Are you watching the Olympics? Which sports do you follow?

We decided to relax our “no tv on while kids are awake” rule so the kids can watch a bit of the Olympics. Already I remember why I loathe network sports coverage. There seem to be two minutes of commercials for every minute of action on NBC.

In 1996 I lived in the Czech Republic and watched hours of coverage of the Atlanta Olympics on state-run Czech television. There were no commercials, and they had extensive coverage of sports where Czechs and Slovaks do well (like canoeing and kayaking).

Watching the gymnastics made the biggest impression on me, though. You could tell that most of the people in the arena were watching large tv screens. There would be huge cheers whenever an American finished a routine. Meanwhile, Czech television was showing all of the gymnasts. You’d see some girl from a different country finish an amazing routine to dead silence from the crowd.

Or, in the middle of a difficult maneuver, the competitors from other countries would have to deal with deafening roars from the crowd as an American finished up on a different piece of equipment.

The crowd was so unsportsmanlike in not acknowledging good performances from non-Americans that I felt embarrassed to face my European colleagues at work.