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Olympic Eventing: Cross Country
Once again: phenomenal job by NBC and Mircosoft’s Silverlight technology to deliver the live online coverage. I am not a Microsoft fan, but even I can’t quibble with this. The coverage has been absolutely amazing: great quality video, good quality sound, and only a few blips here and there in the video feed.
I know people have had problems with Silverlight, but it’s worked almost flawlessly on my machine. Also, people were complaining about commercials, but I don’t think I had a single commercial interrupt the events all weekend. I expected to see them, especially when others started griping about them, but for some reason I seem to be commercial-free. Sweet.
As far as the eventing itself: some absolutely amazing rides and a few scary rides. There were a couple falls, but everyone (horses and riders) walked away. The course was beautifully designed with some very technical questions in it that really made the difference in ride times. No one made the time allowed, so it sounds like the cross country ride is going to be a huge factor in the final standings. Certainly the rankings changed significantly from what they were after the dressage phase.
The US team is probably disappointed right now. Amy Tryon had a fall and was eliminated, and a couple riders had refusals. They were tenth of eleven teams when Phillip Dutton anchored the team. He did a fantastic job, moving the US up to 7th going into show jumping. However, unless total disaster strikes all the other teams, the US is well out of team medal contention. Gina Miles may be in contention for an individual medal; I don’t know how much standings usually change in the show jumping phase, but she is only six points off the first place rider (Hinrich Romeike for Germany); that’s just two rails and some change, and there will be a second round of show jumping to determine final individual placings. Doesn’t seem like it’s out of the question for her to medal.
Mary King turned in a great anchor ride for Great Britain; it was a lovely, accurately-ridden course. Shane Rose for Australia also performed well in the anchor position, bringing home the fastest time of the day, which must have felt fantastic after his rough dressage test. Germany should be celebrating their four clean rounds, with riders all under eighteen time faults (their fifth rider had 40+ points, but his score is dropped).
Current top three standings are Germany in first (158.10), Australia (162.00), and Great Britain (173.70). Italy is in fourth with 198.40. Like I said, I don’t know how many show jumping faults are typical for an eventer, but I would be very surprised indeed to see the top three change. They might change the order amongst themselves, but I would be surprised to one of them drop off the podium. Unless, of course, something happens tomorrow in the jog and horse(s) are pulled for soundness reasons.
From what I can tell with the time differences, the jog will be Monday evening our time. The actual showjumping phase will be Tuesday morning our time (Monday evening Hong Kong). I would love to be able to watch it (and the first phases of the regular show jumping and dressage) live, but I’m not sure how thrilled my boss will be when I ask him if I can come in at 1 for the rest of the week. I think I’ll be lucky if I can talk him into just one day.
There will still be the archived video on NBC, though, so I’m sure I’ll survive. By the way: I noticed with the eventing dressage video that it takes a day or two for the permanent archive video to show up, so if you check for the cross country video and it’s not there yet, give it some time.
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Comments
What’s your machine (XP, Vista, Mac)? I’m on Vista and I wonder if that’s not part of the reason Silverlight is working so well for me—I know the people complaining about install problems were either on Macs or had XP running.
I’ve got XP, but that may not be it, I’m almost computer illiterate, and am lucky to get a post out or my e-mails. If it’s not straightforward I’m pretty much lost.But I did everything the instructions said and all I get is an introduction advertisement for how wonderful China is and instead of going to an event it just says ‘replay’.
I’ve heard some videos are showing up on YouTube; NBC will get them yanked eventually because they have sole broadcasting rights in the US, but if you act quickly you might be able to catch some of them.
On Aug 11, 2008, greyhorsematters said:
I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one having problems with my online viewing. I keep trying to watch it and after much frustration, just give up. I do wish they would broadcast it more fully on TV, but then again I guess handball,beach volleyball,ping pong and synchronized swimming are much closer to the original Olympics venue and are considered the ‘real athletes’. Sorry for being so sarcastic, but it really annoys me that the Equestrian events are always pushed to a back burner in the Olympics.