Category: Sports Bar
I have been watching the paralympic games from Athens
for a day and i was shocked to discover that American tv has NOT shown any interest.
they do have a 2 hour special due in November
BUT considering that many other countries including Britain,{admittedly we'er sport daft over here}
Are covering the games i was wondering how the
American's here feel about this lack of interest.
And are you the least bit curious about how your athletes are doing in Athens
by the way britain is doing quite well.
well we only have a hundred and fifty or seventy channels, so come on, where do you expect them to show the cripples fumbling about? the people want reality tv shows, not reality. it sucks, I forgot about the paralympics I gotta go find out what's going on in judo.
hmm why do i bother when
im obviously scraping the barrel.
I honestly don't keep up with sports at all, as in watching it, but that does seem messed up that the U.S. wouldn't show much interest in paralympics. *frowns* I would've thought they would show something on it while it was going on, just like they do with the Olympics and other games. But that is crappy.
Sorry I can't say much else on it, but I would be interested to know how that's going. *smiles*
Leilani
It doesn't surprise me, not in the least. The people care about the regular olympic games, and hours upon hours are dedicated to them. Actually, it makes me sick sometimes. And then everything turns around when the paralympics come up... where did the coverage go? Well, y'know, premiers of new seasons of existing shows, and new reality shows that are even worse than what came before are more important!! God!!
oh gobby gobby, forgive me if my post wasn't up to your standards. if you don't like what your scraping from the barrel, then maybe you should get out of it.
Leilani and the others who showed mature interest
the paralympics are going well the most exciting sport so far is the wheelchair rugby its fast furious violent and definately not for the squeamish
you would not want to jump in front of these guys in a queue.
if you are hungry for info you can visit the website at
www.bbc.co.uk/paralympicgames.
if that's incorrect feel free to complain and i'll sort it out.
But i agree completely and its a real indictment on society in general that the paralympics are not seen as equally important.
i feel the standard of tv can in some way reflect the attitude of society towards a certain section and as always we'er at the bottom of the pile where we'er shown little or no respect and given less interest.
this dumbing down of programming that pervades American tv has escalated over here and we are bombared by
DIY
reality drivel
and talk shows where sad desperate individuals air their grievences in public.
I agree that tv has become a reflection of the public's genral atitude, that is the atitude of the lowest common denominator. Over here in england there is so much shite on tv it's mind numbing. I don't give a fuck about big brother, pig brother, DIY or home improovments, *tears hair out*, agreed I watch fly on the wall documentaries, and believe me, if what I see is true, I would pay more council tax just to reward the poor suckers that have to clean our streets and sort out other ppl's mess. on the subject of the paralimpics, agreed, they have some classification problems re varying levels of disablility, flagged up in the british wheelchair 200 metres competitor that was disqualified for not being as disabled as was first thought. hmm, strange one that. I don't know much about this stuff, what I do know is that paralimpians have to do as much, if not more training than the non disabled athletes. if the americans can show contempt for disabled athletes by not showing the paralimpics, they are more backwards than I thought possible.
Dobbin you hit the nail
I have stopped watching tv apart from the paralympics and Formula 1.
It seems the virus that is Americana is endemic here we have no sense of ourselves as English or Scots
But before i drift off on a tirade
the attitude of several countries not just America reflects the apathy towards disabled sport,even Greek tv were found wanting in their coverage of
the games
Well, you know, I hate to sound negative about this and I agree in many ways. The fact is though that parallympics, even though improving very quickly, are in no way even close to the intense competition and incredibly tough competition the olympics are at and that's exactly what the tv watchers want. Sometimes you only have 8 ot 9 people for a specific category and event and one can win it by a huge difference (tens of seconds), the classification is very hard and also disabled people's training isn't on par with those who participate in the olympics. Before I get all slammed about this, I was in the parallympics both in 1992 and 1996 as a swimmer and won medals at both games (granted I trained 8 times a week 3 hours every time for the 1996 games but even that is not as much as you need to train to by an olympic swimmer). I've seen the competition get a lot closer and the general level go way up and I think in 8 to 12 years we'll begint osee some really unnerving races. I think the parallympic timing is also bad, because it comes at a time when people are fed up with olympics. I'd rather have them before the olympic games (they have to be around the same time since they use the sae staff and facilities, more or less). This way people are curious and want to check out the facilities and it'll give the parallympic people more publicity. And none of this is meant as any disrespect for the hard work put in by thousands of people, I've been there, I know what it means and I know how much they sacrifice, but the nature of the games is still less tv supre excitement appealing than the olympics, yet, I checked the games out a lot online, it was cool.
Well i am going to slam you
You obviously missed the point completely i managed to see the wheelchair rugby and those guys trained like nutters for Athens
to a man they were up at 4.30 am every morning 7 days a week for months preparing for the games
that is commitment above and beyond all reason.
Also you said the training is not on a par with able bodied athletes,
not ONCE did i hear anyone mention a lack of training or preperation,they all worked like slaves to ensure a medal.
you only have to watch Chantal Petitclerce who won 5 gold medals in wheelchair racing, or Jim Anderson who won 4 golds in swimming,to realise they have done nothing BUT work
You might have been there Wildebrew, but your attitude is deplorable and an insult to each and every paralympic athlete
obviously the spirit of the games failed to reach you
Goblin, hey man, I think you have a valid point but may be went a bit overboard. I can only speak for the swimming so I should have specified that in my post. And my main point was the tv audiance want to see competitions where fractions of a second separate the first 3 (or even first 8) people, a very simple quick look at the time sheets for the swimming confirms that this is hardly ever the case for the parallympics, not yet. The s9 though s10 ctategories are good but the lower ones still have huge time gaps in them. So, no, I shouldn't have generalized it to other sports because I don't know and I never said that parallympic athletes don't put a lot of work into what they did. I put in tremendous amount of hours and I never reached more than a bronze medal, but I just saw some of my team mates that hardly trained at all really and won their respective cateegories with 10 and 20 second differences. And, no, it's not out of jealousy at all because I am thorroughly happy for them, I'm just saying that with differences this big those particula categories still have a long way to go, because given a lot of swimmers with similar amount of training there is absolutely no reason more than just a few seconds separate them. This gap has been going down tremendously and I'm looking forward to see how this develops (yes, I'm definitely out and won't be participating, except havina beer whenever I see anyone from my country win a medal). :)
So, anyways, I think I didn't miss out on the spirit of the games man, I was there, both in 1992 and 1996, I know what they're all about and, yes, it's cool, it's competitive and it's professional and there is no reason why this shouldnn't start really drawing attention especcially the "unusual" sports like wheel chair basketball and stuff, but I still maintain in terms of excitement and availibility of superb athletes, it still has some way to go, and this is based on my personal observations of time sheets and I spent 8 to 10 hours a day in the pool watching all the heeds so I know exactly what I'm talking about.
Still, :) just exchange of opiniions and I'm happy to be corrected always.
Cheers
-B
Generally it#s the case that the olympics are way, way more interesting for the TV than the paraolympics. Unfortunately I couldn't watch them, but I think it's really interesting.