(Team GB’s Jenny Jones reminds The Zapper she’s only a couple of opponents’ drug test failures from becoming the numero uno woman snowboarder in the world)
Of the BBC’s recently concluded coverage of the Winter Games from Sochi, Private Eye’s The Zapper considers the lesser of the Olympiads something less than crucial viewing (“what a disparate, distant event like this needs is some kind of narrative chassis, a story that gives the whole sprawling pageant focus and reroutes the headlines from corruption, government-sanctioned gay-bashing and no snow”). That said, perhaps the Zapper’s biggest hang up is the Winter Games’ emphasis on “a whole load of sports we don’t understand”.
In freestyle snowboarding, for example, that left us with two shouty men bleating vaguely scatological non-sequiturs as men in baggy pants pinged up and down like popcorn in a pan : “The backside air was smooth, but it wasn’t massive”; “The front ten is the shire horse of halfpipe riding.” It was at least encouraging to see that Coleman and his redoubtable balls live on in the next generation of sports broadcasters.
“‘The Seatbelt'” said Dom Harington, commenting on some obscure snowboarding move. “It’s like an alligator giving birth : very rare.”
“They’re reptiles — they lay eggs,” pointed out his partner.