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King Kaufman

Really, honestly ...
Enough with the diving, NBC.
By King Kaufman August 22, 2008
Hench items
The U.S. track and field debacle and NBC's shabby treatment of the games' glamour event. Plus: Keri Walsh. And: Teddy Atlas.
By King Kaufman August 22, 2008
Rogge: Usain in the membrane
The IOC chief criticizes the magnificent Bolt for celebrating. Is he an idiot or just crazy?
By King Kaufman August 21, 2008
Softball stunner
After the second straight Olympics in which a U.S. women's team has been on the wrong side of a "miracle," it's time for women to try baseball
By King Kaufman August 21, 2008
Hacker: Gymnast He is 14, not 16
A blogger uses Google and a Chinese search engine to find government documents showing the uneven-bars champ's birth date as Jan. 1, 1994.
By King Kaufman August 21, 2008
Babe Ruth and the Nippon Ham Fighters
NBC's baseball announcers make stuff up about both. And insult West Virginia for good measure.
By King Kaufman August 20, 2008
Lolo Jones' Olympian failure
Steps from gold, she clips a hurdle and falters, leading to an agony that's unique to the games.
By King Kaufman August 20, 2008
The mystery of beach volleyball
Those hand signals the women flash behind their butts: They must be explained. Again.
By King Kaufman August 20, 2008
Mom favored for Sap-o-Meter gold
Slate has a scientific method for measuring the mawkishness of NBC's coverage.
By King Kaufman August 19, 2008
Why do runners "shut it down"?
Saving energy for the final is one thing, but slowing down before the tape in heats looks like a recipe for disaster.
By King Kaufman August 19, 2008
Gymnastics tiebreakers are nuts!
Crazy rules cost American Liukin a gold. Then again, all gymnastics rules are crazy, and sane ones wouldn't have helped her.
By King Kaufman August 19, 2008
Baseball gets chippy
Six hit batsmen, two collisions, an injured catcher and a woozy top prospect. No wonder big-league teams want no part of the Olympics.
By King Kaufman August 18, 2008
Where have you gone, Allen Iverson?
The U.S. men's return to basketball dominance is a lot less interesting than those fascinating days of dysfunction in Athens.
By King Kaufman August 18, 2008
Get the names right
NBC's lazy approach to pronunciation isn't limited to non-American athletes. The Peacock even butchers "Beijing."
By King Kaufman August 15, 2008
Grace under pressure, and over power
It would have been great to see Shawn Johnson's explosive athleticism win the women's gymnastics gold.
By King Kaufman August 15, 2008
Clear the beach!
Volleyball in sand. Skimpy outfits. Americans good. We get it. Can we have a little basketball on TV please?
By King Kaufman August 14, 2008
Softball too: See ya
As Yahoo's Dan Wetzel points out, the U.S. is the only country playing the sport at a high level.
By King Kaufman August 14, 2008
Phelps, Phelps, Phelps
The American phenom has been annoyingly omnipresent. That's too bad, because there are other things happening, and because he's not annoying.
By King Kaufman August 14, 2008
Good riddance, baseball
Great sport, but the Olympics are right to give it the boot. Tennis should go too. But not softball.
By King Kaufman August 13, 2008
Boxing: The point of absurdity
American Rau'shee Warren's loss, crazy as it was, was business as usual in a sport that's been gutted by its scoring system.
By King Kaufman August 13, 2008
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Recent posts

Scoring the Beijing Olympics
They get a 9 for pomp and spectacle, but only a 3 for furthering world understanding and a 2 for the fan experience.
Athletes are just people
The outrage over Usain Bolt's chest-pounding proves that we expect athletes to be heroes -- and when they're not, we turn on them.
What happened to the real Olympics?
By only showing snippets of classic events like the decathlon, high jump and pole vaulting, NBC is missing what makes the Olympics special.

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About the Authors

Gary Kamiya is Salon's writer at large. He covered the Olympics for the magazine in Nagano, Sydney and Athens.

King Kaufman is Salon's daily sports columnist.

John Krich has been covering China for 20 years, most recently as the Asian Wall Street Journal's main food/sports/culture writer. He's the author of "El Beisbol," "Won Ton Lust" and other literary travelogues.

Jennifer Sey is the author of "Chalked Up," her memoir about the ups and downs in internationally competitive gymnastics. She was the 1986 U.S. National Champion and a seven-time national team member.

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