UKC

Pointless close ups, empty mats, shots that are too tight so that you can't see what's going on, climbers constantly reaching straight out of frame to take the next hold - the direction and camerawork of the Olympic television coverage is shockingly poor.

From what I've heard, the IFSC not long ago replaced its media team, removing everyone who had experience of covering the competition circuit. Is that correct? Would that explain why the coverage is so poor?

You are lucky! I cant find any coverage.

Which Channel are you watching?

It's being shown on Eurosport 2.

The commentary is appalling too. So annoying to hear them tell us how amazed that they can hang on small holds and to consistently use wrong terminology. Extremely frustrating

Thanks

Olympics host broadcaster is OBS whereas the IFSC uses ORF as it's HB and has done years.

The reason the coverage is poor is that OBS have never covered a climbing event previously (they may have done some test events). 

That explains the pictures, but whilst the World Feed probably does have comms, I'd imagine the comms we're hearing are being added at Eurosport, who also have limited experience of covering climbing events.

So yeah although this is an IFSC sanctioned event, they don't play any part in producing the pictures, nor own the rights to any of the footage.  They do however, get a nice slice of broadcast revenue in return, which they may choose to put back into their own events.  

Its now on Beebers. 

Could you put a link to it on here please?

The commentary was just weird at times. A particular highlight being when they referred to one of the belayers as an "auto belay specialist"...

Press the on button on tv remote. Press no. 1 button. I think . Just done speed, now on bouldering + lead, good coverage, but just highlights. Lasted 20mins if that! 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000yhzm/olympics-day-11-bbc-one-1500...

I did roll my eyes at the  Eurosport bs of tiny holds on the speed route. I managed to flash a cut-down version of the speed route and I can't pull off tiny holds on 5 degree overhangs.

Oh, thanks fgot about that, but you have to have an account etc I suppose. 

I got a 1 month sub to Eurosport for £6.99 through Amazon Video.

I thought it'd be bad but not this bad. I mean climbing is pretty dull to watch even if you know what's actually going on. The casual Olympic TV viewer is not even gonna spend 5 seconds on that tripe. 

Compare that to the BMX park event the other day. Debut event too. I've no idea what it takes to flip a bike like that but I thought it was great. That's an entertaining sport. 

I know the commentary is trying to dumb it down for casual viewers but they don't do that in the gymnastics. I watched quite a bit of the gymnastics and didn't have a clue what on earth the commentary team were talking about. They just said it like it was. Still good viewing IMO. 

BBC summary was OK ish. and Molly's sum up comprehensive. Maybe there will be more focus when Shauna is involved!

Yeah, I was just thinking this, dispite knowing nothing about BMX I still enjoyed the commentary, not once the the commentators feel the need to say ooh, look they done a jump, and span around loads that's harder then cycling to Tesco's etc. etc. Unlike the climbing which seemed to entirely comprise of inane nonsense about how it's harder then going to the gym, how small the holds were or how big their muscles are. They lost me at 'he's just done a pull up'

Yes main complaint was that BBC focused on the speed, although I guess for a non climber it's the most easily understood. As a climber though I find speed gets boring to watch, as you can't appreciate the strength and balance required when they just scamper up the route.

Good to see Molly involved in the commentating team. I do like the fact that this year across most sports they are bringing in athletes who have actually competed and have in depth knowledge, so can talk with genuine passion.

Also oddly I always thought the argument for having speed climbing in there is that climbing needed the notion of a world record for consideration. What's the BMX world record exactly? Or mountain biking? It's not like they don't change the course. So why is speed climbing done on the exact same route? Absolutely bobbins. Gladiators was more entertaining. 

To me non of it is climbing. Speed is a race, and boulder and lead are specialist gymnastics. But the BMC have taken Sport England’s money. Not too long ago they condemned any form of  competitive sport in climbing! I enjoy watching the bouldering from  a purely technical point of view and marvel at the gymnastics involved, but for pure all round climbing enjoyment I forsake volumes and jumping tricks for real rock outdoors, with the ambience and history of it all. But then again I am an old fart with over 50 years of climbing experience. Final point, I,ve never understood why the BMC oversee this circus. Surely an association of climbing wall venues who own and manage the facilities should run indoor sport, whilst the BMC should concentrate on what the name says on the tin, despite a recent sneaky attempt to change it.

