Under the control the games, during the games...

...we had the some possibilities, some big chances, some big okazyons, like Simon Ammann, Lamy-Chappuis' sprint at the 10km, a tomato that flew, Sweden beating Canada to the women's curling gold.. and that's pretty much it. Which brings us to the fact that

big games are easy than the other games, unfortunately; rainy games were rainy, slushy snow was slushy, green trees were green, and easy courses were easy. Except maybe the luge track. Oops.

You have to give it to the Norwegians, though. They did disappoint, but at least they got the timing right, with Ole’s (who missed seven on the mass start?!) clean standing shoot at the relay and Petter Nordhug’s bizarro (for a cycling fan, that is. think a Schleck towing Valverde up hills to the finish.) 50km Classic MS gold strategically placed toward the end of the games. (I wish I was born a bit earlier and watched, say, Ole at Salt Lake City. [And Daehlie! I’m not at all sad, however, to have missed the Festina/Lance/OP years, though Floyd might have been fun? {Perish the thought.}])

Odd-Bjørn Hjelmeset’s priceless comment about porn aside, the quote of the olympics has to be the beautifully executed « Putain de jeux olympiques de merde! » by a certain M. Joubert, who messed up spectacularly to the surprise of no one including himself, channeling the olympic spirit so many before him has felt but failed to put into words. The official word was that’s the figure skating, and something happened, until a couple of hours after the SP, when he was pronounced a « p’tit con » by his federation in the press. The next day, he admitted to his « p’tit con » ness, infuriated translators everywhere (one headline said “Joubert admits to being kinda stupid”) and promised to do whatever the federation guy tells him. Next year, when all of that fails, while sad for Brian, I’ll at least have the satisfaction of having predicted it. (I missed most of his career as well, though I remember watching the « Time » programme, probably my earliest memory of men’s figure skating.)

Technical problems kept me away from intl. commentary, but I have to admit, despite my prejudice against them, that the Turkish ES guys did surprisingly well. That said, dear sirs, the races you’re commentating on are infinitely interesting and beautiful to us who actually care about that particular sport (who, you’d think, make up a sizeable portion of your target market). So please, please do talk about the race? This especially goes for XC skiing /cycling etc; and I understand commentating on a Vuelta sprint stage or the 50 km event can be a challenge, but your English-language counterparts seem to have found a solution, so it’s definitely doable. Please, please do resist the urge to recount the history of the sport complete with a detailed description of all the polemica you’ve ever heard about and forget about the race that’s actually going on. ‘Cause, y’know, chances are we already know everything you want to tell us, and the new viewers will enjoy getting to know a new sport by osmosis rather than an infodump. (I know I did.) There’s no reason to doubt the sport, we don't think it's that boring; we love it, honest. We love you, for bringing it to us. We feel bad when we have to mute the commentary. (I would also humbly advise against shouting every ski jumper’s name as they land their jump. And I’m sure you’ll agree that “yukarıdan geldi” isn’t a terribly interesting observation, considering.)

etc etc etc
Some of the grammatical mistakes you see is art.