Winter Olympics
Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2026 12:54 pm
We have been watching quite a lot of this as we're both fans of winter sports. We only have French TV, so naturally the commentaries are strongly biased towards the French competitors.
The events come across as being well-organised and there's some excellent photography - the use of drones has revolutionised the filming of such sports.
We've enjoyed it all so far but sadly, in the coulisses, there are various mutterings which rather spoil things.
For example, a French couple won the Free dance, a whisker ahead of the Americans thanks to a high score by the French judge, which was higher than any of the other 5 judges. The Americans were very unhappy with the scoring - understandably. I far preferred their performance to that of the French.
In many sports, because of the risk of bias, the scores of the highest and lowest judges are removed, thus preventing a judge from awarding a high score to his own country.
Then there is Lindsey Vonn, the American downhill skier who suffered serious fractures of the tibia after a fall 13 seconds into her run. She had ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament of her left knee one week before the start of the Games. Her training runs were without incident but clearly she was taking a huge risk (which she was well aware of). So you can well imagine what is being written about her all over the press.
As usual with French commentators, they talk over each other and are quite incapable of appreciating silence during an event. A couple of days, to our real annoyance, they focussed on the penultimate competitor (French) in one of the ski events, and had 2 screens up at once. As a result, we were unable to get a good view of the last competitor (not french) who eventually won the Gold.
I find it sad that the press are so keen to dig up the dirt on competitors at this time. I don't doubt that life behind the scenes can be very difficult - just as it can for anyone. But why spoil an exciting moment with malicious tittle-tattle ?
The events come across as being well-organised and there's some excellent photography - the use of drones has revolutionised the filming of such sports.
We've enjoyed it all so far but sadly, in the coulisses, there are various mutterings which rather spoil things.
For example, a French couple won the Free dance, a whisker ahead of the Americans thanks to a high score by the French judge, which was higher than any of the other 5 judges. The Americans were very unhappy with the scoring - understandably. I far preferred their performance to that of the French.
In many sports, because of the risk of bias, the scores of the highest and lowest judges are removed, thus preventing a judge from awarding a high score to his own country.
Then there is Lindsey Vonn, the American downhill skier who suffered serious fractures of the tibia after a fall 13 seconds into her run. She had ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament of her left knee one week before the start of the Games. Her training runs were without incident but clearly she was taking a huge risk (which she was well aware of). So you can well imagine what is being written about her all over the press.
As usual with French commentators, they talk over each other and are quite incapable of appreciating silence during an event. A couple of days, to our real annoyance, they focussed on the penultimate competitor (French) in one of the ski events, and had 2 screens up at once. As a result, we were unable to get a good view of the last competitor (not french) who eventually won the Gold.
I find it sad that the press are so keen to dig up the dirt on competitors at this time. I don't doubt that life behind the scenes can be very difficult - just as it can for anyone. But why spoil an exciting moment with malicious tittle-tattle ?
