The Wacky, *&#% World of Snowboarding

When it comes to the Olympics (or just athletics in general), snowboarders have always been considered a breed apart thanks to their laid-back, surfer-dude mentality. Americans were shocked when Lindsay Jacobellis blew a gold medal in the 2006 games by trying a hot-dogging move toward the end of a race, then refusing to apologize for it. (With a shot at redemption in Vancouver, Jacobellis unfortunately failed to qualify for the finals).

Snowboarding icon Shaun White has no such problems. Wednesday night, White blew away the competition in the half-pipe to win yet another gold medal. White already had the gold medal clinched and could have taken it easy for his 2nd run, but decided to do something spectacular ... and did he ever--landing a move that included 2 complete flips and 3-1/2 twists.

The only down side of the whole thing was listening to White and coach Bud Keene right before the final effort. As is quite common in a variety of sports, motivation came in the form of several profanities. Not to be prudish, but do we really need to hear that in prime-time? Kudos to NBC for having a camera and microphone to capture the moment, but what's wrong with running a delay for a few seconds? By now, we've all seen the dangers of putting a live microphone into such situations. (Audio from NBA coaches during TV games is taped-delayed and never live).

The NBC announcers quickly apologized, but it was certainly a situation that could have been prevented. Again, not a huge deal ... it's all part of the game in sports, and especially snowboarding, and it certainly doesn't detract from all those gold-medal performances Wednesday night. But it's another black eye for NBC, which despite some good early ratings, has made plenty of mistakes in covering these games.