First 2002 World Championships Tape completed

[edew]

The first one (of three, most likely) is completed. It has all the individual bouts. That's six complete individual golds, 1.5 semi-final women's sabre, and 0.5 semi-final men's epee.

I've included all the slo-mo between "halt" and "fence" and deleted only some commercials. I left at the very beginning the asian dry-cleaner commerical where the asian proprietor holds a dress hostage with scissors at the ready. Maybe someone can explain the commerical (there are others, which will be shown in the other tapes) to me...and others.

The end includes about 10 minutes of World Track and Field coverage from Linz, Austria. I think it's good for US viewers to see this portion, just to see how pathetic US sports broadcast is. Aside from the major sports, Basketball, baseball, football, and hockey, US telecast of other sports is beyond pathetic. Here, we the women's 400M hurdles and men's shotput and women's discus. One reason, I suspect, that US athletes are getting their 4$$es handed to them on a plate in many Olympics sports, which they used to dominate, is because there is virtually zero broadcasts of such sports. If we actually see some sports on TV, maybe the youths have some opportunity to emulate the athletes and do well. Instead, we get this (have I been echoing this for a while) Up-close-and-personal buLL$h17 time and again. Who wants to emulate some dysfunctional whiner? Who needs to have overbearing parents pushing kids to excel? Show us the action and the we'll follow and create new stuff.

Anyway, back to the tape. This tape starts off with Men's Sabre. Then, it shows the women's epee gold. Then the 1.5 semi-final bouts of women's sabre, followed by the gold medal bout. Hey, does anyone else think that Elena Jemaeva is a bit too over-the-top with her self-promoting cheering? I'd card her black and blue by the fifth time she did her stupid dance.

After women's sabre, it's the men's foil gold. Then men's epee semi-finals, women's foil finals (bo-ring...and totally non-educational: you'll never learn a thing about how to beat Bojko or Yucheva from watching this segment), and then finishes with the men's epee gold. Only the last two events did not include the medals ceremonies, otherwise, we get to see an italian, a chinese, and a korean lip-synch their national anthems. Podzniakov didn't both to hum the few bars.

I'll post a poll on which national anthem sounds the best. I'll also post a poll on which winner did the best cheer. Personal favorites: Vanni's victory celebration and Kolobkov's victory sprint. A heartfelt cheer for Tan Xue's victory hug with her coach.