Where is it actually on? I could only find coverage behind some paywall. Surely there must be a free option.

Thanks for the tip. I did manage to watch some of the climbing on BBC this afternoon, and have to confess that I found it boring, particularly the speed climbing and bouldering.

I've neve been particularly captivated by watching others climb. 

 Climbing to me was a personal thing, just me and my mate(s) enjoying being out there on a rock face or on a mountain. I've never considered it to be competitive. Call me a dinosaur if you like, but an Olympic sport isn't what I feel climbing is about.   Each to their own, but I wish those who enjoy it and the British team all the best.

I caught Emma Twyford on 5Live this afternoon, and she explained it quite well, well in the brief time slot that they gave her. 60 seconds maybe?

You should try watching the olympic coverage in France. I've had handball, volleyball and basketball all effin day.

E

Agree - shockingly poor coverage of the bouldering especially ... close ups of climber chalking up after falling whilst hearing the cheers and applause as other climbers are sending another one of the problems - wide-angle full wall view, please! Or, worst of all, focusing on the trainers with concerned faces whilst climbers actually climbing ... they don't do that when gymnasts are performing so why in climbing?? 

FYI managed to find full coverage of the lead part on a free streaming sports site with multiple olympic channels (hesgoal) and ended up muting the nonsense commentary but at least it covered all climbers in their attempts on the route.

If you mute the Eurosport coverage, you can listen to Matt Groom commentating live on the Epic TV Youtube channel at the same time. 

I think I must have missed the speed abseiling and aid climbing?

Been watching the lead on the BBC and their commentary is actually good, Eurosport is just... no words really.

Do you have link for it? I searched the BBC for olympics and climbing and nothing aside from some 1m thing on speed, came up.

Yep.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p09pjzdg

Edit: If the link doesn't take you directly to the climbing, it starts 20 minutes in.

I agree, Mike Langley's input is great, and paired up with Ed Leigh as a recognisable BBC voice seems to work quite well. Certainly watchable, which sounds a great deal better than Eurosports from reading the comments above! It's a shame you have to go looking for the coverage, but understandable as I can see it being a bit dry for a typical viewer - especially compared with something like the BMX freestyle!

Thanks for trying but currently there's just a photo of a climber with a message:

  "Sorry, this episode is not currently available."

No info when it will be available, if ever, or any other info. What a fiasco!!!

Try clicking on episodes and looking through

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000ylyw

It works. Yay. Thanks

A few factual corrections and a counter opinion:

Sport England fund participation, they don't provide elite sport funding (and for Tokyo, elite funding didn't involve the BMC).

As for the 'not long ago' point... I'm really confused  how you could have overlooked the long BMC involvement in competitions, from their very beginnings (under the leadership of Dennis Gray).

The BMC rightly criticised competition on real rock in the past but I'm not aware of any BMC condemning of competition on purpose- built structures. Some BMC members in recent times spoke out against Olympic and Sport England involvement but when democratic votes were held on the matter they always lost by large margins.

As to why should the BMC be involved? If we care about history, access conservation and ethics, it's best we engage with and share our values with new climbers lest they unwittingly cause damage, misunderstand risks or forget heritage, if they transition to the outdoors. The UK also have a pretty impressive competition and indoor infrastructure history. For the competition side this involves success from the beginning (Simon Nadin was the first ever World Champion, 32 years ago) to the modern logistics (lots of key UK involvement, including Percy out in Tokyo setting).

Yeah, this is really weird, I had the same problem yesterday, my laptop was displaying "This episode is not currently available" while my phone worked fine. I suspect weirdness arising from the rules around their stream licence...

I quite like the idea of this, comparing world class athletes to mundane daily tasks. Weightlifting, much harder than putting those cans on the top shelf. Swimming, less like being in the bath than you might think... 

Weird as you say.

The BBC search seems rather naff too. If I put in 'climbing' and  'Olympics' well there's only been 3 events so far, plus a few shorts, but I get loads of stuff that is not related to climbing at all and those main events aren't there.

