Durban Sandshark

The Olympic Channel will broadcast a special streaming 25-minute interactive live show celebrating 1 year to go until Tokyo 2020 on July 24 with guest appearances with co-hosts Ash Tulloch and Miki Ando. Live from Tokyo from the Let's 55 (Go, Go) event at the Tokyo International Forum and starts at 7:15 GMT/UTC (3:15 New York time, 8:15 London, 9:15 CEST, 16:15 Tokyo). Very early in the morning for us here in North America! https://www.olympicchannel.com/en/stories/features/detail/olympic-channel-interactive-1yeartogo-tokyo2020-live-show/

Lifelong Snicker fan here. Always enjoy myself some Snickers! So did American skiier Karl Anderson en route to Sarajevo after Lake Placid back in 1984 to offset his "hunger feeling" before going downhill when he pitched for it--and "substantial" Snickers was the official snack food of the 1984 Winter Olympics! Alas, he didn't qualify for Sarajevo after Innsbruck and Lake Placid. Maybe he did this after he retired before 1984: When Sydney, New South Wales, Australia was hosting the 2000 Summer Olympics, Westpac Bank put out a massive promotion towards endorsing and supporting its homegrown athletes it sponsors since 1997 and even beyond. But nothing like almost 20 years ago. Here in this humorous and then-innovative piece, the mothers and sisters of Australian Olympians swimmer Susie O'Neill, marathoner Kylie Risk, gymnast Lisa Skinner, hurdler Kyle Vander Kuyp, weightlifter Damian Brown, and javelin thrower Adrian Hatcher all try in vain at their famous world class family members' sports with great hilarity, all wondering aloud "I don't know how s/he does it". Thus reminding us all their athletes' elite skills:

OK, this is the full entire version of the 2019 Pacific Games Opening Ceremony in Apia, (Western) Samoa using the official feed. Yet it's cut into two parts for some bizarre reason. What took it so long after this? The Rev. Faulalo Leti, President of the Samoan Methodist Church, really had a long speech by Games standards along with a prayer and a hymn choir. Samoa's PM Va'aletoa Sualauvi II makes a 22-minute long speech while opening these Games, which is very long by any type of Games standards. But like with the Port Moresby one, we certainly see various teams across the Pacific displaying their Haka renditions and showcasing their diversities, all living up to the motto "One In Spirit" in several ways. Worth noting here that on May 15, 2017 the Tongan Prime Minister announced that Tonga, which never hosted these Pacific Games, would withdraw from hosting the 2019 Pacific Games amid concerns the country facing economic difficulties when staging the event. A Tongan Cabinet spokesman, speaking to Kaniva News, noted that Prime Minister Akilisi Pōhiva decided to save the nation from a "costly mistake" when the planned Chinese and Japanese investment and development in their planned and upgraded venues and facilities never arrived. Continues on in the second video until 43:49 starting with the torch inside the stadium and then the broadcast stream heads to the studio co-anchors and the competition (Cook Islands-Fiji women's basketball and Fiji-Tahiti men's soccer): No full footage of the 2019 NatWest International Island Games Opening Ceremony that happened nearly two months ago yet. So we'll have to settle with individual team delegations marching towards inside Gibraltar's Europa Point Stadium at least for now. Like Team Isle of Wight here:

Hopefully it would later down the line. Not sure if they would have the rights to them and other events before, say, Guadalajara, Winnipeg, and Rio De Janeiro. Just started.

Easily overlooked in the global sports scene with so much going on this year at this very time with the soccer (WWC, Copa America, and CONCACAF Gold Cup), Wimbeldon, MLB at the halfway mark, NBA free agency and the Summer League, F1 and NASCAR, Tour De France all taking up attention. But the 16th Pacific Games just kicked off in Apia, (Western) Samoa with its Opening Ceremony a couple days ago taken from Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea in 2015. First time since 2007. The official full one is yet to be uploaded on YouTube, but we can expect that in a matter of days. Right now, here's two videos from it in an attempt to make things fuller since some scenes are omitted from both, although the second one is longer and fuller. Seems a little on the basic side of things without the computer technology we now come to expect from the Pacific Games' bigger budgeted and more well-known counterparts:

