All The Sports

I've been watching the weightlifting during the Olympics, along with the other strength sports like discus and shot put in the main arena, and discovered a bit of a frustration with the official coverage. I'm not sure if it's OBS (the Olympic broadcaster) or BBC (for I am in the UK) but the weightlifting was dropped or cut short a few times to show extra sailing events and other things, and a lot of the discus wasn't shown at all.

There was a lot of coverage of runners walking about, runners looking at things, runners warming up (note: not actually running) and all the while in the background you can see the discus event going on, right next to them. Running is fine and whatever, but this felt unfair and unreasonable. I whinged about it on Twitter (of course) but wasn't sure how much this affected other less well-known sports. Were kayak events not shown in favour of football or tennis, say?

Running, football, rugby, tennis, etc. get a lot of commercial coverage anyway. There's always talk of what the 'Olympic legacy' is going to be, and I think that part of it could, could be to send the message there are more sports out there than the ones you hated at school. If I'd had a chance to see and try weightlifting as a kid I'd have been far healthier far sooner in life. After this Olympics is over, the weightlifting, wrestling, BMX, fencing, gymnastics (so much there), judo, archery, whitewater events and so on might as well not exist as far as TV schedules go, and that's a crying shame. It's not much of a legacy is it?