It appears to be one episode and the title changes based on what was being streamed into it at the time. When I watched it, it was titled "Climbing" and showed up in the search. When I linked it to you it was titled "Handball". They really need to just add metadata to the search.

Well the women's bouldering is taking place currently. But having done a few searches, (Youtube, BBC, IFSC) I can't find any coverage of that either.

This has to be the biggest embarrassment for the climbing community ever. This thing has been hyped and hyped literally for years. There must be dozens of articles about it on UKC alone. There are hundreds of Instagram posts, videos, interviews, Ondra even made a video series about his preparations. Now it's finally here it seems like all there is, is limited viewing on the BBC and some dodgy sounding, paywalled streaming service.

I have to admit I wasn't expecting that much. The format is poor and the number of participants is far fewer than a normal world cup so why all the hype about it I've no idea. But I didn't expect it to be this bad. You can't even find live coverage. Unbelievable.

Just watching the Eurosport catch up of yesterdays men's qualies. The commentary is hilariously bad. 

Persisting with the bouldering footage despite perpetual cringing but I will swap over to Mike and the Beeb for lead...

My gf found the men's climbing on iplayer last nigh so watched that, lead qualifiers. I enjoyed it and the beeb commentary was ok..... but it did take her ages to find. As you say it's a shame.

Slight aside, saw this

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/aug/04/sport-climbing-olympics-tokyo...

Generally positive about the event but does describe the speed climbing as 'like something from it's a knockout'. The bbc commentators were also speculating that the climbers weren't at their best because of having to train and do the speed climbing. Definitely something to discard next time round IMO.

  You’re right, but it’s been the same with most sports. Sailing coverage non-existent until the medal races, not even updates on progress .Hopefully the climbing coverage will improve for the finals, but something other than the speed nonsense would be nice.

Thanks for the info. That now makes sense. It's incredibly frustrating that an event's first appearance at a Games is being documented and represented so poorly.

From a bit of poking around, it appears that OBS adds its own commentary for some events and broadcasters can then choose to use it or provide their own.

I watched that last night (on iplayer under "day 11 red button extra - handball") and the commentary was top notch.  I was impressed with Molly Thompson-Smith's little segment as a BBC studio pundit yesterday too, really very good indeed.

Eurosport has just stopped showing the live bouldering!  

That's right, OBS will are the host broadcaster so will produce what's called a world or unilateral feed.  This will often have English comms and graphics already added so broadcasters can if they like, put this straight to air, as their rights cover everything on the feed. 

However the feed the also has and "m+e" channel which is just the ambient noise from the event, to allow broadcasters to add their own local comms which they'll defo do for more popular events...

Works the same for many sports - for example every champions league match has an English commentary track that basically nobody ever hears!

You are over-egging the pudding. The lack of TV coverage is the same for all sports at the Olympics (try watching weightlifting, for example), and the blame can be laid at the IOC's door, and their TV deal with Discovery. See https://olympics.com/ioc/news/ioc-awards-all-tv-and-multiplatform-broadcast...

Well, I'm looking at it right now...

Although they did manage to multiply 3 by 1 and come up with 4 at one point.  And declare Ondra to be out and him going on to finish 5th.  Must admit it did seem to me fairly decent on the whole despite such Murray Walkerisms.

Ah come on, no spoilers please!

france.tv seems to have a reasonable choice including climbing

Well, it's not all about you oddly enough.  If you don't like it don't watch it.

Found it!

Oh, OK.  I would have thought if you wanted to avoid the results of yesterday's qualifiers then you then you wouldn't click on a thread about the coverage of them.  But I'll sod off so I don't drop any more clangers.

Well that is appalling if true, but the BBC did show the lead event, so sounds like that is not completely accurate.

Maybe the BMC should have sent Liam Lonsdale out there with his mobile phone.

But I'm also contrasting it with all the years of hype we've had about climbing in the Olympics and how wonderful it's going to be and all the rest of it. Even if we could watch it all the very limited participation mean it's actually less competitive than an average world cup.

