The Olympic games cover a wide variety of athletics. Some are more popular and easier to recognize than others. You know what basketball and even water polo are. For other events, you understand a little bit about the sport from the title, but don't quite understand all the objectives and scoring for the event. This is where the commentators come into play. Their job is the simplify the sport so that the common viewer can understand the goal of the competition. Sometimes they are too simple.
Watching synchronized diving, you hear the commentator explain the scoring. The 2 divers are judged for similarity in style, speed of rotation, angle of entry and timing of entry. The more synchronized the 2 divers are, the less deductions they receive from the dive's start value. In the slow motion film, you can begin to see what they are talking about.
After a while, the commentators lack information to share and try to add fluff or color to their dialogue. That's when the odd, Yogi Berra comments start to come out. . . 'She completely missed the dive. She is not going to score well.' That's the comment. Not how many points are going to be deducted, but the fact that she is not going to receive as many points if it has been executed perfectly. or 'They train in the same facility. This makes training (for synchronized diving) a lot easier for the them.' As if I assumed that they were in sync, and they wouldn't have to be in the same place to train together. Enlightening. Hope you are enlightened as well.
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