Alas, India won the first medal today with a silver in shooting. 100 Billion faces can now shed a tint of smile. As America stabilized its medal tally to move up to the top spot, NBC media empire trumpets the American version of the Olympics on every media channel available to people living in this part of the continent. NBC, one of the top media conglomerates has bought virtually rights to all forms of Olympics telecast in the US. The unfortunate consequence of this to people like us, non-americans living here, is to just watch the sports as NBC telecasts it. That means we see only american athletes performances. Unless India qualifies for any quarter or semi or becomes unlikely lucky enough for a final, we wouldnt have the pleasure of watching Indians play. With India losing its first game in Hockey, the hopes are only shattering more. I just saw a brief match of flyweight boxing where Kumar lost comfortably(!) to a french guy. On the other end, China leads the Gold tally. There is so much to learn from China, what best do we need than being a largest neighbour? Can we just tear down all barriers and aim for more collabaration from china for next olympics than just free passes to walk over to beijing acorss the Himalayas?.
Neverthless I am happy to see Olympics on HD (high definition) TV via NBC HD. That saves me from Bob Costas who covers most of the NBC Olympics coverage for the regular NBC channel. During the opening ceremony parade, as some of the low-profile countries with one or two (or less than 10) atheletes participating passed by, it was so pathetic how Bob costas specifically mentioned that ‘This is Djibouti, They have never won a medal in Olympics!’, ‘This is Kyrgystan first time in Olympics”…and then a few seconds later completed the sentence by saying ‘They have never won a medal in Olympics!’. Isnt it, rude? He probably thought he was giving statistical info about every country, but it is not an encouraging note at all. Its no big deal that US has won so many medals, with 450 athelete barging in every olympics, it would be shame otherwise! On HD, it was a treat to watch with crystal clear telecast and much less talking commentry and more than anything else, very few commercials!
On a happy note, it was so good to see a standing ovation from the crowd for Iraq on the opening ceremony I was really feeling good that they were able to participate inspite of all the turmoils going back home. Its hard to imagine for us, living in this wonderful peace to understand their feelings about war/death. As a bonus encouragement, Iraq won their qualifying football game even before the opening ceremony, so they were all in Cloud 9 walking up proud. In all, it was truly THE BEST opening ceremony of all olympics. For so much criticisms pouring from across the globe going into the Olympics, they did a fantastic job. It was truly breathtaking.