If you want bad coverage try the Eventing Cross Country. Regular 30 second plus shots of grass with no horse in sight, cutting away from horses just as they enter interesting sections, at one point both commentators disappeared for 5 minutes. Maybe they both decided to get a cup of tea at the same moment?

The Beeb are showing small amounts of everything - which is all they can do. The era of many 'red button' channels, each dedicated to a single sport, is finished. Blame the IOC.

Ah well, for that, blame the people who've been hyping it up for years. It's not the Beeb's fault.

Thanks, but no need - I'm feeling benevolent because #crackisback

blimey, what a bunch of whingers you lot are. I hope no non-climbers see this - they will assume we are all miserable gits

Those were some pretty horses though!

It's nothing to do with the IOC, the BBC just didn't outbid EuroSport as the primary rights holder for the UK.

Blame capitalism?

Edit: I just looked up how much Eurosport paid...  2018-24 Olympics Europe-wide they paid £1.1 billion.  They then sub license to national broadcasters (such as bbc) but terms state no more than 2 live events at a time for the BBC.  

That's a lot of cash, especially in the age of illegal streaming.

(You just need to re-load)

precisely, well said Blanche. I can't believe the negativity on this thread.

don't miss your streetcar!

jesus wept. what a moan. all those kids who are into climbing because of climbing walls and you get to decide what 'real climbing' is? 

Sounds about right. I'm guessing that there are probably a small group of people, with probably no interest in climbing or sport at all, who stand to make a wad of cash from this. Very sad day for climbing and sport then.

When the IFSC tried to paywall climbing some years ago the comp climbers went on a kind of semi strike, refused interviews etc., and the decision was reversed. With this it seems no one was aware this was even happening.

Absolutely. It's all about Discovery/Eurosport betting they can turn this into a whole bunch of extra subscriptions for Eurosport and Discovery+

It was announced in 2016, everyone just forgot. The BBC can't afford it anymore, who knows what will happen post Paris?!

Damn right we're whinging. This is the most hyped up climbing event of the century and it's just fallen totally flat on it's face. You either can't watch it OR , if you're prepared to pay, watch a shoddy live stream with amateur camera work and commentators who haven't a clue what they're talking about.

This is totally scandalous and we're right to moan and whinge and complain about it and doing so might just mean this doesn't happen again in the future.

I thought the bbc coverage was good including the commentary -  I think the finals will be a lot more interesting as only 8 competitors - approx 20 competitors each climbing the same route can be a bit tedious I accept even for the most dedicated !

Actually, I've come around to the position multiplier approach - it means there is no outright nailed on winner from the start.

Todays eurosport coverage (free for me through vodaphone, take that capitalism!) seems much better, maybe they were just warming up yesterday, I'm only on the bouldering though as I actually had to do some work this morning. 

Oh i couldnt find the bouldering, just speed and lead

I'm watching the live coverage on discovery plus (paywalled unless you get get a free trial like me) everything seems to be there, a real shame not on BBC though.

Eurosport didn’t seem to have the bouldering either for some reason 

Just wait for the howls of outrage there'll be on here if one of the winners dares to use the word "send" in an interview. There'll be calls for a disqualification.

For those who want to warm up for said outrage, I suggest checking out Sky Brown's interview after winning bronze in skateboarding: "it was super sick... everyone was ripping it." Kids, eh. I blame the schools.

Beebers red button has lead qualifying on now, Shauna yet to go.... 

Welcome to UKC

Nah, just the headmasters 

According to the UKC stats, ‘real’ climbing is a Hard Severe on Stanage Popular End. I’m not sure that’s going to float the broadcasters’ boat. Or the IOC 😂

She lives in California*.  I blame the Americans.

* And Japan.

It's cos they've all led sheltered lives in school. It's about time we replaced them with people who've got some experience of the real world, like selling fireplaces.

Yeah, once they moved over to the horse racing on the main channel the bouldering was hard to find again. I initially couldn't find the stream but after someone up thread assured me they were watching, I had another look and found it.

Eurosport's Player App isn't the best.  

Hey-ho, I got to see most of it. I wonder how much BBC viewers got to see?