Bob Fitzgerald, soon to be leaving San Francisco's sports radio station KNBR 680AM after three decades, will be again a play-by-play voice of the Tokyo 2020 USA Men's Olympic Basketball Team games on the NBC family of TV networks. This will be his second time covering Olympic basketball on TV after London 2012 and his fifth Olympic broadcasting appearance overall since swimming in Atlanta--and with basketball radio coverage in Athens 2004 (also called water polo coverage for NBC at Beijing 2008): http://www.knbr.com/2019/06/24/knbr-signs-greg-papa-to-multi-year-deal-new-lineup-to-debut-july-16/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Fitzgerald The CBC got some plans to broadcast the upcoming Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games using Twitter on the social media side with content ranging from actual coverage to Canadian athletes' stories in striving for excellence: https://www.gamingpost.ca/canadian-sports-science-news/new-twitter-canada-sports-deals/ Down under with the Seven Network Kurt Burnette, Seven's Olympic director, predicts to The Australian that over 20 million Aussies will watch Seven Network's coverage of Tokyo 2020 with an additional 5 million tuning on portable digital devices with a favorable time zone difference this time for them. More than Sydney in viewership (Can't get to the The Australian article due to subscription fees): https://www.mediaweek.com.au/mediaweek-roundup-june-24-2019/ Look for a new Olympic-themed animated short film made in co-production by Studio Ponoc and with the Olympic Foundation for Culture and Heritage "expressing the Olympic values of excellence, friendship, and respect" that's aimed at kids to get into the Olympic spirit come early next year. Announcement was made at the Annecy Film Festival earlier this month: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20190611_13/ Ireland's Tokyo 2020 Olympic field hockey qualification journey in the 8-team FIH Hockey Series going on from June 8-16 at the Banbridge Hockey Club was streamed live on BBC Sport NI. With a new coach in Sean Dancer and the South Korea, Scotland, France, Czech Republic, Singapore, and Ukraine national teams (Spoiler: Ireland qualified for the FIH Olympic Qualifiers along with South Korea as the top two teams there): https://www.bbc.com/sport/hockey/48490038 The Diet approves the launching of NHK's streaming service coming in March in time for the torch relay and for its simultaneous Tokyo 2020 TV Olympic coverage. No additional fee required going along with that of the TV subscription thanks to a revised law: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/05/29/national/diet-approves-simultaneous-streaming-japans-public-broadcaster-nhk/#.XRK-jOtKjcs

That Dinamo Minsk stadium sure does remind me of Lenin Stadium with that cauldron and the Soviet-era floodlights. Wonder if this is intended as an inspiration...

Are you ready for NBC Olympic primetime anchor Mike Tirico's announcement at the NBCU UpFront this morning at NYC's Radio City Music Hall awaiting with Tokyo 2020? An unprecedented “7,000 hours, over 17 days, reaching 205 million people” in the US...(Brace for a much bigger Olympics spiel next May). Roughly 245 more hours overall than what NBCU offered for Rio 2016 because of new events added. Only right the Peacock recruited 13 famed female American Olympians, including gold medalists Lindsey Vonn, Allyson Felix, and Kerri Strug, who all took the Radio City Music Hall stage to the only standing ovation of the presentation. Driving the female empowerment vibe home, Vonn reminded the Radio City audience that over the past 15 years, American women have won half of all Olympic medals and, I'll add now, well outnumber the men on the US Olympic Team in recent Summer Olympics. That, the feel-good message it brings at today's presentation, and with the #MeToo movement at least on a symbolic level. All at 10:25 am CT. Doesn't mention the breakdown among the networks--we know NBC, NBCSN, MSNBC, CNBC, USA, the Olympic Basketball and Soccer Channels, Golf Channel, Bravo, and TELEMUNDO/NBC Universo will get involved. That of course will come with everything along with it. Fun to speculate which network will get what sports and how many hours each, although it's very early. Safe to assume, going by what Rio 2016 and London 2012 offered by the NBC family of networks, many of these sports will head to where they previously were. Question is, how about the incoming sports on the Tokyo 2020 program like baseball, softball, surfing, skateboarding, karate, and mountain climbing? Where do you think they'll be slated for? Do you think Oxygen will participate? Any chance for new one? How about a new Olympic baseball/softball channel? Will we eventually see the actual creation of Telemundo Deportes? What kind of role will its upcoming NBCU streaming service play in this? Hopefully that will give us Americans a chance to catch up with full replays of past NBC Olympics coverage, for one thing, with the Tokyo 2020 coverage: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/nbcuniversal-upfront-snl-cast-tina-fey-seth-meyers-more-hit-radio-city-1210064 https://deadline.com/2019/05/nbc-upfront-2019-2020-presentation-live-blog-1202613553/

