It's Monday morning. The time when, for over thirty years, I crawled back to work after a weekend of fun outdoors, sailing, skiing, playing with the kids, whatever. The time to try and switch the mind back to thinking about work, pick up the loose ends of problems I didn't solve in the previous week, work out the priorities for the coming week, look forward (not) to whatever location in the world I'd be flying off to on business this week, deal with all the hassles...
But now I'm retired what am I doing on Monday morning? Watching the Louis Vuitton Cup on the VS Channel. Spectacular pictures from Valencia. Close racing between BMW Oracle and Luna Rossa in a shifty breeze. Who said that there isn't any good coverage of sailing on TV?
And it even has sewercam!
11 comments:
Better make sure the new house gets Versus!!!
Interesting. I get VS with my Dish Network subscription, but I need to readjust the dish responsible for that channel. I set my DVR to record the cup events, and the one that I did manage to get was so unimpressive that I was a little shocked. The races were cut up and edited to the point where it was uninteresting even for the sailing obsessed such as myself. Maybe this was a result of them covering the last "act" of the pre cup series, but my doubts did persist until your post here. Sounds like I really need to get that dish readjusted. Did they have a fair amount of computer generated vies of the action? I have always found that really good actually in the past with virtual spectator.
The thing that bugs me about match racing coverage I've seen in the past is how the gloss over the start to simply highlight other parts of the race... I don't see how they can avoid showing the start of a match race!
Agreed. Every four years or so (more in this last case) the broadcasters feel the need to reteach everyone what sailing is all about. I will guarantee that nobody watches sailing outside those that participate, so why dumb it down? Drives me crazy. Believe it or not, my dad's neighbor Fred, a guy who doesn't know anything about sailing became obsessed during the 87 match...he is the exception for sure.
Anyways, glossing over the start is ridiculous. I caught an ESPN classic show on the cup the other day that was so riddled with mistakes and innaccurate commentary that I wanted to throw something at the TV. One of these days I guess...
Sailing as a scene will take off the moment they put a camera on a screaming I14 / 49er and ditch ANYONE with a non-american accent that is commentating. Until then, it'll be like the YUGO-Nascar series.
What really hurts is the conflict between those of us who absolutely refuse to pay the egregiously high costs that the cable companies wish to charge and bleed us dry, and those who argue that cable television is a necessity rather than a luxury.
Sorry, I'd rather buy groceries to put into the fridge than pay for 150 channels that I mostly don't watch, especially given that the two shows I watch most devotedly are broadcast, not cable or satellite.
But the backside of not having cable is that I also don't know what's going on with the America's Cup. Yeah, maybe I could get updates online, except that my online connection is a dialup modem that is, at best, extremely slow.
Yeah, the image of sailboat racing is that it's just for rich folks, and the fact that coverage of the America's Cup is available only to people who have money is just going to perpetuate that stereotype.
I sail competitively. That supposedly means I have tons of money. But I don't. I can't even afford cable TV, so I can't keep up with the America's Cup competition.
Geeze litoralis - do you think I would buy a house in an area that didn't have VS on cable? That would be like buying a house without a wet bar.
But can you watch Versus from the wetbar?
The whole thing just seems a bit remote these days -- the battle of the multinational conglomerate billionaires.
We remember touring and seeing people when the Cup was in San Diego, and before that the days when outrageous personalities and classic Twelves were part of the Cup's history.
In my limited experience, sailing at the local level is not about money. We've got the socio-economical scale covered and the one with the fanciest boats are not necessarily the fastest. The high dollar, global events on the other hand, paint a skewed picture...
Well I've not been a great fan of AC racing in the past but I have to say that the last two days have been great examples of our sport on TV.
Day 1 in an offshore breeze was all about playing the shifts and finding the puffs. Just like lake sailing!
And the match on Day 2 between BMW Oracle and Luna Rossa was all about boat-to-boat tactics, winning the start, covering up the beat, attacking on the runs etc. A classic match race. Almost as much fun as Laser racing!
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