BBC coverage of qualifiers was good on the speed while pretty rushed with lead and boulder (didn't show much really) but at least showed the points table. Hopefully will be more comprehensive when it comes to the finals!

A win-win situation.

Media people  and sports bureaucrats who don't find real climbing of the type you mention to be sexy enough for TV and mass viewing will keep their attention  away from the crags and amuse themselves by creating and promoting an artificial sport in an artificial environment.

The rest of us are left to enjoy Christmas Crack without the worry of a tens of thousands of new punters eroding their way up it. Everyone's happy ( apart from those who wish the coverage was up to the standard of "real" Olympic sports.)

By the sounds of it the coverage of the "real" Olympic sports was not up to the standard of the "real" Olympic sports. 

At least in the BBC, they seem to have traded out "commentators-with-knowledge" for "cheerleaders-with-recognisable-voice". Cheaper, I guess.

Doing a disservice to Mike Langley I think. He is obviously very knowledgeable about climbing, and the competition scene, and I think he did a very respectable job of explaining actual climbing without dumbing it down too much, or just talking complete nonsense. Far better than other commentators I've heard these last few days - Eurosport on Tuesday was unbearable. I also thought Ed Leigh did a good job considering his lack of knowledge - this article below explains why he was chosen, and given this, he was as good as anyone else that would have had to cover skate, surf and bmx too.

https://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/features/tokyo_2020_sport_climbing_on_t...

Remembering that the BBC are catering for a huge audience, more than just experienced and knowledgeable climbers; I don't think there are too many people that could have achieved this, while also being experienced and reliable broadcasters.

I wasn't referring to climbing particularly, but other sports. I think it was in the sailing (Ed Leigh as well?) where all we got was "He's got to go now!!!" shouted over and over again. Or "Go! Go! Go!!!!" when some brits were obviously not 'going' enough. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I though sports commentary was supposed to inform rather than just add to the noise.

Ah I see. I do remember some of the ex-athlete pundits (looking at you, BMX woman who's name escapes me) yelling support during commentary without actually doing any commentating.

I wouldn't say that's old fashioned - commentators are surely meant to add more than just atmosphere. They can add background, context, knowledge, that makes the event far more entertaining or understandable, depending on who you are as a viewer. Good commentary is definitely more than just loud cheering!

I've been watching it on ZDF the German channel via a VPN.  It looked to me like they have more live events than the BBC and are showing more of the climbing. 

OTOH the ZDF commentator isn't great, obviously just a general sport commentator with a cheat sheet.

I wonder how much the BBC spent on presenters and their fancy fake Tokyo studio and how much they spent on the content.  

Discovered its possible to switch the commentators off - clock the 'caption' icon which allows you to select the language, there should be an option for 'ambient'. This mutes the commentary and has the benefit of makes the stage mics louder so you often get to hear the climbers talk. 

The cost of the set will be lost in the noise.

Yeah, much improved today. Thank goodness.

As an aside: There are hooky feeds available but my wife and I forked out for Eurosport so that we could watch it after the competition had finished.

What's shit is that Discovery (which owns Eurosport) was a major funding partner for the launch of the right wing channel GB News. Paying them money sucks.

Yeah I think the BBC opted to have less live events this time around (no more than 2), but will have the rights to show more than two live events at once next time in Paris.  It's all about money and what they can afford to sub license from Disco/EuroSport.

The content will certainly have cost a lot, lot more than the production. Bear in mind Disco?Eurosport paid over a Billion pound for this tranche of Olympics rights, they're not going to be selling it on cheap!

With regards to the cost of the BBC's production I'd say this is about as cost effective as possible.  Using a virtual set is a fraction of the cost of a real set.  The remote production, whereby they receive the feeds from OBS and all the staff working on it are based in Salford, is a new way of producing sports events that has allowed broadcasters to slash their costs significantly.  No Outside Broadcast costs, no SNG linkups, no flights, insurance, hotels, perduims, studio build cable rigging etc.... Just a few presenters and a couple of ENG crews to make features out there

On screen talent is needed for any sports broadcast and the BBC have gone for a mix of safe hands like Claire Balding and new young talent (think cheaper!) like Alex Scott.

