NBC Olympics coverage may be improving

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I still remember one of the World Wide of Sports lines "the agony of defeat" with that ski jumper crashing at the end of the ramp.

 

Yep, that is definitely ingrained in my brain from childhood.

 

That was from something called the "Ski Flying" championships, where the hill is much larger than what they usually used - then again, the "large hill" back then was only 90m. (Apparently, ski flying still exists, with 180m hills.)

There were some "Winter Olympic" events that appeared regularly on WWoS:
Alpine Skiing - the men's downhill at the Hahnenkamm in Kitzbuhl, and I think they aired the world ski jumping championships (they also aired a lot of professional skiing events - mainly head-to-head slalom racing)
Figure Skating - US Nationals and World Championships
Skeleton (well, Toboggan) - they always aired an event from the St. Moritz Cresta run each year

 

Vinko Bogataj (or something like that) was the fellow who fell off the ski-jump. He was uninjured. I remember them having a WWoS retrospective on ABC and they invited him to appear on the show.

I think they had some speed skating on WWoS as well, especially in Olympic years. They regularly showed T&F (NCAA championships I believe) and gymnastics for summer games. They also used to show the EPL final game regularly from Wembley. And of course some real obscure stuff. Wrist Wrestling from Petaluma, CA, Demo Derby, Barrel jumping, quite a few Eval Kneival jumps. And LOTS of boxing.

 

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Has anyone seen a good schedule for the Paralympics?

There's one at the bottom of this Press release from 19 February, but the formatting is butt-ugly.

 

Here's a better one

 

Thanks! Yes, that's much more readable.

 

I don't want to cancel any of the athletes' dreams, but it seems kind of wrong to be honoring Putin and Russia right now.

 

Well, the US delegation isn't going now, right? Just the team?

 

That's what I have heard as well.

Bogotaj has appeared at least twice - they interviewed him remotely decades ago, and he made an appearance at either the 20th or 25th Anniversary specials. (At one of those, they aired a couple of minor events (I think one of them was a 10K in Butte, Montana) for no other reason that they were in the two states where they had never aired events up to that point.)

While WWoS aired the Rugby League Cup Final (usually from Wembley, but if it ended in a tie, they replayed the entire match in northern England a week later, and ABC aired that game instead) every year (usually with an NFL player along for a comparative analysis with football), I think they aired the F.A. Cup final only once, in the 1960s (and it was not limited to what would now be the EPL; any team, no matter how minor, could enter, although only once has a team that was not in what is now the EPL or England's "Championship" league even made it to the final).

WWoS aired NCAA championships in track & field, swimming, wrestling, and volleyball every year. Note that, back then, the NCAA only conducted championships in men's sports; by the time they started having women's championships (1981-82, IIRC), they had moved to ESPN.

 

Just FYI, MSNBC is re-running coverage that was on Primetime, divided up by individual sports, under the title "Return to Sochi".

So if there was a particular sport you wanted to see, or revisit, check your Guide Data for details.