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

[Pipsquiggle]

Of the crowd noise!

Trying to hear Gabby, Denise, Jess & Michael but it sounds like they are in the crowd - lots of clapping and cheering, you can't hear them speak.

The sound department need to sort this out ASAP. It's really ruining the programme.

Rebecca Adlington is great. Articulate and insightful. Lovely dresses too.
Mark Foster is OK. Gold medal for manspreading.
Clare Balding grates on my nerves. What has she ever won?

Two irritations for me: the female rowing commentator Whose. Every. Sentence. Was. Structured. Like. This. And the swimming chap who told us the Brits were wearing red caps at least a dozen times every race. It caused confusion in our house when the Chinese were in the pool at the same time...

I'm pretty sure they have had similar open commentary boxes before. I remember seeing a clip of Denise Lewis going wild when a British person was winning a race, she was leaning over the glass barrier and jumping up and down. It may have been Jessica Ennis she was watching, I can't remember.

The female rowing commentator was a bit nails-on-blackboard with HER. PEAK. EXCITEMENT. AT. LITERALLY. EVERY. STROKE!!!!! But I would happily have listened to Matt Pinsent and Katherine Grainger all day. They also looked as if they'd brought along a tremendous picnic hamper in the back of the Discovery.

Otherwise it'd be helpful to get a few explainers for any event involving complex and hard to see manoeuvres, like gymnastics, skateboarding, BMX gymnastics, etc, instead of the commentator just screaming, 'That was a double Kravchenko with an Oops on the outspin!!!'.

Exactly this. So much endless chat and recaps, while there is minimal coverage of events that you can see actually going on in the background. It is really poor, and the athletics coverage is always so heavily focused on the track, with hardly any coverage of the field events.

I’ve enjoyed the swimming commentary, although I don’t quite understand why the BBC have spent quite so much time on it when we’ve done so terribly!
Also, Where are our female swimmers this year? Men have also done badly. But Balding, Adlington and that chap are very watchable.

Another vote for Rebecca Adlington - she is great, so natural and warm with a great knowledge of her sport. Also love the diving commentators (very funny too)

To be clear, I set this post up about the noise in the stade du France and not being able to hear Gabby, Jess, Michael & Denise.

I think the rest of the commentary is great, particularly as I don't know a lot about alot of Olympic sports - canoeing, shooting, judo ......... They are brilliant at describing what's good and what's not.

I love Clare Balding, I always think would she prefer to be covering the equestrian events rather than swimming?

The gymnastics commentary grates on me - Matt Baker I don't mind but every move on the uneven bars is a Katchev - it gets mentioned every 5s - WTF is it? Every 10s someone says "this has got to be perfect" and Craig Heap's voice - eugh!! There used to be a crabby old woman who frequented a local cafe who was always offering my young kids out of date fruit polos - I used to watch her trying to peel off the wrapping paper that was stuck to them using her obscenely flakey bright pink nails - (I'm miming to the kids - don't eat them!) then she'd try and cadge a free cuppa off me (the people serving in the cafe mime to me "don't fall for that old trick") - she had a raspy hoarse voice that belonged in an episode of The League of Gentlemen - every time Craig speaks that's all I can think of.

In the studio- Beth Tweddle is dire- unbearably dire in every way. I like Rebecca Adlington and Mark Foster in the swimming . Haven't minded Matt Baker or Fred and their bits.
I don't mind the commentators on the actual events- quirky but know what they are talking about.
I am not a Clare Balding fan in anything she does.
Mathew Pinsent and Helen Gardener (?) not for me.

The ones I object to most are the early morning ones in the studios- two black women who seem to think they need bare arms and low cut tops every day to present sport in a studio, and two dull white men in suits who drone and are personalityless. All awful
And the woman interviewing athletes beside the track who asks the most inane questions to every athlete. I am surprised 99% are so polite and generous. One tonight was very rude and came a cross as having a personality disorder he was so odd

@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.

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

‘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 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!

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 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!!

@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

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.

@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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.