In terms of production costs I've no doubt that the BBC will have spent less on this than any previous Olympics

The trouble is that TV employs former athletes/competitors who were successful competing, but who aren't very good at actually commentating because they don't really know much about the sport in general - with the very notable exception of a certain former US 400 metre runner.

(I'm talking about athletics in particular here).

Yes Michael Johnson is a treasue the high point always being when he says "baton" which he did several times this morning.

Paula is poor, the Sean Kelly of athletics. Steve Cram is excellent.

Except that he doesn't understand the Rules - which haven't principally changed since he was racing.

Maybe you haven't been paying attention, but indoor competition climbing hasn't just "been created".  I seem to recall some punter called "Moffatt" and another one called "Nadin" and another called "Hill" (or some such) doing quite well at it in the late 80s and early 90s.  No doubt they'd have been rubbish if they'd ever ventured outside.

That's barely climbing.....

I think Brooke Raboutou's parents might have dabbled in competitive climbing a bit back in the day too.

That sort of fake studio is very common in sports commentating. It will be the same studio as for other BBC sports with a different background at the press of a digital button.Would not surpise me if its some sort of stand by newsroom or one used for election specials as well.

I don't usually watch climbing competitions, so this was all new to me. I've been watching on Discovery+, and I agree the coverage was awful.  Poor camerawork, poor directing, and a commentator who clearly didn't know what he was talking about.  They managed to miss many of the most important moves in the bouldering.

I found the speed event simply boring.  It's impossible to appreciate the skill and strength involved, and it looks ridiculous. Running in pairs removed any of the excitement normally found in racing. Imaging running the 100m sprint as a succession of paired heats.

The scoring was simply baffling, and removed a lot of the excitement because it was impossible to work out the consequences of each climber's score.  Watching the last climber in the mens' lead top out was exciting for its own sake, but it was difficult to understand what effect it would have on the overall outcome.  Even the competitors didn't seem to know what was going on.

If I hear about lactic acid one more time from the Eurosports commentator... (No, lactic acid has nothing to do with getting pumped!)

Another day of the Olympics = another day of frustration and irritation. Trying to find the coverage from yesterdays finals and all that comes up on the BBC search is something from 2 days ago.

I've actually started searching the bbc from duckduckgo now because the search on the bbc is so crap. That yielded more results but most of the videos I found were all "Sorry this not available at present", or this will be available later. No indication of what time that's going to be. Unbelievably bad. So unprofessional. I did find one 5 min short of yesterday but didn't watch coz I don't want to know the result.

This whole thing is one gigantic cock up. What a mess of the world's biggest sporting event that you can't even find coverage of it. It would have been so much better if they'd just left it to the IFSC to do it's thing they way they always do. They're not without their flaws but at least they have experience, know what they're doing and can get the job done.

Favourite quote from today's Eurosport coverage:

"It's so visually appealing... especially to the eye"

Strong contender for the Tautology Gold!

Whole hour covering all 3 disciplines for women on BBC website "Day 14 Red Button - Football & Sport Climbing" https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/olympics/50974155

Brilliant thankyou, just came in this thread to ask if the women's finals were on iPlayer - the search function on the BBC site is terrible!

FIY all,

France.tv still has the whole 5+ hrs finals coverage available for replay, in case you missed anything. Including all the very emotional moments off-wall that often got cut.

It needs a simple e-mail registration and is geofenced to French internet viewers only (obviously), but there are some (nudge nudge, nudge nudge!) ways to get around that...

Best thing is, there is no bloody stupid commentary at all! Watched the whole thing live with EpicTV live commentary in sync in the background and it was brilliant

I've been away so have missed most of it and wouldn't normally watch comp climbing anyway, but I have just seen the women's highlights on BBC2 and I thought the coverage and commentary were really excellent; well pitched and explained.

Wish I spotted this earlier! I went to watch the highlights on iPlayer and it starts right at the end of the thing showing the results. 

Gave up after that. 

I thought that was exactly what it was? I remember being surprised the first time I heard Michael Johnson talking about lactic acid in the legs since it was something I always associated with getting completely boxed on steep ground.

