the vault (and he shouldn't have), but the dismissal of Paul winning a medal because of the fall was where Tim was wrong. But when Tim said, "That's it!" He didn't clarify what was exactly "it." Did he mean Paul was out of medal contention or was he simply saying the gold was gone?
All in all, I think Tim has done a great job. And Paul Hamm was NOT the best gymnast that night, and he should at least share the gold medal with the South Korean gymnast and hand over his silver (along with that Italian guy handing over his gold) to Alesei Nemov who kicked ass on the high-bar.
I actually think Tim Daggett is great gymnastics commentator - definitely the best of the three that NBC has. He has the right balance of excitement, mastery of gymnastics knowledge, and calmness to smooth it all out and almost always comes across as a good commentator in my opinion. I'm pretty sure most everyone agreed with him after Hamm's spill on the vault. Never in history has anything close to that happened, so why would he have reason to think that Hamm would clench the gold, or any medal, this time? Was Daggett supposed to say "Well, that's going to hurt him but I think he can maybe come back from this?" He could have said that, but he didn't. He's just doing his job, and pretty well at that. Al Troutwig is the one who makes me want to hit the mute button, with his completely ignorant comments and constant statements like "Well Tim, how was that?" etc. IMO, Paul Hamm truely was the greatest gymnast that night. If you can make such a major, uncharacteristic mistake as he did, and have it in you to come back and post huge numbers to win the gold...you are worthy of the title "Olympic Champion"
Daggett came in for much mockery at our household.
In fact, mocking Olympic commentators is something of a favorite pastime here -- whether it be for outrageously stupid comments like Daggett's ("dream-killing", anyone?) or amusingly unintentional double-entendres ("she's going to take the full length of the beam for her dismount").