Telemundo once again confirms it'll supply the US Spanish language TV coverage of the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics. Details TBD in the next year. The article just mentions it at the end. Since we're talking also about women's soccer here, Telemundo is also airing this edition of the FIFA Women's World Cup in France starting June 7: https://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/telemundo-shares-upfront-strategy

HBO premieres Friday night a very important and devastating 90-minute documentary from filmmaker Erin Leigh Carr, daughter of the late New York Times media journalist (and certainly not to be confused with the retired Houston Texans QB) David Carr, on the deeply disturbing USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal centering on the disgraced Dr. Larry Nasser as it also keeps its eye on the money and attain medals in a dehumanizing system and culture that get embraced where coaches act like this for medals and accolades prioritizing over the young gymnasts' safety. And how he was enabled to continue on with around 300+ of them over the years. At the end it doesn't matter if the likes of Bela and Marta Karolyi specifically knew about the sexual abuse incidents or the warnings--Nasser perhaps duped and manipulated them. But they had to have known about this with his multiple police interrogations while they were known to be abusive to their gymnasts themselves. You'll see Olympians Aly Raisman and Jordyn Wieber but they, based on the press reviews on the documentary, appear only from their court statement footage; the bigger and more notable names in the gymnastics and of those in power involved with and revolve around them. This is more from a different angle: on the comparatively anonymous young women Larissa Boyce, Trinea Gonczar, Isabel Hutchins, Jessica Ann Smith, Morgan McCaul, Taylor Livingston, Rachel Dellhollander, and the only coach willing to speak on-camera in Aimee Boorman who so memorably confronted Nassar during his January 2018 sentencing hearing in Lansing, Michigan. Carr supports all their stories and their access being told when they're ready but is intrigued in the under-reported portions. They too tell how Nasser played upon that culture abused and savagely betrayed their trust and boundaries under the guise of medical care. Not to mention this same culture disinclined to disregard the needs, concerns, and boundaries of women's own bodies when, here, they're expected to tough things out, never complain, and suffer in silence that's a by-product of one portion in Anglo-American culture. Even with the crumbling institutional structure and fallout from the USA Gymnastics scandal, coaches are still scared in speaking up for fear of losing their jobs, status, and access. The gymnasts too were afraid of speaking out and not being listened to under this culture of fear until later. Rather, Carr, saying this scandal "makes my blood boil", sets it all up in more of a forensic and investigative manner. You know, I flat out don't blame the father at all for wanting to charge and viciously assault at "this demon" in court: You may assume ESPN may touch on this themselves since this is a major development. But usually for things like this, it wants to wait for some years when enough time passes. Regardless, this saga will NEVER end in whatever form for those who were forced to endure that even with Nasser permanently behind bars for there is a legacy to it. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/olympics/article/HBO-presents-another-view-of-the-USA-Gymnastics-13808621.php https://www.bustle.com/p/will-larry-nassar-get-out-of-prison-at-the-heart-of-gold-examines-the-devastating-usa-gymnastics-case-17135629 https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/05/new-film-exposes-how-larry-nassar-was-able-abuse/588571/

