I was watching the Men’s All-Around Gymnastics Final tonight on NBC like a good little American, rooting for Paul Hamm as he went for the gold. I’ve been glued to my television every night for gymnastics, just as I should be. And yet, after so many days of tuning in, I’ve become increasingly frustrated with the three commentators – Elfi Schlegel, Al Trautwig, and most of all, Tim Daggett. Their constant overstatement of the obvious, the redundancies in their statements… finally, I have my revenge! Best of all, my revenge was saved for time and all eternity thanks to the wonders of Tivo and my TV capture card. See for yourself:

http://www.meggers.org/video/olympic-gas.mpg

Download that. Watch as they start their babbling after Romania’s Ioan Suciu. You’ll hear Al talking about all the big scores, then Tim Daggett has to add, “This is gonna be big too.” Just then. Listen for it. Tim was right, it was big. Although, it could have been bigger. For goodness sake, I’m quite disappointed in Mr. Daggett’s performance – I’m a girl and I can do it better than he can. You almost have to turn your speakers up all the way to fully appreciate the dull, defeated approach to that exercise. Check out that instant replay – quite frankly, I can’t imagine giving him a score any higher than 3.475. With a disappointment like that, he simply can’t expect to medal in the Olympic All-Around Gas Finals. I’m an experienced competitor in that field – gold medalist back in 1996 – and I can say that with such a measly show of strength and that wobble after the dismount, not even a Paul-Hamm-size comeback could save Daggett after that miserable failure. It was puny, he didn’t hold it for the full two seconds, and he didn’t even manage to squeeze one verbal release in during the whole exercise. Elfi, I’m just disappointed in the American team this year. Not enough training, I’d say, and simply not the depth of experience we’ve seen from NBC in the past.

Ahh, revenge is sweet. 🙂

At least the gymnasts surpassed the horrible show put on by those commentators. All kidding aside, Paul Hamm’s comeback was absolutely phenomenal. I wonder if he and Morgan could take on Daggett in the Olympic All-Around Gas Finals in the games of 2008… I bet those darling boys from Wisconsin could belch a few good ones themselves.