cows and the Olympics

I have seen several more healthy-looking cows this past week. I really believe that things are looking up here as evidenced by this country's first ever individual gold in Olympic history for the 10M Air Rifle competition.

It's interesting to watch the Olympics in a country that is not your own. If I were in Houston, I would probably watch a few events that I like, but being here, I want to watch everything and I check the internet every day to see the US medal count. It's cool b/c even the people here are rooting for Michael Phelps to win 8 gold medals.

Some differences between Olympic coverage here and in the US:

1. There are no background stories of the athletes here. You know how in the US there is always the media piece where the reporters go to the hometown of the athlete and interview the family, friends, coaches and community members and sometimes re-enact hardships the athletes had to overcome to get to the Olympics? None of that here.
2. It never occurred to me how many resources the US has in terms of sports experts. Pretty much, there is a US commentator for every single event in the Olympics, or at least those in which Americans participate. There is a UK company that sells broadcasting rights to about 50 different countries who cannot afford and/or do not have the personnel to cover each of the sports. So there is no banter between previous Olympians about the athletes and what they must be going through or what they need to get that medal.
3. The sports that are given more attention are different from those that get attention in the US. There is a lot of field hockey coverage here mostly because this country won several gold medals in this sport many years ago.
4. There is no schedule available of what events will be covered. At home, we could check the newspaper or internet to find out when an event we wanted to see would be on TV. No such thing here. We kinda get Olympics potluck. (We missed the opening ceremony because it took us a while to figure out what channel and what time it was going to be shown here. Which brings me to another topic - every once in a while, the channels randomly change. And so we have to spend time figuring out what networks are on what channels. For instance, "Hey! There is Bollywood MTV on the BBC station. Now we have to look for BBC again!" AND, we have another TV in the living room, whose channels do not match the channels we get in the bedroom. Insane, I know.)
5. Weird coverage glitches. The network that is covering the games here is called DD Sports. Well, tonight, in the middle of the 100M final, the programming suddenly switched to soccer on ESPN, and not even Olympics. We had to look for a news station to find out who won. (Jerry is channel surfing right now and just found DD Sports on a different channel! So, my auxiliary comment from #4 has just been proved again.)