King Kaufman's Sports Daily

Olympics: The best and worst at the microphone. Plus: The sartorial report. And: The injuries are mounting.

Aug. 26, 2004 | The best Olympics announcers help you understand what you're watching as you take your quadrennial look-see at sports you ignore the rest of the time. They can turn you into a mini-expert after a couple of broadcasts. NBC and its hench-networks have some good ones.

They also have some bad ones. But let's talk about the good ones for a minute first.

I've watched Greco-Roman wrestling at every Olympics since 1972, without ever coming close to understanding what the hell was going on. Within five minutes of tuning in to the action in Athens, I actually was dangerously close to comprehending a little bit of it, thanks to Russ Hellickson and especially former wrestling champ Jeff Blatnick.

Bill Clement, so good on ESPN hockey broadcasts, has been similarly good on, of all things, badminton and table tennis.

I've already mentioned the great job Teddy Atlas has done on boxing. Former diver Cynthia Potter has done similarly fine work explaining the technical aspects of diving, despite being paired with Ted Robinson, who's always just bugged me. Jon Lugbill overcame the same pairing on whitewater sports.

Dot Richardson did a nice job on softball, though she has kind of a funny way of talking, always referring to players as "athletes," even when a word like "hitter" would seem a lot more natural. She'd say, "She showed bunt to try to bring the athletes in." Athletes? I always thought they were called infielders.

Former high jumper Dwight Stones has been solid on track and field for many years, particularly the jumping events, obviously. I also like Marty Liquori because he talks well about strategy in the longer races, but mostly because he sounds like Al DeRogatis, who did football color on NBC when I was a kid.

The one thing all of these announcers have in common is that they assume the audience is made up of reasonably intelligent people who aren't used to watching the sport in question. The worst don't understand the need to make that assumption, or don't care about it.

And the worst of the worst are Paul Sherwen and Steve Podborski doing track cycling. Sherwen does most of the talking.

Track cycling is one of the most exciting and fascinating sports at the Olympics. It has speed, power, chess-like strategy and spectacular wipeouts, and the individual events don't last very long. It's also completely baffling if you're not familiar with it.

Sherwen and Podborski seem to think their American audience sits on the couch every Sunday watching the ol' track cycling races. A miscalculation to say the least. It should have been a clue to Sherwen that he and his BBC accent had been hired in the first place. He's a former road racer who's well known in Europe but could walk down Fifth Avenue every lunchtime for 10 years without once being recognized.

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