Just watched! Terrible, the pair of them, other than rolling out ‘where they’re from, how old they are, stats, stats stats, it’s just painful.

The male commentator seems to have it in his mind that the competitors ‘can/should’ only do the problems as the route setters intended and not by their own style. Surely they could have found someone (!) with a climbing background to commentate? 

Go to the women's football and fastforward till you get to the start of the climbing coverage.

I don't know, I found it interesting to know when an athlete had, through natural talent / ingenuity, found a way up a boulder to 'cheat' the route-setters' plans!

Here's an easy-reading summary (with a link to a scientific paper): https://furthermore.equinox.com/articles/2019/09/lactic-acid-lactate-myth-b...

And a synopsis of another with mixed findings, with a link to download the full paper if that's your kind of thing: thing: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7206794_Lactic_Acid_and_Exercise_P...

The commentary on eurosport was just awful.

But enough moaning, I'm off to to the bouldering wall to go deep into some problems

Does anyone know who the Eurosport commentators actually were?

Well, thanks again for the France TV online commentary on "l'escalade". It was awesome, since there was none

Just the full uncut 5:20 hrs of speed, boulder and lead, including nothing happening, backstage and interviews. With the complete feed, no cuts (apart the ones from the Olympic feed director during any action, of course, but that's OBS's fault)...

The main guy was Jonny Bryan, not sure who his co-commentators were

No, Jonny Bryan was the OBS commentator, Eurosport replaced his comms with their own, much worse guys

Yeah it was him - the "brute strength" guy.

I thought Ed Leigh and Mike Langley did a good job but it was a major pain that the BBC didn't show the whole thing. Ended up with Eurosport on ambient sound synched up to Epic TV.

He commentary was used on Discovery+ too. He was actually pretty well received globally, popular with non-climbers, went down a storm with his surfing commentary and after some feedback after the first climbing day tried to modify his commentary.

It's a pretty tough gig, they have so many sports to cover they are bound to be less than perfect in some areas.

I loved it (the climbing that is), was extra psyched down at the wall afterwards and definitely found an extra 5%. I shall be using "go deep on this route" in all sport climbing occasions in the future.

Oh really?  I never saw any of the Eurosport coverage so judging on the feedback here assumed that they had added their own comms?  Think the female co-comms was someone called Gabby?

He's commentated on climbing before so I'm surprised he managed to make some of the howlers people have mentioned here.

I saw the women's quals via OBS/Sub Saharan Africa Broadcaster.  That was his second day on it so he'd obviously spent the previous evening researching as I found him mildly annoying rather than completely clueless.

Absolutely agree that it's a tough gig - for the most part nobody would know that they're talking rubbish as they don't know otherwise.  After all, football commentators talk some crap, and half of them played the bloody game!

For all we know when we watch the other minority sports, the fencing and badmintons of this world, they're talking a load of crap on there too.

Speaking of badminton, there were a couple of great snippets, one of a rally that lasted for about 90 shots, the other in the (IIRC) women's doubles final where a string went, she ran off, grabbed new racquet, ran back on and they still won the rally.

Yeah I saw that, bloody brilliant wasn't it?

Badminton and table tennis are two games that are fun to play, but when you see pros playing them you realise just how awful at them you are!

I used to be a keen weekly company badminton ladder type player back in my twenties.  Was mostly at the top of the ladder for about a year so convinced myself I wasn't bad.  Then someone who had been on the British junior team joined the company.  First time I played him - oh dear!  Played three games and scored 2 points in total.  

It's weird when you realise the level pros are at at a sport you thought you knew what "good" was.  I used to play 5-a-side at work, and there was a guy there who was in his 40's but was semi-pro in his younger days.  This guy was miles better than anyone we'd ever seen, could do anything, was like an adult playing with a bunch of 6 years olds...

And the thing was, he was only a semi pro.  Like the 6th tier of English football.  He wouldn't be even fit to lace the boots of the worst premier league player you've seen in your life.... The mind boggles how good they are.

I actually thought it was class and really enjoyed it.

gutted it’s over!!