Denying that they, the Tokyo 2020 organizers, didn't act on the wishes of NBC's massive clout with the broadcasting seems silly not just to everybody here but elsewhere. Should expect widespread criticisms going their way over this. Find it interesting even the women's soccer gold medal final is set during the US primetime too (11am Tokyo time). And this is because the American women are expected to be there and likely win (should've done that in Rio 2016, won't discuss that here except I'm still angry at them). Considering the weather there when the temperature starts rising, I can understand that. But nighttime seems more preferable. Nine events in track-and-field athletics including men’s and women’s long jump and 400m hurdles, and basketball for both women and men because we know both USA teams will be there. Just hope the situation doesn't turn adverse or even tragic on the athletes' side: https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/u-s-tv-broadcasters-dominate-tokyo-2020-olympics-schedule/ A very strong sign that Sony Pictures Networks will showcase archery in its upcoming Tokyo 2020 broadcast along with preceding major archery events across the Indian subcontinent: https://worldarchery.org/news/167152/sony-pictures-networks-acquires-exclusive-archery-broadcast-rights-indian-sub-continent Would you like some 5G along your upcoming 8KTV with that? Nice to see but...Be quite a while for that to happen with North America and Europe and the Pacific as it would in East Asia. Doubt those 5G 8KTV will hit here in time for Tokyo 2020 unless they're fast tracked with 5G being installed. Nor will the broadcasters be ready save for limited usage: https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/01/huawei-reportedly-plans-first-5g-8k-tv-to-one-up-samsung-and-apple/

Seven News Melbourne's full post-Opening Ceremony news bulletin that aired right after it with a review and reaction across Sydney of what went down at Stadium Australia in Homebush and the torch relay's final day being in Sydney minus the commercial breaks. At 16: 35, a preview of what to watch for on the official first day of competition that included Jelena Dokic's dad restriction on seeing her for his abuse on his daughter, women's triathlon, swimming with the Australia-USA rivalry, Team USA men's basketball team, and Grant Hackett and his fam:

It's well-known that Americans living right at the Canadian-US border have the luxury, unlike the rest of us here in America, of catching the LIVE Canadian coverage presentation of the Olympic Games unlike seeing them live in Buffalo, Seattle, and Detroit, where you can get the CBC and CTV channels. Mostly on the CBC in comparison to what NBC proper offers in this era. But in this case, I'm presenting the link from a 1992 Buffalo News article alerting Americans that they can watch the Summer Olympics on TV almost entirely for FREE and LIVE from Canada without the aid of the infamous Olympic Triplecast coming from CFTO TV-9 Toronto! Was a different era no doubt just before the Internet came along and even Canadian broadcasters weren't ready to embrace that yet at the time. More makes the long-searching info on CTV Barcelona makes it more fleshed out. Works still needs to be done, though. Not sure what TSN was doing back then if it did these Olympics. Coverage was 176.5 hours and mostly LIVE as opposed to (and 15 hours more than) NBC's 161 that was all but 5-8 hours of that live with at least 4 hours of daily live coverage on weekday afternoons. Thanks to this piece, I can fill in some more details. Established that Rod Black, THE man in Canadian TV sportscasting back in the 1990s, anchored the primetime segment from 6 or 6:30-9pm Canada/USA CT. Tracy Wilson, who earlier that year help covered the figure skating in Albertville on CBS, co-hosted the CTV Opening Ceremony presentation with CTV National News anchor Lloyd Robertson that went on tape delayed in primetime 6-9 pm like in the NBC version, one of the few events that did. She also shared the afternoon segment duties with longtime reporter Dan Matheson. Its daily live afternoon coverage usually came around 12-4pm during the daytime segment that usually went roughly 10am-5pm (weekdays it'll go up to 4pm). Longtime Canada men's basketball coach Jack Donohue covered basketball in Barcelona like the Dream Team games--happen to have a copy of Jack McCallum's Dream Team right beside me now while sporting a Canada Basketball Nike longsleeve T-shirt as I'm writing this. Surely, at least the first Dream Team game against Angola, the semis, and the gold medal final were shown on CTV given the huge demand for them. Lorissa Lowing did gymnastics as analyst. Hardcore followers of Olympic broadcasting like many of us here will know Byron MacDonald was at the pool with Mark Faulds, particularly when Calgary native Mark Tewksbury won a surprise gold Ron Reusch covered baseball in its Olympic debut. Don't know what CFTO sports anchor Suneel Joshi and John David "JD" Roberts, then at Canada AM, did there. Time slots (all times CT, live across Canada so no delaying for time zones like here in the US with the East and West--Mountain and Pacific)--still need help in the fuller coverage and what sports were in each slot: July 25, 1992--12-1pm (preview?), 6-9pm (Opening Ceremony), 11pm-1:30am (OC H/L) July 26, August 2--10am-5pm, 6-9pm, 11pm-1:30am July 27, August 1, 3, 8--10am-5pm, 6:30-9pm, 11pm-1:30am July 28-31, August 4-7--10am-4pm, 6:30-9pm, 11pm-1:30am August 9--10am-5pm, 6-9pm (Closing Ceremony, surely that was shown up in Canada in full unlike what NBC did) https://buffalonews.com/1992/07/23/wnyers-can-watch-it-live-for-free-on-ctv/ https://archive.macleans.ca/article/1992/7/27/live-from-barcelona#!&pid=40

