BBC Athletics commentary is dire because.......

There's a lot of hate for Clare Balding but she is very good at the "holding it all together live while being smiley" role. Very experienced.

Her getting emotional over Andy Murray retiring was lovely. She does genuinely love all sorts of sports.

The cricket commentators use those microphones that are a funny shape and they hold right up to their mouths, seems to work. We took out a one month subscription to Discovery+ for £6.99, renewal already cancelled. Well worth it for the volley ball alone

Claire Balding did a Radio 2 Sunday morning show. It was so awful I stopped listening. Don't know what it was but it just didn't work.

Many many flat races - she was leading female British jockey for a while

Sports commentary role started with racing, but she branched out, and then became a general sports anchor. So I think her role is to hold it all together (as individual former champs may talk well on their sport, but be less skilled in holding a broadcast together. Plus she seems able to turn her hand to being enthusiastic./appreciative spectator type of comment when there is no expert available.

That’s because, as earlier, if it’s not Andrew Cotter I reimagine everything they say in his voice.

Or, if I’m bored, Jeff Goldblum

Five pages in and no one has said how awful Paula Radcliffe is. Breathy and long-winded.

Love the Olympics and most of the commentary, especially the gold medal winning athletics commentators (@VeronicaBeccabunga ). Gymnastics commenters are knowledgeable and very fair in their remarks, quick to praise other countries’ competitors and not at all partisan.

Swimming - Clare, Mark n’ Becky are great, the unseen two men (Adrian Moorhouse and partner) are awful - very biased.

Leon Taylor at diving is fabulous, but that bloody woman Kat he is always paired with - she is TERRIBLE. Droning “in gold medal position after the first dive”. FFS there are five or six rounds of dives, and it can all turn in an instant. She’s been reminded multiple times over the years by Leon of this but she persists in doing it. Why on earth was she selected for this role?

Agree the trackside interviewers are insensitive and trite. How do you feel (after seeing your past four years work wiped out in 21.3 seconds)?

But still watch it all!

Oh yes the rowing lady is Very Intense and LOUD! But I agree that Katherine Grainger is brilliant.

Just because sportspeople were great at their sport doesn't mean they will make a great professional broadcaster and commentator.
It's obviously a very different skill set - they may have the knowledge but it's putting it across in a helpful way to an audience that counts.

My only commentator complaint is how negative Johnson can be about people.

I also think there is too much waffling going on, staying with the Rowing commentators for 15 mins while they were talking rubbish, rather than cutting back to the Hockey Game that was going on, for instance.

Some of the lockdown Olive and Mabel videos are doing the rounds again on SM just now and they are still brilliant.

Clare was a quite successful amateur jockey in the late 80s, early 90s, and most of her family are involved in Training Horses, several of which who've been very successful.
That aside, her entire working career has been in Radio, then TV as a presenter. She also writes sports columns for several papers and magazine, and presented Sunday Grandstand before it was discontinued.

She's commentated for 7 Olympics so far, 5 Paralympics, several Winter Olypmics and the Commonwealth Games.. so i'd say she's very adequately qualified for her job.

Thought Balding, Adlington, Foster made watching swimming on an evening a total joy. I felt I got to know members of Team GB swimmers so well through their discussions and the interviews by Sharron Davis.

Very true. Somehow Sharron's interviews work whereas the athletics ones are awful and I feel for the athletes.

Altheletics pundit team talk too much (Johnson,Ennis etc.). Too many repeats of action just done.
And they are somehow boring.and slightly patronising.

There was a segment on Radio 5 in their Olympics coverage last week and it was Johnson talking about himself for over 20mins. OK an amazing career, total respect but there was so much bloody live sport action going on....

Thought Balding, Adlington, Foster made watching swimming on an evening a total joy. I felt I got to know members of Team GB swimmers so well through their discussions and the interviews by Sharron Davis.

I suspect they have those mikes because the closer the mike is to the source (the commentators voice), the higher the level of the voice relative to the background noise.

ie, they have a background noise problem. I don't think it is just for show.

I'm surprised they don't have some sort of noise cancelling where they can sample the background noise and subtract it from the mikes in real time.

They can do this on a £200 set of headphones so the multi billion pound BBC should be able to handle it.

I have noticed similar issues where they tend to have this on the extravagant open air studios. It was the same on the Euros IIRC , where there were drunken roars from fans in the background from the studio overlooking the Brandenburg gate.

@GoldOnyx My OH (who knows nothing about gymnastics) came into the room and said "Why is Johnny Vegas commentating?"

It's an awful, awful voice to listen to and their endless listing of the moves is so boring. Can't we just enjoy the routines with a few relevant comments instead of the non stop babbling.

What irks me is the fashion for having studio presenters awkwardly holding individual mics. They had the technology years ago to site multiple mics on the desk in front of each one. It's just for show.

@bridgetreilly I knew you were joking about some of the commentators being "no hopers". For those who didn't, it helps to read the whole thread 🤷‍♀️
Someone said Clare Balding knows nothing, or words to that effect, I thought she was a top horsey person in her day

I wouldn’t agree she is a goofball. She comes across as very sweet and caring, with a good sense of humour and bubbliness. I don’t think that makes her a goofball. To me, the word goofball suggests she’s a bit silly and accident prone, and I think that’d actually be quite a mean way to describe her. I don’t think she could’ve got to where she has done by being a goofball!!

I didn’t know Craig Heap’s name until now but his voice really, really reminds me of Johnny Vegas’s voice 😂😂 I remember when I first heard him commentate, at the Tokyo Olympics, and even though I did know it wasn’t actually Johnny Vegas’s voice, all I could think of was ‘but why is Johnny Vegas commentating on the gymnastics?’

I hate this too. Literally just missed out on a medal/place in the final, sometimes by the narrowest of margins.....and they're trying to interview them about how it went....they're going to be absolutely gutted and probably not want to speak to anyone let alone be on camera!

‘to medal’ is what the kids did to stop the baddies in Scooby Doo. Grates on me too!

(I know it’s spelled differently)

I like Katherine Grainger (thanks for reminding me of her name 😁) just not as a pair with Mathew Pinsent.

@LuluBlakey1 I love Katherine Grainger! Such a high achiever. Clare is sometimes a bit too intense. Becky is great - a bit of a goofball but she knows what she's taking about.