Cologne, Germany-based documentary label Autentic had a slate of Tokyo 2020-themed documentary projects hoping to be sold by its sales division for the MIFED convention at Cannes, France. Two involve skateboarding now on the Olympic program and another focusing on security and AI technology at the Olympic Games: http://realscreen.com/2019/04/03/the-miptv-2019-shoppers-guide-part-three/ Tokyo will use 4 areas (Hibiya Park, Ueno Park in Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolitan University Minami-Osawa Campus for the Olympics and Chofu Station Plaza for the Paralympics) and several other locations have been selected in the Tohoku and Kumamoto regions in Kotadai Park in Miyagi and Kumamoto-jo Hall in Kumamoto that were devastated by the 2011 and 2016 earthquakes as multiple viewing areas for both the Olympics and Paralympics: https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1077903/tokyo-2020-releases-plans-for-public-viewing-sites-during-olympics-and-paralympics Great news for NBC with the Tokyo 2020 schedule just now up, and it's getting the swimming, track, and beach volleyball finals will all live air on American primetime despite being 16 hours across the Pacific with its way. By contrast, gymnastics, soccer and other sports will stick to traditional afternoon and evening start times that's more beneficial to European TV. Plus, there's going to be a couple of Super Saturdays and a Golden Sunday like one of the former on August 8 with 30 medal events back-to-back in men's gold medal basketball (tip-off at 11:30 a.m. at Saitama Super Arena Tokyo time), soccer, and baseball games before the Closing Ceremony the next Sunday. Another thing the NBC family of networks when covering Tokyo 2020 would like to drum up interest on. Even with NBC forking out the largest amount of cash, the Tokyo 2020 organisers only consulted with the OBS in imagining the audiences in each sport and then factoring other aspects in devising the schedule: https://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-tokyo-olympics-schedule-prime-time-20190416-story.html https://www.japantimes.co.jp/sports/2019/04/16/olympics/super-saturdays-highlight-schedule-tokyo-olympics/#.XL-3fDBKjct Olympic Channel: now also available on the Roku platform and app: https://www.sportsvideo.org/2019/04/04/olympic-channel-finds-another-home-on-the-roku-channel/

Network Ten Australia and Virgin Video promoted this 1988 Australian Seoul Olympics video entitled Hand in Hand (after the theme song) after the conclusion of these Games that Australians would order by phone through mail order that was under A$30 before shipping and handling. They can relive all the top Aussie Olympic moments like Duncan Armstrong, the Hockeyroos, and Debbie Flintoff-King plus the disappointments on the Aussie team with everything else general culled from Ten's massive coverage that had more TV hours than even NBC for being on nearly 24 hours a day. Actually have a copy of this bought from Ebay years ago but still don't have a VCR that can convert with PAL and SECAM along with playing NTSC. This was of course before the financial collapse of what was to come for Ten soon afterwards from its last Summer Olympics presentation here... The recently retired Lizzie Yarnold, one of Britain's most successful Winter Olympians, explains why she swears off tuna during her early days in transitioning to skeleton in a world of more experienced skeleton racers around her who were lighter and smaller than her in this Toyota Team GB commercial from last year. Filmed just before successfully defending her gold in skeleton